Music To Watch Girls By

As a teenager, Vicki Fox worked at Rock On before becoming involved with Ace, where her skill at photographic restoration enhanced so many of their releases. A gifted artist and a passionate music fan, Vicki's joie de vivre and live-wire personality enriched everything she undertook. Vicki also compiled several releases herself. Her love of cats was immortalised in Feline Groovy (CDCHD 1168), a CD which launched a thousand T-shirts. This was followed by All Aboard (CDCHD 1450), a highly eclectic collection of train songs.

It doesn't take much rhetorical muscle to argue that science fiction was one of the dominant genre artforms of the 20th century, from the Lumiere brothers to Spielberg, from Wells and Conan Doyle to Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke. This nearly exhaustive, lavishly packaged collection documents the genre's musical legacy across virtually every major genre on its five discs and 113 tracks. Each volume is divided by sub-genre–Movie Themes, TV Themes, Pop, Incidental/Lounge, Novelty–with each containing both the obvious contenders and some delightful surprises. The film disc alone contains a wealth of rarities, including music from Them!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Andromeda Strain, Fantastic Voyage, and other notables. The packaging is brilliant kitsch: a 6.5-inch square, metal-lidded cube emblazoned on three sides with suitably tacky 3-D images of–you guessed it!–a floating brain. But the profusely illustrated, hard-bound, 200-page book (designed to emulate the Big Little Books of the 1940s and '50s) that's included gives the subject its serious due, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury and contributions from an array of other notables, including Forrest J. Ackerman, Billy Mumy, Joe Dante, Dr. Demento, and Matt Groening. Perhaps the best half-cubic-foot of sci-fi brain food every assembled. –Jerry McCulley

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