Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep

The most anticipated AI Horror of 2026 from a master of the genre

Paul Tremblay author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:2nd Jul '26

Should be back in stock very soon

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep cover

Philip K. Dick meets the Coen Brothers in this genre-bending near-future tech nightmare that is as bitingly funny as it is horrifically believable from the New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie.

A genre-bending near-future tech nightmare that is as bitingly funny as it is horrifically believable, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World.

‘The best anti-Generative AI story horror has produced so far’ NPR
'Philip K. Dick would be honoured to read Tremblay's novel’ Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh
‘Mind-bending’ Guardian
'A master of his craft, Tremblay creates a new genre with every book he writes.’ Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho
‘Expertly delivers twists and turns in a world that seems all too timely.’ Variety
‘One of the most terrifying horror writers of his generation.’ Joe Hill, King Sorrow
‘Horrific, multi-layered and massively meta’ SFX

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Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn’t like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world’s largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can’t refuse. One sham interview later, she’s offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state from California to the East Coast. But he’s not dead dead: he has an AI mind implanted in his head . . .

Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he’s trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn’t remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person.
Who? He can’t remember.

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a heady, terrifying genre-bender from one of themost groundbreaking voices in fiction today, exploring the ‘I’ in AI.

PRAISE


‘Mind-bending . . . Dipping into the darker side of science fiction, this is a chilling story that imagines a brain implant allowing the dead to walk . . . and the person hired to control them.’Guardian

'Innovative, terrifying, and deeply human. An electric and wild skewering of Silicon Valley's takeover of the human mind and body that could only be written by Paul Tremblay.' Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe

‘Paul Tremblay is on fire, this time with a...

Tremblay [is] not just one of our great horror writers but one of our great fiction writers, full stop * New York Times *
Paul Tremblay is one of the most terrifying horror writers of his generation. -- Joe Hill, No.1 New York Times bestselling author of King Sorrow
Mind-bending . . . Dipping into the darker side of science fiction, this is a chilling story that imagines a brain implant allowing the dead to walk . . . and the person hired to control them. * Guardian *
Philip K. Dick would be honored to read Tremblay's novel, which, with its hypnotic prose, compels us to confront our existential horror even as it makes us laugh, excites us, moves us, and yes, makes us shudder a lot -- Agustina Bazterrica, the international best-selling author of Tender Is the Flesh
Tremblay has always been an innovator, but this beautifully written collection of real and imagined grotesqueries cements him not only as one of the most original and exciting voices in horror but also one of the smartest, most engaging authors in contemporary fiction. * NPR *
Paul Tremblay is Horror’s Newest Big Thing * GQ *
A master of his craft, Tremblay creates a new genre with every book he writes. This ingenious novel is refreshing, hilarious, teeming with warnings of real horrors to come, and ultimately entirely human. It will be the most stressfully entertaining journey of your year -- Virginia Feito, author of Victorian Psycho
Uncertainty is Tremblay's stock-in-trade. Over the last decade, he has grown from hot new thing to horror icon without compromising on his uniquely inexplicable nightmares * Esquire *
Paul Tremblay is unmatched in creating horror that feels at once outsized and disturbingly personal -- Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea and Private Rites
‘In an age of shredded attention spans and never-ending attempts to turn art into 'content,' there's power in seeing an artist make a stand in defense of his principles . . . Readers will find themselves entertained, enraged and satisfied.’ * The New York Times *
Tremblay turns horror inside out with characters so complex and painfully human it makes the terrible things that happen even worse -- Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls
Tremblay expertly delivers twists and turns in a world that seems all too timely. * Variety *
Innovative, terrifying, and deeply human. An electric and wild skewering of Silicon Valley's takeover of the human mind and body that could only be written by Paul Tremblay. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep will keep you up at night -- Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe
Horrific, multi-layered, meta, and absolutely brilliant! * SFX *
Melts your brain and scours your soul. As entertaining and pop-culture savvy as the novel can be, it's emotionally wrenching and truly scary – you'll never think of the phrase proof of concept the same way again. Get ready to root for Julia Flang and weep for our lost humanity -- Ed Park, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed, Different Dreams

ISBN: 9781037205798

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 34mm

Weight: 540g

336 pages