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No, Blade Runner does not occur in the original book. I think Ridley Scott or whoever titled the movie got it from a completely unrelated book and used it just because they liked the name. Ok, found it. Author of unrelated book is William S. Burroughs.

Uh, why are you repeating information that is in the summary, instead of just scrolling up to read it (or better yet, actually reading TFA)?

Summarizing the summary: The title came from the book The Bladerunner by Alan Nourse, as adapted into an unproduced screenplay by William S. Burroughs.

I found a reference for this: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/unauthorized-lord-rings/

Interestingly, Humphrey Carter, in Tolkien’s official biography, noted that while Tolkien was displeased with the Ace editions, they at least sported covers that resembled their stories; by contrast, Tolkien was distressed at the cover art for the Ballantine editions, to which he noted: “What has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs?”

Ace’s editions were a commercial success, selling over 100,000 copies, which angered Tolkien and his publishers. They complained, and as early as May 1965, Tolkien began to urge the fans who wrote to him to inform them that the American copies were pirated: "I am now inserting in every note of acknowledgement to readers in the U.S.A. a brief note informing them that Ace Books is a pirate, and asking them to inform others."

Competition to the Ace copies arrived at the same time, as Ballantine Books released their own ‘authorized’ The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in October and Return of the King in November of 1966. While Ace’s editions were priced at $0.75 against Ballantine’s $0.95, the tide began to turn as the negative publicity mounted.

It’s interesting to see that Tolkien utilized the fanbase that he so abhorred to fight back against the unauthorized editions. He was also correct: The incredible publicity that the row received, which pulled in efforts from the Science Fiction Writers of America, helped to grow the fervent readership for the tales from Middle Earth. It’s also ironic that while Tolkien had resisted so “ ‘degenerate a form’ as the paperback book,” it was in that format which they first appeared and grew in popularity within the United States.

Bookstores and fans began to boycott the unauthorized edition, and by February 1966, Tolkien reported in a letter that he had reached an agreement with Wollheim to receive some royalties from their publication run, and a promise that they would let the edition sell out, with no further print runs. Ace was under no legal obligation to agree to such a deal, but considerable pressure from their rival publishers and readers forced them to the table. By March, Ace announced that they had reached an agreement with the author, and their edition fell out of print.

Thanks. And here is the Ace + Emu story in more detail (turns out Ace did ask but was its 'pulp' was rebuked by Tolkien). The grassroots anti-Ace campaign is worth a read here, it was something the publishing world had never experienced. Also a good photos of the Purple Emu Fellowship I owned which showed more of the drawing. It was a nice illustration. The artist pegged the landscape pretty well but could not have known that Tolkien was fastidious in his portrayal of Middle Earth and kept its flora and fauna strictly Earthlike in appearance, save a few notable exceptions. No emus or lion-things.

To counter the "What the hell does all this have to do with 'news for nerds'?" while discussing Tolkien,
How It's Made: Books

The novel is The Bug by Ellen Ullman.

Here's quote from one of the reviewshttps://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ellen-ullman/the-bug/:

Her first fiction - which descends back into this realm of basement cafes and windowless break rooms, of buzzing fluorescents, whining computers, and cussing hackers - sustains a haunting tone of revulsion mingled with nostalgia. This artful tension distinguishes heroine Roberta Walton, who tells about the dramatic undoing in 1984 of Ethan Levin, a slightly odious but efficient programmer plagued by a highly odious but efficient computer bug.

Sounds like the courts eventually decided it was copyright infringement, at least according to a post up the page and this, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/... though it took quite a while and really the battle was waged in the court of public opinion and the judgement from the court of public opinion forced Ace to not do any more editions, selling what they had, and give some royalties to Tolkien.

Ace Books DID pirate LotR books.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/...

In 1993, a court found that the reasoning which the publishing house used to produce their own editions was flawed: where they reasoned that the lapse of a copyright renewal indicated that it was a de facto forfeiture of rights, the court disagreed. The opinion noted that provisions within a 1909 copyright law did protect the rights of the original copyright holder: While " 'forfeitures are never to be inferred from doubtful language.' Washingtonian Publishing Co. v. Pearson, 306 U.S. 30, 42, 59 S.Ct. 397, 403, 83 L.Ed. 470 (1938), this rule need not be relied upon: the 1909 Copyright Act makes no provision anywhere for forfeiture of copyrights of aliens because of distribution of their works without a copyright notice."

Which does not mean that Tolkein was not a dick and a two-faced bigoted stuck-up asshole.

Tolkien was not interested in seeing his books in paperback form: "When he called up Professor Tolkien in 1964 and asked if he could publish Lord of the Rings as Ace paperbacks, Tolkien said he would never allow his great works to appear in so 'degenerate a form' as the paperback book."
...
It's interesting to see that Tolkien utilized the fanbase that he so abhorred to fight back against the unauthorized editions. He was also correct: The incredible publicity that the row received, which pulled in efforts from the Science Fiction Writers of America, helped to grow the fervent readership for the tales from Middle Earth. It's also ironic that while Tolkien had resisted so " 'degenerate a form' as the paperback book," it was in that format which they first appeared and grew in popularity within the United States.

Nonsense, almost from start to finish. The Ace edition of Lord of the Rings was possible not due to a 'lapse of copyright' but due to a loophole in US copyright law at the time involving the importing and rebinding of unbound copies of the book for resale (Houghton Mifflin sold LotR this way; the fact that they exceeded the quota of copies shows that it was not a commercial failure). Ace could not cut a deal with Tolkien, who did not approve of the paperback format, not because Wollheim thought that fantasy wouldn't sell (his _business_ was selling paperback adult fantasy!) The Ace edition was published in May-July 1965; Ballantine's edition was published about a year later amid much pressure from SFWA and fans for Ace to withdraw their edition, and achieved tremendous success with multiple reprints. See https://www.kirkusreviews.com/...

D&D was published in 1974 (per the article), long after the paperback 'controversy' had subsided, and it is almost certainly the massively popular Ballantine edition that would have come to Gary Gygax's attention in that time. D&D, in the mid 1970s, was an early part of kind of a perfect storm of geekdom, in which the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, Star Wars, and the best-selling publication of The Silmarillion all had a part.

Speaking of Sci-Fi, the lead female character (Mira) in the book "Evolution's Darling" is an assassin who targets scientists that have been judged by Mira's AI-overlords as being too close to making undesirable discoveries.

For instance, one of her past targets included a researcher working on teleportation (which they calculate will lead to the collapse of civilization), and much of the story involves her mission to assassinate a rogue AI who has developed a method of making perfect copies of AI minds. All for the protection of society of course.

I think the NYTimes has some good book reviews but:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/
http://www.nybooks.com/

The NYTimes is on par with Chicago, LA, SF Chron, the Telegraph which is good for a paper.

In terms of quantity and timeliness: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/

Similarly for the other examples. Yes the NYTimes is good but the problem is in an internet based market they aren't anywhere near the top nor do they have anything truly specific to offer.