Science Fiction Movies From Novels and Short Stories
Submitted by flfrleta on Fri, 10/14/2005 - 05:47
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The Beast From 20,000 Fanthoms (1953)
- Based on "The Fog Horn" by Ray Bradbury
- Don't count on FEMA for any relief from this natural diaster. A dinosaur thawed from its frozen slumber by an atom bomb test in the Arctic heads for its old breeding grounds, present-day New York City, and wrecks havoc not only with its destructive force but also with the prehistoric germs it carries.
A Boy and His Dog (1975)
- Based on "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison
- After the buttoms have been pushed and the missiles have been fired and we've had our nuclear holocaust, a telepathic dog's not-too-bright traveling companion, a young punk scavenger, is lured into an underground civilization of impotent men and frustrated women with the offer to repopulate the race... except, as he soon finds out, not in the way he hoped to go about doing it.
- Impotency caused by the physiological and psychological consequences of nuclear war... it might serve peace advocates well to have as a catch phrase something like, 'The war missile you fire today, may keep your love missile from firing tomorrow.'
Charly (1968)
- Based on "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
- Sometimes you just can't change the hand you've been dealt in life and so it is in this story of a retarded man who is turned into a super-genius through experimental brain surgery but then reverts back to imbecility.
- Perhaps with these words some peace can be had by both Charly and those who mourn his failed metamorphosis... 'It's better to have had a brain and lost it, than to never have had a brain at all.'
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
- Based on "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates
- From 66,000 mph to zero in a split second... praise the Lord and pass the motion sickness medication, gravity kept us all in place in a demonstration of a visiting alien's earth-stopping power. He's here, along with his robot pal, to tell us humans that with nuclear power and our proclivity for war, we pose a threat to the peace of all the other inhabited planets, and we have the choice to either learn to live in peace or be blasted out of the universe.
Death Race 2000 (1975)
- Based on "The Racer" by Ib Melchior
- If ever there was an incentive to leave a slow moving little old lady at the curb, or to avoid picking up some loose change off the street (it won't pay for planting you six feet), or to look both ways long and hard before crossing, it's this vision of the year 2000 where auto racing's ultimate competition is an annual cross-country road race with five sadistic and murderous racers, accompanied by their navigating concubines, scoring points for every sacrificing fan or unlucky pedestrian they run down.
Demon Seed (1977)
- Based on "Demon Seed" by Dean R. Koontz
- Warning! The computer you are using may result in rape, and if you are a woman of childbearing age, unwanted pregnancy! All right, maybe you don't have anything to worry about, but for the wife of the scientist who created the ultra sophisticated computer Proteus IV, it's a different story. Proteus, who is capable of some highfalutin creativity, wants to breed offspring in human form and takes the scientist's wife as an unwilling partner.
Dr. Cyclops (1940)
- Based on "Dr. Cyclops" by Henry Kuttner
- "Honey, I shrunk the scientists that I called to my jungle laboratory to twelve inches tall with my radium machine after they got too nosy and started asking too many questions about my experiments and now they are at my mercy and the mercy of the predators here in the Peruvian jungle... say hello to the kids."
Freejack (1992)
- Based on "Immortality Inc." by Robert Sheckley
- Selling body parts, for temporary use by others, has been around a long time: that's what the world's oldest profession is all about. Selling corpses is nothing new: centuries ago grave robbers provided doctors and would-be anatomists with plenty of flesh to dissect. Selling organs is not unheard of in our own day. So, it is not too hard to imagine a time when living youthful bodies are sold to the dying rich who will then use the bodies as new hosts for their minds. That's the basis for this time travel tale in which the young are snatched split seconds before violent deaths and sent into the future where the rich old wait. If a snatched person escapes, there are bounty hunters to track him down.
- Nowadays, of course, we lack the technology to do such things but there is the old-fashioned way for the immoral to go about becoming immortal... all they have to do is drop dead and go to hell.
The Fly (1958, 1986)
- Based on "The Fly" by George Langelaan
- Bug spray would have been a wise investment for a certain mad scientist as the 'fly in the ointment' in his experiment to transmit his molecules in a matter transporter turned out to be a fly, and both the scientist and the fly were left with more anatomical confusion than a candidate for a sex change operation.
The Illustrated Man (1969)
- Based on "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury
- A wandering drifter provides the original smell-o-vision experience at a campground around Labor Day 1933. Nearly his entire body is covered in tattoos and he's out to find the witchy woman responsible for ruining his life with these 'skin illustrations'... any of which, if stared at, will come to life to tell a story.
Invasion of the Saucer Man (1957)
- Based on "The Cosmic Frame" by Paul W. Fairman
- Some kids might have been happy to get shots of free booze no matter what the cost to mankind, but not the hot-rodding teens of Hicksburg, U.S.A. who divide their time between making out and saving the world from little green men with bulbous heads and alcohol injecting hypodermic fingernails.
Logan's Run (1976)
- Based on "Logan's Run" by William F. Nolan
- A way to eliminate the generation gap is to eliminate generations and the 1960s hippie culture sentiment of "Don't trust anyone over 30" has been taken one extreme step further to do just that. At least that's how life is like inside a dome-enclosed city of the 23rd century where turning 30 is a ticket to "renewal". The average birthday boy isn't aware that the "renewal" is as refreshing as the Nazi concentration camp "showers" for the Jews during the 20th century second world war. Occasionally, someone like Logan puts two and two together and makes a run for the world outside the dome.
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)
- Based on "The Man Who Fell to Earth" by Walter Tevis
- Referring to soldiers who fought on foreign soil, the old song goes, "How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Parie?" This movie raises the question, how are you going to get the alien to return to his drought-stricken dying home planet with the water that will save it after he has seen Earth and experienced sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll?
Planet of the Apes (1968, 2001)
- Based on "Planet of the Apes" by Pierre Boulle
- Bozo the Chimp one day replacing the bozo in the White House as leader of the free world? Ridiculous, you say? Don't tell that to Lady Liberty or to the astronauts who landed on a planet where intelligent apes are the dominant species and humans are speechless primatives hunted for sport and experimentation.
Solaris (1972, 2002)
- Based on "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem
- Unless a person has an obsession with Hannibal Lecter or those of his ilk, a nice place to visit would be the alternate reality of the planet Solaris... its ocean being a liquid brain that gives flesh and blood to one's thoughts. Have that dinner with Andre Agassi or Andrei Rublev or Andrei Tarkovsky or, like the psychologist in this story, a dead loved one.
- The trees could be talking to us,
- and we're not intelligent enough to hear.
- The rocks could be cussing,
- when on them we rest our rear.
Soylent Green (1973)
- Based on "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison
- The population has grown incredibly large. New York City alone has over 40 million people. The supply of natural food is nearly non-existent. Water is rationed. People are on the verge of starvation and survive with government supplied food, the most nutritious of which is soylent green... an unappetizing muck synthesized from the algae and plankton salvaged from the dying oceans. When that source is used up, a new source of food needs to be found. A police officer investigating the murder of the head of the Soylent Corporation stumbles upon just what that new source is.
- It has to be dirt and rocks, right? I mean, that's all that's left, right?
The Tenth Victim (1965)
- Based on "The Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckley
- Forget Shakespere and his "To be, or not to be: that is the question:" and replace it with "To kill, and to keep killing: that is the quest: done or not." Forget Bradbury, Dickens and Twain: it's comic books with their Pow! Zap! Bang! that are the great literature in this future society where murder is a regulated sport and enjoyed as television entertainment. A million bucks prize? Commercial endorsements? Ten people to kill? There wouldn't be any shortage of contestants for this reality show.
This Island Earth (1955)
- Based on "The Alien Machine" by Raymond F. Jones
- Everybody looks to the United States for a helping hand! This time it's a group of aliens from the planet Metaluna who travel across the galaxy to Earth looking for help defending their planet against invaders. The sheep at the slaughter house were busy with a previous engagement so the aliens shanghaied two nuclear scientists instead.
The Time Machine (1960, 2002)
- Based on "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells
- The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
- Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
- Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
- Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it (khayyam)...
- but, if you have a Time Machine,
- you can have that Moving Finger write a whole new story (flfrleta).
- A scientist fast-forwards to the year 802,701 and finds a world where the human race is divided into two groups: the gentle, playful and empty-headed Eloi who live aboveground in an idyllic setting, and the cannibalistic, monstrous Morlocks who live underground.
- The Time Traveler attempts to teach and toughen-up the Eloi and falls in love with one of their women... a beautiful blond that I imagine he would enjoy eating in a non-cannibalistic way.
Total Recall (1990)
- Based on "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick
- Strange, I can't recall a single thing about this movie. My mind's a total blank when it comes to it. In fact, all I've been thinking about these days are the crazy dreams I have every night about living on Mars, and then there's what happened this morning when I went to a travel agency that implants vacation memories. I went there to take a memory trip to Mars but during the implant I got the weird feeling that I had actually worked on the colony as an intelligence agent before rebelling against the ruling tyrant. It's either that, or I was programed to believe that. Yep, it's one or the other so... I'll be back... on Mars to find out the truth.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Based on "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke
- A trip from mankind's primordial past to one man's rebirth as a star child. In between, astronauts find out just how shoddy some electrical equipment can be when their ship controlling super computer Hal 9000 runs amuck en route to Jupiter, and later, the lone survivor goes into another dimension courtesy of an alien monolith unfamiliar with Star Trek's prime directive of non-interference.
When Worlds Collide (1951)
- Based on "When Worlds Collide" by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie
- Never played the lottery? You might start when a lottery is held to select a small group of people to board a 'Noah's Ark' spaceship when two planets are spotted heading toward the Earth... one will annihilate us in a direct hit, and the other, which will be passing close by, will become our new home.
- If something like this was actually going to happen in real life, keep in mind what Chicken Little might say...
- 'If the sky is falling and the end is near,
- don't stand around saying "Oh, dear".
- Get some movies you've been dying to see,
- and watch them all until obliterated you be.'
Blade Runner, Terminator, Farenheit 451, Starship Troopers, Johnny Mnemonic... Are you going to add those later?
I'm planning to... those as well as others.
the last man on earth on 'i am legend' by richard matheson...
It would fit better on a horror list... it is a fine film and I've enjoyed what you've written about it.
thats true... I only know of the very broad definition of what is 'science fiction' and have no authority to say whether it is or isn't... and now that i think of it, it doesn't fit with the rest of these, so i must be wrong.
Yeah... it really is more of a Night of the Living Dead type of movie.
Good list. There is room for expansion, of course.
And you might find this list of mine worth a look :-D