Part of the reason why I find science fiction attractive as a focus for study is because of its inherent uncertainties. For instance, Altman states that ‘most genre critics prefer to deal with films that are clearly and ineluctably tied to the genre in question’. This has certainly not been my approach to science fiction. For instance, I have included discussion of films that are less than clear examples of the genre and have chosen to read films like Crash (dir. David Cronenberg, 1996) and The Terminal Man (dir. Michael Hodges, 1974) as science fictions. I am not sure that it is possible to consider science fiction in the kind of vacuum that Altman suggests is prevalent among genre theorists. I am not sure that science fiction can be successfully removed from at least some discussion of other genres or from the ways in which these films have been categorised within specific historical, cultural and production contexts.
