This last year, I finally convinced The Chancellor to watch Blade Runner with me. He absolutely hated the whole experience. He’s definitely more into Modernism than I am. I am entertained and fascinated by postmodernism, so I found lots of food for contemplation in the movie. This led to a discussion about the source material. I’d never read anything by Philip K. Dick, and I finally decided this summer was the time to start catching up.
The novel (as with the film) focuses on Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of andys, or androids. A world war has devastated the Earth and rendered most animal species extinct. There’s a special kind of android, called the Nexus-6, which is highly specialized and much more human-looking and sounding than its less pricey predecessors. Deckard has developed a test to identify this kind of android, but his path becomes increasingly dangerous when he understands to what lengths androids will go to blend in with other people.
This is an intriguing novel, to say the least. While the most famous parts of the movie (the “Tears in the rain” monologue) aren’t drawn from the novel, there is an interesting interplay between a source text and its more popular adaptation that’s worth exploring. I would definitely consider adding this to a course rotation and then invoking a discussion about what the film does and doesn’t do. I think the character of Rachael in the book is a bit more finely-drawn than the film, which makes an interesting contrast.
Good review! I love Blade Runner but I would like to see a more faithful adaptation of the book one of these days. The book world was a lot more expansive and didn’t have any of the crap about Deckard being an android, which to this day I don’t accept and I don’t care what Scott, Ford, or anyone else has to say about it.
Now that I’ve read the book, I’m inclined to agree. Deckard is a troubled enough character, and adding the android bit just diminishes (maybe that’s not the right word) his character somehow. I also was fascinated about the extinct animals aspect, and think it’s too bad the movie dropped that aspect of the world.
It also completely negates the point of the book, which is that humans can be just as devoid as empathy as machines. I just always remember that passage where that one character is picturing a violent assassin coming to kill him and his friends, there to rip and rend life from flesh, and you think he’s talking about the androids, but he’s actually talking about Deckard. It gets me every time.