Blade Runner: Origins Vol 2: Scrap by K. Perkins, Mellow Brown, Mike Johnson
Art by Fernando Dagnino

(Titan Comics, 2022)

Reviewed by John Dodd

I’ll go on record as saying that I love all things to do with Bladerunner, from the original films (in all its many forms), to the book and its sequels, to the film sequel and all the lore and mythos that has been built up over time.

This was something I hadn’t yet encountered and that was a very refreshing thing to encounter.

Cal Moreaux (the significance of the name is not lost on me), is a man who has been brought in by the LAPD to assist on a case involving problems with the Nexus 4 model replicants. It quickly becomes apparent that there are issues with the 4’s malfunctioning, with the first one that they encounter going into a recursive loop till their programming comes to the conclusion that it needs to, albeit that no one knows what the conclusion should be.

It becomes very apparent that the Nexus 4’s are very far removed from the Nexus 6’s that many people will be familiar with. They’re not as advanced, not as fast, not as strong, and with the casual racism and harassment that is an ever-present part of the world, their lives are not really worth living.

Added to this is the complication of the new Nexus 5 replicants that are just starting to appear on the streets and a secret group of 5’s that are moving around the city trying to rescue other replicants from the troubles that they are in.

This is clearly the setup to the rest of the story, we’re given the notion that there is a place where replicants can be brought where they won’t be persecuted, and that there’s ongoing casual violence against replicants, and that there are replicants who aren’t going to take this anymore. They don’t hate all humans, in fact they’re more than happy to help those humans who bear them no ill will, but they hate humans who use violence on replicants for no more reason than they are replicants.

This is powerful writing, the need of an oppressed people to be given the same rights and privileges as all those around them resonates in every part of the novel. That these people were engineered as servants makes their oppression no less real, and the notion of freedom being something that could only be granted to something that was born is clear. As we learn more about what’s going on (and trying not to give spoilers to an excellent tale), we learn that the transference of memories is something that is going on, on a regular basis, and that memories can be downloaded between different bodies.

This in turn was a revelation, if memories could be downloaded between bodies, then there’s no reason that the four-year life cycle couldn’t be changed and that it would be entirely possible to bring replicants in at the end of their lives and download those memories, so at some point, something changed, and from that, the whole dystopian nightmare of the original films was born.

That is something that I want to read about, and I’m hoping that it comes to pass in the next installation, as while there was a lot of setup in this novel, it did set the scene for events that will prove to be incendiary, no matter how they resolve themselves.

The artwork was good and clear, the style maintained throughout, and there was a series of images at the back of the novel with the covers for all the different parts of the story. That the story is set in 2009 is consistent with the canon, but looking at it now, it does feel strange in many ways that we are further along in time, but further back in technology than the story. That said, the message delivered resonates no matter what year it is, looking forwards to seeing what comes next.

Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.