It's not often that a remake outshines its original but David Cronenberg's "reimagining" of The Fly (1986) is one of those rare exceptions. Equal parts horror, science fiction, and romance, The Fly takes the premise of its 1958 original--a man unintentionally fusing with a housefly during an experiment in teleportation--and reinterprets the plot as a gradual cellular metamorphosis between these two organisms.

This book teases out the intricate DNA of The Fly and how it represents the personalities of many authors, including a distinguished history of Man-as-God tales...