Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World [Hardcover]

Sidney Perkowitz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An entertaining, maybe indispensable guide for film buffs everywhere." -- Booklist

""A grand roundup of technical movie masterpieces... praising scientific accuracy ( A Beautiful Mind) and exposing turkeys ( Volcano)." -- Los Angeles Magazine

"An engaging and fun read." -- Claude Lalumière, Locus

" Hollywood Science is great fun... I give it two thumbs up!" -- David Schneider, American Scientist

"A fascinating read that will have you heading to your local DVD store." -- Physics World

"This is a terrific book... Essential." -- CHOICE

" Hollywood Science is a treat for anyone who looks from their television set to the Moon." -- John Findura, Fortean Times

"An exceptionally accessible book, Hollywood Science provides a very good catalog of the ways Hollywood has used and abused science." -- Neil Easterbrook, SFRA Review

Review

"The approach taken by Sidney Perkowitz is ideal and can accommodate science subfields such as cosmology, genetic engineering, volcanology, and robotics. I believe this book will be very valuable to bridging the gap between scientists, general readers, and non-science students. The book has great appeal for general readers and, in my opinion, will be a useful course book for college level courses in science and film. For the most part, the book is highly readable, provocative, and will be just plain fun to read for both general readers and college students." -- Brian Schwartz, Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs, director of the NSF-supported Science and the Arts Program, and professor of physics at Brooklyn College

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; 1 edition (November 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231142803
• ISBN-13: 978-0231142809
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #799,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Short Summary That Misses the Mark, January 4, 2008

By	Brian Switek "Laelaps" (New Brunswick, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World (Hardcover)

While they are often not the sort of films to win Oscars, science fiction movies have been around for nearly as long as there have been moving pictures, and Hollywood continues to pump out tales about time-traveling cyborgs, alien encounters, and man-made disasters. Sidney Perkowitz's new book, Hollywood Science, takes a look at a number of popular films that not only feature extensions of science but also a look at scientists themselves, what appears on the silver screen often being a reflection of our own attitudes and worries in a changing world. Movie scientists struggle with personal problems, become heroes, descend into villainy, push the boundaries of what is known, and sometimes acquire a taste for world domination, but how much of any of that is real?


Throughout the book, Perkowitz follows a predicable (and often repetitive format); a subject such as "encounters with aliens" is picked, a few well-known movies that fit the topic are summarized in the first half of the chapter, and the latter half is spent quickly confirming or debunking prominent situations in the films. For someone who isn't familiar with Terminator, Gattaca, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park, or any of the other films mentioned this might be a fair approach, but for well-versed fans of science fiction this approach can be a little tedious. Even the discussions about the real science behind Tinseltown premises are a bit shallow and dry, and a more integrated approach, mixing discussions of the films with science instead of segregating them to opposite ends of the chapter, would have been more engaging. I could generally deal with the writing and format if the book was called "The Science of Science-Fiction" or something similar, but the book's subtitle "Movies, Science, and the End of the World" made me hope for content that was never really delivered. I was hoping for a book that looked at how science fiction films, especially those that involve disasters (either man-made or natural), reflected the worries of society during a given time period. Fears of alien invasions (as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) seemed to be more prevalent when concerns about communism ran high, more modern alien films like the remake of War of the Worlds instead taking cues from terrorist attacks. Films involving destruction due to nuclear weapons also were prevalent after WW II (like Dr. Strangelove) and took on new dimensions during the Cold War era (as in War Games), but these sorts of trends are barely mentioned in Perkowitz's book.

Even more bothersome is what is conspicuously absent from the book. Star Wars and Star Trek, perhaps the two most popular science fiction franchises of all time, are barely mentioned at all. I'm not a big Star Trek fan but I do understand that the show has had a major impact on many people and even on our technology, so it was odd the franchise was largely left out. Natural sciences were also largely left on the cutting room floor, which is likely due to two factors. First is that many people might not include "revenge of nature" films (often involving monsters created by pollution, radiation, experiments, unusual natural conditions, etc.) in the science fiction genre, probably because many people equate science with technology and medicine. The second factor is that Perkowitz is a physicist, and biologists still sometimes suffer from having their discipline regarded as "soft science" (even if we do have a proclivity for squishy things rather than equations). Still, scientists often appear in films involving the threat of a monster, from Dr. Serizawa in Gojira to Hooper in Jaws to Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park, and (for lack of a better term) "monster movies" provide plenty of fodder for study when considering science in films. Even lighter fare like Short Circuit, The Nutty Professor, and The Man With Two Brains are left out of the mix, the topic of scientists as nerds or socially-inept buffoons receiving little more than a brief nod to Prof. Frink of The Simpsons fame. I know I couldn't have expected the author to cover every conceivable genre and some things probably would have had to be left out, but some of the omissions are quite baffling.

I do not wish to be overly harsh in my review of Perkowitz's book, but while I feel that the book offers a fair summary of a few science fiction films and the science behind some of them, it ultimately falls a bit flat. A review of how our worries and fears have shaped science fiction (and how those representations are then fed back to us) would have been much more interesting, and while the seeds of such a discussion lie in the book they never fully germinate. If you know someone who is generally unfamiliar with science fiction films, Perkowitz's book might be a good place for them to start, but I have to be honest and say that I was a bit let down by this book as both a fan of science fiction and as someone interested in science.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good General Overview of Science in Movies, February 14, 2008

By	G. Poirier (Orleans, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World (Hardcover)

This is the third book that I've read recently on science as depicted in Hollywood movies; the other two being: "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics" by Tom Rogers and "Don't Try This At Home" by Adam Weiner. Whereas these last two focus on specific movie scenes and analyze their plausibility (or impossibility) using mathematics and the application of sound scientific principles, this book is more general in its approach. First of all, movies are divided into two broad categories: those involving natural disasters and those involving disasters caused by humans. Then, movie story lines are recounted to varying degrees of detail; some movies are described in about a paragraph, while others are described over a few pages. After the descriptions, the science content is discussed in terms of whether it was well presented, possible, exaggerated, or complete nonsense. The social climate at the times when the movies were made is also discussed in an effort to understand the psychology of choosing the scientific subject matter that was presented. Finally, movie depictions of scientists are discussed and compared to scientists in the real world. The only shortcoming that this book may have is that some of the story lines that are presented are much too long and detailed for the purposes of this book; a person who has seen a given movie, possibly more than once, may be displeased at encountering a rather lengthy description of it. Otherwise, the book is quite engaging. The writing style is clear, friendly and accessible. This book can be enjoyed by anyone - math phobic or not; however, I suspect that it would likely appeal the most to science fiction movie buffs.

3.0 out of 5 stars "Hollywood Science" book catalogues movies' influence on scientific beliefs, June 30, 2009

By	David H. Rosen "SellingTomorrows.com" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World (Hardcover)

The table of contents tells 99% of the story. Part I: "Dangers from Nature." Part II: "Dangers from Ourselves." So does Sidney Perkowitz, physics professor at Emory University, begin his tour of science's portrayal in the movies in his book, "Hollywood Science."

Why is this topic important? Well, as Perkowitz point out, "only about one in 300 Americans is a scientist." So your chances of running into one, as opposed to a Dr. Brackish Okun-like stereotype, are pretty slim. Couple that with the fact that "nearly one-third of American adults believe that astrology and fortune telling are 'very scientific' or 'sort of scientific,'" and we quickly see why movies are doing a better job of framing science than highschools.

All of which is to say (and Perkowitz says it best) "When new, little-understood possibilities and threats appear, science fiction films can inform, predict, and warn."