All the articles and essays in this Reader have been previously published in a variety of journals and anthologies. Thanks go to all the authors, editors and publishers of the following publications who have permitted the reproduction of these works: Vivian Sobchack (1997) ‘Images of Wonder: The Look of Science Fiction’ (pp. 64–87 only) and ‘Postfuturism’ (pp. 223–41 only) Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film, second edition, New York: Rutgers University Press; Steve Neale (1990) ‘You’ve Got To Be Fucking Kidding!: Knowledge, Belief and Judgement in Science Fiction’, in Annette Kuhn (ed.) Alien Zone, London: Verso, pp. 160–8; Barry Kieth Grant (1999) ‘Sensuous Elaboration: reason and the Visible in the Science Fiction Film’, in Annette Kuhn (ed.) Alien Zone II, London: Verso, pp. 16–29; Warren Buckland (1999) ‘Between Science Fiction and Science Fact: Spielberg’s Digital Dinosaurs, Possible Worlds and the New Aesthetic Realism’, Screen, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 177–92; Susan Sontag (1994) ‘The Imagination of Disaster’, in Against Interpretation, London: Vintage Press, pp. 209–25; Linda Ruth Williams (1999) ‘Dream Girls and Mechanic Panic: Dystopia and its Others in Brazil and Nineteen Eighty-Four’, in I. Q. Hunter (ed.) British Science Fiction Cinema, London: Routledge, pp. 153–69; Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner (1988) ‘Technophobia/Dystopia’, in Camera Politica, Indiana: Indiana University Press, pp. 224–58; Eric Avila (2001) ‘Dark City: White Flight and the Urban Science Fiction Film in Postwar America’, in Daniel Bernardi (ed.) Classic Hollywood: Classic Whiteness, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 52–71; Vivian Sobchack (1999) ‘Cities on the Edge of Time: The Urban Science Fiction Film’, in Annette Kuhn (ed.) Alien Zone II, London: Verso, pp. 123–43; Isolde Standish (1998) ‘Akira, Postmodernism and Resistance’, in D. P. Martinez (ed.) The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–74; Wong Kin Yuen (2000) ‘On the Edge of Spaces: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Hong Kong’s Cityscape’, Science Fiction Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1–21; Andrew Gordon (1987) ‘Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time Traveller, Science Fiction Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 372–85; Constance Penley (1991) ‘Time travel, Primal Scene and the Critical Dystopia’, in Constance Penley (ed.) Close Encounters: Film, Feminism and Science Fiction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 63–80; Jonathan Bignell (1999) ‘Another Time, Another Space: Modernity, Subjectivity and The Time Machine’, in Deborah Cartmell, I. Q. Hunter, Heidi Kaye and Imelda Whelehan (eds) Alien Identities, London: Pluto Press, pp. 87–103; Carol Schwartz Ellis (1995) ‘With Eyes Uplifted: Space Aliens as Sky Gods’, in Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt (eds) Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film, Boulder CO: Westview Press, pp. 83–93; Donna J. Haraway (1991) ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, pp. 149–81; Mary Ann Doane (1990) ‘Technophilia, Representation and the Feminine’, in Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth (eds) Body/Politcs: Women and the Discourses of Science, London: Routledge, pp. 163–76; Doran Larson (1997) ‘Machine as Messiah: Cyborgs, Morphs and the American Body Politic’, in Cinema Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 57–75; Susan J. Napier (2001) ‘Ghosts and Machines: The Technological Body’, in Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke, New York: Palgrave, pp. 85–102; Scott Bukatman (1990) ‘Who Programs You? The Science Fiction of the Spectacle’, in Annette Kuhn (ed.) Alien Zone, London: Verso, pp. 196–213; J. P. Telotte (1983) ‘Human Artifice and the Science Fiction Film’, Film Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 44–51; Alison Landsberg (1995) ‘Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner’, in Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds) Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, London: Sage, pp. 175–89; Henry Jenkins III (1988) ‘Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 85–107; John Tulloch (1995) ‘‘We’re Only a Speck in the Ocean’: The Fan as Powerless Elite’, in John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins (eds) Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek, London: Routledge, pp. 144–72; Will Brooker (1997) ‘New Hope’ The Postmodern Project of Star Wars’, Will and Peter Brooker (eds) Postmodern After-Images, London: Arnold, pp. 101–12; Kurt Lancaster (2001) ‘Web of Babylon’ (pp. 128–36 only) in Fan Performances in a Media Universe: Interacting with Babylon 5, Austin, TX: MIT; Peter Biskind (1983) ‘‘The Russians are Coming, Aren’t They?’ Them! and The Thing’, in Seeing is Believing: How HollywoodTaught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 1950s, London: Pluto Press, pp. 123–36; Mark Jancovich (1996) ‘Re-examining the 1950s Invasion Narratives’, in Rational Fears, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 26–49; Peter Hutchings (1999) ‘‘We’re the Martians Now’: British SF Invasion Narratives of the 1950s and 1960s’, in I. Q. Hunter (ed.) British Science Fiction Cinema, London: Routledge, pp. 33–48.
I would like to thank David, Deborah, Su, Karen, Cathy, John B., Peter, John H., Belinda and Annabel at Southampton Institute for their help, support and camaraderie during the composition of this Reader. I would also like to thank my cinefantastic classes for their conditional love of the sci-fi cinema machine and for their fancy dress seminar presentations. Never have so many superheroes looked so incapable of action! I would like to thank all at Wallflower Press for their support of this project.
… And thanks to Steven T. ‘all the best directors have beards!’ Hanley for the Anime reference.
Where would the cinema be without time travel and alien invaders? Nowhere that interesting, really…
For Caitlin and Joshua and those beams of light we never quite catch.
For Mum and Dad – for letting me watch too much television.