Alan Edward Nourse (/nɜːrs/;[1] August 11, 1928 – July 19, 1992) was an American science fiction writer and physician.

He served his one-year internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle and practiced medicine in North Bend, Washington, from 1958 to 1963 and also pursued his writing career.

[citation needed] He had helped pay for his medical education by writing science fiction for magazines.

[4] His novel The Bladerunner lent its name to the Blade Runner movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters (which were taken from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella Blade Runner (a movie).