The 1970s witnessed a remarkable efflorescence of science fiction films, with filmmakers in the U.S. and abroad channeling the relentless darkness and misanthropy of the period’s cinema into dystopian, paranoid and offbeat fables of a bleak new world. After 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), science fiction cinema entered an extraordinarily creative and fertile period equally distinguished by such brooding masterpieces as Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky’s answer to Kubrick, and Nicholas Roeg’s haunting elegy for a dying race The Man Who Fell to Earth, as by the outrageous and imaginative satire of Death Race 2000 and Dark Star. Predicting a future ruled by reality television programs, genetic engineering, environmental plagues and insouciant robots, talented auteurs such as Robert Altman, David Cronenberg and Jim McBride brought a new sophistication and dark verve to one of the most popular postwar film genres.