Fantastic Fiction: Classic Science Fiction Films of the Early 1960s

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

The early 1960s were a fascinating time for science fiction cinema, blending Cold War anxieties, space-age optimism, and philosophical explorations of technology and humanity. Five standout sci-fi films from 1960 to 1965 left a lasting impact on the genre: The Time Machine (1960), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), The Day of the Triffids (1962), The First Men in the Moon (1964), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and La Jetée (1962).

Fantastic Fiction: Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Alan Shepard and MR-3

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

American astronaut Alan Shepard could have become the first person in space, but NASA’s desire for just one more test flight delayed his launch, and he lost that historic position to Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Discover how NASA’s Project Mercury helped to turn the age-old dream of human spaceflight into reality in 1961 as the Cold War Space Race started to heat up.

Fantastic Fiction: Elric of Melniboné: Tortured Elf Emperor with a Cursed Sword

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

What is the longest running SFF series written by a single author? If you answered “Elric of Melniboné” by Michael Moorcock, congratulations, you’re right. Spanning a whopping 62 years from the first Elric story, The Dreaming City, in 1961 to the last story to date, The Folk of the Forest (2023), no other series written by a single author has run longer. But who is Elric of Melniboné, and what makes him so special?

Fantastic Fiction: Fascism

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

We live in worrying times. Fascism is on the rise across Europe and America, according to the consensus of many commentators. In this post, I will highlight SF that has speculated on the rise and activities of fascism. In a later blog post, I’ll discuss science fiction that has thought about ways to resist.

Fantastic Fiction: Italian SFT: Calvino and Buzzati

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

Four authors dominated SFT in 20th century Italy: Buzzati, Landolfi, Calvino, and Levi. The first three wrote what most would call “fantastic” literature, while Levi wrote more allegorical and historical science fiction. Referred to as fantascienza (a fusion of fantasy and science) in Italian, the speculative fiction coming out of that country following World War Two was influenced by the political and social upheavals of that war and the fascism that had dominated Italian politics.