fought the Vietnam war, that is a generation sent to die in a foreign land and for the wrong
reasons by its elders, hence betrayed by the most fundamental structure of them all, the family
cell. In the case of the fantastic, the family structure, usually associated with the motif of the
house, favors the radical defamiliarization that characterizes the mode, for it represents the
familiar environment par excellence, hence that which theoretically should preclude any
unexpected threat. The perversion of the familiar order in both senses of the word corresponds
to that of our most elementary certainties - those which even precede reason for they are
perceived and assimilated by children - and it is the one most likely to cause an immediate
rupture of reality; more recent narrations at both end of the fantastic spectrum - from Amytiville
and The Exocist to Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser to the more childish Poltergeistrepresent at various degrees the disintegration of the family structure. Naturally, in “And Then
the Sky Opened,” it is soon after the protagonist discovers that his own parents do no longer
acknowledge his existence and ask him to hang up that he vanishes from the phone booth.
The elimination of the three astronauts, of their spaceship and of their mission is
indicated throughout the narration by a very mundane object, namely the issue of the
newspaper that features the return of the three astronauts on the front page and which
progressively changes to reflect their elimination, juxtaposing therefore a hyper-realistic,
fundamentally monosemic element - a newspaper, the purpose of which is precisely to inform
upon reality - and the impossible, systematic erasure of three human beings from that very
same reality. In spite of relying upon paradigms belonging to the science fiction mode, “And
When the Sky Opened” is a fantastic narration, which takes place in our reality and establishes
authority by perverting some of its most fundamental elements, such as families and
newspapers.
Similarly, the episode “Death Ship” seems to be constructed along the lines of a typical
science fiction adventure: three astronauts land on a distant planet, encounter a ship identical
to theirs that has crashed and find their own dead bodies when they explore the wreck. Back
on their own ship, they attempt to decide if the wrecked ship is truly their own and if they will
crash when they attempt to take off. We will discover at the end of the episode that the three
men have indeed crashed but that their captain has simply will himself and his crew out of
death, and the conclusion shows them getting ready for landing, forever captive of an endless
loop that condemns them to always return to the moment that preceded their crash. Although,
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