As I watched the Stanley Kubrick film during my teen years, I kept working through the “What the heck is going on here!?” thought process. This reminds me of another prime example of the movie-turned-book, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As mentioned above, the book was based off the movie, and for good reason: the movie did not make much sense without the context offered by the book! Like most sane people, I found the book to be far better than the film, though Fantastic Journey must be placed in a separate category than most others. ‘Cliffhangers’ aren’t very effective over 3-foot ravines.Īfter watching the film, I did get my hands on a copy of the 1966 film (which has always been touted as ‘a Raquel Welch flick’ more than anything else, though she is hardly the star). I don’t want to find out how a thriller is going to progress by simply by scanning chapter titles. Although I knew that the Proteous was not going to be destroyed inside the heart, just seeing that a later chapter was titled “Lungs” took all suspense out of the heart for me.

One thing I found off-putting, however, was the chapter titles.

I am glad I did, because I really enjoyed the book and would actually recommend it to readers today (so long as they don’t expect to learn much biology). Picking up Fantastic Voyage was like picking up a biology book with action scenes, which meant I could justify my time spent by learning a little something along the way. Sci-fi offers very little in genuinely useful information, which is why I generally stick to the travel/adventure genre, or at the very least historical fiction. I figure that if I’m going to waste time watching a movie or TV series, or if I’m going to spend time reading a book, I want to justify the wastage by saying that I’m actually learning something throughout. I have always been a Star Wars fan, but beyond that, sci-fi has never been my favorite. Isaac Asimov is a fine and prolific author, if you like the sci-fi sort of thing.

I simply had to throw it into the pile this year. Though this book is not really a ‘classic’ in the proper sense of the word, it is one that has been sitting on my shelf for too long, simply demanding to be read. “Translated into the feminine, ‘tired’ means ‘disheveled.'” (p.8)įor Classic Reads number 4 this year, I chose Fantastic Voyage, the book Issac Asimov wrote shortly after the film of the same name debuted in 1966.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov