Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay is presented as a horror-tinged science-fiction novel that unsettles through structure and point of view. The story opens in a living room that “rearranges its own furniture,” narrated by a “you” who cannot recall his own name, creating a sense of imbalance akin to motion sickness. Julia Flang, a broke former semi-professional gamer in Glendale living with a retired uncle, accepts a high-paying temp job to remotely control a comatose man with proprietary AI embedded in his skull from California to the East Coast. The novel alternates Julia’s third-person, wry present-tense chapters with Bernie’s second-person dread. It also includes metafictional interludes addressing the reader directly, framing who is telling the story as part of the suspense. The piece emphasizes psychological terror over gore, centered on grief and self-inventory.