The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982; By Chris Nashawaty, Flatiron; 289 pp., $29.99

As we approach the dying days of a movie summer dominated by Deadpool & Wolverine, the premise of a new book by veteran film journalist Chris Nashawaty may sound like a bit of a tough sell. In The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982, Nashawaty argues that something like the apotheosis of mainstream full-bodied science-fiction and fantasy films was achieved some 42 summers ago. In the summer of 1982, a slate of movies, including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, and The Thing, were playing, sometimes concurrently, in theaters. This is a fine and formidable assortment, but what about the inconvenient truth that today’s multiplexes are bursting with fanciful and fantastic fare?