John Oldman (David Lee Smith) ponders.
What if a man from the Upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?
What would he be like? Mortality is one of the defining characteristics of humanity; what would a man be like who will not die? A man who is fourteen thousand years old: he’s not only seen friends and lovers, wives and children come and go, he remembers the end of the last glacial period. He has, literally, forgotten more than any of us will ever know.
Jerome Bixby (1923–1998) was a science fiction writer, most famous for a handful of classic Trek episodes, including “Mirror, Mirror” which introduced the mirror universe, and for co-writing the story for Fantastic Voyage (1966). He began his last work, a screenplay called The Man from Earth, in the 1960s and finished it on his deathbed. Forty years is a long time to spend on a script, but it pays off in one of the most intelligent science fiction films I’ve seen.
