Brooks Landon's book is wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and near state-of-the-art. It concerns science fiction film and, toward the end, almost becomes SF in its provocative speculations on the future of such film. His study is really two books in one. The first part argues that most criticism of SF film has been inadequate because it is based on literary rather than film-specific standards. The second argues that SF film will soon become either obsolete or be totally transformed through new computer technology. What ties them together is the author's concern with what might be called the SF ethos or SF thinking, so that science fiction can be seen to encompass not only SF in print, film, TV and comic books, but has become all-pervasive in contemporary culture. At present, Landon argues that SF film may have exhausted itself as a genre but new electronic technology--computer animation, interactive narratives, and virtual reality--promises to radically transform SF film and possibly create a synthesis of the divergent trends of SF literature and film. Production technology has become the new story, one more interesting than the narrative it ostensibly supports. Landon believes we are at the threshold of a new age, similar to the pioneer years of filmmaking a hundred years ago.

First published in 2003. Brooks Landon analyses science fiction not as a set of rules for writers, but as a set of expectations for readers. He presents science fiction as a social phenomenon that moves beyond literary experience through a sense of mission based on the belief that SF can be a tool to help you think. He offers a broad overview of the genre and the stages through which it has developed in the twentieth century from the dime store novel through the New Wave of the '60s, the cyberpunk '80s, and soft agenda SF of the '90s. The writers he examines range for E. M. Forster and John W. Campbell to Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin. He also examines the large body of criticism now devoted to the genre and includes a bibliographic essay and a list of recommended titles.

Brooks Landon analyses science fiction not as a set of rules for writers, but as a set of expectations for readers. He presents science fiction as a social phenomenon that moves beyond literary experience through a sense of mission based on the belief that SF can be a 'tool to help you think'. He offers a broad overview of the genre and the stages through which it has developed in the twentieth century from the dime store novel through the New Wave of the '60s, the cyberpunk '80s, and soft agenda SF of the '90s. The writers he examines range from E. M. Forster and John W. Campbell to Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin. He also examines the large body of criticism now devoted to the genre and includes a bibliographic essay and a list of recommended titles.

Science fiction, more than any other film genre, allows cinema to exhibit its own distinctive matters of expression. Whether these be the state-of-the-art special effects technologies of "2001: A Space Odyssey," or the symbolic imagery of ruined cityscapes in "Blade Runner," they allow the spectator to experience the totality of the audiovisual thrill.
While this remains in many ways the core defining feature of the genre, recent trends in the study of science fiction cinema have seen a shift of focus away from the specifically cinematic towards the more broadly cultural. New technologies of communication and vision, revolutionary developments in the delivery and reception of moving-image media, the increasing importance of the notion of space: all are forcing new and different ways of thinking about the genre.
"Alien Zone II" presents some of the most exciting new voices in the current debates. A companion volume to "Alien Zone," it continues to pursue the critical and theoretical issues opened up in the earlier book and energetically explores fresh territory with an eye which is both reflective and interventionist: visionary cities, psycho-cybernetics, internet fandom, the convergence of science fiction literature and science action film, the body and its limits are just some of the subjects brought under its gaze.