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Science Fiction America: Essays on SF Cinema

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That's what the hero of the 1962 sci-fi classic Nude on the Moon wonders, when he lands on the lunar surface and finds antennae-sporting "moondolls" sunbathing and swimming au naturel.

Nude on the Moon is one of the few films in Science Fiction America that I haven't seen (for some reason Leonard Maltin doesn't cover it in his movie guide either). But it's interesting to read Chase Winsted's essay on voyeurism, comparing director Doris Wishman's Nude on the Moon to Roger Corman's "X" - - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. One story is liberating, one conservative. It looks like Doris Wishman deserves credit for being an early feminist filmmaker.

Editor David Hogan picked twenty-two essays that reflect America's twentieth century as seen through science fiction movies, from the aftermath of World War I (the British film High Treason) to the first glimpses of the so-called War on Terror (Starship Troopers and The Iron Giant).

It's talking about more than just the usual films you expect (for example, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, Invaders from Mars, and It Came from Outer Space) that makes this book so good (though the chapters on those films are good too). But Fleischer cartoons, Godzilla, TV, exploitation flicks, fifties saucer movies, seventies youth pictures, all tell as much about American life as film noir or Douglas Sirk-style weepy dramas ever did.

Leonard Kohl's analysis of the Flash Gordon serials shows how anti-escapist movies sometimes were back then despite themselves, even when they were trying to take audiences all the way to another planet, like Mongo.

And editor Hogan's own essay on the low budget The Adventures of Superman illuminates the fifties better than some of the big theatrical films (which makes sense, when you consider that it was the beginning of the age of television). We were just learning to talk to ourselves through the box.

Brian Senn's chapter on the seventies movies Death Race 2000 and Rollerball makes you realize how unintelligent recent remakes of classic science fiction films have been, mostly because they go out of their way to pander to a pubescent audience and they don't dare to make a statement (for instance, the remakes of Rollerball and The Stepford Wives).

Ken Weiss's article, comparing Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers to Paul Verhoeven's film, is fascinating, but I think Weiss may be giving Heinlein too much credit as a satirist. I don't think Heinlein saw his future history as a dystopia.

Science Fiction America is as good an example of McFarland & Company's film books as I've come across, and that is high praise.

Read this book!

David Hogan does a splendid job in bringing together thoughtful pieces on a subject intended to divert you rather than make you introspective. His wide knowledge of the literature, combined with his artistic sense, enables the newcomer (of which I am one) to quickly grasp the range and the depth of science fiction. I suspect that his appeal will be even broader to an expert in the field, for his selection of articles and their authors have an authentic, solid ring that satisfies. Highly recommended to all!