Well, some characters are mentioned and images are shown, so this is a tiny bit of a spoiler. But your trade-off would be "shall I first watch Blade Runner before reading this article"; watch it today. And read the article anyway, as it is not just about Blade Runner but also e. g. Logan’s Run. Now, Logan’s Run is not as good as Blade Runner, but it has some elements that are quite interesting IMO. So it can also be recommended, even though I find it a bit dated now; Blade Runner is not dated though really. Probably one of the most important science fiction movie ever made. The book is also good, but different to the movie; I was disappointed because I found the movie was better, but the book is in many ways much more logical. It kind of explains why there are so few animals and so many artificial animals (even though from a biological point of view this makes no sense, humans are also animals after all), whereas in the movie, it is rarely explained why there are artificial animals. IMO the book was more intrinsically logical, and more desperate e. g. regular humans were drug addicts, that was totally cut in the movie. I still liked the movie more, even though I think the book had a stronger intrinsic logic; but the performance of Rutger Hauer really was epic there. IMO his best performance in his whole career.