Science Fiction

Science fiction has interested film-makers since the earliest days of the cinema, although not often to the benefit of the film or science fiction itself. Most of such films have been adaptations of science-fiction literature and comic strips.

Unlike science-fiction literature, science-fiction cinema was, until the 1970s, increasingly preoccupied with unnatural creatures of various sorts, giving rise to a subgenre colloquially referred to as horror or monster films. Films featuring alien beings, mutant creatures, or soulless humans were more often than not stereotyped melodramas. Among common themes of such science-fiction films were the fallibility of megalomaniacal scientists, the urgency of international cooperation against invaders from outer space or monsters from Earth, the rash hostility of people to anything alien, and the evil aspects of technology.

The earliest film to tackle fantasy, if not science fiction proper, was Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), created by the French film-maker and magician Georges Méliès in 1902. The film company of the American inventor Thomas A. Edison produced A Trip to Mars in 1910. Early German film-makers produced influential films culminating in such Expressionistic films as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene) and Metropolis (1926, Fritz Lang). Prominent American monster films, which have since inspired countless sequels, are Frankenstein (1931, James Whale), Dracula (1931, Tod Browning), and The Mummy (1932, Karl Freund). Notable American serials of the 1930s were based on the comic-strip characters Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. In 1933 came King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack) and The Invisible Man (James Whale). In 1936 Great Britain produced the ambitious Things To Come (William Cameron Menzies), a visionary treatment of a utopian technocracy, the scenario for which was written by Wells, author of the novel, The Shape of Things to Come (1933), from which it was adapted.

The American producer and director George Pal contributed several well-regarded films, beginning in 1950 with Destination Moon (Irving Pichel) and continuing with When Worlds Collide (1951, Rudolph Maté), The War of the Worlds (1953, Byron Haskin), and The Time Machine (1960, George Pal). All four films won awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their special effects. Other notable films of the 1950s were The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Robert Wise), Forbidden Planet (1956, Fred M. Wilcox), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Don Siegel).

The critically acclaimed science-fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s include The Day of the Triffids (1962, Steve Sekely), Alphaville (1965, Jean-Luc Godard), Fahrenheit 451 (1966, François Truffaut), Fantastic Voyage (1966, Richard Fleischer), Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner), The Andromeda Strain (1971, Robert Wise), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976, Nicolas Roeg), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg). Stanley Kubrick made the epic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was one of the most widely discussed science-fiction films of all time; and the science-fiction adventure fantasy Star Wars (1977, George Lucas) became one of the biggest box-office hits to date. Several film episodes of Star Trek (based on the television series); Mad Max (1979, George Miller) and its sequels; Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam); Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott; The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and Aliens (1986), by James Cameron; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), and Minority Report (2002), all by Steven Spielberg; the Matrix series of films (1999-2003) by the Wachowski brothers; and the sequels to Star Wars have demonstrated the range and popularity of science-fiction film-making since the 1980s.

One of the most successful science-fiction programmes on radio in the 1930s was the serial Buck Rogers (1932-1947). In 1938 the realism of a broadcast production of Wells’s The War of the Worlds by the American actor and director Orson Welles aroused panic among some listeners, so realistic was its announcement of a Martian invasion of the Earth. Later such programmes as Dimension X (1950-1951) and X Minus One (1955-1958) dramatized short stories.

Two American television programmes from the 1950s are the science-fiction serials Captain Video (1949-1955) and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (1950-1955). In later years, Superman and other comic book heroes were featured, while programmes popular with adults included The Twilight Zone (1959-1964; revived 1985-1987), The Outer Limits (1963-1965), Lost in Space (1965-1968), Land of the Giants (1968-1970), The Immortal (1970-1971), and Star Trek (1966-1969); and in Britain Doctor Who (1963-1989). Star Trek, one of Paramount Studios’ most successful productions, created a large fan movement and inspired several subsequent syndicated series, including the sequel Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), which in turn inspired two spin-off series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). Science-fiction television programmes of the 1970s and 1980s included the British series Survivors (1975-1977) and Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), and the American shows Battlestar Galactica (1978-1980) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981). A popular science-fiction television series of the 1990s was The X-Files (1993-2002), about paranormal activity.

Two major events brought science fiction general recognition as a literature of relevance: the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945 and the successful landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, of two American astronauts. Atomic bombs (and atomic energy) and space flight had been two of the major subjects of science fiction almost from its beginning, but they had been ridiculed by traditional critics and even many scientists as “mere science fiction”. Their realization and the recognition by many people of the way in which life is being changed by science and technology have contributed to what Asimov has called “a science-fiction world”. This awareness was intensified in July 1976 when a space vehicle landed on Mars and transmitted to Earth the first on-site photographs of another planet, and in November 1980 when the American spacecraft Voyager I flew by the planet Saturn and transmitted some 1 billion miles back to Earth photographs of remarkable clarity. It was further stimulated in 2004 when United States President George Bush announced proposals to build a permanent lunar space station and send a man to Mars. Scientists and explorers have credited science fiction by Verne and others with starting them on their professions. Space exploration by Soviet scientists was influenced by the writings of the Russian author Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Beyond Earth, 1920), and German rocket research was inspired partly by the works of the German author Kurd Lasswitz.