asting a long shadow across the cinemagraphic landscape, the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is arguably the most recognizable artefact in science fiction film. Simultaneously ancient and futuristic, this enigmatic signifier of the origin and evolution of homo technologus is an apropos ‘site’ to introduce the central concern of this book: digging up the past buried in the future of contemporary american science fiction film and television.two archaeological events are particularly germane: the appearance of the monolith in the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence and the excavation of its lunar twin, tycho Magnetic anomaly-One. Each discovery imparts tremendous momentum to human evolution. When the monolith inspires ‘Moon-Watcher’2 to wield a bone to hunt and then to defend territory and resources from competitors, we are confronted with an unflattering image of ourselves as agents of invention and progress.