Fantastic Fiction

In the Fantastic Fiction column, a distinguished cadre of fan writers will take you back to the 1961-1962 era of the first Seattle Worldcon and Century 21 Exposition, also known as the Seattle World’s Fair, events that cemented Seattle’s position as a global center for futurism and technological innovation. We hope immersion in the speculative fiction dreams and influences of the era will inspire you to make something—a story, costume, poem, argument, essay, panel idea, heart wish, or short film—to bring to our Worldcon.

Fantastic Fiction: Early Science Fiction Meets Proto-Steampunk: The Time Machine

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

In many ways, the Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow blog is a time machine, taking us back into the history of the genre and showing how that past is connected to the present and future. In 1960, a movie adaptation of H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine brought the story out of the past and into the present of that decade with aesthetics that looked both back to the Victorian era and forward to the turn of the millennium.

Fantastic Fiction: Pathfinders (1960-1961): The Path to Doctor Who

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

In 1960 we were still three years away from Doctor Who’s premiere—however, producer Sydney Newman was already hard at work creating family-oriented science fiction television at the independent network Associated British Corporation (ABC Television). Between 1960–1961, U.K.’s ABC ran four serials, Target Luna, Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars, and Pathfinders to Venus, and the U.K. was enchanted with journeys to Earth’s nearest neighbors.

Fantastic Fiction: SF in Central/Eastern Europe

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

The year 1961 brought Anglophonic readers three fascinating works of speculative fiction in translation, two of which were by Jewish authors. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Spinoza of Market Street, and Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke are concerned with the world lurking beneath what we see as reality. Dark fantasy, the occult, magic, and the grotesque come together to make these texts unsettling forays into an alternate way of seeing the world.

Fantastic Fiction: Star Stellar Starlight

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

Frederik Pohl’s 1953 Star Science Fiction anthology was not just the first of a string of noteworthy anthologies. His series inspired other editors to assemble similar series. The latest such work was released close to half a century after Pohl’s first anthology was published.

Fantastic Fiction: Fantastic Four Premieres and the Marvel Age Kicks Off

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

With Seattle Worldcon 2025 coming up and Marvel films still in fashion, let’s look back on the premiere of one of the most important comics ever published. Fantastic Four #1 was released to newsstands just weeks before Seattle’s last Worldcon in 1961. This comic heralded Marvel’s emergence as the most popular line of comics in the world.

Fantastic Fiction: Village of the Damned

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

Visitors to Seattle’s first Worldcon, in 1961, would have been voting in one of six Hugo Award categories for the best dramatic presentation of 1960. With Halloween on the way, why not get in the mood with one of the year’s strong contenders: Village of the Damned, an adaptation of John Wyndham’s chilling novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The movie brings the story to cinematic life through believable performances and clever special effects.

Fantastic Fiction: Knights versus Aliens: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

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

Science fiction often begins with a question of “what if”? And in 1960, Poul Anderson asked just such a question: What if aliens attempting to invade the Earth encountered a troop of medieval knights? And what if the knights won the ensuing struggle and took to the stars? This is the premise of The High Crusade, one of the most offbeat and entertaining science fiction novels of the early 1960s…