The Bladerunner

The novel "The Bladerunner" (also published as "The Blade Runner") is a 1974 science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse.

The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs "blades" for Doc (Doctor John Long) as part of an illegal black market for medical services. The setting is a society where free, comprehensive medical treatment is available for anyone so long as they qualify for treatment under the Eugenics Laws. Preconditions for medical care include sterilization, and no legitimate medical care is available for anyone who does not qualify or does not wish to undergo the sterilization procedure (including children over the age of five). These conditions have created illegal medical services in which bladerunners supply black-market medical supplies for underground practitioners, who generally go out at night to see patients and perform surgery.

Connection to the film "Blade Runner"

The book is a version of a common science-fiction plot, which suggested the title of the 1982 science-fiction film "Blade Runner" (which was otherwise unrelated beyond the common element of dystopian futures). Both of the earlier works use the term "bladerunner" to describe black-market suppliers of items needed for medical care.

In 1979 William S. Burroughs was commissioned to write a story treatment for a possible film adaptation. This treatment was published as the novella "Blade Runner (a movie)". Burroughs acknowledged the Nourse novel as a source, and prominently set a mutated virus and right-wing politics in the year 1999.

No film was produced from it, but Hampton Fancher, a screenwriter for the 1982 film (based on science fiction author Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), had a copy, and it suggested the title "Blade Runner" as one more tantalizing than the successive earlier working titles, "Android" and "Dangerous Days". Within the film, the phrase appears as an informal term for the personnel of the police "Rep-Detect" division.

Ridley Scott bought any rights to the title "Blade Runner" that might have arisen from either the Nourse novel or the Burroughs story treatment.