Beginning several months after the events in Blade Runner, Deckard has retired to an isolated shack outside the city, taking the replicant Rachael with him in a Tyrell transport container, which slows down the replicant aging process. He is approached by a woman who explains she is Sarah Tyrell, niece of Eldon Tyrell, heiress to the entire Tyrell Corporation and the human template (templant) for the Rachael replicant. She asks Deckard to hunt down the "missing" sixth replicant. At the same time, the human template for Roy Batty hires Dave Holden, the blade runner attacked by Leon, to help him hunt down the man he believes is the sixth replicant - Deckard.

Living on Mars, Deckard is acting as a consultant to a movie crew filming the story of his Blade Runner days. He finds himself drawn into a mission on behalf of the replicants he was once assigned to kill. Meanwhile, the mystery surrounding the beginnings of the Tyrell Corporation is being dragged out into the light.

The story begins with the introduction of Iris, a female Blade Runner, and the best in her unit. Meyer - her boss - tells her that the blade runner division is in danger; far fewer replicants are coming to Earth, and thus the economic value of the blade runners is dropping, giving the risk of a "reorganisation". Meyer gives Iris the assignment to track down an owl - an extremely rare, real owl, named Scrappy. Iris is skeptical, since if the owl is real (and thus not a replicant) the case seems to be nothing to do with the blade runners, but she accepts the job anyway.

In a devastated Los Angeles of the near future most of the population have fled from THE FEAR, leaving the city inhabited by freaks and drop-outs, policed by the mysterious and powerful SCRAP organisation: characters such as the punkish Dortz and his enigmatic side-kick Anne Manx, the vicous, dumb Buddy - a boy who quite literally will blow your mind - and his sister, Rachel, reanimator of dead flesh.

Set in a future where the United States has largely broken down into reluctantly cooperating enclaves run by a wide variety of strongmen and warlords, with a veneer of government control that seems largely interested in controlling technology. Dr. Adder is an artist-surgeon, who modifies sexual organs of his patients to satisfy the weirdest of perversion; he is clearly depicted as a partly criminal, partly countercultural figure in a future Los Angeles.

The book is set in the Pacific Fringe – the only remaining industrialised part of the world – in a society where free market capitalism holds absolute sway. Even the dead, including the hero's wife, can be brought back to life as slave labour if they fail to meet their financial obligations. The internet has evolved radically so that emails can be seen fluttering around the recipient and pestering for attention, while strange online sexual experiences can be had through electronic surrogates called prowlers.

Schuyler, a sprinter, one who outruns government particle beam satellites to deliver computer chips to the European black market, becomes a media celebrity and the icon of a new religious cult.