[HN Gopher] Digging into the odd history of Blade Runner's title...
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Digging into the odd history of Blade Runner's title (2017)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-07-31 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vulture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vulture.com)
| linsomniac wrote:
| 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.
| PNewling wrote:
| 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).
| cvwright wrote:
| Sure you're not thinking of the John Scalzi book with the
| similar (referential) title?
| yomlica8 wrote:
| 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.
| Finnucane wrote:
| 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.
| nidnogg wrote:
| 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.
| lordfrito wrote:
| 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.
| animatethrow wrote:
| 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."
| linsomniac wrote:
| Thank you!
| raldi wrote:
| [flagged]
| whycome wrote:
| A wild ride of a read. What was clickbait to you?
| raldi wrote:
| 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.
| xsmasher wrote:
| 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.
| raldi wrote:
| 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."
| swayvil wrote:
| 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
| nntwozz wrote:
| 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.
| neilk wrote:
| 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.
| twoodfin wrote:
| 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".
| coldtea wrote:
| > _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.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| 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".)
| themanmaran wrote:
| 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
| wumms wrote:
| > 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...
| [deleted]
| johnvaluk wrote:
| Great novel. It's a shame the author never gave it a title. /s
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