I must have been about ten years old when my parents proudly demonstrated their new tape recording machine. They had recorded a conversation with friends that had taken place a few days earlier. Of course they were primarily showing off the wonders of this technology to their children, but I distinctly recall that the discussion I heard revolved around their confusion over what was meant by the closing sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968), a film that they had recently seen. This may have been the event that sparked my interest in the science fiction genre as I remember wishing I had seen the images that had caused so much debate. In my teenage years, without really knowing what I was looking for, I was drawn to the science fiction novels of John Wyndham, Doris Lessing and Arthur C. Clark. In retrospect I think that a form of quiet teenage rebellion had much to do with my interest in the genre at this time. Escaping from the ‘girly fantasies’ offered by the likes of Jackie magazine or the BBC television series Ballet Shoes, science fiction seemed to offer me a far more exciting and thought provoking landscape of opportunity. This quiet rebellion was further compounded when I managed to slip in to see my first ‘X’ film, Zardoz (dir. John Boorman, 1974), at barely fifteen years of age.