Blade Runner

The only Blade Runner in the news at the moment is Oscar Pistorius, currently on trial for something or other in South Africa. (I always want to call him Oscar Pretorius because he is South African.) It was not always that way, though.

Next week the University of York is holding a workshop into the film Blade Runner. It looks like the kind of workshop I would not feel happy at, for several reasons:

• There is a lot of philosophy involved, and I have never really got the hang of philosophy, even though I consider myself a philospher of sorts.
• I have never seen all of the film Blade Runner. Like many other films, there was a time and a place to watch it (which I think was probably the 1980s) but now the moment has passed. Everything it did mean will no longer mean anything. See, I told you I was a philosopher.
• You have to make your own arrangements for lunch. Come on, at least make the day feel special.

But then, in an uncanny coincidence (or was it?), I found this book in a charity shop yesterday. It was a free copy given away with the May 1997 issue of Computer Gaming World, when the 21st Century was just a glint in the eye of time. I particularly like the way that they emphasised the film title, rather than the actual title of the book

and how the back cover includes the credits for the film, rather than book-related information.

Computer Gaming World ceased publication in 2006, which gives this book the odd feeling of being a historical document about a future world, which should have existed by now, but doesn't.