Junior novelizations are an odd breed of book. I mean, does one really need to read a 200 page prose version of Adventures in Babysitting? (If you were me in 1987, then the answer is a resounding yes, but I pray that I’m in the minority). Over the years I’ve collected quite a few gems of dubious literary spin-offs—everything from a Where’s Waldo/Street Fighter mash up to the Star Wars Question and Answer Book About Space, which poses such questions as “Are there such things as Moon Creatures?” and “Can Lasers kill people?” (the answers are no and sometimes respectively–sorry, spoilers). One of my favorites is the novelization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (hint, it’s not by Bram Stoker).
Today let’s look beneath the cover of a real head-scratcher: Blade Runner: a Story of the Future. Is this heavily illustrated 90 page chapter book meant to appeal to the 7-year-olds coming off of The Empire Strikes Back and itching for more Han Solo space adventures, or is it intended to be a low-cost art book for older fanboys? We’ll let the book speak for itself.
He sat alone, looking at the snakes decorating the bar walls, crawling upon the floor, and wrapped around women who were wearing little else. The snakes were replicas, of course – otherwise they would have cost a fortune. But the showgirls were clearly real, their flesh warm against the snakes’ cold scales. Except for one, thought Deckard. One who looked even more enticing than the others. She was billed as Salome, and when she finished her act and went backstage, Deckard couldn’t wait for Rachael any longer. He had a job to do. A skin job.
Actually, that sounds more like the start of a very naughty fan fic.
Skin jobs aside, the author takes a decidedly chipper approach to adaptation. For instance, take Roy Batty’s final lines, perhaps the most poignant point in the film. This:
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.
Becomes this:
“You have courage,” Batty said to him. “You are the only human I have met with as much courage as I. Perhaps you have even more. Even I was tempted to beg not to die.” Batty paused as his mind turned feelings into words. “I could not destroy courage like that. It would be like destroying what is best in me.”
Deckard sat beside Batty as Batty stared up at the star-filled sky.
“You know,” said Batty,” I have never spared a life before. I am glad I was able to do it now. I am glad I have been free not to kill at least once before I die.”
Okay, granted the author probably had to write this before the final script, and Batty’s final line was improved, but that sounds more like “Frog and Toad are Replicants” than Blade Runner.
Come to think of it, the book’s final words also have a Frog and Toad vibe:
Deckard had one hand on the controls, the other was around Rachael. “They’ve left it all behind for us,” he said. “We’re heirs to all the earth.”
“But for how long?” asked Rachael.
“How does that old-fashioned vow go?” said Deckard. “For as long as we both shall live.”
