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"In science fiction one can say a great many things that are unpalatable, … because it's expressed as science fiction you can slip it past their defenses."
- Frederik Pohl

Replicant  
  An android; an artificial human being.  

This term for an android is used in the movie Blade Runner, which was made from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. However, the term is never used in the book.

See the entry for andy to learn more about Philip K. Dick's take on humanity.

In the following quote, Ridley Scott, director of Bladerunner, explains the origin of the word "replicant:"

"When we set out to do this film, we decided to make 'android' a taboo word. I said anybody who uses the word 'android' gets their head broken with a baseball bat. The word sets up all sorts of preconceptions of the kind of film this could be. An android might be human, actually flesh and blood, gentically structured, but we simply decided not to use the word because its over-used and misused. So we developed our own word, which is the word 'replicant.'"

Technovelgy from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Doubleday in 1968
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