As we all–yes, all of us–know, at the end of Back to the Future Part 1, George McFly becomes a successful science fiction writer. He and the family are positively radiant as the advance copies of his first novel, A Match Made in Space, arrive in the mail.
But we never really found out what the book was about…until now! New companion book Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History, out on October 20, 2015, gives extensive day-to-day details on the filming and creation of all three Back to the Future movies and that includes details that never made it into the films: like the plot to George’s novel!
The book cheekily inserts the mass market cover to A Match Made in Space into its pages. Whereas as the hardcover (which we see in the film) includes an author photo of George on the back, the paperback features a plot synopsis!
First, we love that the book’s price is authentic for the time it would have been published (1986 or so).
Second, PLANET VULCAN CULVAN. This just adds further evidence to our speculation that in the Back to the Future universe, George McFly wrote episodes of the original series of Star Trek.
Third, awwww, George reworked his romance with Lorraine into a universe-saving love story. *sniffle* You did good, Marty. *sniffle* You did good.
The alien’s name of Garth D’Vade seems to indicate a link to the Star Wars universe as well.
Zippy, when Marty sneaks into his George’s bedroom and zaps him with the walkman set to Van Halen he says that his name is “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan”. The names are apparently supposed to come from George’s fragments of memory from that night.
Yeah, you’re right. I was a bit confused that the article didn’t remember that Marty used both Star Wars and Star Trek as inspiration when scaring George into asking Lorraine out.
Speaking of anagrams (Vulcan/Culvan), consider George and Roger, and also Lorraine and Raylene.
LOVE this, but being the pedant I am, I had to see what I could find out from the bar code at the bottom of the image. I was truly hoping to find a nice easter egg – this being Back to the Future, after all – but no such luck. The bar code does indeed scan to match the printed number – 9780991041541 – but there is no book that matches, as far as google knows. :-(
Indeed, I discovered a small slip in the image – per Wikipedia (that bountiful source of knowledge), “the ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, and 10 digits long if assigned before 2007.” The image shows a 13-digit ISBN, therefore generated after 2007 (and after 1985 for that matter). Ah, well…
The 13-digit ISBN became mandatory in 2007, but was sporadically in use before that IIRC.