Blade Runner Blaster 

A practical weapon...

Known to aficionados as the 'PKD, (Steyr, Pflager, Katsumata Series D Blaster or the LAPD 2019)' the Blade Runner blaster was designed and crafted for Harrison Ford's weary future detective/enforcer Rick Deckard in the celebrated 1982 science fiction movie Blade Runner.

After decades of fanciful directed energy weapons (lasers, phasers and energy-based 'blasters') the PKD - named to mirror the initials of Blade Runner writer Philip K. Dick - was the first of a series of more realistic, gritty movie firearms; guns that looked like they were from the future, but were actually an extrapolation from existing firearms technology and didn't depend on as-yet-undreamt-of power sources.

As an aside we are a LONG way away from effective, portable directed energy weapons, let alone weapons capable of creating quantum singularities; batteries are just one problem in this respect. Modern cartridge firearms are just too efficient, reliable and cost-effective to be replaced anytime soon.

...impractically made?

The actual Blade Runner blaster prop was an ingenious disguise for a modern firearm; the relatively mundane Bulldog 44 Special Revolver, from the US company Charter Arms.

This gave the blaster its chunky, slightly retro lines and enabled it to fire blanks like the weapons used in 'Star Wars.' Here though no laser bolts would be animated in post-production; the prop would work on screen much like a real revolver. 

To take things into the near future, however, the 'Bulldog' was married to a bolt-action Austrian Steyr Mannlicher Model SL (in .222 Remington, the predecessor of NATO's current 5.56x45mm cartridge). 

In practical terms, this combination made no sense; the rifle had no barrel (indeed, no chamber to accept a cartridge) and so the distinctive turned-down handle on the side of the finished blaster had no real-world function. 

The rifle's magazine was mounted below the barrel of the host revolver, so there was no way to feed cartridges to the upper 'barrel' either, even though the pistol's two triggers reinforce the idea that this is a double-barrelled weapon. A plastic clamshell covers the revolver's cylinder to further persuade the viewer that this is a totally new type of weapon. However, this means that there is no on-screen way to reload the thing either. 

Some lurid transparent, amber covered grips and some pointless sci-fi red and green LEDs complete the look. If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm really not; it's just interesting to peek behind the 'movie magic' curtain sometimes. In fact, these design choices were made for precisely these reasons; even students of arms and armour were stumped by the blaster at first sight. 

A film icon

Interestingly, production designer Syd Mead (who also worked on 'Aliens' and 'Star Trek', among other franchises), originally penned a very futuristic 'black hole gun' that looked absolutely nothing like a modern firearm. 

It clearly fills the role in terms of Hollywood detective and sci-fi movie tropes but stays mysterious and futuristic. Does it still fire bullets or some special kinetic projectile that we can't imagine? Is it a miniature railgun, with the ammunition stored in the Steyr's magazine (with its glowing red lights)? Or is it really a directed energy weapon? Most viewers won't care, but those of us that do see the weapon as almost a character in its own right, akin to King Arthur's Excalibur. 

This is certainly true of former Mythbuster Adam Savage who embarked on his own personal quest to perfectly recreate the blaster for his own collection.

An icon in movie history, the iconic status of the blaster is curious in a way. As in the case of the so-called Han Solo blaster from 'Star Wars', the LAPD 2019 was very clearly used by more than just the one character and was intended to be an absolutely mundane standard-issue weapon. Not some special heroic weapon like Excalibur or Vera from the space western series 'Firefly.' 

It's the use of the weapon as part of the narrative that somehow makes it special, unique and sought after by fans. After all, this is the gun that Deckard uses to retire Blade Runner's Nexus-6 replicants and which Rutger Hauer's replicant, Roy Batty, places back into Deckard's shattered hand shortly before his final Tears in the Rain' monologue.