Patreon Preview: Blade Runner
Note: This is a preview of “From Electric Sheep to the Final Cut: The Evolution of a Blade Runner”, my 2007 essay on the evolution of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel across twenty-five years of cinematic re-edits. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $5 “It Came from the Morgue…” level.
Like many cinematic adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s literary output, Blade Runner takes its hook from the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but uses the book as a starting point to develop the ideas in a new direction. Blade Runner, as adapted by writers Hampton Fancher and David Peoples and realized by director Ridley Scott, inverts much of the novel’s intent by altering the nature of the story’s protagonist and the audience’s viewpoint on the world where he lives.
Written in 1966 and published two years later, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? told the story of bounty hunter Rick Deckard and his pursuit of renegade androids in a feel-good consumer culture occupying a dying Earth of 1992. Dick’s book presented a society wherein citizens flaunted their empathy by caring for an ever-decreasing supply of live animals, or pretending to do so, in the case of the eponymous electric sheep. The depleted state of livestock was the result of a radioactive cloud that constantly eroded the genetic code of those who remained on Earth rather than emigrating to its prosperous off-world colonies.
If the prospect of eventually being classified as “a special”—too gene-damaged to reproduce or hold down a worthwhile job—wasn’t reason enough to leave Earth, the deal was sweetened by a free custom-designed android for every colonist, but these slaves were illegal on Earth. It was Deckard’s job to “retire”—a euphemism for “kill”—any that make their way to the homeworld.
To continue reading, please join me on Patreon. Your interest in my work is much appreciated.
JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer