I learned about Ayn Rand from an old girlfriend I went out with in the summer of 1971. She loaned me Rand’s novella, “Anthem,” which is written for the most part without use of the pronoun “I.” It was actually pretty good; I still recommend it as an original little piece of dystopian science fiction.
The Star and News started running full page ads weeks in advance, of the now-familiar scenes of the PanAm spaceliner docking with a space station, of astronaut Dave freaking out on mind bending alien special effects.
Cinerama had been around since the early 1950s, screening mainly travelogues, much the way the current IMAX megaformat process has. This first screening was of the original This is Cinerama feature, a series of brief pastiches strung together to fill up two hours. First up was a roller coaster ride; that stomach lurching demo was like something I had never seen, and really, haven’t since.
Over soup, sandwich and glass of milk, Edwards filled my head with tales of cigar-shaped objects in the sky, strange unknown monsters, and on one terrifying occasion, a guy who spontaneously combusted.
By forty five minutes past concert time, order had broken down.
