Classic Science Fiction

Various Authors

I had to get this book, it was an interesting concept, a collection of short stories that were the basis for a bunch of sci-fi movies. Turns out there is a whole series of books in the series, bit iffy about the others that I have seen though, Classic Horror Movies and Classic Westerns. The horror movie collection is has some trully crap movies in there and well Westerns just aren't my thing, might get them, might not.

Ok so the cover art is not very exciting and the cover isn't even all that nice texturally, especially after I got hair gel on it and it is ended up kinda sticky. It also got a bit bashed around when I was reading it on the train, it was not the higest of quality paper back cover to start with.

I haven't seen the first four movies, those being Destination Moon, It Came From Outer Space, The Conquest of Space and Panic in the Year Zero, so I didn't have any frame of referance, I read them based purely on their merits as a story.

The best story out of the first four was definately the one that went on to be the basis for Panic in the Year Zero, the original story was called "Lot" by Ward Moore. The first part reminded me a bit of the movie Red Dawn with Patrick Swaze, not that I actually saw most of the movie, so it is probably in no way similar at all, except for the fact that they loaded up the car to go live out in the sticks. So basically the gist of the story is that a man, his wife and thier three kids, have a car loaded up and ready to go in case they need to evacuate their home. I think there is an iminent nuclear strike or something, it isn't directly mentioned, just an attack, and a shit load of death and destruction to accompany it.

They decide that they have to leave, so the Man loads everyone into the car, and the wife and kids are fucking around trying to take the dog and visit neighbors and stuff. But Mr "I'm the man here, we gotta go now, do what I say underlings" insists, and he gets his way. He is what you would call a survivalist. They get going, act like total pricks to all the other motorists, and eventually get out on the open road. They end up going on the wrong side of the road since nobody is going that way (like duh they are evacuating the place). It goes on as the roadtrip from hell basically. The bit that makes it really cool though is the ending.

This next paragraph is a spoiler, so skip past it if you plan on reading it.

The man decides that the only person in his family that he can rely on is his teenage daughter. When they stop at a "Gas Station" (it's an american story), he sends his wife inside to try and make a phone call to the neighbours that she wanted to call earlier, then sends one of the sons in to make sure his wife is allright, then send the other son in with a few thousand dollars in cash to buy tasty treats(tm). Once his wife and two sons are inside he jumps in his car with his daughter and drives off.

The next interesting one was the short story that was the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Originally called "Sentinel of Eternity" by Aurther C Clarke. This was interesting because it was so short. It was 12 pages long, basically the story is there was some guys on the moon exploring, they saw somthing reflective on a cliff top, they climbed the cliff, there was the thing that in the movie looked like a Playstation2, the thing has a force field around it, years later they manage to disengage the force field, a signal starts sending. That was the extent of the story, so nearly the entire movie had nothing to do with the story.

Note, I've decided giving spoiler warning is a waste of time, that didn't take long, but hey if you are going to read a review you have to expect a spoiler.

The absolute highlight of the book was the original story for Total Recall. It was written by Philip K Dick and was entitled "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale". Is it just me or are his titles a bit strange?

This story was better than the movie, not that the movie was bad or anything. Where as in the movie, most of the movie we saw the main character (played by arnie) prance around mars, beating people up, basically none of the story actually took place on Mars. It was the same in that the guy had a boring job, went to the recall agency to have a simulated holiday to Mars where he was a secret agent on a secret mission, and it screwed up because it was actually the truth.

So to get away from the movie thing, instead of hightailing it off to mars, our 'Hero' contacts his secret agent aquaintances, and they say that they will have to kill him, because they can't cover up his real exciting life, with a boring fantasy. So in the end, they agree to concoct a fantasy for him that will allow him to be programmed as someone who does a boring job, but has an exciting secret identity. What they come up with is, that when he was younger some aliens came to invade earth, but he was nice to them, so in return the aliens vowed not to invade earth whilst he lived. Then there is this huge twist, in that they try to program this outragous fantast into him and it dosen't work, again, because it is true. It ends with them deciding that they can't kill him.

The Final notable story is Candyman, based on "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker, it was a rather interesting story but I can't really be bothered writing anything about it, I haven't seen the movie didn't really want to after the shit on the trailer where they called his name five times or whatever it was, that looked crappy and thankfully isn't in the story. I think that maybe it was in the wrong collection, it should have been in the horror book mentioned earlier, but it isn't my series of books and hence not my place to decide what book the story should be in. It was compiled by Peter Haining, who I have never heard of, but his insights into the movies were quite interesting.

Thats it for this book, if anybody has any reviews for it that they want me to post, email it to me from the link at the bottom of the page.

Note this was the first book review I ever wrote for my website.