In all the obsession around Cronenberg’s oeuvre, it sometimes feels as though his talent as a science fiction artist is overlooked. But if you rewatch the early Cronenberg film Scanners, released 45 years ago today, what you’ll find is a sci-fi masterpiece. Manson InternationalSci-fi’s New Wave lasted from 1965 to 1980, but Scanners feels like the most New Wave product ever. For fans of genre cinema, watching Scanners is like watching two generations of sci-fi royalty interact. Scanners is like a Rosetta Stone for sci-fi and horror: the style predicts Cronenberg’s later horror works, but the cast and writing feel like windows into the larger world of science fiction.