Clickbait antidote please?

A wild ride of a read. What was clickbait to you?

When someone sees the headline, the natural impulse is, "I wonder why they called it Blade Runner; if I click the link, it will tell me." But ten long paragraphs into the piece, there's no sign of an answer.

I guess you had to read the whole thing? The title of "digging into the odd history" suggest that it's going to be a tale. History doesn't exist as simple quick answers.

Sure, but I think a lot of people who saw the headline were only interested in the simple, quick answer, which was certainly enough for me.

Hard to TL;DR because it's a twisty tale that doesn't make a lot of sense.

It was the name of an unrelated book by an obscure author that was adapted into a "film treatment" by Willam Burroughs; and it was sitting on the right shelf when Scott and Co. were scratching around for a title. Neither manuscript had an influence on the final film, and the term "Blade Runner" is never explained in the film.

Thanks. Looks like the complete answer would be something like, "There was a book about 'bladerunners', black-market couriers of medical equipment like scalpels, and they liked the name and adopted it for the unrelated film."

Surprising. I had assumed it was a random future-world term, but was also meant to evoke Deckard's dilemmas - balanced on a knife edge.

Probably why everyone involved liked it: It's evocative across multiple interpretations.

In addition to yours, "runner" works as a kind of diminution of the job, runners being minor functionaries who shuttle back and forth at the beck of their superiors ("No choice, pal.")

That what Deckard's running is a "blade"—death—only emphasizes either his powerlessness or his victims'. He's a pageboy being made to do murder. Or a janitor cleaning up mere "hazards".

>That what Deckard's running is a "blade"—death

Yeah, could be "running" as in operating ("run: be in charge of; manage") a metaphorical blade, that is cutting their life short.

Or, since the original intended sense was "smuggler of blades", within the world in the movie "blade runner" could be interpreted as "smuggler of death in the underworld of the replicants".

(With the dark irony that the original was meant to be "smuggling equipment to heal the needy", re-applied to a context of "bringing death to the desperate".)

I had similar thoughts as well only to read through and fully understand what all these meant

The TLDR summary: "Blade Runner" comes from another SciFi dystopia:

> Universal health care has been enacted, but in order to cull the herd of the weak, the “Health Control laws” — enforced by the office of a draconian “Secretary of Health Control” — dictate that anyone who wants medical care must undergo sterilization first. As a result, a system of black-market health care has emerged in which suppliers obtain medical equipment, doctors use it to illegally heal those who don’t want to be sterilized, and there are people who covertly transport the equipment to the doctors. Since that equipment often includes scalpels and other instruments of incision, the transporters are known as “bladerunners.”

Thank you!

I'm surprised Grandpa Simpsons stories are still a thing in "journalism"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQyN0owXGo

Sounds like a good story but the movie (Taking Tiger Mountain) is mediocre, judging by the ratings. Fortunately there is Gattaca!

Sounds pretty realistic. The US coerced India (on the threat of not providing aid) to run major sterilization campaigns. In many cases people were sterilized without any actual consent when they came for medical treatment.

Wild. Doc turned sci-fi author wrote a book [1]. Book re-written by someone else to be a movie [2]. Movie never published. Rights purchased and turned into a totally different movie [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bladerunner

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(a_movie)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner

> Movie never published

"Blade Runner (a movie) was loosely adapted as the 1983 film Taking Tiger Mountain [0], after co-director Tom Huckabee purchased the rights to the novella from Burroughs for $100." [1]

[0] (movie is rated 4.7@imdb) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Tiger_Mountain_(film)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(a_movie)#Adapt...

Filmed as a movie adaption of a Camus-inspired poem in Wales, Wales as a fallback location after failing to reach Tangier. Rearranged into a loose adaption of the novel "Blade Runner (a movie)" only in post production. That's amazingly true to the convoluted nature of that story's evolution!

The articles referenced on the Wikipedia page seem to be almost deliberately nonspecific about the timing of pulling in the Burroughs material: at some point between 1979 and 1983, so it could be well before or after Ridley Scott turned those two words into a household name. Might be the best way to play the cards given, ambiguous endings run in the family.

A few weeks ago I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and as a long time fan of Blade Runner it provided a lot of good back story on the movie. Highly recommended.

Recently read this as well. I found the movie kind of uneven in parts but felt it was mostly a better story than the book, which I didn't expect to be the case.

I guess I didn't totally get the Mercerism and animal angle, it seemed to exist mostly to highlight a difference in empathy between characters. I think the film is better without it.

The android test Mexican standoff was amusing though.

The differences in empathy was kinda the whole point of the book. Which is to say, the androids didn't have any. In the context of the story, they could act and look like humans, but were essentially psychopathic killing machines. PKD felt that being fully human required empathy.

I guess I kind of felt it was a wacky way to establish that, and I felt it wasn't necessary. The absence of it in the androids would be sufficient to highlight it. The aspect of Mercerism being unveiled as a fraud being the androids grand plan and it not mattering (because Mercer being a real deity was never the actual point anyway) was great at highlighting how the entire idea was just a bridge to far for the androids.

I probably just have some bias here since I like the film's nuanced interpretation of the androids and having one of them show mercy at the last moment is a better twist to me.

The book goes the other way--in the end, Deckard quits his job because he is starting to feel empathy for the androids.

I had a similar impression. For me those two hit the hardest and I think it can drag a bit in those moments. I expected a more in depth view as is often the case with source material, not an entirely different societal mindset from most characters. It's as if they forked out a huge part of the story for the movies and honestly I'm glad they did so.

I was a bit skeptic of Philip K Dick once I finished it but I'm glad I took up Ubik a couple of years after - it turned out to be one of my favorite reads.

Ubik is my favorite as well.

Another good PKD read is A Maze of Death... it has very dated tech in it (satellite in orbit playing pre-recorded tape)... but the ideas are very similar to Ubik (in a way). A world deteriorating, an almost spiritual war between forces of order and disorder.

> bit skeptic of PKD... but I'm glad I took up Ubik a couple of years after

'Ubik' the novel, not the substance, I take it. in the novel [spoiler], Ubik is a store-bought aerosol product which can be used to temporarily reverse deterioration... or is it...?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

I agree that the movie is kind of uneven but over all a better telling of the story. But there are parts of the movie that I'm like "what's going on here" that the story clears up.

I don't think these are spoilers, but stop reading if you are sensitive: Ones that stuck out for me were "why is this weird guy living in a building that is falling apart?" The story reveals that Earth is basically poisoned and that everyone who can leave has left, and the people staying behind are suffering serious cognitive decline due to it.

J.F. Sebastian? He's suffering from a genetic condition that causes him to age prematurely (ironic, since he's a geneticist who designs replicants and simpler creatures). He failed the medical screening required for off-world living, and thus is confined to life on Earth.

I'm afraid I disagree with your claim that J.F. is "suffering serious cognitive decline" due to his life on Earth. To the contrary, his confinement on Earth is not the cause of his psysical decline, his physical condition (genetics) is the cause of his confinement.

more details: https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/J.F._Sebastian

I think linsomniac is crossing wires between the film and PKD's original novel: in PKD's novel John Isidore, a radioactively damaged and sub-par IQ human, aids the fugitive androids. And in PKD's novel, the remaining residents on Earth wore lead codpieces to protect themselves from mutation.

The film differs in that J.F. Sebastian is a creative genius, not sub-par IQ, and yes his genetic condition is the proximate cause of his confinement on Earth: but the film clearly asks: what caused the condition? The film doesn't say but pretty much implies the same as PKD's novel [that one of Sebastian's parents or ancestors was radioactively damaged].

In general the film implies but does not lay out any of the (unnecessary and seriously tiresome) exposition from matchstick characters that PKD's novel did, and that makes it stronger. (Arguably except for Gaff, and especially the unicorn scene in the Director's Cut). Ditto, omitting Mercerism in place of a general existential malaise.

I might have misinterpreted something, but wasn't there an exposition piece from Isidore about how he could heal animals and humans before his abilities were burned out by exposure? It sounded like fantastical ravings of a diminished mind but maybe it was meant to highlight in his fantasy world his desire was to heal.

Definitely read as it is a classic, just prepare yourself for a lot of talking about sheep (I think it was a sheep, it's been awhile).

Sure you’re not thinking of the John Scalzi book with the similar (referential) title?

As implied by the name of the story, it was indeed a lot of talk about an electric sheep. Maybe Scalzi has a book that also talks a lot about a sheep, but it definitely fits for this story as well.

> it was indeed a lot of talk about an electric sheep

And I believe one of the things Deckard talked to his wife about was saving up enough to buy a real sheep, which is what leads him to the Tyrell corporation.

Yeah, this is what I was remembering. It was really more of talk about "keeping up with the jones", but the sheep was the core object of this conversation.

Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner is a great documentary, really recommended.

It was to be called Dangerous Days in Fancher's last draft before eventually taking the name Blade Runner.

Great novel. It's a shame the author never gave it a title. /s

Alan E. Nourse. Silverberg says he's a good sci fi writer. Hmm.

Here's one of his short story collections

http://library.lol/fiction/5318504BEFA6ADEBC97C8EF417F51104

One of my all time favourite short sci-fi stories is "The Coffin Cure":

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24276/24276-h/24276-h.htm

It's about a guy who cures the common-cold ... and the consequences. Always had a soft spot for it.

Alan E. Nourse wrote a short story called "Tiger by the Tail" that was collected in one of those Asimov or Martin Greenberg (or both) edited anthologies. For some reason the story really affected me, and I tracked it down after thirty years or so of half remembering it. I was surprised to learn about the Blade Runner connection from the Wikipedia article about him.

This makes me suspect there is even more to this (amazing!) story:

> Their saga is somewhat incomprehensible, not least because it’s eventually conveyed in two separate movies, intended to be screened either by alternating scenes from one of the film with scenes from the other, or by projecting them on two screens simultaneously. It concludes with Billy realizing he’s not living in 2014, as he once thought, but is actually somehow in 1914.

That's from Burroughs's work, which was based off of Nourse's. But that idea of two parallel times - of someone living in more than one time - is such a hallmark of Philip K. Dick's later work that I can't help but wonder if Borroughs was inspired by PKD. The timeline fits: Borroughs wrote this in the late 70's, and PKD's experience that led to his obsession with parallel times was in 1974 [1], and his first published work inspired by it was that same year.

If Borroughs was inspired by PKD, that's another weird coincidence in this chain of events. If he wasn't that's maybe even more of a coincidence actually.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Paranormal_expe...

Executive summary: in an earlier dystopian novel by Alan E. Nourse, people are required to be sterilized as a condition to receive Universal Health Care. Underground clinics flourish, and people smuggling scalpels for those clinics are called blade runners.

lol. I always thought it is some well known english metaphor that everyone knows, and the only interpretation I had was "blade runner" means running (no time to think) on a blade (very thin margin of error) and any misstep will be a catastrophe.

The title "Blade Runner" was unintentionally borrowed from a 1974 novel by Alan E. Nourse, and it has no direct connection to the plot or themes of the 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott, which is based on Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The adoption of the title has contributed to the film's enigmatic history and enduring cultural significance.