Free A 1980s Childhood by Michael A. Johnson

missiles have been launched and are heading for strategic targets in the US, although it soon becomes evident that this has not actually occurred. Although no Soviet missiles have been launched, the NORAD supercomputer thinks that missiles have been fired and automatically prepares retaliatory action that will lead to World War III.
    Lightman discovers what has happened from a news broadcast and although he tries to cover his tracks, he is quickly arrested by the FBI and taken in for questioning. Lightman realises the severity of the situation and escapes, tracking down the original programmer of the NORAD supercomputer to ask for his help in preventing a nuclear holocaust.
    Disaster is averted at the very last moment after Lightman directs the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself, resulting in a long string of draws and thereby teaching the computer the concept of futility. Just before launching the nuclear missiles, the computer runs through all the possible outcomes of the thermonuclear war and realises they all result in stalemates, at which point the computer decides that nuclear warfare is ‘a strange game’ and offers to play a nice game of chess instead.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
    This is without doubt one of the greatest science fiction films of the 1980s, telling the story of a lonely boy called Elliott who discovers an alien living in the woods near his home. Some visiting alien botanists had been exploring the woods together but were scared off by US government agents; in their haste to escape, they accidentally leave behind E.T. the extra-terrestrial. Fortunately, this alien is not one of the laser-wielding, blood-sucking varieties and instead prefers watching movies and getting drunk while his new friend Elliott is at school. Everything goes well for a while, although E.T. seems to be missing home and attempts to communicate with his home planet using a makeshift transmitter cobbled together from odds and ends wired to a Speak and Spell toy. E.T. demonstrates some remarkable talents, including reanimating a dead flower, healing an injured finger and using a psychic connection to transfer his emotions to Elliott.
    Things start to get a bit edgy when E.T. falls ill; due to his psychic connection, Elliott also gets sick and it becomes evident that the pair are dying. At this point, government agents raid the house and quarantine both Elliott and E.T. in a rather intense and frightening scene which terrified me as a child. It appears as though E.T. dies and Elliott begins to recover, but when Elliott is left alone with E.T., he reanimates and reveals that his alien buddies are coming back to retrieve him. Now all they have to do is escape from the government agents and get to the alien landing site as quickly as possible, giving rise to a heart-pounding BMX bike chase sequence with E.T. in a basket on the front of Elliott’s bike. Trapped in a dead-end, E.T. conveniently demonstrates another of his skills by levitating the bicycle in the air leading to the often-parodied silhouetted-bicycle-in-front-of-the-full-moon shot.
    Of course, E.T. makes it back to his spaceship just in time and disappears back off to his home planet, leaving Elliot and his sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) staring up at a rainbow in the sky. At the time, E.T. was the second most financially successful film ever, after Star Wars , taking a whopping $792,910,554 at box offices worldwide, as well as generating vast revenues from related merchandise.
    While I would dearly love to continue reminiscing about all the other films I enjoyed in the 1980s, I’m going to have to wrap it up because there’s simply not enough space in this book to cover them all. Instead, I’ll leave you with a nostalgic list of some of my personal favourite films and TV shows of the eighties. Please note that I have been careful to only include films that were actually released in the 1980s, but you may notice that some of the TV shows span more than one