In an essay for the journal Science Fiction Studies, Andrew Gordon writes that “the characters… in E. also drew the attention of scholars who sought to understand its appeal. Wildly popular and critically acclaimed, E.T. has gone on to achieve the status of a classic, making just about every “best of” list of sci-fi movies. The film is also famous for introducing Reese’s Pieces to the consuming public, the most prominent early instance of the power of the product placement. Neil Diamond wrote a hit song, “Heartlight”, inspired by one of the film’s central tropes. Michael Jackson went out of his way to purchase one of the puppets used in the making of the film. At their request, Spielberg even held a private screening of the film for Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. captured the public imagination like no other film of the early ’80s. Billed as the story of “a troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home world”. the Extra-Terrestrial (hereafter E.T.), which premiered in June 1982, was the top-grossing film that year in the US. Surprising many, Steven Spielberg’s film, E.T. In so doing, Le Guin claims, sci-fi can “say in words what cannot be said in words”. By that she meant that when a work of sci-fi presents, say, travel faster than the speed of light or alternative biology, these futuristic tropes become vehicles for exploring subjects closer to home from a novel perspective that disrupts tired ways of thinking about them. Ursula Le Guin once famously wrote that sci-fi isn’t prescriptive, it’s descriptive.
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