INTRODUCTION
DEFINING THE IMPOSSIBLE GENRE
The most memorable science-fiction movies are ones that defy our expectations. Even the experience of writing about science fiction defied my expectations. As I deeply explored the genre, I was struck by the uniqueness of every story—how dissimilar each was from the next—rather than their similarities. What does a comedy like Back to the Future (1985) have in common with a thriller like Alien (1979)? Does Barbarella (1968) share any elements with The Invisible Man (1933)? Even categorizing certain titles as science fiction proved more challenging than I had imagined. Like the shape-shifting monster in The Thing (1982), sci-fi cinema takes many forms and is almost impossible to wrangle in an expected direction.
So how do we know a science-fiction movie when we see it? According to writer Phil Hardy, who labeled science fiction “the impossible genre,” virtually all sci-fi films “in some way or another call into question the world we live in and accept as absolute.” In other words, they question our reality. Science fiction looks at our world and asks, “What if?” What if we could travel back and forth in time? What if there are aliens on other planets? What if everything we believe to be real is, in fact, a computer-generated illusion? Specifically, science fiction confronts the what-ifs of technology by questioning our relationship to scientific progress and projecting advancements that might lie just beyond the horizon. Where is science leading mankind? Unforgettable sci-fi films not only pose such heavy-duty questions, they proceed to answer them in dazzling detail.
Before the birth of science-fiction cinema, writers like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells laid the groundwork for the art form with their highly imaginative literary works. Often using such inspiration, since the nickelodeon days motion pictures dabbled in the weird, the unearthly, and the fantastic. But never before have science-fiction films been more respected or more widespread than now, in the twenty-first century. Prompted by technological advancements in our reality—some that eerily resemble the science fiction of yesterday—cinema is experiencing a sci-fi renaissance, and a fan base that seems to grow broader with each passing year. “Science fiction is for everybody,” director James Cameron once observed. “We live in a technological world… so to say that science fiction is just for the pencil-neck nerds with calculators on their hips is really to miss the point.”
Keir Dullea in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)