An undetected arteriovenous fistula forces them to detour through the heart, where cardiac arrest must be induced to, at best, reduce turbulence that would be strong enough to destroy Proteus. The crew faces many obstacles during the mission. The team has 60 minutes to get to and remove the clot after this, Proteus and its crew will begin reverting to their normal size, become vulnerable to Benes's immune system, and kill Benes.

The submarine, named Proteus, is then miniaturized to 'about the size of a microbe', and injected into Benes' body. Peter Duval, and his assistant Cora Peterson are placed aboard a Navy ichthyology submarine at the Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces facilities. To save his life, Grant, Navy pilot Captain Bill Owens, medical chief and circulatory specialist Dr. With the help of American intelligence agents, including agent Charles Grant, he escapes to the West and arrives in New York City, but an attempted assassination leaves him comatose with a blood clot in his brain that no surgery can remove from the outside. Jan Benes, working behind the Iron Curtain, has figured out how to make the process work indefinitely. The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that can miniaturize matter by shrinking individual atoms, but only for one hour.Ī scientist. The movie used the concept of miniaturization in science fiction along with The Incredible Shrinking Man and inspired an animated television series of the same name. Its modern and imaginative production design received five nominations at the 39th Academy Awards mostly in technical departments, winning for Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction in Color. īecause the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed that the film was based on Asimov's book. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.īantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it. Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film is about a submarine crew who is shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov