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Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,

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and this is Frame By Frame.

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Science fiction films first came about in the beginning of cinema with George Milies' "Trip to the Moon,"

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but they've come in sporadic waves of interest. I'm thinking, for example of "Things to Come,"

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the fantastic British film. Also Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" in 1927.

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But a vogue for science fiction didn't really hit till the 1950s in America,

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with things like "When Worlds Collide," "The Thing," which was one of the first great science fiction films.

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"The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Earth vs.the Flying Saucers,"

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And science fiction reflected a kind of Cold War paranoia.

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The other thing about science fiction is that it's tied curiously to the Western.

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As the westerns sort of became moribund, and now people don't make too many westerns these days,

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science fiction became "the final frontier." As manifest destiny was more or less explored,

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now space became the new frontier that had to be explored.

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And this, of course, lead to the success of the "Star Trek" series and "Star Wars."

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And of course, the dystopian science fiction films like "Alien."

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Now, here that we are in the 21st century, science fiction has become an absolute generic staple.

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Science fiction films are more popular than ever.

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I think they offer a sense of escape. They offer a sense of wonder.

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They offer a sense of exploring something beyond what we know.

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The world has become very small now. We're in touch with everyone around the world, whether we like to or not.

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And science fiction offers us a sense that there's frontier out there that we don't know...

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There's civilizations out there that we don't know,

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and science fiction offers us a way to escape,

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but also it's a commentary on the smallness of our world right now,

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and also it projects into the future the possibilities of what can happen,

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in terms of both good, or in terms of bad... basically a dystopian future like "Blade Runner,"

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in which the future does not work.

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So science fiction projects our fear and our hopes on the cinema screen.