Oh, how I love Half-Price Books!
Whenever I browse through Half-Price Books (and yes, you can order from the store online, but a used bookstore really is someplace you should visit in person), I always hit the Film, TV, Music aisle immediately after checking out the American History section. That was where I found The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies. I purchased it. I can’t remember how much it cost, but I didn’t care. It was an encyclopedia of movies. I had to have a copy.
It’s a great collection of reviews. The films are listed by year, so you can actually chart how the genre developed, and flipping through this book definitely helped me develop a better understanding and appreciation of science fiction movies. (And, of course, quite a few of the films reviewed were also horror films that happened to have science fiction elements.) Now, of course, I should mention that this book was published in 1986 and, as a result, it ends with the year 1985. But you know what? I don’t really need a guide to recent films. I’ve either seen or heard about most of the recent science fiction films. What I do need is a guide to the films that were made before I was even born. This book has introduced me to films that I otherwise would never have heard about. That’s the most important thing that a film guide can do!
The reviews are short, well-written, and opinionated. Because the book was published in the UK, a lot of American films that were made for television are reviewed as feature films, because that’s what they were in Europe. It’s an entertaining book, one that you can happily flip through with the knowledge that you’ll find something worth examining on each page.
This book can be ordered from all the usual suspects. I’ve seen it going for as little as $4. Don’t look for it at Half-Price Books. I grabbed the last copy.
