Videohound's Sci-Fi Experience: Your Quantum Guide to the Video Universe

by Carol A. Schwartz (Editor)

Star Wars is back. Planet of the Apes is being remade. Adventures to Mars and beyond are standard otherworldly fare, as the fascination with the Red Planet endures. The Matrix is a huge success, spawning two sequels. We're living in Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sci-fi is hotter than a blazing sunspot again, as Hollywood looks to the outer edges of the imagination for inspiration and commercial success. Sci-fi fans, including devoted Trekkers, X-philes, Whovians, and G-fans (you know who you are) finally get their due with this handy video guide to their own peculiar universes. From monsters and mad scientists to space exploration and time travel, VideoHound's Sci-Fi Experience spans the genre with 1,200 video reviews, including 20 sci-fi television series like The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, The Outer Limits, and The Invaders and documentaries in the Alien Autopsy tradition. Cult movie maven Carol Schwartz and her band of unearthly collaborators take a comprehensive tour of the night sky, beginning with Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and terminating with Zontar, The Thing from Venus. In between, much fun is to be had with Barbarella, Godzilla, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I Was a Zombie for the FBI. In addition to providing reviews and ratings, Sci-Fi Experience features movie quotes and taglines, 125 stills, out-of-this-world sidebars, and a bevy of indexes, plus a futuristic resource section.

Genres: Science Fiction, Film, Reference

450 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is less useful than most of the more off-beat psychotronic or cult film guides, because it is produced by a franchise with a general audience in mind. Compared to more comprehensive guides, it contains a relatively small number of titles, and is fairly strict in its definition of "sci fi" - a lot of fantasy material that walks the border is left out, for instance. Readers accustomed to the Internet will find little of value in the "Sci Fi connections" area, which gives mailing addresses for various conventions, but not websites. The reviews are generally not all that informative, but reasonably fair (again, bearing the general audience in mind). The real strength of the volume is in its various indexes, which are better than nearly any other printed source, and in the production details included at the end of each review. At a time when we didn't have imdb, this was vital stuff.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great shopping list all in one book.

I have the first one and the last one. Just must get the ones in-between. This book is extremely helpful in describing each movie.

The only drawback is there are so many movies that many only get a paragraph or two as “Dark Star” a John Carpenter classic.

Also, this is a tad dated; so, it is missing a decade or so of such films as “Freaky Faron” or “The Man from Earth.” And the media types include Betamax.

There are a lot of interesting articles interspersed throughout the book.