>Lily and I just watched the 1951 film When Worlds Collide. I had never seen the film before and I have to say it’s quite unintentionally funny from our vantage point today.

Cover art from the 1933 novel

I liked how the planet Zyra, to which the forty humans have fled for their survival, looks more like a Walt Disney planet than someplace interesting. I was a little disappointed when no bunnies and other woodland creatures were to be seen.

Finally, I couldn’t help but remember a poem from my youth:

The Land of Happy

Have you been to the land of happy,
Where everyone’s happy all day,
Where they joke and they sing
Of the happiest things,
And everything’s jolly and gay?
There’s no one unhappy in Happy
There’s laughter and smiles galore.
I have been to The Land of Happy-
What a bore

~Shel Silverstein, from Where the Sidewalk Ends

P.S. I do have to say, however, that deep down I really love this kind of classic science fiction. There is something passionate and hopeful in it. And When Worlds Collide is, in many ways, a great example of its time and genre.