Popular Culture Review Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 2013 | Page 133

BOOK REVIEWS 129 study, which makes Projecting Tomorrow much more informative and convincing than many current postmodem, stylistically challenged essays on populär culture. The selection o f films that Chapman and Cull choose to analyze is sound and representative o f the gerne, although some may question their decision to treat Robocop over Blade Runner or Avatar over Matrix— there might even be a few purists who deplore the absence o f any mention made to John Boorm an’s, Zardoz. The selection o f a corpus o f study is no easy task and the authors o f Projecting Tomorrow explain in their introduction the factors that led them to their choices. I personally applaud the selection o f Robocop over Blade Runner and rejoice at the fact that two serious scholars have recognized the significance o f this particular film— it takes more academic courage to rehabilitate Robocop than to rejoin the cohort o f critics that have already discussed the filmic adaptation o f Phillip K. D ick’s Do Androids Dream o f Electric Sheep? Analysis o f Terminator, Matrix or Zardoz would have indeed been welcomed, but not to the detriment o f any o f the existing chapters. In the space allotted, the authors could simply not treat everything; hence their selections might disappoint some hard-core fans here and there, but will on the other hand satisfy any serious Student and amateur o f Science fiction cinema. Chapman and Cull’s conception o f the Science fiction genre is wide and includes dystopian fiction (Logan ’s Run, Robocop) as well as space opera (Star Wars) and fantasy (Avatar), which naturally prompts the question o f generic definition. It could be argued that Robocop and Avatar represent each a very different treatment o f the relationship between reality and the narrative universe, and therefore do not fulfill the same type o f function nor occupy the same space within the collective exchange— whereas Star Wars and Avatar are suited for young audiences, it would not appear recommendable to take a child to a Robocop retrospective. However, the authors’ flexible con ception o f the genre allows them to address many different aspects o f what is commonly understood as “science fiction” and makes Projecting Tomorrow a more complete essay about the importance o f anti-realistic cinematic narrations in our society and upon our collective consciousness than if it were solely devoted to one specific type o f science fiction. Furthermore, in these times o f considerable generic disorientation, mostly rooted upon the fashionable, if ill-conceived, post-structuralist notion that “Everything is a Text,” which tends to even obliterate the