It has been a pleasure to read this volume: the right book published at the
right time. John Brosnan, an experienced and thoughtful critic of the
cinema, has equally professional knowledge of the specialised world of
science fiction. Now, at a time when the sf film appears to be bursting
into popularity, he has written the definitive history of the birth and
growth of these films. I have much enjoyed this book and now feel replete
with the details of sf cinematic history. But, being a science fiction
author myself, I am greatly interested in where the sf film is going as
well as where it has, been. So I paid special attention in this book to the
opinions of film producers, special effects men, screen writers and sf
writers about what the sf film is and what sort of future it is likely to
have.
One thing was instantly obvious: all these opinions are wrong. (If you have heard that science fiction writers are a contentious lot, you are right.) I say this not to belittle the observations of my fellow writers, most of whom are serious and thoughtful artists, but to point out what appears to be a self-evident fact that they have all missed. This is that, When filmmakers talk about 'science fiction films', they are really talking about the same old films they have always made - only tarted up with some of the mechanical trappings of sf.
This is a serious statement and should not be dismissed as a casual insult. It is simply an observation of the truth. When, in the past, real science fiction writers have been involved in the making of an sf film, like H. G. Wells in Things to Come or Arthur C. Clarke in 2001, the result was a real sf film without the need of quote-marks round the sf. The rest of the time we have had the machinery but not the soul. Do you doubt this? If you do, then glance at what the giants of the film industry have learned from the recent success of the sf film. Look at the last page of the last chapter of this book and see what real sf they are planning for our future. They seriously think that things like Starship Invasions, The Terrible Jaw Man, Star Crash, etcetera, can be something more than the desperate rubbish described by their titles.
Why will they be bad? Because they will have cobbled-together, derivative plots ground out by bored screenwriting hacks. These overly familiar stories will be magically transformed into 'sf' by the addition of sf furniture. This does not mean they will be science fiction at all. Dressing an actor in a dentist's smock does not make him a scientist; nor does putting him into a tin suit make him a robot. If the author of the screenplay does not know what a scientist really is or what a robot could possibly be, then the film, no matter how much it looks like science fiction, will not be science fiction.
The film-makers have still to get this message. Science fiction is something different. Its creation requires a strange and rare kind of writer. It is a quirk, a talent, an attitude, an indescribable difference that is nevertheless always present. The first film producer to recognise this fact will be a rich man -- witness how successful 'almost sf' films have been recently. Science fiction's popularity has been growing for years and has never been bigger than it is now. For the very first time, science fiction books are on the bestseller lists. In January 1978 the New York Times Book Section announced: 'Publishers expect the public's appetite for the genre to continue unabated ... and many are doubling -- in some cases tripling -- the number of titles they'll publish.' So the audience is there, and something should be done to bring them into the cinemas.
If a failed-sf film like Close Encounters of the Third Kind can make millions, think of the profits that a real sf movie could generate.
Star Wars is a real science fiction film; therefore it deserves every greenback it has earned. It is not sophisticated sf, but then it never pretended to be: it is juvenile, the best of Buck Rogers and Planet Stories woven together to please the young and the young at heart. We who like to read the stuff have experienced it all before. But it was fun to see all the mechanics spelled out in living colour. Star Wars is all action, and in between the shooting and crashing there are none of the ridiculous 'drama' scenes of actors in strange clothes trying to take the stupid plot seriously. Instead there is humour -- and what a change that makes!
Close Encounters, on the other hand, is not sf, but rather mysticism of the smarmiest kind. I always feel contempt for those who pander to weaknesses -- people who sell narcotics to children or practise crooked schemes to pry life savings from old-age pensioners. Close Encounters cynically uses the trappings of science to deliver the strongly anti-science message of pie-in-the-sky. It tells us not to use our brains and energy to improve mankind's state by means of science. It reveals that science is only flashing lights and strange sounds -- which a lot of people have always suspected -- good only for luring from the skies Superior Beings who will care for us. Is this attitude any different from that of the South Sea Cargo Cults, which involve the building of crude bamboo replicas of aeroplanes to entice cargo planes bearing their manna from heaven? The effects in this film were incredible and spectacular -- the sf trappings. The message they carried, though, is anti-sf, anti-science and pro-mysticism of the most debilitating sort.
It is exasperating that no one to date seems able to separate the look of sf from its ideas. Trumbull himself, the master of the special effects in Close Encounters, doesn't understand this point. In the pages of this book he is quoted as saying that he is so proud of his work on this film that he will never do special effects again for anybody apart from himself. Instead he intends to make another film of his own. Really? What will his film be about -- and which sf author will write it? When will he -- and everyone else -- learn that setting a film in a spaceship does not make it science fiction? Just as the film-makers ignore science, so they also ignore science fiction while pretending that they are producing it. Until they change their ways we are only going to get the trappings on the cinema screen without the substance. It is not the science that is important but the attitude towards science. And until this changes we will continue only to get more of the same.
If this sounds too gloomy I hold out one small hope for the future. A single producer recognises this fact. His name is Lester Goldsmith and perhaps some day he will be honoured for his observation of the seemingly obvious -- that science fiction films should be written by science fiction authors. He plans to have the authors themselves write screenplays of their already successful sf novels. Obvious? It may be after the fact -- but no one else in a position of authority appears to have noticed it. When Mr Goldsmith's plans come to fruition they might very well usher in the final and successful era of science fiction films.
We can only wait, hope -- and see.
© Harry Harrison, 1978