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Mstation Book Reviews
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Thu, 01 Dec 2005

Sci-Fi Moviescapes

Matt Hanson, Building Sc-Fi Moviescapes:
The science behind the fiction, Rotovision

This is a lot of fun. What the book does is go through a series of sci-fi movies in rough chronological order and show pictures from the movie and talk about what the thinking was and how it was implemented.

It doesn't cover all movies, just ones that have been deemed to be interesting. Here's a sample: Bladerunner (of course!), Tron, 2001, The Fifth Element, Star Wars, Dune ... I picked those out randomly. There are many more.

While Rotovision generally aims its books at the design profession, this book is readable by anyone with an interest in the subject of sci-fi movies. The implementation detail is actually quite general so that a general reader won't have their eyes glazing over at long accounts of sticking clay to wire mesh, or whatever.

Another little bonus of the book is that it might give some clues about movies that you missed that you might now want to see.

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