What is Blade Runner ?

"A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. New climate, recreational facilities.....absolutely free. Use your new friend as a personal body servant or a tireless field hand - the custom tailored genetically engineered humanoid replicant designed especially for your needs. So come on America, let's put our team up there...."

Quoted from the Blade Runner FAQ... I was rooting around some film magazines over the weekend when I discovered to my delight, a dog-eared copy of the Blade Runner FAQ bulking out an old Empire magazine. Compiled back in the early 90’s, the 70-odd page FAQ was a treasure trove of Blade Runner lore, crammed with fascinating facts, trivia and answers to those niggly questions the film poses (Was the Unicorn sequence taken from Legend ? What is the significance of the chess game?) Back in 1993, the BR FAQ felt like it was beamed from the future – my older brother, working at Motorola at the time printed me a copy from that mysterious newfangled thing known as the Internet, and for years the FAQ served as my Blade Runner Bible, endlessly read cover to cover up to its retirement with the arrival of Paul Sammon’s definitive chronicle of the film, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (which seems to be out of print these days). I’m looking thru an online version of the original FAQ now and enjoying the minutiae that easily slips the mind, like the association of each of the characters with an animal: Leon (Turtle), Roy (Wolf, Dove), Zhora (Snake), Rachel (Spider), Tyrell (Owl), Sebastian (Mouse), Pris (Raccoon), Deckard (Sushi (raw fish), unicorn). Morphology? Longevity? Incept dates? Answers here...