Customer Reviews

Blade Runner: A Movie

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're looking for a connection to Ridley Scott's brilliant 1981 film release, you won't have it here. The only real connection is the title itself. It strikes me that someone creative and well-read in the Blade Runner film development came upon a phrase which just wouldn't let go, and that's how we got the term for the film. But wait, this was the term in Philip K. Dick's original book--so who knows which came first... Burroughs' description here and that in the film are similar in their urban and societal context, but that's about where they end.

Reading this book, it strikes me that the producers of Escape from New York read this novel, and took an awful lot of creative vision away from it. This is especially true of the descriptions of a decrepit and decaying New York City, walled, populated by the dead, dying, and murdering, and where entire cultures flourish hundreds of feet above in the dead skyscrapers.

Written in late 70s, published first in 1979. Set in 1999, or maybe 2014, or maybe 1984, or maybe any number of time citations Burroughs coughs up.

Basically it's a futuristic nightmare, a technological hell in which the state has taken over all aspects of life, bureaucracy dictates every waking moment, and the medical institution is the vilest, most corrupt, most bloodthirsty, and most reckless of them all. Underground and legit drugs, as well as designer plagues all vie in the marketplace. Genetics are manipulated and diseases are voluntarily contracted for the material and physiological benefits the accrue.

Inside this hell the blade runner is central. "Essential to underground medicine are the blade runners, who transfer the actual drugs, instruments and equipment from the suppliers to the clients and doctors and underground clinics." The second half of the book, all two-dozen-odd pages of it follows Billy and his mates, blade runners all, as they fight their way through life on the street.

If you're a Burroughs fan, you've seen it all before in Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads. Nothing exotic or new or surprising here. This is a good addition to complete your Burroughs library, but not much more.

This very short book will disappoint all but the most blindly fanatical Burroughs fans. A series of sketches inspired by the Nourse novel of the same name, it simply repeats well-worn themes dealt with more effectively elsewhere in his work. It seems to be the collected results of an aborted attempt to write a novel or screenplay, and from these insipid, lifeless scenes it is easy to see why it was aborted. The only question is: why display the lifeless corpse to the reading public? Methinks his manager was behind this unwise decision$$$

For completists only.

After reading the other reviews, I thought I would answer some of the questions that occur from reading the amazon blurb and the reviews. This is not a review of the book; it is an attempt to help you understand what happened between 3 different books - all of which are titled Blade Runner.

Alan E. Nourse wrote the original book titled "The Bladerunner". (IMPORTANT - note the difference in the titles. One has a "space" between "Blade Runner", the other title "The Bladerunner" does not have a "space".) It is totally a different book and plot from the Philip K Dick novel originally titled "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The plot is as described above or on the amazon page regarding the original Alan E Nourse book. When the movie (Blade Runner) was made, the directors/producers changed the name from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" to Blade Runner. This is because the movie "Blade Runner" left out or edited out the aspects of the story that gave the original title it's meaning and pertinence. (If you have read the original Philip K Dick story you know what I mean.) I think if you watch the credits closely you will see that Alan E Nourse is given credit for the title. I don't know if they bought the title from him or not.

The book, "Blade Runner: A Movie" by William S Burroughs is essentially Burroughs attempt to rewrite Nourse's book into a form from which a movie could be made.

Here is what Wikipedia says regarding this issue: "His novel (meaning Nourse) The Bladerunner lent its name to the Blade Runner movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella, Blade Runner (a movie)." The first sentence of this quote is a poorly written sentence. The author of the wikipedia article was trying to say that ONLY the title "Blade Runner" was borrowed from Nourse. Everything else in the movie is stricly from the Philip K Dick novel.

I have not read the Burroughs version yet. I will be buying it just to round out my "collection" of items regarding an interesting story of scifi history. I greatly enjoy other William Burroughs books but suspect I won't be happy with this "interpretation" for movie making purposes. I gave it 3 stars just to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Different from "Blade runner"by Ridley Scott. Rather;more difficult,but bloody fun,wild,cool and rapid. You will not able to deceive yourself any longer after reading this novel,or you yourself must be a blade runner.

Not having read the novel upon which this screenplay was based, I can't make any comparisons so my comments deal only with this book. The beginning third of the book is well written with some amazing foresight. It deals with the background of the "screenplay"; medical care for the halves and the halve nots; the lack of adequate medical coverage, national health policies, rampant drug abuse and socialized medicine. Pretty good stuff all in all. Then...the "screenplay" starts. This part of the book was without question the worst bit of contrived garbage I have ever read! I can only assume Burroughs wrote this last bit using his cut-up technique as it ridiculously put together, doesn't flow and he could not help but inject himself in the story. (It opens with the reader finding out the protaganist,Billy, is homosexual which has NOTHING to do with the rest of the story); hence completely irrelevent.

This book was a waste of time and money. Buy this book only if you feel you might run out of toilet paper.

Burroughs's Blade Runner, A Movie, though as noted in previous reviews, bears no relation to the P.K. Dick work by the same title, it is nonetheless a far-reaching work of science fiction which explores the potential ramifications of the state of the nation if national health care were to be instituted (the work was penned in 1979). Though many people, when confronting a sci-fi work that has become literal in one sense yet in other aspects have yet to occur, will prey upon the latter while failing to salute the former. However, many times such critics are only exercising half of their literary aestheticism, for these people quickly forget the literal and the metaphorical are, at its best moments, entirely inseparable. With this in mind, yes, part of what Burroughs has written has occurred in regards to the implementation of HMOs yet other aspects have, and will not, but are to be taken metaphorically. Yet, regardless of interpretation, it is a tale told by a master that is easily accessible (even for Burroughs). Blade Runner is entertaining, and as always with WSB, thought provoking.