These two books look at a pair of sci-fi’s most influential projects and their flawed creators

In 2018, films and television shows about superheroes or the adventures of heroes fighting evil across space are commonplace: only a single non-genre film (Crazy Rich Asians) has cracked the top 10 list for highest box office gross this year. Historically, that’s a new development; science fiction was once a reviled genre, dismissed as juvenile trash or escapist nonsense. Two projects are largely responsible for this shift: Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking 1968 film 2001: A Space Od