Prequel to Philip K. Dick’s Electric Sheep Hits iPad

Nearly three decades after Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? sparked Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner movie, the novel has inspired a comic book prequel that explores Earth’s first wave of droid hunters.

Titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dust to Dust, the $4 comic book by I Zombie writer Chris Roberson and 48 Stron artist Robert Adler lands May 26.

Roberson says the comic, offered in four variant covers (including the Trevor Hairsine art pictured above left), draws on a major theme running through Dick’s 1968 sci-fi classic. “There are a number of references to World War Terminus and the radioactive dust responsible for killing off nearly all animal life and rendering humans sterile,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail.

“Our story takes place in the immediate aftermath of that war as the populace comes to grips with the virtual extinction of animal life,” he said. “Meanwhile, the off-world colonies lure more and more people away, and androids originally intended for the battlefield are being repurposed to serve as the colonial workforce.”

To get a free sneak peek at the story, fans can eyeball an eight-page digital preview on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. The Dust to Dust app, devised by comiXology and Boom Studios, includes a retail locator bundled with a preorder feature for those who want to purchase physical copies.