A Matter of Time: The Unauthorized Back to the Future Lexicon

A good historian is someone who is curious, methodical, and can bring order to chaos. 

A good historian is someone who is meticulous to the point of being obsessive about the details. 

And a good historian can tie things together in a way that surprises, enlightens, and educates his or her readers.

Author Rich Handley (From Aldo to Zira: Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes, Timeline of the Planet of the Apes) is a very good historian indeed. 

His latest book, A Matter of Time: The Unofficial Back to the Future Lexiconis ample evidence of this fact.  It’s a 339-page text that leaves no factoid unturned in its exploration of the Back to the Future film trilogy and all its spin-offs.  And like the movies this encyclopedia explores so assiduously, the book is also a hell of a lot of fun.

Handley writes in his introduction that his new text is “designed for anal-retentive, die-hard fans, as well as those who simply enjoy the movies.”  However, I think he’s soft-peddling the obsessive nature of the book there. The abbreviation key alone provides nearly four dozen sources of information on the Back-to-the-Future-verse, from interviews with the writers to music videos, to “photographs hanging in the Doc Brown’s Chicken restaurant at Universal Studios.”

You want complete?  Hello, McFly!  This encyclopedia is complete.  There are (exhaustive) entries on every detail in the mythos from the bicycle shop seen in Courthouse Square (in 1955) to the von Braun family album. The book incorporates facts from an animated series, video games, amusement park rides and more…half of which, I must confess, I didn’t even know existed.

I can’t claim that my passion with Back to the Future runs as nearly deep as my passion for Planet of the Apes, but I am unhealthy obsessed, no doubt, with Back to the Future Part II (1989).  It’s actually my favorite film in the cycle -- kind of a Back to the Future Unbound-- and in my opinion it’s a seriously underrated and technically accomplished film.  I liked the original 1985 movie just fine, but it played, in some sense, on romantic nostalgia for a decade/time period I never lived through.  Back to the Future Part II travels to the past, the future, and even “inside” the events of the first movie.  It’s a crazy brilliant film that moves at a breakneck pace.

Reading through A Matter of Time, I really wanted to watch Back to the Future Part IIagain, and perhaps review it here on the blog.  Handley’s text reminded me of that film’s sense of joy…and utter madness. It left me feeling "Fired Up," to refer to a 2015 Marty McFly and the Pinheads compilation album (addressed in the book on page 93).

If Rich Handley keeps writing books of this depth and detail every year, I have no doubt his hair will soon go as stark white as Doc Brown’s.

Occupational hazard for madmen historians, I suppose…

What I'm Reading Now: A Matter of Time: The Back to the Future Lexicon

"It's rare that comedy sequels manage to re-capture the magic of their progenitors, as anyone who paid to see the disastrous Police Academy, Revenge of the Nerds and Look Who's Talking follow-ups knows all too painfully well.  But the BTTF trilogy indisputably pulled it off.  Between the multi-colored sci-fi future of 2015, the dark "Biffhorrific" alternate 1985, the nostalgic revisiting of the first film's 1955 sequences, and the sentimental Spaghetti Western riff in 1885, the sequels hit it out of the park, scene after scene."

-Rich Handley, author of A Matter of Time: The Back to the Future Lexicon, Hasslein Books, page xii.

Back to Frank Black Book Now Available on Amazon

I received my copy of Back to Frank Black a week ago and have been stealing moments here and there to read it.  

It’s an impressively written, edited, and presented book, featuring terrific insights about Millennium (1996 – 1999) from many of those talents (writers, directors, directors of photography, actors and actresses) who made the series such a special endeavor.   The book also includes well-written, provocative and intriguing essays about the series and its implications from the likes of Gordon Roberts and Joseph Maddrey.  The art work -- inside and out -- by James McLean is stunning as well.  

In all, it's an absolute must-read and important next chapter in the campaign to bring Millennium back to our screens.

Back to Frank Blackis available now on Amazon.