For those of you who didn't see Blade Runner, here's a brief explanation of the plot. In a 21st century Los Angeles, the Tyrell Corporation came up with synthetic humans called "replicants." They were developed for use in off-world colonization and other areas where humans could not survive. Replicants were smarter, stronger, and more agile than their human masters. And after a certain amount of time, they began to rebel against their human masters and one of them actually killed a human. So "replicants" became illegal on earth. The replicants that made it back to earth were hunted down by special police units, Blade Runners, that were trained in the detection and destruction of the replicants, which wasn't exactly easy since they could easily pass for a human.
The original "Blade Runner" movie centers around one Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner grown tired of the profession who got asked to do "just one more job" -- hunt down and kill four dangerous replicants who made it back to earth to get into the Tyrell Corporation and find some way to extend their four-year life span. The movie centers around the hunt of these rogue replicants and a replicant inside the Tyrell Corporation named Rachael that Deckard ends up falling in love with.
The movie "Blade Runner" is based on the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick. Though the basic plot of the movie and the book are similar, the book explores the question "What does it mean to be human?" in more detail. The movie "Blade Runner" exists in a few different versions (I myself have seen three). The various "directors cut" editions add additional dialogue, remove the voice-over by Harrison Ford, and have a slightly different ending from that of the "release" version of the movie. This ending -- where we are not told that Rachael has an unlimited lifespan, is the point at which the books by Jeter resume the story of Rick Deckard.
It's obvious from reading both these books that you will be able to get the most out of these books by seeing the movie, in any form, but I believe anyone could become a fan of "Blade Runner" after reading Jeter's books. Both books are phenomenally compelling and captivating. Once I picked up these books, I could not put them done until I had finished. Jeter writes a story that sucks you in deeper and deeper into a dark and dreary picture of humanity in the 21st century. The descriptions of Los Angeles, the colonies on Mars, and the environments are as vivid to me as the visual imagery of the Blade Runner movie. The conspiracies and moral issues only hinted at in the movie are brought to the forefront and wrestled with by Deckard and the various other players. Just when you think you've figured out where the story is going, a new twist is thrown in.
One of my favorite passages from "Replicant Night" is this description of the marketplace of an emmigrant colony on Mars. This passage is a great example of the author's ability to make real this fictional account of life in the 21st century:
Deckard let his gaze, the hard encompassing cop scan that'd become engrained in his optic nerves, pass over the crowd. He knew what the briefcase meant, what it had picked up on without even having eyes. The city vibration, shouting and murmuring voices--as he shouldered his way through, the briefcase dangling in one hand's tight grip, its corners catching like a barbed anchor against the press of others' thighs and hips, he saw the same faces he'd seen in his other life, the one spent on Earth. Nothing had changed, at least in the essential sense--identical eyes glittered too bright and hungry, whether they were naked or shielded behind dark lenses or bambardier-style goggles. Other eyes, that he remembered as well, opiated or glazed over with any number of pharmaceutical combinations--the marketplace's recycled air smelled rancid with receptor-specific molecules exuded through the sweat upon shivering, palid skin. And those whose eyes were still focused, but on some point far from here, a deific vision they'd come to the shabbiest stall and overcoated, secret-pocketed vendors to find--Deckard remembered seeing those before as well.
"Just goes to show," he spoke aloud--nobody in the crowd noticed a person talking to himself or having a conversation with the small luggage he carried. "That L.A.'s not a place. It's an idea. A bad idea."