New New York

New New York is the principal American settlement on Mars, a colonial city that serves as both the promised destination for Earth's emigrants and the origin point for the androids who flee back to Earth. It is the place where the U.N.'s colonization program, driven by the carrot of android servants and the stick of radioactive fallout, aims to resettle Earth's remaining "regular" population. The city is repeatedly invoked in government propaganda and the broadcasts of Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends as a land of opportunity, dignity, and escape from the contaminated homeworld.

Colonial Promise and Propaganda

The U.N.'s colonization program, which grants each emigrant an android subtype of their choice, is the primary mechanism for populating New New York. The city is presented as a solution to Earth's post-war degradation, with the slogan "Emigrate or degenerate! The choice is yours!" driving the narrative. In an interview taped live in New New York, a recent immigrant named Mrs. Maggie Klugman describes the dignity of having a dependable servant, contrasting her new life with the anxiety of being classified as a "special" on Earth. This propaganda, broadcast on the government-controlled TV channel that John Isidore is forced to watch, frames New New York as a place where the worries of genetic and mental fitness vanish.

The Android's Mars

For the androids who escape to Earth, New New York is the site of their servitude and the place they fled. Pris Stratton, one of the eight Nexus-6 androids who illegally return to Earth, tells John Isidore that she lived in a settlement near New New York. She describes a lonely, desolate existence on Mars, where the androids themselves are lonely, and where she obtained drugs from Roy Baty, a pharmacist who ran a drugstore. Pris characterizes Mars as an awful, ancient place, far lonelier than the abandoned Earth building where she takes refuge. The city is thus not a utopia but a site of oppression and isolation for the androids, who are manufactured there by the Rosen Association to serve human colonists.

Economic and Industrial Context

The Rosen Association, the system's largest manufacturer of humanoid robots, operates its parent auto-factory on Mars, producing the Nexus-6 brain units that power the androids. The association follows the time-honored principle of commercial venture, producing progressively more human types to meet colonial demand. The city is therefore the industrial hub for the very androids that bounty hunters like Rick Deckard are tasked with "retiring" on Earth. The connection between New New York and the Rosen Association underscores the economic and legal framework that treats androids as property, a status that the escaped androids violently reject.

Narrative Significance

New New York functions as a distant, almost mythical counterpoint to the decaying, dust-choked Earth. It represents the official future that Earth's remaining population is pressured to embrace, yet it is also the source of the novel's central conflict: the androids who escape its servitude. The city's existence drives the plot, as Deckard's mission to retire the escaped Nexus-6 androids is a direct consequence of the colonization program that produces them. The city is never directly visited in the novel, but its presence looms over every decision, from Deckard's desire to emigrate to the androids' desperate flight to Earth.