Fans of the Blade Runner film know well that this gritty sci-fi noir is based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which, like many adaptations, differs in significant ways from the source novel). I never knew, though, why it was called “Blade Runner” (although that was the title of Rick Deckard’s job, in the movie). The film’s name was cribbed from another novel for which no one less than William S. Burroughs had adapted to a screenplay:
No film was produced from the Burroughs treatment, but Hampton Fancher, a screenwriter for a film based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), had a copy. He suggested “Blade Runner”, as preferable to the earlier working titles “Android” and “Dangerous Days”, for the Dick adaptation.[3] In the film, released as Blade Runner in 1982, the term is never explained, and the plot has no connection to the Nourse and Burroughs stories.