by Peter Clarke
Yes! Sort of!
“The Bladerunner” was a 1974 novel by sci-fi author Alan E. Nourse. A few years later, William S. Burroughs wrote a story treatment based on the novel. This treatment was published in 1979 as a novella titled “Blade Runner, a Movie.”
The published work is definitely a literary oddity. It’s not a traditional film treatment, screenplay, or novella. But it is very Burroughs. It feels like something he’d create using his cut up technique. It jumps around, from wild overviews, to character sketches, to action mid-scene.
Page one begins:
Now B.J. you are asking me to tell you in one sentence what this film is about? I’m telling you it’s too big for one sentence—even a life sentence. For starters it’s about the National Health Insurance we don’t got. It’s about a plain middle-class middle-income bracket Joe, the $15,000-a-year boy, sweating out two jobs…
But no, this novella by Burroughs does not have much to do with the 1982 film Blade Runner. Ridley Scott acquired the title “Blade Runner,” but for his film he used the plot from Philip K. Dick’s novel “Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”
Here’s a peek inside the book:
Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.
