Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies [antikvár]

Preface Harlan Ellison's lengthy introduction to this book covers the entire science fiction genre, from films in which atomic bombs create or unleash giant monsters to alien-visitation/invasion movies to space adventures set a long time ago in galaxies far, far away to those films that either take place in Earth's future or advance concepts that apply to Earth's future. While all types of sf films are discussed within this volume. Screen Flights Screen Fantasies concentrates on the "futuristic films," exploring their themes, detailing how they were made, and examining the futuristic visions of the people who made them. What makes the "futuristic" subgenre particularly compelling is that our own visions of the future were, I believe, •formulated to a great extent from having seen many convincing films that have prophesied about the Earth ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand years from now. If we do possess an anti-nuclear bias, an uneasiness in regard to all forms of artificial life, a fear of technology, a distrust of scientists and other intellectuals, or simultaneous feelings of wonder and worry about tomorrow—and the day after—it can probably be traced to our having believed much of what filmmakers have speculated. Of course, our source is suspect. After all these films are fiction, even if the term "science fiction" implies that some amount of deductive scientific reasoning went into their conceptions. Moreover, since history according to the cinema is bunk, as we all have come to realize, it doesn't seem likely that filmmakers would be capable of accurately predicting our future, especially since most of them have no more scientific knowledge than we laymen have. But time and again their futuristic visions have fascinated us; when futuristic films are well made, they capture our imagination, they make us want to believe them. All of us who have anxiously waited for 1984 and finally have been able to compare our world's societies to that posited by Orwell and by the filmmakers who adapted his book in 1956 are already wondering how our