Introduction
Unless you haunt used book stores, you won’t be able to find a copy of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. With the cult success of the film Blade Runner, which was based on the work, publisher Del Rey rereleased the book under the film’s title; “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a novel by Philip K. Dick” appears in parantheses (and smaller print) under it. To ensure that the connection is made, the front and back covers contain images from the film.
In an unusual publisher’s note, somebody at Del Rey defensively wrote: “Though the novel’s characters and backgrounds differ in some respects from those of the film, readers who enjoyed the latter will discover an added dimension when encountering the original work.” [1] Why do I think it’s unusual? Can you imagine an apology from the publishers of, say, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, for the fact that it deviates from the film version? When a novel is adapted into a film, it seems to me that the publishers shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for the fact that the written version, which, after all, was the original inspiration for the film, isn’t exactly the same as it.
But literature and film, especially Hollywood film, always dance a strange tango with each other. The media are completely different, with different storytelling strengths and weaknesses — ideally, an adapter should be comfortable with both media. In this article, I will be looking at the diffrerences between Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner in order to tease out some general rules about adapting a novel for film.
Get Out Your Hatchets
The following is a point by point synopsis of the first 20 pages of Hampton Fancher’s screenplay for Blade Runner:
– Leon, who is later revealed to be an android, is questioned by Holden, whom he eventually shoots
– a blimp trumpets the virtues of off-world immigration
– Deckard is introduced as a “blade runner,” a cop who kills androids; Gaff appears to tell him Bryant, his boss, wants him; they leave in a hovercar
– Bryant tells Deckard that five androids are loose on earth; Deckard tries to refuse the case, to find and kill them, but Bryant forces him to take it
– we see images of the androids and are told that they tried to break into the Tyrell Corporation, where they were made
– Deckard visits Holden in the hospital; Holden explains what happened to him, then voices the opinion that androids can no longer be distinguished from human beings (the scenes in the hospital with Deckard visiting Holden, although based on scenes in the novel, were omitted from the finished film) [2]
Compare this with a similar point by point description of the first 20 pages of Dick’s novel:
– Rick Deckard wakes up to a fight with his wife, Iran: she resents the fact that he’s a bounty hunter; he wishes he could afford a real sheep instead of the electric one he owns
– introduction of Buster Friendly, ubiquitous television personality
– introduction of the idea that most apartments on earth are empty
– mood organs are used to shape people’s emotions
– “everybody who’s smart has emigrated” from earth
– Deckard visits his electric sheep on the roof; people accept it as real because it is socially unacceptable to question such things
– a world war years before covered the world with a grey fog of radioactive dust; moving to other planets was encouraged to escape the deadly fog
– Deckard’s neighbour has a real pregnant horse; Deckard asks if he can buy the colt, revealing, to his neighbour’s pity, that his sheep had died a year earlier, and he had replaced it with a mechanical one
– description of the war; owls were the first casualties of the radioactive fallout, then birds in general, then small animals; androids became numerous in order to help with the colonization of the planets; the dust caused genetic mutation which led to sterilization in humans
– introduction of John R. Isidore, who drives a truck for an android animal vet (he is a “Special,” a mutant who is no longer eligible to emigrate, with a low IQ)
– J.R. takes the handles of an “empathy box” and, with everybody else who is connected, experiences the final climb up a hill of William Mercer’s life (the basis of the religion known as Mercerism) [3]
As should be obvious, more information can be conveyed in a page of text than can be in a page of a screenplay. You must also remember that 20 pages is a lot more of the 130 page screenplay than it would be of a 215 page novel. Overall, a novel can contain a much greater amount of information about story or character than a screenplay can. Even when the visuals contain additional information (as Director Ridley Scott’s realization of the screenplay for Blade Runner does), a film still does not approach the amount of information which can be conveyed in a novel.
For this reason, the primary goal of somebody adapting a novel into a film has to be simplification, to find that small core of the novel which will translate well into the visual medium and pare away everything which will not translate.
Things Lost
At the heart of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is an extraordinary scene. Deckard has been trying to get an opera singer to undergo a test to determine whether or not she’s human. She claims his attention is harrassment and calls the police, who send a couple of officers he doesn’t know to take him to a police station he didn’t know existed. From this station, he tries to call the police station he works out of, but the operator tells him it doesn’t exist. Neither can he get through to his wife. The police ask him if he would mind taking a test to determine whether or not he is an android, a different test than the one with which he is familiar.
Is Rick Deckard an android with implanted memories of being a blade runner? [4]
As it turns out, no. The whole alternative police station is an elaborate fiction created by androids to give them a safe haven. But for those few pages where the illusion holds, the reader seriously questions Deckard’s humanity; the scene undersores the book’s message that sufficiently complex androids cannot be differentiated from human beings, and we may have to adjust our attitudes towards them accordingly.
Strictly speaking, although it is of thematic significance, the scene in the androids’ police station is a diversion from the main story of Deckard attempting to retire renegade androids. While it is possible to do this in a novel without disrupting the overall forward momentum of the story, including the scene would have stopped the film’s progress dead. You can only include scenes in a film which move the story forward; since this one didn’t, it had to be omitted.
(There is a distant echo of the theme brought out by this scene from the novel in the film, however. At the beginning of Blade Runner, Deckard is told that five androids have escaped to earth, but, during the course of the film, he only kills or witnesses the deaths of four. Some viewers have interpreted this to allow for the possibility that he is the fifth android, bringing back the question of the differences between androids and human beings. This overlooks the obvious possibility, though, that the final android to escape to earth was Rachel Rosen, whom Deckard assumes is legitimate because they first meet in the offices of the Tyrell Corporation, which manufactures the androids.)
Another concept which was omitted from the film was the religion known as Mercerism. The core of the religion is the ability to empathize with the suffering of a martyred man known as Wilbur Mercer. The importance of Mercerism to the novel is, again, largely thematic: the only true difference between androids and real human beings is that androids have no emotional empathy for others. And again, in terms of the film, it would take too much time to set up and only divert attention away from the forward momentum of the story.
Things Altered
In many cases, aspects of the novel were distilled to a fine essence which, while not explained in the film, helped to give it a richer texture.
“…no one today remembered why the war had come about, or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets; coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive the owls had escaped notice. Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the form of many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above.” [5] In the novel, Dick’s description of what he called World War Terminus served to explain many aspects of his futuristic world.
For one thing, it explained the fine grey dust that settled over everything. Without the novel’s explanation, this became a large part of the look of the film, where the day is always grey and overcast and the sun is difficult to make out through the fog. It also explains the director’s decision to shoot most outdoor scenes in the rain: Scott wanted to capture the dreariness of the world of the novel in visual terms.
Dick’s description of conditions after the war also explained why earth has become largely depopulated. The radioactive dust was considered a health hazard to normal men and women, so they were pressed to emigrate to other worlds so that the human gene pool could be preserved. The concept of off-world emigration is given one major push in the screenplay when a blimp flying overhead gives the following message:
“Join us in a clean, fresh environment featuring the invigorating Johnson and Murikami California Climate! (WE NEED YOU YOU you you you) Enjoy the numerous recreation areas and resorts such as the famous Elysium Crater Resort! (WE NEED YOU YOU you you)
“Let our abundant man-made labour force cater to your personal needs!
“(WE NEED YOU YOU you you)
“If you meet our health and experience qualifications for the Offworld Emigration Programs…the standard short form…there’s a place for you at Dominguez and Shimata Colonies.” [6]
As it happened, the film cut back on this even further, so the viewer just gets a sense of the emigration issue. (In fact, the growth in the use of androids is explained in the novel as a way of encouraging people to emigrate by providing them with their own servants, but this fact is not broached in the film.)
One of the consequences of this emigration was that the earth had become greatly depopulated. In the film, as in the book, J. R. Isidore is the only person who lives in a high rise building which once housed a thousand families. In the book, the reason for this is very clear; in the film, however, the connection to off-world emigration is tenuous and reference to the war is non-existent, so it is more an unexplained part of the fabric of the future world (and part of the visual fabric of the film) than an explicable part of a self-consistent reality.
Another outgrowth of the war was the extinction of most small animals, starting with the owls. In the novel, it becomes a matter of personal pride and social status to own an animal (in line with the religion of Mercerism, it is believed to increase human empathy). In fact, there is a guide, Sidney’s, which Deckard consults many times in the novel, which tells how much various species are worth. Moreover, at one point in the novel, Eldon Rosen (Tyrell in the film), claiming that the owl in his office is genuine, offers to give it to Deckard if he will fake the results of a test on an android. [7] Of course, those who cannot have a real animal must buy an electric animal and pretend it is real; much of the novel is given over to the business of creating and maintaining electric animals (including the sheep of the title).
In the film, the electronic owl makes a brief appearance in the first scene at the Tyrell Corporation. [8] Otherwise, animals are notable for their absence in the film. The only exception comes later in the screenplay, when an artificial snake, the prop of an android who works as a stripper, becomes a clue which Deckard uses to track her down. [9]
In the novel, where the author has the luxury of space for explanations, the absence of animals, their replacement by electronic versions, the emigration of humans to distant planets and the problems of the androids all arise out of the war, making the novel an integrated whole. Without the explanation of World War Terminus, many of its effects return in the film as parts of a mysterious whole, window-dressing which only hint at the depth of difference between this futuristic world and our own.
Things Added
So, once we’ve removed or compressed much of the content of the novel, what do we have left? Rick Deckard, futuristic bounty hunter, goes after several renegade androids. It’s the basic outline of a plot, but it isn’t much of a screenplay. Additional changes have to be made and elements added before we can see how it will be possible to make this story into a film.
Perhaps the most obvious change was to make Deckard single, removing his wife from the story. This gave Fancher the opportunity to develop a romantic relationship between Deckard and the android Rachel Rosen. In this way, the theme of what makes us human is brought back into the story, albeit in a completely different way: if an android can love and inspire love in a human being, how much difference can there be between the two?
This was part of a more general change in Deckard’s character. In the novel, he is a low-level grunt, not even an official policeman, and a terrible social climber: his desire to kill the androids in the novel is driven by the fact that he will be able to buy himself a proper animal with the bounties he will receive, making him a respectable part of the community once again. In the film, Deckard is a typical film noir hero, a loner with his own developing sense of morality and justice; it is an iconic shorthand which allows the audience to immediately understand and accept the character. (We know Deckard as the reluctant hero from the very beginning of the film, when he tries to refuse to accept the case. [10])
There is also a fundamental change in the characters of the androids. In the book, they come to earth because they want to live like human beings. In the film, they have been created with a four year life-span; we are told that they have attempted to break into the Tyreell Corporation more than once, apparently in order to try to expand the life they were given. This life or death motivation in the film is much sharper than that of the book, giving an urgency to the behaviour of the androids. It also gives them a much clearer motivation for putting themselves in potential danger: everything the androids do in the film is tied to this desire to live longer; in the book, by way of contrast, the desire to be human does not necessarily direct their actions in a specific way.
In particular, the character of Roy Batty (Baty in the novel), the main android, is changed substantially. In the book, you will recall, the androids had no empathy, either for living things or for each other. When Deckard finally tracks them down, Batty cowardly hides from him, willingly sacrificing the other androids in the room just to be allowed to live a little longer. [11] In the film, on the other hand, Batty is enraged by the death of Pris, his partner, and becomes an enraged warrior who intends to make Deckard suffer for the deaths he has caused. [12] It is necessary, if Deckard is our tarnished hero, for his opponent to be worthy of the chase.
In the end, Batty knows his time is up and, somewhat heroically, he saves Deckard from falling to his death and spends his last few hours alive telling Deckard stories of the amazing things he had seen in his brief life. [13] Batty’s anger at Pris’ death and his empathy for Deckard (even if he couldn’t continue to live, Deckard could) mark a fundamental change in the nature of androids, who are now portrayed as having the ability to feel for others (perhaps more so than Deckard, who, though human, tracks his prey with unfeeling efficiency). This, more than anything, is the basis for the confusion between human beings and androids which is the film’s method of portraying the theme developed in the book.
There is also a shift in the character of J. P. Isidore. In the book, he works for a repairer of electronic animals, and it is only a coincidence that Batty and the other androids find him and use his apartment as a hide-out. In the film, Isidore is an employee of the Tyrell Corporation, and Batty uses him to get to the head of the corporation in a last desparate attempt to expand his expected lifespan (which fails, setting up the final confrontation between Batty and Deckard). In this way, Isidore’s character is much better integrated into the story, much more pivotal to its outcome.
Finally, there is the addition of the voice over to the film. [14] The novel moves between the points of view of Deckard and Isidore; the text allows us to actually get into the heads of the characters, thinking what they are thinking and understanding their perceptions of events as they unfold. Film, being primarily a visually medium, is very bad at directly portraying the inner lives of characters; ordinarily, the audience is left to infer this by their actions and the expressiveness of the actors. The voice overs allow the film audience to get know Deckard a little better by allowing it to hear what he thinks about the events in which he is caught up.
Conclusion
Of course, writing is an intuitive process, so you may not always go in a formulaic way from stripping a novel to its essentials to building what remains into a screenplay. In most cases, there will be a certain amount of trial and error, going back and forth between the source novel and the developing screenplay, seeing what fits and modifying what doesn’t.
Writing can be a messy process.
The depth of information possible with a novel allows a writer the opportunity to explore a world in much greater detail than film which, by its nature, is largely visual and story-driven. Understanding the strengths and limitations of the different media is important if you wish to adapt a work from one to the other. The differences between Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Hampton Fancher’s screenplay for the film Blade Runner are indicative of the sorts of changes a would-be adapter needs to consider.
Notes
1) Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) (New York: Del Rey, 1982), unpaginated.
2) Hampton Fancher, Blade Runner (February 23, 1981, rev. thru May 15, 1981), 1-20.
3) Dick, Electric Sheep, 1-20.
4) ibid, 93-112
5) ibid, 12/13.
6) Fancher, Blade Runner, 5/6.
7) Dick, Electric Sheep, 48/49.
8) Fancher, Blade Runner, 22.
9) ibid, 53.
10) ibid, 8/9.
11) Dick, Electric Sheep, 197.
12) Fancher, Blade Runner, 115-125.
13) ibid, 125/126.
14) The voice over was not, in fact, part of the writer or director’s original conception of the film, and only appears towards the end of this version of the screenplay. See, Fancher, Blade Runner, 127. Unfortunately, the voice over in Blade Runner is a poor example of the form; it generally repeats what we have already been shown and adds very little information that the audience couldn’t already have figured out.