Kicking off roughly in the early 1950s, British and American science fiction authors of the new breed, labeled New Wave later, brought massive changes to the genre and changed the way the future of mankind was perceived. They spoke for a growing readership that was hungry for new visions and speculative prospects, now being prepared […]
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Tag: Science Fiction
The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination by Philip Ball (2021)
The days when (ancient) myths – be they Greek, Nordic or from whatever region – were rather important to man as they served as guidelines and offered counsel are long gone; or so it seems. Because popular culture has created books, tales and stories that are inhabited by artificial men, werewolves, vampires, ghost hunters or […]
Exploring The Orville: Essays on … by David Kyle Johnson and Michael R. Berry (eds.) (2021)
In 2017, the first episode of the science-fiction series The Orville premiered on Fox. So far, two seasons of the space adventure show that never denied its relatedness to 1990’s Star Trek, exist. The TV series immediately was described by critics as something between a parody, homage, fan fiction, Star Trek rip-off, and bad copy, […]
Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture After Apollo by Alexander C. T. Geppert (ed.) (2018)
Introducing the second volume of the European view on space programs and the sociocultural effects of current and future space travel and planet colonization plans, Limiting Outer Space continues the Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology series. The title is strongly linked to Vol. 1 Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the […]
Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America … by Steffen Hantke
The 1950s and 1960s were the decades when science-fiction movies boomed and during that time not so much technology, but disgust, shock, fear, basically all aspects of horror and horror movies, were used instead to give science fiction movies a certain direction by presenting miniature or giant creatures, mutants and every kind or harrowing creature […]
Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren (2016)
The 1950s were a unique time when many aggressors, real and imaginative, seemingly threatened not only the people and the political system of the United States, but Earth itself. One product of these anxieties were science fiction movies that more often than not gave (not so pretty) faces and (not so nice) names to the […]
Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology by Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka (eds.) (2012)
There are probably many millions of people worldwide awaiting the new Star Wars episode to be presented in December 2015, including your reviewer here. So even if the book at hand came out some months ago, now is the time to devote some lines to it. The topics of this volume are subsumed under the […]
Steaming Into a Victorian Future by Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller (eds.) (2014)
After all, Steampunk as a genre of literature, fashion, film or even music is a truly young being, hardly older than 30 years, if we consider William Gibson’s and Bruce Sterling’s novel The Difference Engine (1990) as one of the very earliest works of fiction now considered part of the movement and probably its kick […]