Category Archives: science fiction

Planet of the Apes Blue-Ray DVD Release

September 24th, 2008 | Posted in 1960s, Planet of the Apes, science fiction

I’m a little late in promoting this information from a press release from Fox announcing the Blue-Ray DVD release of Planet of the Apes this November. I am a huge fan of the franchise as a formative one in my childhood interaction with sci fi, and last night’s research in trying to track down Eric […]

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“The problem with horror movies is…”: Reflections on our cultural context

August 18th, 2008 | Posted in 1960s, aliens, Body, cultures, independent horror films, postmodernism, science fiction, social dynamics

The League of Tana Tea Drinks (LOTT D) elite group of blogging horrorheads is putting together another unity blog, and one of the topics for discussion involved an invitation to complete the following sentence: “The problem with today’s horror movies is…” Contributors were given the opportunity to finish this sentence in keeping with its negative connotation, or take another […]

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Cinematic Extraterrestrials: Call for Papers

August 11th, 2008 | Posted in archetypes, call for papers, pop culture, science fiction

       2008 Film & History Conference “Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond,” October 30-November 2, 2008, Chicago, Illinois, www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory Second-Round Deadline: September 1, 2008 Area: Cinematic Extraterrestrials As film made its way into 20th-century popular culture, depictions of extraterrestrial aliens became more prolific and specialized, eventually becoming fixed in the imagination as cultural archetypes, […]

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Science, Religion, and The War of the Worlds

July 29th, 2008 | Posted in H. G. Wells, science fiction, War of the Worlds

My personal story in terms of involvement with the fantastic goes back to a viewing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) on television. I was probably six or seven at the time, but this experience hooked me in terms of fascination with science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Soon after watching this program I […]

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WALL-E: Moving Visual Storytelling, Laughs, and Subtle Social Commentary

July 3rd, 2008 | Posted in animation, science fiction, WALL-E

It had been some time since my family and I took in a movie at the theater. Normally we keep our eye out for advertisements of upcoming films, and then once a movie is released to DVD we make a trip to the nearest Redbox DVD rental location and for $1 we have a good […]

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The Andromeda Strain: A&E’s Miniseries Misses the Mark

May 30th, 2008 | Posted in science fiction, The Andromeda Strain

Last Sunday night A&E unveiled (with much fanfare) the first of a new two-part television event, The Andromeda Strain, presented as an updated version of the story written by Michael Crichton. As I stated in a post on this topic prior to the airing of this program, the 1971 film version of this story was […]

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Cylons in America: Interview with Editors of New Book on the Battlestar Galactica Series

May 25th, 2008 | Posted in Battlestar Galactica, myths, science fiction

In a previous post I let readers know about a relatively recent book titled Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica (Continuum Publishing Group, 2007), which won the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s award for Best Edited Collection on Popular Culture for 2008. The book is edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall, […]

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The Andromeda Strain Revisited in New Television Event

May 19th, 2008 | Posted in science fiction, The Andromeda Strain

One of my favorite science fiction films from my youth, perhaps surprising to some int that it is not your typical sci fi film that might attract a young person, is The Andromeda Strain (1971). The source material for the film came from an adaptation of a Michael Crichton best-selling novel, and this movie also […]

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Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica

April 30th, 2008 | Posted in Battlestar Galactica, science fiction

After Star Wars became a phenomenon in movie theaters around the world in the 1970s it didn’t take long for television to take advantage in the resurgent interest in fantasy and science fiction. One of the television programs I remember fondly, although in my estimation it doesn’t hold up well when revisited thirty years later, […]

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Paul Davids: Sci-Fi Boys and the Pied Pipers of the Imagination

April 25th, 2008 | Posted in fantasy, Forrest J. Ackerman, Paul Davids, Ray Harryhausen, Sci-Fi Boys, science fiction

A while ago I was channel surfing and came across a late night showing of a great documentary film called The Sci-Fi Boys. I have commented on this film previously, which documents the tremendous influence of the films of Ray Harryhausen and the publishing work of Forrest J. Ackerman on several generations of young people. […]

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