"Blade Runner andCyberpunk Visions ofHumanity"

W. A. Senior

Ridley Scott's popular 1982 film Blade Rur}r\er, which was adaptedfrom Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, appeared justbefore William Gibson's quintessential cyberpunk novel Neuromancer waspublished in 1984, and the two share enough features that one might wellretroactively call Blade Runner the first truly cyberpunk film. Future urbannightmares form their settings; huge financial conglomerates usurp thepowers of government; technology, Japanese influence, and a bouillabaisseof postmodern history and culture permeate each; while theFrankensteinian theme of man crafting himself and experimenting withnew forms provides both the conflict and the philosophical dialectic thatrun through the film and through cyberpunk fiction and lead to their mutualcentral questions: what does it mean to be human? what are theboundaries of humanity? how human or humane are humans? whenandroid/replicants and humans meet, how can one tell them apart? howhuman are replicants, androids, or genetically designed wo/men?

Blade Runner, like most cyberpunk fiction, establishes no apodicticcriteria for humanity. Rather, it insinuates a wide range of constantlymetamorphosing humanities from the regressive street rats to thesuperhuman replicants: "Eventually all the boundaries are blurred betweenmaster and slave, hunter and hunted, hero and villain, the animate andthe inanimate, the human and the nonhuman" (Francavilla 8). The terms"cyberpunk" and "Neuromancer" are portmanteau words which alloy

human concepts to mechanical ones, as perhaps do "Blade" and "Runner."In Bruce Sterling's Mechanist and Shapers stories, men dispute the futureof mankind and divide into two opposing groups, one committed toimproving and developing man through technology and merger withmachines, the other devoted to genetic and psychological evolution. InDan Simmon's Hyperion novels, the Outers redesign themselves into amyriad of forms, that imitate animal and plant life combined with humanform. Even the computer-generated gods of William Gibson's Sprawl novelsare primarily human emanations, software personalities and powers bornof human thought and feeling, demi-urges of the chip. Other prominentvenues are the genetic tinkering in Rudy Rucker's work, the "vastening" ofFrederick Pohl's Heechee series whereby a human becomes a computeranalog, Neil Stephenson's related Snow Crash with its Metaverse, and ofcourse the earlier work by Philip K. Dick, especially in novels such as Ubikwhere human perception, or reality, is controlled by software.. In eachcase mankind begins to change and develop, to evolve in a sense, underhis own control, and the age old question of what it means to be humantakes on added dimensions and complications.

As Scott Bukatman phrases it, "Cyberpunk, and the science fictionof terminal identity, returns the human (and its fate) to the center stage ofthe postmodern drama" (60). Norman Spinrad called the cyberpunkauthors "neuromantics"; part of his reference addresses the "radicaltechnological change which provides the opportunity for human beings topositively change the 'perceptual and psychic definitions of what it meansto be human"' (Mead 350). Bruce Sterling comments that one of thecentral images of cyberpunk fiction is the prosthesis through which fleshand technology meet and meld to produce a different vision of humanity(Tatsumi 26). In Blade Runner axe elements mirrored in the later cyberpunkfictions of Sterling, Rucker, John Shirley, Gibson and others.^ Because"cyberpunk" itself is an amorphous term and covers a broad array ofideas, a one-to-one correspondence of elements with Blade Runner doesnot exist; where the two connect most closely is in the presentation of anever-adapting humanity and the factors which promote such evolution.

A major factor in the cyberpunk environment is the futuristic andhostile world through which characters move and which often has theeffect of unfocussing humanity because of the need for change. The comfortand sentimentality of middle class 20"' century life and the attendant mythof science as panacea give way to a minatory and increasingly technologicalexistence in which science figures as both savior (the Golden Age of s-f)and besetting demon (New Wave technophobia). The retro-fitted buildings

• of Blade Runner's sets image the Sprawl of Gibson's novels, where onebuilding or site is cannibalized so that parts can be added onto another, or

the constant accretion in space arcologies where necessity or conveniencedemands constant additions onto already existing structures. In the streetsand alleyways oi Blade Runner lurk a dispossessed and increasingly ignoredunderclass that lives by cunning and wit in a social Darwinism gone mad.^Even within apparently sanctioned spaces, the environment can be hostile.When Batty and Leon visit the eyeball designer Chew working on eyes inhis sub-zero lab, he is wearing a space suit and cannot tolerate theatmosphere when it is removed; when Leon rips his suit open, he isthreatening Chew with death by exposure in his own workplace. Outsiderain pours down constantly; the skies are covered by smoke, smog, thegaseous effluvia rising from this terrestrial Pandemonium where factoriesseem volcanoes spewing up ash across the city. As Scott Bukatman andGiuliana Bruno both comment, the muted sepia lighting and thechiaroscuro effect of the movie's cinematography fade everything together,obscuring certainty and insinuating visually the film's investigation of whatit means to be a human. Nothing is distinct; all is smoky, blurred, shadowyso that the street scenes depict crowds with scarcely any individualcharacteristics, people hiding their features to avoid the corrosive elementsand blending into a large amorphous mass. The characters move beneathhuge neon signs and building-size simulacra of Oriental models on massiveskyscrapers with external media screens. Surrounding and towering abovethe streets, these video advertisements dwarf everything and render theaverage person insignificant; however, at the same time the juxtapositionof the "normal" person with the gargantuan figures offers an expandedview of humankind, perhaps with a subtle allusion to replicants, whothemselves seem greater than "human."

The triumph of Japanese culture also makes this future Los Angelesa distant, if recognizable, world. From the beginning of the film, the Orientalcast of the people, the rickshaws in the streets, the pagoda-like structuresshedding light over pedestrians, and even the background music makethe city seem a future Tokyo. As Samuel R. Delaney comments ofNeuromancer, "Japanoiserie of the most modern and grotty sort greets usaround every alley corner" (32-3); and Bruno says much the same ofBlade Runner: "The explosive Orient dominates, the Orient of yesterdayincorporating the Orient of today" (66). When Deckard first appears, he isat a Japanese outdoor restaurant, eating sushi; the street vendors, themerchants in the alleys, the eye researcher in his lab are all Oriental, as aremany of the models featured on the giant billboard^uildings. One of Gaff'strademarks is the origami he leaves about wherever he has been. Englishand Japanese words, in both scripts, appear in advertisements, on elevators,on street signs, and the language spoken on the street itself is a polyglotstew of English, Japanese, German, "what have you," as Deckard puts it.

As social systems melt down, so too do languages, a result of evolving, ordecaying, class structures and codes. In this melting pot of East and West,of hi-tech affluence and grim poverty, is a radical and dislocating view ofsuburban, middle class life and its insistence on order, logic, and form.

Similarly the ubiquity of technology places Blade Runner at aremove from our everyday world by taking what we have to extremes, justas most cyberpunk works posit a future in which technology infiltratesevery facet of life. As Judith Kerman suggests, "every light in the city'smassive skyscrapers appears to be lit" and "Even traffic lights can be usedfor crowd control" (17-18). A call to join the off-world colonies is soundedby a huge floating craft that cruises above the streets, while futuristichovercraft/aircars fly around and over it.̂ Deckard searches the photos hefinds of Leon's room with a television-camera-computer-duplication systemthat responds to voice commands. In essence, he becomes part of thesystem, a kind of machine analogy himself; moreover, Deckard's systemprefigures the quintessential spirit of cyberpunk fiction and itstechnocentricity; Bruce Sterling talks of cyberpunk's constituency ofcomputer wizards sitting around "punching deck" (Tatsumi 27-8), and"Deckard's computer is surely the envy of every hacker" (Carper 188).Testing for replicants is done with a hi-tech retina scanner, and Deckardstops to ask a streetside vendor to look at a synthetic scale on her—incredibly enough—electron microscope.

The protagonists of cyberpunk fiction, like Rick Deckard, are oftenhard, pragmatic men and women trying to survive in a constantly changingenvironment where control and power shift rapidly. Bruce Sterling's Arti/icia/Kid is actually a combat performance artist who films his exploits and sellsthem as entertainment. His edge depends upon his use of availabletechnology, whether hardware, software, drugs, or neurosurgery. A centralmethod of survival is through physical or intellectual enhancement as eachcharacter takes anything he or she can get to even the odds against thegiant, often isolated and unreachable, conglomerates and their hiddenagendas and mysterious Als. "The executives of the great industrial zaibatsuthat dominate the world economy, exchange their liberty for the cradle-to-grave security of the corporate arcologies" (Mead 355). Similarly, Tyrell inBlade Runner lives in his own environment and sends out orders andultimatums; his 700 story corporate fortress effectively makes him a lawand order unto himself. Rick Deckard, like Molly, Case, or Turner inGibson's novels or Abelard Lindsey in Sterling's Schismatrix, finds himselfcaught in the corporate/governmental power Web.

Beyond his own survival, foremost among Deckard's concerns isthe question of where humankind leaves off, or perhaps where it begins,for he is a Blade Runner, a special type of private detective/bounty hunter.

whose job is to hunt down and destroy renegade replicants, geneficallyengineered beings designed for special tasks and purposes deemed toodifficult, demeaning, or dangerous for normal humans. Like many of thecentral characters of cyberpunk fiction (and the detective//i7m noir genreScott uses), he is a loner or a misfit, one who goes his own way. Calledout of retirement, Deckard is forced to resume his profession by an all-powerful bureaucracy that denies him individual rights and self-determination, just as it discriminates against replicants and limits not onlytheir choices but also their lives. Replicants were built to be human inalmost every way, yet they are denied human status, like many of theothers who cannot qualify for off-world placement, in a technologicallyracist society that views them as disposable slaves. Deckard makes theconnection for us when he says that the police lieutenant Bryant is the"type of cop who used to call black men niggers" because Bryant refers toreplicants as "skin jobs."" From this first tentative identification of Deckardwith the replicants he hunts, the movie develops a number of ambiguitiesand further associations so that we become uncertain whether Deckardhimself is not a replicant; at the same time, it implies that distinctionsbetween human and replicant ultimately fade and do not matter.^

Deckard's competence, his intelligence, his toughness, and hiseffectiveness place him on a level with the replicants. He tracks themfairly easily, has an affinity for anticipating their behavior, and understandsthem. In fact, if we make a preliminary leap of faith that Deckard is areplicant, then only replicants kill replicants in the film, perhaps becauseothers cannot. It is significant first that he survives Zohra's attack since sheis a trained kick assassin and then that he does kill her as she inexplicablyflees from him. He later survives another vicious, crippling assault by Pris-"your basic pleasure model"— but manages to destroy her as well. On theother hand, Deckard is saved from Leon by Rachel after he kills Zohra.Only against Batty, the most modern and advanced combat model ofreplicant, is it clear that he has little chance. When Deckard goes out toTyrell Corporation to begin his investigation, he is greeted by Rachel, whomwe shortly discover is a new generation replicant. Ironically, she beginsquestioning Deckard in the same fashion that he then applies to her, usingthe same strategies used on Leon in one of the film's opening scenes.These questions elicit emotional responses and address both common anddistasteful subjects: Rachel asks an innocuous greeting question and theninquires if Deckard has ever "retired," the euphemism for "killed," a realperson by mistake.

The question, taken in context, raises further questions for theviewer. Deckard himself has just been called out of "retirement" by thisemergency despite his protests and attempted refusal because the police

force's best men have failed. Yet despite this period of inactivity, he is ableto spot that Rachel is a replicant, although she does not know it herself.Tyrell explains that the newest experimental'models have had pastmemories and associations implanted in order to give them stability andto make them even more human, so to speak, so we begin to wonder ifDeckard himself is not one of these models, or an older one that has beenrevived or revised, brought out when needed like the Tessier-Ashpool ninjaHideo in Neuromancer.

Deckard's visit to Leon's apartment further clouds the issue whenhe finds the packet of Leon's photos in a dresser drawer, photos of a family,house, and celebrations together. When Leon meets Roy Batty, Battyasks if he has found his "precious pictures," underscoring the importanceof this family history to Leon. Similarly, in a later scene, after she hassaved Deckard's life, Rachel presents him with a picture of herself and hermother as evidence that she cannot be a repljcant. Upon his own pianoare many pictures, whether his, Leon's, or both we do not know. But hisfascination with them yokes him again to the replicants and their similarneeds and fascinations. Although they are not supposed to have emotions,the test for replicants is based on emotional reaction, and Rachel has beenbuilt to have a full complement of emotions. Deckard thinks to himselfthat "Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings, but neither were bladerunners." Yet it is clear that both do and develop powerful emotions throughcontact with others. And "in science fiction the ultimate sign of the human"is the expression of "emotions and feelings" (Bruno 61). Leon is saddenedby the loss of his pictures; Rachel is desperate to prove herself human;Batty is sympathetic with and understanding of the rather dense Leon.Joseph Francavilla claims that no one—human or replicant—shows anyremorse for the various deaths (10), but this is incorrect: when Deckardkills Zohra, the scene is attended by slow, melancholy music and his ownregrets and unhappiness. He is dismayed by shooting a woman in theback and by the plight of the replicants, which mirrors his own victimizationby a police force that hunted him out and forced him into actions he doesnot wish to take. And so he laments the whole matter for himself, "for her[Zohra], for Rachel."

Another issue raised by the photos is that of memory, recall of thepast, for continuity of memory defines the individual. Sterling's ArtificialKid manufactures memories. In Dick's Ubik, no one can be sure whosethoughts or experiences are whose. In Neuromancer, the Al Wintermuteimplants memories into Corto; Case tries to recapture the sensations ofcyberspace through drugs; the Dixie Flatline is nothing but a F?AM constructof memory. The characters of Blade Runner are similarly bounded bymemory. One of Deckard's first comments is a recollection of his ex-wife;

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Rachel confronts him with both photos and memories, which he tells herare someone else's. Batty's Keatsian discourse as he dies catalogs his mosttreasured experiences. Leon's explosion during the retina test results froma question about his mother. In this issue lies one nexus of cyberpunkfiction, for memory is shared by people and computers, individually andsymbiotically. An Al is "human" in part because of its ability to remember.Gibson, in fact, points out that he considers a computer simply a metaphorfor the brain, so memory too becomes a common denominator in theexploding concept of "humanity."

In addition to their quest for more life, the need for present loveand security, as the pictures also testify, drives the replicants. Rachel comesto Deckard in a frightened panic and looks to him for help, just as Battyseems to regard Leon as a younger, slow-witted brother and Pris as lover.The beginning of Deckard's affair with Rachel demonstrates both her urgentpassion and his own need for love and comfort, a denial of the label of"cold fish" his ex-wife (if she actually existed) pinned to him. Moreover,the situations, behaviors, reactions, and needs of the replicants parallel orexceed in intensity those of the few humans in the film. Leonard Heldrethcites Pauline Kael's severe criticism of Batty as "so overscaled it'sWagnerian," but points out that "the emotional intensity, the animalexuberance" (52) provide a balance and a contrast to Deckard and theother "humans." In fact, because they are so aware of their five yearexistence, the replicants live with an internsity and joie de uivre that thegenetic humans lack almost entirely. Both of the police, Gaf and Bryant,seem to be cold fish themselves, highly pragmatic and disassociated men.Tyrell, the Frankensteinian father of the replicants destroyed by his owntriumph, is a caricature of the inhuman scientist obsessed with progress.On one hand, the replicants' journey to discover who conceived them isan Oedipal journey (Bruno 71). On another mythic level, Tyrell is a remoteand distant deity to them; he seems ironically to have no feeling for theirtribulations and even applies the Achilles proposition to Batty, explainingthat he burns more brightly for having the shorter life, a state and statement,for all their truth, that offer little consolation. Tyrell even calls him theProdigal Son, tying him into yet another human myth and archetype andconfirming his "humanity." Even the chess game, in which the creationsurpasses the creator, forwards the paradigm: to Tyrell it is an academicexercise; for Batty the checkmate operates as and prefigures his revengeas he reciprocally cuts short Tyrell's lifespan..

By contrast to Bryant and Tyrell, Deckard and the replicants areround characters with many personal attributes, both strengths andweaknesses. In Roy Batty combat programming and calculated brutalitycontradict an otherwise compassionate and sensitive nature. He quotes

poetry at various times for emotional effect; he seems to treasure Pris andLeon and is both angered and saddened by Zohra's death and thepiecemeal destruction of his community; while dying, he rhapsodizeslyrically about the marvelous things he has seen in his life. The othersdisplay similar reactions and emotions, but Rachel has been designed tobe the most perfect imitation: To simulate implies actually producing inoneself some of the characteristics of what one wants to simulate. It is amatter of internalizing the signs or the systems to the point where there isno difference between "false" and "true," "real" and imaginary." Rachel isthe most perfect replicant because she does not know if she is one or not.To say that she simulates her symptoms, her sexuality, her memory is tosay that she realizes, experiences them (Bruno 68).

She and Deckard exhibit reflexive stereotypical responses to stress.When being examined by Deckard, Rachel asks to smoke; he, uponreturning to his apartment. Immediately pours himself a drink in order torelax. After the battles with Zohra and Leon, Deckard turns to Rachel andsays, "Shakes? Me too," and then offers her a drink. His anxiety about heris matched by Batty's for Pris, two warriors protecting their women. ForBlade Runrier, like cyberpunk fiction, is in essence about the desperatestruggle to survive, whether one is a genetic human or a geneticallyproduced human. It has Darwinian overtones in the idea of thedevelopment of humanity into competing species in which one is the huntedand then the hunter. When Sebastian asks Pris and Batty what the problemseems to be, the answer comes in one word: "Death." After a depressedDeckard has killed Zohra and let down his guard, Leon attacks him andsummarizes their mutual condition: "Painful to live in fear, isn't it?" Thisevent is repeated later, after Deckard kills Pris, when Batty hunts him inreturn and shouts, "Quite an experience to live in fear," signaling the bedrockhuman condition that none escape. Even their wounds are replicas ofone another in this scene: both have bleeding faces; both have Injuredhands. As Deckard braces himself to put fingers that Batty has dislocatedback into their sockets. Batty pierces his hand with a nail to keep it fromclenching itself as his life's battery begins to drain. The Christ analogyfurther links the two and enlarges the concept of humanity through thedual nature of the man/god (the flight of the dove at the end adds yet athird dimension as Holy Ghost). On another level, Leonard Heldrethargues that this final scene borrows heavily from the original Frankensteinfilm and states that the two sides of the personality—the rational scientistand irrational monster, ego and id—unite here (47).

In the end Batty, when he has Deckard at his mercy and couldallow them to die together, saves a man he should consider his enemy.Designed as a killing machine. Batty surpasses his originally inhibiting

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nature through empathy, compassion, and generosity—traits much valuedamong "civilized human beings." Sitting in the downpour as the strengthruns out of him, Batty discourses upon the wonders he has seen, the vitalityof the life that burned in him. Upon his death, the dove cradled in hishands flies upward despite the rain, a symbol of the soul within. A stunnedDeckard wonders if life were not so precious to the replicant that he couldnot bear to see any life ended, and he too defends his enemy, saying, "Allhe'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us wanted. Where do Icome from? Where am I going? How long do I have?"

When Gaff enters at this point, he makes a statement that reinforcesthe ambiguity of Deckard's nature. 'You've done a man's job, sir," he tellshim, making us wonder again if Deckard is not a replicant. (In fact, in anearlier script. Gaffs next line was, "But are you a man?" [Kolb 170]). Gaffalso verbally ties Deckard's end to the replicants'. He says, "I guess you'rethrough," and Deckard replies resignedly, "Finished." But in return. Gaffoffers him hope and a reason to go on, alluding to Rachel, who is sleepingin Deckard's apartment, and saying, "It's too bad she won't live. But thenagain, who does?" Just as replicants die, so too do humans, and the hourof their end is hidden. So Deckard hurries to protect Rachel and to helpher escape, as Batty did for Pris, and finds her not in death but in sleep.His guarded approach to her and awakening kiss are a mirror inversion ofBatty's wary approach to Pris and his good-bye kiss to her corpse. Andjust as Batty permitted Deckard's escape and life, so too does Gaff permitRachel's.

In the end, as he and Rachel, now hunted as the replicants were,leave the city's dismal environment and enter blue sky and open land, theproblematic "green ending," Deckard repeats Batty's questions about life,but now he uses the pronoun "we" to wonder how long he and Rachelhave and where they are going. His questions are again ambiguous, for ifboth are replicants, they may well not be programmed for a full life or maybe programmed for different lengths; or Deckard may be referring to thehunt that must once again follow them; or he may simply be resigned tothe human condition.

For death ultimately constitutes another common denominator.A parallel, secondary storyline involving J.R. Sebastian supports theconcerns of the main plot. Sebastian is a genetic engineer who works onreplicants. A peculiar little man, he suffers from the incurable Methusaleh'ssyndrome, which will age and thus kill him at an early age, an afflictionwhich the replicants share (Bruno 65). So the replicants return to seekmore life since they have been designed to run down and simply stop as ifon a timer, a planned obsolescence parallel to accelerated decrepitude. Ina scene of mordant irony, Sebastian introduces his friends to Pris, whom

he has just met. As the strange creatures come to the door to greet him, heexplains to Pris, "I make friends." Indeed, his whole apartment is filledwith friends and creatures he has manufactured and for whom he cares.In fact, he later tells Batty and Pris, "I made you." Pris, who resembles alarge doll, fits right in with his companions and later attempts to hide herselfamong them: until her death.

In Trillion Year Spree Brian Aldiss criticizes Blade Runner for itsdeviations from Phillip K. Dick's rich novel, upon which the film is looselybased, and laments the movie's reliance on Hollywood's hard-boileddetective tradition. He further attacks the film for what he calls its reductionof the complex story line and moral problems: "Gone were Rick Deckard'smarital problems and his fears about his own authenticity. Gone was thewhole question of human worth as something ndt to be measured in simpleIQ terms" (335).^ Yet Aldiss' complaints, while they may have pinpointedsome of the film's fiaws, ignore its intent. Scott's revision of the original isnot meant to be literally true to the original because at its heart is thequestion of what constitutes humanity consists. Is humanity a measure ofquantity or of quality? Is it form or is it content? In fact, "the larger questionof the film which is related to genocide is the ability of the state to definethe human and to destroy those who fall outside the definition" (Kerman23).

Neuromancer spawned an entire movement within the sciencefiction canon and a generation of devotees, while Blade Runner has hadno imitators, only cousins such as Mad Max, perhaps because it cuts tooclosely and asks too many unpleasant questions about class structure, thefigure of the alien within us, racism, power, the ethics of genefic sciences,and so on. Ultimately, Blade Runner posits, no doubt uncomfortably formany, that humanity expands to occupy many forms, and its primarybond with cyberpunk fiction lies in their evaluation of the nature of humanityas hardwire technology, genetic sculpting, and human biology becomesymbiotic and mutually dependent. Recently the term "differently abled"has become a social and political buzzword, but Blade Runner andcyberpunk look one step further to the differently humaned. Or as PhilipK. Dick wryly put it. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

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Notes

' I am using the term ci^berpunk rather generally here. As I would defineit, cyberpunk work has a rigorous intellectual base that permits hardextrapolative questions about the future of technology and its effect onman; a society/culture permeated by various technologies so that humanityhas begun to fragment as a result; a frequently grim setting where the gapbetween rich and poor has become unbridgeable and where the middleclass seems virtually to have disappeared; and a freewheeling aestheticvision obtained from "punk" culture. Gibson's three Sprawl novels{Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), Sterling's ArticificalKid and Schismatrix, Rucker's Software and Wetware, Gibson and Sterling'sco-authored Difference Engine, the anthology Mirrorshades would form asolid core nucleus of cyberpunk fiction.

2 As Samuel R. Delaney succinctly puts it, "Gibson's world .. . is harsh.Total Recall impoverished, and cruel" (32). The same can be said of almostany cyberpunk work. In Schismatrix, for instance. Sterling investigates thegrim problem of bacterial infection in different space vehicles. Simmons'Hyperion novels show an entire civilization in collapse and the resultantdestructive, hope-rending upheaval.

^ It would appear, in fact, that almost anyone who can go offworld alreadyhas, so that Blade Runner deals with a different class of humans headingfor Morlock status, and it thus achieves refiexive polarities in examininghumanity: the replicants, who exist at the higher end of the scale, and thehuman rejects, who exist at the other. Yet both are linked by the controlexerted over them by the authorities; they are, as Bryant puts it, "littlepeople."

" I am using the original film with the much debated voice-over, not theDirector's cut which omits the narrative and the Hollywood ending; thesecond, I believe, is so different that it needs an entirely different reading.As Leonard Heldreth points out in an as-yet unpublished article, theaudience "confronts an original and a replicant version of the film . . . andmust decide which is more authentic." In a sense, both films ask us todecide that about the characters. Obviously, the lack of commentary andthe long white spaces that occur with it change the way we conceive ofDeckard, Batty, Pris, and so on. Without Deckard's assessment of Bryant,we are likely to see the latter as more menacing but perhaps not see him ina negative light. Similarly, Deckard's assessment of his own feelings andhis comments on Batty's death bring us closer to him; their omission leaves

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us in yet more doubt about the nature and the "humanity" of the differentcharacters.

^ Various articles and interviews demonstrate that Ridley Scott certainlythought of Deckard as a replicant, and Leonard Heldreth comments thatthe most interesting possible ending "involved Deckard finding out hehimself was, like Rachel, a Nexus 7 model" (51).

^ Donald Palumbo agrees with Aldiss and says that the film "avoids nearlyall the ambiguities of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" He positsthat Total Recall "achieves a measure of artistic success precisely becauseit is so relentlessly ambiguous" (69).

Works Cited

Aldiss, Brian W. Trillion Year Spree. New York: Avon, 1986.Bukatman, Scott. "The Cybernetic (City) State: Terminal Space Becomes

Phenomenal." JFA 2 (Summer 1989): 43-63.Carper, Steve. "Subverting the Disaffected City: Cityscape in Blade

Runner." Kerman. 185-95.Delaney, Samuel R. "Is Cyberpunk a Good or a Bad Thing?" Mississippi

Review 47/48 (1988): 28-34.Francavilla, Joseph. 'The Android as Doppelganger." Kerman. 4-15.Heldreth, Leonard. "The Cutting Edges of Blade Runner. Kerman. 40-

52.Kerman, Judith. "Technology and Politics in the Blade Runner Dystopia."

Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner andPhilip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Ed. Judith B.Kerman. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University PopularPress, 1991. 16-24.

Kolb, William M. "B/ade Runner Film Notes." Kerman. 154-77.Mead, David G. "Technological Transformation in William Gibson's Sprawl

Novels: Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.Extrapolation 32.4 (Winter 1991): 350-60.

Palumbo, Donald. "Inspired . . . by Phillip K. Dick": Ambiguity, Deception,and Illusion in Tofa/Reca//." JFA 4.1 (1991): 69-80.

Scott, Ridley, dir. Blade Runner. USA: Ladd Co, 1982.Tatsumi, Takayuki. "SF Author Profile: Bruce Sterling." Science Fiction

and Fantasy/ Book Review Annual 1989. Eds. Robert A. Collins andRobert Latham. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1991. 26-45.

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