The Blade Runner film, released in 1982, has a cult following in the Computer Underground, especially among Newbies. The dense, detailed plot of the movie was backed by a mesmerizing, melancholy musical soundtrack. Classified as a futuristic film, the main character was a former police officer and bounty hunter sent by the state to search for four android clones that had been genetically engineered to have limited life spans. Driven by fear, the clones came to earth from another planet to find their creator and to force him (presumably) to prolong their lives. The film’s theme has been said to symbolize the quest for immortality—a topic of particular interest, it seems, to those in the computer underground.

See Also: Computer Underground (CU); Newbies and Scriptkiddies.