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Designing Sounds for Science Fiction.

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Designing Sounds for Science Fiction. William Whittington. Sound Design and Science Fiction. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 280pp. $22.95 pbk.

* Sound Design and Science Fiction is a compelling book, both for what it brings into play for cinematic analysis and for what it leaves out of consideration. Its primary purpose is to sketch out the development of the field of sound design in the contemporary cinema, while linking that development to the science fiction genre, since, the author argues, science fiction and sound design have "converged in a symbiotic relationship" in recent years "to push cinematic technologies and techniques to their limits" (7). In carrying out this broadly historical task, this book opens the door for examining a dimension of film narrative that is all too often neglected, while building on the work of a handful of other scholars--most notably Rick Altman, Kaja Silverman, and Carol Flinn--who have done pioneering work on the film soundtrack. And yet in limiting its main focus to what the author vaguely terms "contemporary cinema"--even as the discussion examples include films from the hardly contemporary 1960s--the book strikes a rather limited historical note for the study of both sound design and the science fiction film.

The key strength of this book is its concentrated focus on the concept of sound design, a comprehensive approach to cinematic sound that includes, as Whittington explains, "the planning and patterns of the film sound track and the meanings that result...

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