Masters of Science Fiction is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television anthology series by the same creators as Masters of Horror

Masters of Horror

Masters of Horror is an informal social group of international film writers and directors specializing in horror movies and an American television series created by director Mick Garris for the Showtime cable network.- Origin :...

. The show debuted on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 on August 4, 2007 at 10PM for a run of four episodes. It was originally scheduled to run in six parts, but two episodes were removed from the schedule for undisclosed reasons.

The show follows a similar format as Masters of Horror, with each hour long episode taking the form of a separate short film adaptation of a story by a respected member of the science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 community, hence the Masters in the title.

In December 2007, the show was picked up by Space in Canada. This then allowed the North American premiere of the missing two episodes. A Region 1 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 of all six episodes was released on August 5, 2008.

The show is hosted off-screen by physicist Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...

.

Episodes

Title	Original story author	Director	Original U.S. air-date	Original Canadian air-date
A Clean Escape A Clean Escape A Clean Escape is a 1985 short story by John Kessel, later adapted into a play by Kessel in 1986. It features a psychiatrist attempting to cure the President of the United States of his amnesia so that he can be held accountable for precipitating a nuclear holocaust.The story was adapted by Sam...	John Kessel John Kessel John Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer and the author of two solo novels, Good News From Outer Space and Corrupting Dr...	Mark Rydell Mark Rydell Mark Rydell is an American actor, film director and producer.-Career:Rydell's initial training was in music. As a youth, he wanted to be a conductor. He began his career as an actor and first became known for his role as Walt Johnson on The Edge of Night and as Jeff Baker on As the World Turns,...	August 4, 2007	November 11, 2007
The Awakening	Howard Fast Howard Fast Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.-Early life:Fast was born in New York City...	Michael Petroni Michael Petroni Michael Petroni is an Australian film writer and director.Petroni worked in the early 1990s as a comedy writer and performer on Australian television, and appeared as "Psycho Bob", an American serial killer character, in The Big Gig and DAAS Kapital .In 1994, he moved to Los Angeles to study...	August 11, 2007	November 25, 2007
Jerry Was a Man Jerry Was a Man Jerry Was a Man is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein. It is about an attempt by a genetically modified chimpanzee to achieve human rights...	Robert A. Heinlein Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...	Michael Tolkin Michael Tolkin Michael L. Tolkin is an American filmmaker and novelist. He has written numerous screenplays, including The Player , which he adapted from his 1988 book by the same name, and for which he received the 1993 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay...	August 18, 2007	November 18, 2007
The Discarded The Discarded "The Discarded" is a short story by Harlan Ellison.A television adaptation, directed by Jonathan Frakes, aired on August 25, 2007 as an episode of Masters of Science Fiction.- Plot summary :This summary is based on the television adaptation....	Harlan Ellison Harlan Ellison Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...	Jonathan Frakes Jonathan Frakes Jonathan Scott Frakes is an American actor, author and director best known for his role as Commander William T. Riker in the Star Trek franchise, as well as for his tenure as host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction ....	August 25, 2007	December 16, 2007
Little Brother Little Brother (short story) "Little Brother" is a short story by Walter Mosley that appeared in his 2001 book of dystopian short stories Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World...	Walter Mosley Walter Mosley Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los...	Darnell Martin Darnell Martin Darnell Martin is a television and film director, screenwriter, and film producer.-Early life:Martin was born in Bronx, New York. From the Bronx, she went on to Sarah Lawrence College and New York University Film School...	Not scheduled	December 2, 2007
Watchbird	Robert Sheckley Robert Sheckley Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...	Harold Becker Harold Becker Harold Becker is American film director and producer from New York.-Biography:After studying art and photography at the Pratt Institute, Becker began his career as a still photographer, but later tried his hand at directing television commercials, short films and documentaries...	Not scheduled	December 9, 2007

External links

• Official Website
• Masters of Science Fiction press release
• The Futon's Summer Preview: ABC's "Masters of Science Fiction"
• "Cast Set for 'Masters of Sci Fi'", Zap2it, August 4, 2006.