[Note: this review first appeared in my “Guest Reference Library” column in the January/February 2009 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.]
The Reel Stuff edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg
DAW, $15.00, 456pp, tp, 9780756405229. Science fiction anthology.
Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg’s The Reel Stuff is the second edition of the reprint anthology that was first published ten years ago. That book collected eleven memorable, sometimes classic, science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories that were the inspirations for Hollywood movies. Thomsen is an excellent editor for such a volume; he seems equally interested in and enamored with written stories and filmed stories. He’s come up with an excellent selection: some of the stories are by names everyone knows, some by authors more people should know. And they’ve resulted in a wide range of films.
You don’t have to like or care about the movies that came from these stories in order to enjoy the book, but if you do, it’ll be a doubly nostalgic journey through some of speculative fiction’s great works.
The two new stories in this edition are “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which first appeared in 1938, and was the basis for two movies called The Thing (1951 and 1982); and “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick, which was published in 1956 and became a movie in 2002. The rest of the contents include: “Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim (originally published in 1942, the movie by the same name came out in 1997); “Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick (1953, became Screamers in 1996); “Amanda and the Alien” by Robert Silverberg (1983, became a cable movie with the same name in 1995); “Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin (1979, became an Outer Limits episode with the same title in 1995); “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick (1966, became Total Recall in 1990); “Air Raid” by John Varley (1977, became Millennium in 1989); “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker (1985, became Candyman in 1992); “Johnny Mnemonic” by William Gibson (1981, became a movie with the same name in 1995); “Enemy Mine” by Barry Longyear (1980, became a movie with the same name in 1985); “Nightflyers” by George R.R. Martin (1980, became a movie with the same name in 1987); and “Herbert West—Reanimator” by H.P. Lovecraft (1922, became Re-Animator in 1984).