My hubby and I just both read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and we are both wondering just who in the hell is Mercer and why does everyone want to be as one with him? Is there a subtle backstory which we both missed?
As an aside, please recommend more Phillip K. Dick.
Don’t know who Mercer was; I don’t remember that name.
“The Man in the High Castle” is a good PKD book, about Germany and Japan winning WW2 and splitting the U.S. right up the middle. Then Japan starts to wonder if Germany has designs on total global domination… chilling and well-written.
Mercer is the guy that everyone would “connect” with when using their empathy boxes. The scenario when using the empathy box involved a sense of walking up a hill from the depths of some tombs with him whilst being pelted with rocks from unseen “killers”. He’s also supposedly the one that enabled Deckard’s avoidance of an ambush from Pris, one of the androids holed-up in the conapts. He told Deckard that what Deckard was doing was wrong but had to be done.
I dunno. I just feel like I might be missing a level of the book without understanding what Mercer is about. 
You’ve just described what Mercer is about.
But who is he? What are his origins? How do the others connect to him with the empathy boxes if he’s a real person? Is there another story giving his backstory? Why are the donkeys his favorite? I guess I should be asking WTF is his purpose in the story. To me, his character adds nothing. I don’t know if you’re being glib or I’m being dense, but I just don’t get the reason for his character’s existence. He adds nothing.
I read it years ago and although I enjoyed it at the time… I can’t really remember the last 1/3 of the book.
“He adds nothing.”
Actually, he provides the guiding force to Deckard’s ability to discern whether or not people are replicants, so he provides everything.
But that’s just begging the question, isn’t it? Who is he? I hope I don’t come across as being impatient, but my question is not really being answered. He is protrayed as someone we should have prior knowledge of. Why do I feel I haven’t grasped his true signifigance?
It may be worthwhile to note that Philip K. Dick was bonkers.
Having made that helpful observation, I can second the recommendation of The Man in the High Castle and caution the casual reader against Dr. Bloodmoney.
I think I’ll just accept that as the answer and move on with my life and to more readings of this crazy man. I did really quite enjoy it.
From here:
Try reading Dicks short stories. There are 5 vols of them and many are good and some are not - like his novels.
You should probably read A Scanner Darkly which is, IMO, a most chilling book (and soon to be a major motion picture). The Valis trilogy (Valis, The Devine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer) is a good read. And keep in mind that Valis is pretty much autobiographical and you get an idea of his mental state.
Ubik, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said and the aformentioned Man in the High Castle are all excellent reads as well. For Dick at his most Dickian I would also suggest Now Wait For Last Year and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
The humans in DADoES are obesessed with demonstrations of empathy: it’s also demonstrated by the social pressure to care for a “real” animal, to the extent that people buy replicant animals and pretend to feed and care for them. Mercerism is another extension of that: “real” humans can use the empathy boxes to feel what Mercer felt. It’s all an effort to differentiate themselves from the replicants, and thereby excuse their mistreatment of them. Since replicants can’t feel the way humans do, it’s alright to enslave them, work them to death, rape them, whatever. The desperate extent to which humans go to prove their superior empathy is meant, IMO, to hint that the difference doesn’t really exsist: it’s all self-delusion, and humans are no more or less empathic than their artificial creations. Who Mercer was isn’t important. In fact, at one point it’s revealed/implied that he never exsisted at all, and was as much an artificial construct as the people Deckard hunts down and kills.
(This is based on recollections of one reading of the book more than five years ago, so I may have screwed the whole thing up.)
Why would answering these questions make any difference to the story?
It’s what’s known as being evocative – putting things into the story in order to create atmosphere. You might as well ask about the backstory behind the chair Decard sits on (Who made it? Where did he buy it? How much did he pay? Why didn’t it have better casters?). It has no importance whatsoever.