BLADE RUNNER; or, The Sociology of Anticipation

Chevrier, Yves. "BLADE RUNNER; or, The Sociology of Anticipation." Will Straw, trans. Robert M. Philmus, ed. SFS #11.1 (March 1984): 50-60. "This essay is a modified (and also expanded) version of one that appeared under the equivalent French title in Esprit, No. 19" (February 1983): 138-43—Philmus's note.

See for the politics and mise en scène of BLADE RUNNER, contrasting the "utterly medieval disorder" of Los Angeles of 2019 with "the spotless and transparent world . . . portrayed in classical SF and in political fiction ([Y.] Zamiatin's We, [A.] Huxley's Brave New World, [G.] Orwell's 1984], and, in the cinema, [F.] Lang's METROPOLIS)" (52). Usefully places what "visual revolution" there is in BLADE RUNNER into the context of art history, history of cinema, modernization, and Modernism (52-53 and passim).