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"The Brain From Planet Arous" and "World Without End"

Science fiction, in the form of paperbacks and films, is increasingly dominating the life of Western youth.

On first glance this may appear puzzling as the paperbacks are shoddily made, and the films are usually the poorly-directed tow-budget type. But a second glance reveals the deeper impulses behind them.

Prof. Lawden, of Christchurch, recently said in the "Listener" that man has always been conscious of "The Great Unknown," the "what am I doing on this ball of alone in the middle of nowhere?" attitude, but the means of symbolising this chasm of ignorance, the means of dramatising our lonely position in the Universe, varies from culture to culture. At present in this scientific age we are confronted with a religion almost 2000 years out of date, dealing with customs and ways of thought totally alien to our own. Christianity is bankrupt! It offers us a universe without significance and an earthly life without hope. Science fiction on the other hand may be evolving as the modern forum for our imagination, the modern means of dramatising The Great Unknown. Scientifically, most of the ideas in science fiction are preposterous— there are no such things as "magnetic gravity" or the "indestructible slug-men from Mars, who live for a thousand years and carry weapons firing exponential time dilations." But that is irrelevant. The important thing is that the stage on which these teals of mind-stretching are occurring is the scientific one.

Despite the fact that the context of religious expression is changing, certain expressions similar to the traditional ones reoccur in almost every film. The Brain from Planet Arous possesses most of the properties of the "Evil Spirit" in Christian legend. He is cruel, power-mad, and a criminal renegade from the good planet Arous (c.f. expulsion of Satan), and he can enter people's minds(!). Like Satan he is physically indestructible (explosions can't hurt him, bullets won't stop him) but of course he has the traditional Achilles heel. With Dracula it was garlic, with Satan It was a cross, with "The Brain" it is a sharp blow on the fissure of Rolando!

On the whole it is obvious that science-fiction films are showing recurring patterns, The beginnings of stylisation and form—possible characteristics of a new religious outlook.

"World Without End" is notable for its two brilliant tergiversations at the finish. The Earth is overrun with human mutates; the "genetically pure" humans fight and conquer them (after the Great Atomic War) and the pure ones rise from their underground holes to live in happiness on the surface (no mention of improving the lot of the mutates)!

—the little unknown.