I RECEIVED AN E-MAIL this morning in which the television personality ADAM SAVAGE traced the provenance of his home-made Blade Runner gun.

COURTESY HIM, here is the original “hero” gun.

AND HERE IS the astonishing replica he made himself.

CAN YOU SPOT THE THREE DIFFERENCES? I doubt you can.*

WHILE READING ABOUT the hero gun, I noticed it came from the collection of Blade Runner publicist and geek marketing visionary Jeff Walker.

IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD OF HIM, no worries. Neither did I until literally minutes ago, when I started googling him instead of doing my taxes.

AND DURING THAT GOOGLING, I came across this very sweet and also bittersweet document, a letter to Jeff Walker from Philip K. Dick regarding some footage of BLADE RUNNER Dick saw on television before he died….

THIS COMES COURTESY the Philip K. Dick Trust website.

I HAD NEVER KNOWN that Dick had any particular fondness for BLADE RUNNER, I found it heartening that, after a somewhat tormented life, and here, at what Dick perhaps did not know was the end of it, he is clearly so enthused.

BUT ALSO, I found the last line gasp-inducing; for in 1982, as he died, BLADE RUNNER was certainly not invincible.

INDEED, it had been VINCED PRETTY DAMN THOROUGHLY by ET.

BUT BY 2010, however, every one of Dick’s predictions for the film had eerily, impossibly come true. And what better legacy for a futurist?

*MEANWHILE, if you could not tell the difference between the actual gun and the Savage replica, the replica has a life span of only seven years, a bunch of fake memories, and it won’t flip over a turtle, EVEN IF IT IS DYING.

That is all.