Extraterrestrial: Science Fictions in "A Brief History of Time" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man"

Abstract

Shrinkina Man turgid prose, and lack of plot meant that shooting a straight version was impossible.' This last condition was especially problematic, for despite obvious potential for special effects, progress of universe from Big Bang to Big Crunch makes for arid, inhuman storytelling; indeed, in its vastness and contingency, such a chronicle is not, properly speaking, a story at all. To solve this problem, Morris chose to design an overdetermined world built on occult metaphoric connections between Stephen Hawking's cosmologies and his life. Though cinematic materials used in A Brief History are typical of documentariesillustrative scientific graphics, interview clips, and voice-over narration-and though Hawking's narration is condensed almost wholly from his own writings, film is more science fiction than science, an oneiric essay on luck, chance, and fate that allows Morris to cast Stephen Hawking as the man of future.2 According to Morris, the hardest part of making A Brief History was to construct a around Stephen Hawking.3 Given Hawking's almost total immobility (Morris calls him the ultimate non-talking talking head), constructing a narrative literally