Dreaming of Electric Sheep

The film Blade Runner is an intermediate adaptation of the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  The general idea of novel and some of the major themes remain present, the film just changes certain aspects so that the story being told by the film remains fluid and can sustain the allotted time given. For example, Rachel as a love interest of Rick gives the story more drama and we now have someone Rick can show emotion to so that the viewer is conflicted as to whether he is a replicant or not. While on the novel side Rick is married and has an affair with Rachael.  Yes, the drama remains but in a film aspect you can't do everything with a voice over and Rachael being a main character helped bring along and round out the rough edges of creating the novel into a film. 

Given that they attempted to remain close enough to the themes and kept the plot line of the novel, I would say the adaptation is a transposition.  The adaptation is set in a different city and a different year but enough of the original material remains to not completely categorize it as an analogy.  The screenwriters only took out enough of the novel to make a concrete and cohesive film without making it too complicated, ie. adding in Mercerism concept or the theme of empathy itself.  The film itself is journey based, Rick must do these things and hunt down these people to find serenity within himself and complete his journey.  To add in Rick wanting an animal to feel human would be like adding a sub-journey into the main journey and within this the audience would become sidetracked and confused.

I believe that given the base material, the filmmaker and the screenwriters did an amazing job with turning the novel Do Android's Dream Of Electric Sheep into the film Blade Runner.  They did not create their brand new story spine but instead broke it down and extracted the main elements of the story and gave it depth and meaning into a complicated world of film. Overall the creators of the adaptation did an amazing job of turning a truly complex and deep story into a workable and watchable film.