William Blake in popular culture all cited Blake as one of their major inspirations. Comic designer William Blake Everett claims to be descended from Blake. In his film "Mean Streets" (1973), Martin Scorsese refers to Blake's poem "The Tyger" when a young pet tiger makes Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro take refuge atop a couch, paralleling the grit and innocence of life in the city. A variation on a verse from Blake's "America a Prophecy" appears in Ridley Scott's science fiction film "Blade Runner" (1982), spoken by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). This has been interpreted as a way of linking Batty to Blake's mythic
Blade Runner (franchise) Dick, began developing a series of "Blade Runner" novels that would serve as a continuation of both the film "Blade Runner", and the novel upon which it was based, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The first of these novels, "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", was published on October 1, 1995. The novel was set several months after the events of "Blade Runner", following Deckard living in an isolated shack outside of Los Angeles, with Rachael with him in a Tyrell transport container, intended to slow down the replicant aging process. Deckard is called in by the human