Surely a construct that would have altered the face of reality?
One of the most influential writers of the 20th century tackling one of the most influential sci-fi works of the 20th century? Sounds too good to be true.
And it was, but there was an odd connection.
In the introduction, it is noted that ‘In 1980, screenwriter Hampton Fancher was working on about the fifth draft for a film…vaguely based on Phillip K. Dick’s impossibly titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, when director Ridley Scott seized on the phrase in his script – or rather, in his own words, when “the phrase ‘blade runner’ popped up,” as if spontaneously seizing him.
I thought, Christ, that’s terrific. Well, the writer looked guilty and said ‘As a matter of fact it’s not my phrase, I took it from a William Burroughs book.’ And the book, oddly enough, is called Blade Runner: The Film.'
So what is it about?
Originally beginning as a film adaptation of the 1974 novel The Bladerunner (which was about a world where illegal medical services supplying black market medical supplies are threatened with a virus) and then becoming a novella, Burroughs upped the ante by setting it in 2014 and throwing in right wing politicians legalising heroin for controlling the population, unfit people being denied medical services unless they consent to being sterilised and a New York abandoned to gangs.
Take this quote as an example:
Lower Manhattan 2014. Here clients come for operations, drugs, treatments that cannot be bought for any amount of money through legal channels…drugs suppressed by the drugs manufacturers from long-range profit motives and in turn suppressed by the State bureaucracy. Apomorphine as a cure for addiction suppressed by the heroin industry and the drug enforcement agencies…to keep as many addicts as possible on the program to maintain personnel and appropriations.
Depressingly quaint and prescient at the same time.
Functioning as both a novella and script synopsis, it is very much a Burroughs book due to the blending of formats, the rampant drug abuse and the nightmarish hellhole that is society. Although not a cut up text along the lines of Naked Lunch and The Noa Express, it is disjointed enough for someone not familiar with Burroughs to be confused at times. However, it ranks as one of his best because the text is so dystopian and so thick with atmosphere (part of which is from the 1974 novel) that it would be (after Junky and Queer) an excellent way to introduce Burroughs to that hypothetical newbie.
So while it has a small link with the film, the themes Burroughs explores are just as pertinent as the ones explored by Ridley Scott.
Maybe another reason why both novella and film share a title?
William Burroughs, 2019, Blade Runner: A Movie. Tangerine Press. ISBN-13: 978-1910691533
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.
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