The Bladerunner
Source for the title of “Blade Runner”, 1974
The Bladerunner (1974) by Alan E. Nourse is a healthcare dystopia set in a future America where the Eugenics Laws make sterilization a prerequisite for medical treatment, pushing those who refuse outside the legitimate system entirely. A black market medical underground fills the gap, supplied by runners who smuggle equipment past authorities. When an epidemic breaks out among the unregistered population, the underground network is pushed to its limits. The novel's central tension, between a healthcare system built on social control and the human impulse to simply treat the sick, comes fully into focus.
Nourse was a physician himself, and the novel reads as something more than speculative fiction. Its premise, that a bureaucratic system might deny care to enforce compliance rather than serve health, was pointed in 1974 and has not lost its edge. The novel is largely forgotten today but survives as the unlikely source of one of cinema's most iconic titles.
The film Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has no connection to Nourse's novel in plot or theme. Dick's novel never uses the term "blade runner" at all. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher encountered a film treatment of Nourse's book written by William S. Burroughs, and Scott liked the title enough to acquire the rights to use it separately. The name stuck, became iconic, and effectively buried the book it came from.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, red cloth binding with black lettering on spine. New York: David McKay, 1974. ISBN: 0679202897. #11223.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket.
Nourse was a physician himself, and the novel reads as something more than speculative fiction. Its premise, that a bureaucratic system might deny care to enforce compliance rather than serve health, was pointed in 1974 and has not lost its edge. The novel is largely forgotten today but survives as the unlikely source of one of cinema's most iconic titles.
The film Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has no connection to Nourse's novel in plot or theme. Dick's novel never uses the term "blade runner" at all. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher encountered a film treatment of Nourse's book written by William S. Burroughs, and Scott liked the title enough to acquire the rights to use it separately. The name stuck, became iconic, and effectively buried the book it came from.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, red cloth binding with black lettering on spine. New York: David McKay, 1974. ISBN: 0679202897. #11223.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket.