My wife got laid off from her University job today.

[NNadir]

21. Well, I can't say I've read the book. I haven't read science fiction, or for that matter...

...any fiction, since my 20's. (I am now working in a slow desultory way on translating Camus' La Peste into English but other than that...)

My sons pick on me about not reading fiction, but my oldest is a fan of Phillip K. Dick. He watched Blade Runner with us, and he approved of it.

The movie, in my opinion, now that I have had a chance to look at some of the background material, stands by itself as a work of art, I think, and I also think that the iconic last scene stands as one of the finest short evocations of what it is to be human there is. Rutger Hauer not only rewrote it very well on the fly, but he acted it superbly.

In any case, it would have been a great movie with or without the book.

I say this as a person who generally has a jaundiced view of science fiction in general, cinematic and otherwise.

By the way, the scene where Roy Batty confronts his maker, Tyrell, and discusses the science of extending his life was not nearly as bad as some of the "science" one sees in science fiction movies. It bordered a bit on silly, but far less so than most movies, and for a script written over 40 years ago, it was actually not bad at all. It does seem as if the screen writer at least opened a science book.

Modern gene therapy is very much connected with virology, particularly with the AAV delivery vehicle, so there's that...