James Chapman - Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema

James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. His previous books include The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 19391945 (1998), Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (2nd edition 2007) and Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who A Cultural History (2006, new edition 2013), all from I.B.Tauris. He is the editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

Nicholas J. Cull is Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His previous books include Selling War: British Propaganda and American Neutrality in the Second World War (1995), The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 19451989 (2008), The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American public diplomacy, 19892001 (2012), and (with James Chapman), Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (I.B.Tauris, 2009). He is President of the International Association for Media and History.

I very much enjoyed the background that Chapman and Cull produced on these films... I managed to learn something new in every chapter. The authors did a masterful job in the selection of examples a mix of the essential and the surprising which nevertheless manage to cover many of the key periods in the genres evolution on the screen. They make a strong case for why SF films need to be considered in their own right and not simply as an extension of the literary version of the genre. All told, I suspect this book is going to be well received by fans and academics alike.

Henry Jenkins, co-author, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Cinema and Society series

GENERAL EDITOR: JEFFREY RICHARDS

The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain

Jeffrey Richards

An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory

Annette Kuhn

Banned in the USA: British Films in the United States and their Censorship, 19331960

Anthony Slide

Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present

Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards

Big Parades and Grand Illusions: The Anti-War Cinema of the First World War

Andrew Kelly

Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema

Colin McArthur

Britain Can Take It: British Cinema in the Second World War

Tony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards

The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 19391945

James Chapman

British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus

Tony Shaw

British Film Design: A History

Laurie N. Ede

Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids

Sarah J. Smith

Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema

Mark Connelly (ed.)

The Classic French Cinema 19301960

Colin Crisp

The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western

Michael Coyne

Distorted Images: British National Identity and Film in the 1920s

Kenton Bamford

Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema

Melanie Bell

Film and Community in Britain and France: From La Rgle du jeu to Room at the Top

Margaret Butler

Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany

Richard Taylor

The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s

Charles Drazin

From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema

Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli

The Hollywood Family Film: A History, from Shirley Temple to Harry Potter

Noel Brown

Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir

Mike Chopra-Gant

Hollywoods History Films

David Eldridge

Hollywoods New Radicalism: War, Globalisation and the Movies from Reagan to George W. Bush

Ben Dickenson

Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films

James Chapman

Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film

James Chapman

Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces

Andrew Moor

Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema

James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull

Propaganda and the German Cinema, 19331945

David Welch

Shooting the Civil War: Cinema, History and American National Identity

Jenny Barrett

Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone

Christopher Frayling

Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster

Geoff King

Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema

Andrew Spicer

The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 19291939

Jeffrey Richards (ed.)

Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema

Justin Smith

Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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Copyright James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull, 2013

The right of James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

For David Culbert

This book has developed from the authors previous collaboration, Projecting Empire, and, like its predecessor, comprises a series of case studies of important films, including both American and British, in the cinema of science fiction. These films have been chosen according to several criteria, including their narrative and visual representation of the future, their significance in shaping the genre, and, not least, the availability of archival collections documenting their production and reception. Projecting Tomorrow has been written to a set of agreed criteria and principles. James Chapman wrote the Introduction and Chapters 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9, while Nick Cull wrote Chapters 1, 5, 8, 10, 11 and 12, and the Afterword.

Like Projecting Empire, to which it is to some extent a companion volume, Projecting Tomorrow draws upon extensive research in US and British film archives. We are indebted to many archivists and librarians whose unstinting assistance and exemplary professionalism is only too rarely acknowledged. Therefore, we would like to record our thanks and appreciation to: Nathalie Morris, Jonny Davies and the Special Collections Unit of the British Film Institute, London; Jacqueline Kavanagh and the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham, Reading; Richard Daniels and the Stanley Kubrick Archive, University Archives and Special Collections Centre, University of the Arts, London; Barbara Hall, Jenny Romero and the Special Collections Department at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles; Ned Comstock and the Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California; Sona Basmadjian of the David L. Wolper Center for the Study of the Documentary at the University of Southern California; Julie Graham and the Performing Arts Special Collection, University of California Los Angeles; Harold L. Miller and the Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the staff of the New York Library of the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York City. Nick Cull is grateful to David F. Miller and Robert Cohen of the 20th Century-Fox legal department for their kind permission to work on the legal files associated with