Blade Runner (a Movie)

Blade Runner (a movie) is a science fiction novella by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, first published in 1979. The novella began as a story treatment for a proposed film adaptation of Alan E. Nourse's novel The Bladerunner. (Some sources describe Burroughs' work as a closet screenplay.) A later edition published in the 1980s changed the formatting of the title to Blade Runner, a movie.

Burroughs' treatment is set in early 21st century and involves mutated viruses and "a medical-care apocalypse". The term "blade runner" referred to a smuggler of medical supplies, e.g. scalpels.

No film was ever made; the title Blade Runner was later bought for use in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction film, Blade Runner. The plot of that film was based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and not the Nourse/Burroughs source material, although the film does incorporate the term "blade runner" into dialogue.

Works by William S. Burroughs
Novels and novellas
  • And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
  • Junkie
  • Queer
  • Naked Lunch
  • The Soft Machine
  • The Ticket That Exploded
  • Dead Fingers Talk
  • Nova Express
  • The Last Words of Dutch Schultz
  • The Wild Boys
  • Port of Saints
  • Blade Runner (a movie)
  • Cities of the Red Night
  • Ghost of Chance
  • The Place of Dead Roads
  • The Western Lands
  • My Education: A Book of Dreams
  • The Cat Inside
Short story collections
  • Interzone
  • Exterminator!
  • Ah Pook Is Here
  • Tornado Alley
  • The Burroughs File
  • The Third Mind
  • Time
  • The Exterminator
  • Minutes to Go
Essay collections
  • The Electronic Revolution
  • The Third Mind
  • Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology
  • The Adding Machine: Collected Essays
Non-fiction
  • The Yage Letters
  • The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs
  • Letters to Allen Ginsberg
  • The Burroughs File
  • Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs
Recordings
  • Call Me Burroughs
  • Dead City Radio
  • Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales
  • Real English Tea Made Here
  • The "Priest" They Called Him
Films
  • The Junky's Christmas
  • Ah Pook Is Here
  • Naked Lunch (film)

Famous quotes containing the word blade:

    “It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)