Monthly Archives: August 2021

RIP Kurt Westergaard (1935 – 2021)

Kurt Westergaard was a Danish cartoonist famous for drawing the cartoons of Mohamed that were the object of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005.

These cartoons made him the target of multiple death threats and assassination attempts. As a result, Westergaard lived, for the rest of his life, under police protection and in hiding.

RIP William F. Nolan (1928 – 2021)

William F. Nolan was an American author best known for co-writing Logan’s Run, a dystopian novel which shows similarities to Blade Runner.

Trailer for Logan’s Run

Logan (the protagonist from Logan’s Run) is Rick Deckard (the protagonist from Blade Runner). Both chase renegades, rebels from the system. Logan is a sandman (a cop chasing people who refuse to be euthanized) and Deckard is a blade runner (a cop who chases robots who refuse to be put out of circulation).

Both change sides during the story, becoming renegades and rebels themselves.

For interesting thoughts on these similarities, check Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005) and Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy: This Breaks the World (2019).