The textual bulk of Voger's latest is comprised of new essays on mid-century sci-fi TV series, movies, comics, and toys and excerpts of interviews with seemingly every major player from series such as Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants, as well as the staff of EC comics. Voger also includes chats with Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Linda Harrison (Planet of the Apes), Burgess Meredith (The Twilight Zone), and a key quartet of Star Wars veterans (Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, and Phil "Uncle Owen" Brown), among many others.
All this stuff, plus the robot's ransom of marvelous images, makes Futuristic typically delightful Voger stuff. What makes it exceptional in his dedicatedly fun body of work is his willingness to wrestle with the not-so-fun topics that were always at the brain base of sci-fi. You can't discuss mid-twentieth century science fiction without addressing the A-bomb, the cold war, McCarthy's witch-hunts, and the dangers of certain fields of technological "progress." In our current age—when dystopian fascism no longer seems like some distant, futuristic threat and artificial intelligence seems likelier to cure the human race of its creativity and ability to think than cure cancer—too much of sci-fi's dark stuff is more relevant than ever.
What impressed me most is how deftly Voger handles this material. Get too specific, and the core fun intentions of the book go up in a mushroom cloud. Get too evasive, and the author looks like he's whistling past the space graveyard. That's a tough tightrope to walk when putting together a book that mostly wants to dazzle you with pics of clonky robot toys, and Voger does it perfectly, and from a politically wise and humanistic point of view, making Futuristic both thoughtful and fun.
For the sake of full disclosure, I should also note that over the years that I've reviewed Mark Voger's books, he and I have kind of crossed the line separating writer from reviewer and are now friendly pen pals (or, I should say, email pals, since we're both living in the computer-controlled fuuuuuuuture). He's sent me a charming caricature of my son (as well as a writer, Mark's also an accomplished artist), and I've put him on my Halloween card mailing list (look out for it, Mark!). But, in case you think all this compromises my integrity as a reviewer, I've told my own mom that her eggplant has the consistency of snot. If I thought a Mark Voger book stunk, I'd say it. But he hasn't disappointed me yet, unlike mom's eggplant.
