This very short book will dissappoint all but the most blindly fanatical Burroughs fans. A series of sketches inspired by the Nourse novel of the same name, it simply repeats well-worn themes dealt with more effectively elsewhere in his work. It seems to be the collected results of an aborted attempt to write a novel or screenplay, and from these insipid, lifeless scenes it is easy to see why it was aborted. The only question is: why display the lifeless corpse to the reading public? Methinks his manager was behind this unwise decision$$$

For completists only.

If you're looking for a connection to Ridley Scott's brilliant 1981 film release, you won't have it here. The only real connection is the title itself. It strikes me that someone creative and well-read in the Blade Runner film development came upon a phrase which just wouldn't let go, and that's how we got the term for the film. Burroughs' description here and that in the film are similar in their urban and societal context, but that's about where they end.

Reading this book, it strikes me that the producers of "Escape From New York" read this novel, and took an awful lot of creative vision away from it. This is especially true of the descriptions of a decrepit and decaying New York City, walled, populated by the dead, dying, and murdering, and where entire cultures flourish hundreds of feet above in the dead skyscrapers.

Written in late 70s, published first in 1979. Set in 1999, or maybe 2014, or maybe 1984, or maybe any number of time citations Burroughs coughs up.

Basically it's a futuristic nightmare, a technological hell in which the state has taken over all aspects of life, bureaucracy dictates every waking moment, and the medical institution is the vilest, most corrupt, most bloodthirsty, and most reckless of them all. Underground and legit drugs, as well as designer plagues all vie in the marketplace. Genetics are manipulated and diseases are voluntarily contracted for the material and physiological benefits the accrue.

Inside this hell the blade runner is central. "Essential to underground medicine are the blade runners, who transfer the actual drugs, instruments and equipment from the suppliers to the clients and doctors and underground clinics." The second half of the book, all two-dozen-odd pages of it follows Billy and his mates, blade runners all, as they fight their way through life on the street.

If you're a Burroughs fan, you've seen it all before in Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads. Nothing exotic or new or surprising here. This is a good addition to complete your Burroughs library, but not much more.

Burroughs's Blade Runner, A Movie, though as noted in previous reviews, bears no relation to the P.K. Dick work by the same title, it is nonetheless a far-reaching work of science fiction which explores the potential ramifications of the state of the nation if national health care were to be instituted (the work was penned in 1979). Though many people, when confronting a sci-fi work that has become literal in one sense yet in other aspects have yet to occur, will prey upon the latter while failing to salute the former. However, many times such critics are only exercising half of their literary aestheticism, for these people quickly forget the literal and the metaphorical are, at its best moments, entirely inseparable. With this in mind, yes, part of what Burroughs has written has occurred in regards to the implementation of HMOs yet other aspects have, and will not, but are to be taken metaphorically. Yet, regardless of interpretation, it is a tale told by a master that is easily accessible (even for Burroughs). Blade Runner is entertaining, and as always with WSB, thought provoking.

Comes across a bit like watered down Burroughs, but this writing is interesting because it's so stripped down--acoustic Burroughs--lacking the electrical force of the explosion of images, and rape and plundering of words which typifies Burroughs--but while retaining Burroughs' subject matter.

This first piece in this book however is the exception--"Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986"--lays out Burroughs' position on America rather sweetly.

This is a catalog of WSB's shotgun paintings and non-shotgun paintings, with Timothy Leary writing text. WSB wrights a small piece, and Tim Leary writes some essay about... well, his usual upbeat-but-not-quite-coherent stuff. It's rather bad writing, I have to say. Tim Leary was suffering Alzheimers, and this was probably written right before his death, so you shouldn't expect any master pieces, but even with that low expectation, it's still bad.

The designer must have understood that, and tries to save the book by overdesigning Leary's text. A huge font here, totally covering the page, and then just some in the corner... Good try. However, you can't shake the impression that it's cheaply made.

So if you are a huge fan of WSB or Leary or Weissman (you must be, if you are even READING this at all!), you might want to have it. But otherwise, no big deal.

First, the contents; This is an "in memorium" book. It contains 5 (but rather short) interviews with WSB, and an unpublished intro that WSB wrote for a Grove Press catalog. That takes about 40 pages of a 163 page book. The rest is tributes to WSB by various minor writers and artist.

The interviews are not anything spectacular. WSB is not a person that gives new insight like potato chips. He repeats the same thing over and over again, so most of what he says in the interviews, you've probably already read somewhere. All the interviewers are rather ... 2nd rate, most have no idea how to develop a theme, and they just slide along from one topic to the next, only scratching the surface everywhere.

The tributes are, there are about 40 of them altogether, and all of them are unimpressive.

So, as I said in the text, you can skip this unless you are a fanatic like myself (and even this fanatic was not very enthusiastic when this came through the mail). But since it does contain WSB material that you can't find anywhere else, If you GOT to have it all, go for it.