Give Me A Hard Copy Right There

On This Day In History
1982: Blade Runner is released

Quote Of The Day
"My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner."
(Philip K. Dick)

High praise indeed from Philip K. Dick, especially when one considers that his interpretation of replicants was the very antithesis of Ridley Scott's. The thrust of Dick's narrative in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is that replicants are complex automata devoid of emotions and incapable of empathy. That is what sets humans apart from replicants and makes us superior. In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, the replicants not only have emotions and empathy, they seem to have them in a greater degree than human beings. Still, that enigmatic and unresolved dichotomy is one of the themes which gives this film, as well as many of Dick's novels, their power.

Forty years later, Blade Runner remains high in my all time favourite films. Blade Runner 2049 was also an extremely worthy sequel.

Do Androids Dream Of Philip K. Dick?

This Disease

Call Out The Dogs
(I hope he paid the royalty fees for all these samples! He at least paid for the great Dick Morrisey - several times - the saxophonist who performed with Vangelis on the sublime Blade Runner soundtrack.)

Jazz-funk aficionados, please don’t attack me for giving such an insultingly limited summary of Dick Morrisey’s opera omnia; I have very little knowledge of this genre, but I know enough to know he was a significant figure.