Book Review: Hollywood Science

While they are often not the sort of films to win Oscars, science fiction movies have been around for nearly as long as there have been moving pictures, and Hollywood continues to pump out tales about time-traveling cyborgs, alien encounters, and man-made disasters. Sidney Perkowitz's new book, Hollywood Science, takes a look at a number of popular films that not only feature extensions of science but also a look at scientists themselves, what appears on the silver screen often being a reflection of our own attitudes and worries in a changing world. Movie scientists struggle with personal problems, become heroes, descend into villainy, push the boundaries of what is known, and sometimes acquire a taste for world domination, but how much of any of that is real?

Throughout the book, Perkowitz follows a predicable (and often repetitive format); a subject such as "encounters with aliens" is picked, a few well-known movies that fit the topic are summarized in the first half of the chapter, and the latter half is spent quickly confirming or debunking prominent situations in the films. For someone who isn't familiar with Terminator, Gattaca, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park, or any of the other films mentioned this might be a fair approach, but for well-versed fans of science fiction this approach can be a little tedious. Even the discussions about the real science behind Tinseltown premises are a bit shallow and dry, and a more integrated approach, mixing discussions of the films with science instead of segregating them to opposite ends of the chapter, would have been more engaging. I could generally deal with the writing and format if the book was called "The Science of Science-Fiction" or something similar, but the book's subtitle "Movies, Science, and the End of the World" made me hope for content that was never really delivered. I was hoping for a book that looked at how science fiction films, especially those that involve disasters (either man-made or natural), reflected the worries of society during a given time period. Fears of alien invasions (as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) seemed to be more prevalent when concerns about communism ran high, more modern alien films like the remake of War of the Worlds instead taking cues from terrorist attacks. Films involving destruction due to nuclear weapons also were prevalent after WW II (like Dr. Strangelove) and took on new dimensions during the Cold War era (as in War Games), but these sorts of trends are barely mentioned in Perkowitz's book.

Even more bothersome is what is conspicuously absent from the book. Star Wars and Star Trek, perhaps the two most popular science fiction franchises of all time, are barely mentioned at all. I'm not a big Star Trek fan but I do understand that the show has had a major impact on many people and even on our technology, so it was odd the franchise was largely left out. Natural sciences were also largely left on the cutting room floor, which is likely due to two factors. First is that many people might not include "revenge of nature" films (often involving monsters created by pollution, radiation, experiments, unusual natural conditions, etc.) in the science fiction genre, probably because many people equate science with technology and medicine. The second factor is that Perkowitz is a physicist, and biologists still sometimes suffer from having their discipline regarded as "soft science" (even if we do have a proclivity for squishy things rather than equations). Still, scientists often appear in films involving the threat of a monster, from Dr. Serizawa in Gojira to Hooper in Jaws to Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park, and (for lack of a better term) "monster movies" provide plenty of fodder for study when considering science in films. Even lighter fare like Short Circuit, The Nutty Professor, and The Man With Two Brains are left out of the mix, the topic of scientists as nerds or socially-inept buffoons receiving little more than a brief nod to Prof. Frink of The Simpsons fame. I know I couldn't have expected the author to cover every conceivable genre and some things probably would have had to be left out, but some of the omissions are quite baffling.

I do not wish to be overly harsh in my review of Perkowitz's book, but while I feel that the book offers a fair summary of a few science fiction films and the science behind some of them, it ultimately falls a bit flat. A review of how our worries and fears have shaped science fiction (and how those representations are then fed back to us) would have been much more interesting, and while the seeds of such a discussion lie in the book they never fully germinate. If you know someone who is generally unfamiliar with science fiction films, Perkowitz's book might be a good place for them to start, but I have to be honest and say that I was a bit let down by this book as both a fan of science fiction and as someone interested in science.

[Tomorrow's Review: Chimpanzee Politics: 25th Anniversary Edition by Frans de Waal.]