Philip K Dick's Blade Runner letter - 'my life and work is complete'

BLADE RUNNER author Philip K. Dick was undoubtedly a strange cat, but also one of the most wildly creative minds ever to work in the world of science fiction.

As well as his most famous work in Blade Runner, he wrote shedloads of novels and short stories which have also made it onto the screen including Minority Report, Screamers, A Scanner Darkly and Total Recall.

Considering he was best known for exploring dark themes of humanity, reality, totalitarian states, altered perception and paranoia, it is a surprise to see this fantastically enthusiastic letter that Dick wrote to the Blade Runner film production company in 1981, just five months before he died and after watching a short TV report on the film, which had yet to be released.

The letter was brought to my attention by @grahambandage on the fantastic blog Letters of Note and must have been absolutely wonderful to receive.

Dick is effusive in his prise for the film-makers, and modest as to his own role in Blade Runner's creation.

He has also since been proven absolutely right in his assessment of Blade Runner and the impact it would have on contemporary and future culture and fiction.

As I have blogged at elsewhere, the film builds on the tremendously engaging ideas in Dick's novel to become a masterwork.

This letter - which I had never seen before - is a fitting footnote to that process.