By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
Telegram-Tribune

The future has arrived for science fiction films.

Space travel, superviruses, talking computers, laser weapons, personal communicators and other once imaginary gadgets and visions now fill our daily reality.

TV today features such popular fare as ''Star Trek:Deep Space Nine'' and ''The X-Files'' and films like ''Stargate'' and ''Star Trek: Generations'' haul in big box office receipts.

So it isn't surprising that The Palm Theater and Cal Poly Arts are jointly sponsoring an eight-part series highlighting cinematic landmarks in science fiction's journey to mainstream respectability.

No other genre blends philosophy, fantasy, technical achievement and action-adventure plots with heroes and heroines as smart as they are strong.

They gain personal and spiritual insights into themselves, human nature and our origins and destinies as they save loved ones, countries, planets and galaxies from threats posed by invincible alien cultures, science run wild and human shortcomings.

Science fiction films first boomed in the 1950s in the wake of the atomic bomb. That's where the weekly 7 p.m. Thursday night science fiction-fantasy series begins.

Director Robert Wise's ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'' is a classic--intelligent, well-acted and finely written.

Michael Rennie plays Klaatu, a spaceman who lands his flying saucer in Washington, D.C., accompanied by Gort, a gigantic, mysterious and powerful robot. Klaatu carries a warning from other worlds for the Earthlings entering the nuclear age and preparing to enter space.

Before he can speak, the public panics, overwhelmed by fears of anything as unknown and truly different as a spaceman. Paranoia proves a far greater threat to our survival than a bogeyman from outer space.

Klaatu ultimately captures global attention by making every machine and power source on Earth simultaneously stop still and later utters one of the most famous lines in movie history by activating his robot: ''Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto.''

Director James Cameron modeled ''The Abyss'' on ''The Day the Earth Stood Still.'' But the studio forced him to shorten the film for commercial release.

Few saw the reference to ''The Day.'' Many criticized ''The Abyss'' for its abrupt ending and inexplicable subplot surrounding a huge alien presence rising from ocean floor.

The Palm series will show a new version--the director's cut-- with some 30 minutes restored to this gripping tale of a deep-sea oil rig crew trapped at the bottom of the ocean with paranoid military men, nuclear weapons and an unknown creature.

Known for his innovative special effects and strong female characters, Cameron turns an underwater thriller into a tale about the power of love to redeem individual lives and save the human race from self-destruction.

Aliens visiting Earth also inspired ''War of The Worlds,'' a film made nearly two decades after Orson Welles' radio play of the H.G. Wells novel shocked the nation.

The George Pal film, which strays considerably from Wells' plot and setting, won an Academy Award for special effects by realistically creating a relentless invasion of Earth by unprovoked, unseen and seemingly unstoppable aliens.

Many great science fiction films feature humans as aliens journeying to worlds and dimensions unknown and unknowable.

''Forbidden Planet'' set the standard by creating a strange and fantastic world entirely through special effects to retell Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'' on a distant world.

A rocket ship crew sent to check a colony on the planet finds only a brilliant scientist, his daughter, their robot and a powerful, long-dormant enemy of the ancient Krel civilization.

Scenes showing vast machines the now destroyed Krels left inside the planet will seem familiar because they've since been copied in dozens of films, including the ''Star Wars'' trilogy.

Filmed in wide-screen Cinemascope that reproduces poorly on TV, this remains a visually stunning treat 40-years after Robby the Robot helped defeat the invisible, all too human monster.

Robby exemplifies scientific achievement. The HAL 9000 computer illustrates science gone mad in ''2001: A Space Odyssey,'' the greatest science fiction film ever made.

Blending metaphysics with revolutionary, award-winning special effects, director Stanley Kubrick uses minimal dialogue and breathtaking imagery to take us from the dawn of man to man's potential destiny at the start of the third millenium.

The journey starts with our simian ancestors learning to think, use tools and wage war and jumps into outer space where mankind has become overly dependent on technology.

This film about man, god and evolution deserves multiple viewings.

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky approaches Kubrick's broad vision in ''Stalker,'' a poetic, cerebral excursion into a mysterious wasteland (''The Zone'') where a stalker guides two travelers to face their inner desires.

Science fiction frequently travels to innerspace, a psychological realm director John Frankenheimer explored in ''Seconds,'' a seldom-seen ''Twilight Zone'' type thriller.

John Randolph plays a middle-aged banker who buys into a plan that remakes him into a younger man, played by Rock Hudson, only to find himself in conflict with his old and new lives.

The series wraps up with a different dimension, the underground world of Japanese animated science fiction films. Hiroyuki Yamaga's rarely seen ''The Wings of Honneamise'' explores parallel worlds and the life of a young astronaut.

So it's a journey into the unknown, a chance to explore a strange, new worlds and meet new civilizations, just like the best science fiction always offers the adventurous traveler.

• Jan. 12 ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'' (1951)
  
• Jan. 19 ''War of the Worlds'' (1953)
  
• Jan. 26 ''Forbidden Planet'' (1956)
  
• Feb. 2 ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968)
  
• Feb. 9 ''Seconds'' (1966)
  
• Feb. 16 ''The Abyss: The Director's Cut'' (1989)
  
• Feb. 23 ''Stalker'' (1979)
  
• March 2 ''The Wings of Honneamise'' (1987)