Los Angeles, November, 2019

Like any self-respecting science fiction fan “of a certain age,” I’m a huge fan of Ridley Scott’s second masterpiece, Blade Runner (the first being – obviously – Alien). I don’t remember when I first saw the film – probably a censored version on basic cable while in junior high. I do know that I was instantly taken with the oppressive atmosphere of Scott’s vision, that glorious soundtrack, as well as the moral ambiguity of the antagonists.

There’s little reason to add any paltry thoughts of my own to why Blade Runner is such an exceptional film. After all, a library’s worth of analysis already exists on it. But I do also recall the thought occurring to me at one point when I was much younger that – barring accident – I would actually live long enough to see the year 2019 in which the film was set. I had my life all planned out, academically speaking at least: Bachelor’s by 1996; a Master’s in about three years, and then maybe another 4 years with the Doctorate (ha! in retrospect) in 2003 or 2004? In 2019 then, I’d be 45 years old with a Ph.D. to my name and a tenured position in some university somewhere. I doubted even back then I’d be surrounded by vector-thrust flying cars and sentient bio-engineered “androids,” but the rest of my future seemed obvious.

Well, needless to say, but life rarely works out as planned. Tenure-track cultural anthropology jobs are about as common as dragons, for one. On the bright side, as long as things go well and after quite longer than expected I’ll finally have that Ph.D. taken care of at the end of this year. So there’s that.