The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film

Scholarship on science fiction cinema tends to be US-centric. Although science fiction (SF) is by no means an American invention, it is often perceived as such. The same holds true for cinema. At least in the Western world, screens are dominated by the U.S. film industry. While there are other film industries whose output surpasses that of Hollywood, they rarely receive the same attention, as they produce primarily for their respective home market. In the case of SF cinema, then, these two trends reinforce each other to a certain extent. There certainly are well-known examples of SF films that were not produced in the United States, including classics such as Metropolis (DE 1927, directed by Fritz Lang) and Fahrenheit 451 (UK 1966, directed by François Truffaut), or more recent works such as Under the Skin (UK/US/CH 2013, directed by Jonathan Glazer). But in contrast to the output of the American studios, these are often singular works by established auteurs. Genre cinema requires an industrialized environment to fully develop, and the fragmented, largely small-scale European film industry usually fails to provide such a context. The British, and to some extent, the French film industry may be the only exceptions in this regard.SF, especially its action-oriented variation, plays a central role in the blockbuster strategy of Hollywood’s major studios. Outside the United States, studios lack the necessary funds and know-how to compete with such mega-productions as Avatar or the Avengers franchises. Nevertheless, persistent efforts to produce SF films have been made around the world. The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film is dedicated to these efforts. It almost goes without saying that the fourteen chapters of the essay collection cannot exhaustively cover the worldwide production of SF films. The goal of editor Sonja Fritzsche is not comprehensiveness but “to make visible the incredible variety of science fiction filmmaking around the world” (5). However, almost half of the chapters discuss European cinema. The only chapter that deals with SF film on the African continent is Rich Calvin’s on Pumzi (KE 2009, directed by Wanuri Kahiu). Hong Kong, which is very prolific in genre cinema, is not covered, nor is Australia or the Arab region. There may be good reasons for these omissions; I suspect that SF does not exist in all cultures and countries around the world. Yet it would have been illuminating to interrogate these differences and absences.Both Calvin’s and Jie Zhang’s chapter discuss “first” films. In Zhang’s case, it is Death Ray on a Coral Island (CN 1980, directed by Zhang Hongmei), “arguably the first science fiction film produced in post-1949 China” (39). Calvin, on the other hand, devotes his chapter to Pumzi, “the first Kenyan science fiction film” (23). Apart from the fact that they are both considered the first SF film of their respective country, these two films have little in common. Pumzi, a postapocalyptic short film that was made on a shoestring budget of US$ 35,000, focuses on water scarcity and the role of women. It is the work of a dedicated artist, produced in a country not widely known for either its film or SF tradition. Death Ray, in contrast, in which a scientist develops a super battery that Western powers take a keen interest in, was made during what is often considered the first golden age of Chinese SF, a brief period from 1978 to 1983 when SF was officially promoted by the regime as a means “to popularize scientific knowledge and inspire youths interested in scientific research” (39). Both films thus follow a political agenda, albeit under very different auspices.The racial and gender politics of The Silent Star (DDR/PL 1960, directed by Kurt Maetzig), based on the 1951 novel The Astronauts by Polish SF writer Stanisław Lem, are the subject of Evan Torner’s chapter, “Casting for a Socialist Earth: Multicultural Whiteness in the East German/Polish Science-Fiction Film Silent Star (1960).” The Silent Star is considered the first Eastern European SF film, although the Eastern European parties that were involved differed in their goals. While the Soviet partners were keen to foreground the superiority of the Soviet Union in the space race, the Polish producers tried to stay true to Lem’s novel. DEFA, the state-owned film production of the GDR, wanted “to spread an egalitarian warning to the world that would also encourage more investment in space explorations” (125). In this egalitarian spirit, the crew of Kurt Maetzig’s film was surprisingly diverse—both in terms of race and gender. Nevertheless, as Torner shows in his analysis, the film fails to stay clear of well-established stereotypes, especially in its treatment of female characters.The chapters by Calvin, Zhang, and Torner each deal with one film, whereas other contributions offer surveys over the SF film traditions of individual countries. Jessica Lange and Dominic Alession, for example, discuss Indian SF cinema, which they trace as far back as to the 1950s. In recent years, Indian SF has experienced a boom; Lange and Alession list more than thirty films that have been produced since the turn of the millennium, some of them with considerable budgets and expensive technology. Enthiran (IN 2010, directed by S. Shankar), which Lange and Alession discuss in more detail, was the most commercially successful Indian film at the time the chapter was written. Although Enthiran features characteristic elements of Indian cinema, most notably musical interludes, it is also heavily influenced by Hollywood, especially in the design of its action scenes. In fact, some of its visual effects were created by such well-established US companies as Industrial Light and Magic.Importantly, the book under review is an unchanged softcover reissue of the first edition of The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film from 2014. Much has happened since 2014. For one, Enthiran’s success has long since been surpassed; Wikipedia currently lists the film on rank forty-four of highest-grossing Indian films.1 The SF films 2.0 (IN 2018), also directed by S. Shankar, and PK (IN 2014, directed by Rajkumar Hirani), have grossed more than twice as much as Enthiran in the meantime. Nevertheless, Enthiran is an interesting case, as it further illustrates a tendency that can be seen in almost all chapters of Fritzsche’s essay collection: Hollywood ultimately remains an important point of reference for SF cinema worldwide. This can be seen in a production such as Enthiran, which tries to match Hollywood in terms of over-the-top action sequences, as well as in films that seek to set themselves apart from American SF cinema. This latter relationship to American cinema, Derek Johnston argues, characterizes the SF films produced by the Hammer Studios in Great Britain. Hammer pursued what we would now call a trans- or cross-media strategy. By adapting existing radio and stage plays as well as TV productions, the studio created “a particularly British slant on the genre” (100).French cinema, too, offers illuminating examples. France not only has a long and prolific film history, but it has also brought forth important works of SF. Apart from such famous SF texts as the novels of Jules Verne, I would like to highlight France’s rich tradition of comic books, which differs greatly from American comic book writing. However, as Daniel Tron argues in the chapter “Looking for French Science Fiction Cinema,” the idea of the director as auteur, which emerged in the 1950s with the French New Wave, has created an environment that is not conducive to the development of genre cinema. French SF films such as La jetée (FR 1962, directed by Chris Marker), Alphaville (FR/IT 1965, directed by Jean-Luc Godard), or Je t’aime, je t’aime (FR 1968, directed by Alain Resnais) are “either first films or remain one-shot experiments in the filmography of each director” (150). Directors with strong genre affinities, such as Luc Besson, rely on international co-productions to realize their films.The final chapter of the collection is one of its most interesting contributions: Paweł Frelik’s remarks on “Digital Film and Audiences.” Frelik discusses several phenomena that have emerged in a time of widely available digital tools. First, there is what Frelik calls “science fiction exploitation cinema” (248). These are cheap productions released directly to DVD. Frelik identifies “mockbusters,” such as Transmorphers (US 2007, directed by Leigh Scott), AHV: Aliens vs. Hunters (US 2007, directed by Scott Harper), and The Day the Earth Stopped (US 2008, directed by C. Thomas Howell), which try to cash in on the blockbusters of large film studios and the revival of old subgenres, such as giant mutant animal flicks. Although these films make extensive use of digital visual effects, they do not seek to match the quality of major Hollywood productions. They use the out-of-the-box tools and effects provided by common editing and effects software. Frelik further observes a boom of SF short films that are primarily interested in impressing their audiences with visual exuberance while neglecting the plot. He touches on yet another phenomenon when he discusses remixes and fan edits, digital formats where fans take existing material and make it their own. While these are all fascinating subjects that were sorely underexamined at the time The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film first came out, they are not well integrated into the collection’s overall structure and makeup. Digital means of production and distribution are, as several authors point out, of great importance to SF film. This is even more true in today’s media environment than it was in 2014. It would have therefore been of much benefit to the book’s readership if the new edition had included more information on the availability and online locations of the digital productions that is discusses.All in all, as a first attempt to break up the US-dominated canon of SF cinema, The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film is undoubtedly an important and commendable contribution. At the same time, as Fritzsche also makes clear in her introduction, it can only serve as a beginning

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