Fantastic Voyage: Evolution of Science Fiction

How close is the relationship between science fiction and real life? Well, sci-fi has predicted, among other things, the atomic bomb, the moon landing, computers, and cloning, not to mention adding numerous words to our everyday vocabulary, including "cyberspace" (first coined by cyberpunk author William Gibson in his 1984 novel Neuromancer). In this engaging historical overview, featuring William Shatner, directors Paul Verhoeven and Robert Wise, authors Greg Bear and Samuel R. Delaney, and editors such as Gardner Dozois, viewers trace the history of science fiction from its birth (though, of course, this is disputed) in Mary Shelley's mad scientist classic Frankenstein (1818), through the genre-establishing early works by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allen Poe (and in film, Georges Méliès), and on to the pulp (science) fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, and the magazines pioneered by Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, Jr. Moving in to the late '30s and beyond, the program revisits the classic Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, touches on the work of the golden age fiction masters (Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury) and the Cold War/drive-in era feature films (such as Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still), and looks at the history of sci-fi on television from the cheesy Captain Video series to the landmark The Twilight Zone and later Star Trek phenomenon (incidentally, King of Kings' lead Jeffrey Hunter was the first Captain Kirk). Full of clips, archival stills, and wonderful artifacts, Fantastic Voyage is an engaging journey through science fiction's past that not only works as a wonderful introduction to the genre, but also continuously draws interesting parallels between sci-fi and real life. Recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)