Life:Science Fiction 100 Years of Great Movies

Sometimes when you're a cab driver working the midnight shift you make a pit stop at the local gas station at three in the morning. And sometimes you're a bit tired because it's three AM and you're eleven hours into a thirteen hour shift and dammit, you need something to keep you up in case you get a call. So you buy a really cool looking magazine and then...

Proceed to fall asleep with the magazine in your hand. It's three o'clock and you were already half asleep when you bought it. Whatever, it's all good. What that means, really is that you've got something to look at when you get to the laundromat a week later. And, if it's a cool magazine then it's worth the wait. Fortunately, this magazine was definitely worth the wait. Actually, it was double fortunate, because when I read it, I noticed a tag on the front cover that said “Display until 9/23/16.” Oops, I guess I was later than I initially realized. Whatever, I still enjoyed it.

The magazine in question is Life: Science Fiction 100 Years of Great Movies. It was a lot of fun. It was kind of like walking into a room with an old friend and talking about some of my favorite movies. All of the best ones are here. The best stuff that you grew up watching is in the magazine. This thing is full of classics. Godzilla (the original), Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey (not that I liked it, but it is a classic), The Martian. They're all here.

Now, I don't agree with all of the choices. I get including Star Trek. I don't get making it the 2009 edition. Avatar is in here. Seriously. Avatar? Why? I mean it wasn't all that good of a movie. It's not as bad as some people have said, but it's maybe a 3.5 out of 5 Annoying Blue Dudes. I mean, how did that land in here? Overall though, I really do appreciate the choices that they made and it's pretty much inevitable that I wasn't going to agree with them on everything.

This magazine is gorgeous. The cover is beautiful. The table of contents features the Millennium Falcon taking fire from a TIE Fighter. Every movie has a layout of big, awesome pictures. Someone put a lot of work into laying this out and it shows. OK, so maybe the Invasion of the Body Snatchers pictures were a little gross, but it's Invasion of the stinking Body Snatchers. They couldn't NOT look gross. It just wouldn't have worked that way. I have a feeling that some of the older pictures may have been digitally remastered. The 1953 War of the Worlds was never that clear. It was clearly improved. That's good though, because they kept the content of the picture and made it look better.

There is a lot of political commentary included in SF100GM. It's not overwhelming and some of it actually fits. Some of it I'm not so sure of. Specifically, they quote Jack Finney as saying he never wrote Invasion of the Body Snatchers to have a message... and then assign a message to it. Call me crazy, but I'm a bit more convinced by what the author says than by someone else's interpretation. That having been said, a lot of movies are influenced by cultural and political zeitgeist and most of it fits.

There is a story to go with each movie that is featured. In many cases (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) there is talk of the series of flicks that come after. It's weirdly awesome to see a story about the original Star Wars (before it was known as Episode IV) and seeing a picture of Rey and BB8 but it works. It seems appropriate to talk about each films legacy and, let's face it, sequels are part of that legacy. Without Star Wars, we don't get The Last Jedi. Without Back to the Future, we don't get Back to the Future II and III. It just makes sense. Oh, and we also get more of those gorgeous pictures that way. This makes me happy.

The work begins with an introduction. It's a good one. As Science Fiction fans, we all remember the first movies we saw in the genre. For me, there will never be anything to match sitting in a theater with my mother watching Return of the Jedi just a couple weeks after it's initial release. That was my first. What a lot of us forget though is that before we were born, even before the classics that so many of us watched on TV because they had been out long before we were born, there was the foundation. Le Voyage Dans le Lune was the first ever SF movie. It was released in 1902. Metropolis (nothing to do with Superman) was released in 1927 and had the biggest budget in movie history up to that point. (It's also the subject of a beautiful picture on the back cover of the magazine.) They don't spend a lot of time on it, but it's good information. A lot of fans will tell you that modern day SF is simply a recycling of old tropes. These old, old flicks are where those tropes come from. Would I read a thousand page book about them? Probably not. The fact remains that giving them a few pages in a magazine makes sense and is entertaining.

The magazine is further divided into sections entitled “The Age of Anxiety”, “A New Hope?” and “Reel to Reality.” Each includes a couple pages about the cultural background at the time. I like this a lot. Speaking as a man with a history degree, it's important to remember that the past is a foreign country. That may be more true now than ever before. I remember watching an episode of House. It featured a man coming out of a coma. He had been asleep for like two to three years, I believe. In the backseat of one of the doctor's cars, he found and Ipod and didn't know what it was. (Granted, it's an older episode, so they were still kind of new.) Technology had changed that much in only a couple of years. I'm still pretty young but I remember turntables and eight tracks. My parents had both. I owned a tape recorder. I owned a CD player. I even owned an .mp3 player, but who needs one of those anymore? I 've got a cell phone now.

Along with all of the technological changes come the cultural changes. Sixty years ago, McCarthyism was prevalent. People were investigated for communist leanings. In the here and now, you're more likely to be investigated for NOT being a Leftist. When the cultures change, the movies change and spending a page or two to set the stage for what comes next is the smart thing or two. Movies don't happen in a vacuum.

All in all, I really enjoyed this. Oh, and I got all my laundry done too, which is a plus. A trip down memory lane is good for the soul. My wa is very settled now. I had a blast.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Classic Flicks

Life: Science Fiction 100 Years of Great Movies
Life, 2016

Life: Science Fiction 100 Years of Great Movies is available for purchase at the following link: