One of the classics of science fiction is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In this film the alien Klaatu comes to earthwith the warning that humanity must decide to live in peace or face global annihilation brought about through a race of robots such as Gort, Klaatu’s intergalactic traveling companion. This classic has been [...]
I was a young child when I first discovered the fantastic through television broadcasts of science fiction films. These became sources that fueled my fears and fed my imagination. My fears took shape through films like Invaders From Mars (1953) with the images of aliens burrowing underground and mind control devices drilled into the base of human [...]
The discussion list for the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations included an item recently of interest to TheoFantastiqe. Ithica College is hosting a Rod Serling conference in October 2009. As the college event’s website describes the event:
Picture, if you will, a place where communication students can study the creative work of one of the [...]
Sean Cubitt is Director of the Media and Communications Program at The University of Melbourne. With Zaiudin Sardar he is the co-editor of Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema (Pluto Press, 2002). As the subtitle indicates, this volume looks at various expressions of science fiction and how the genre has served as a [...]
The other day a memory of 1970s television came to mind in the form of a science fiction tale, but I couldn’t remember the name of the program. Thank goodness for the Internet and Google. A quick search under “Angie Dickinson” and “Lloyd Bridges,” connected to “1970s television” produced the result I was hoping for. [...]
I’ve been reflecting on science fiction films recently in preparation for a future interview to be posted here. Years ago it was an encounter with science fiction, later fantasy films, and eventually horror, that produced a lifelong interest in the fantastic. For some reason two sci fi films from the 1970s have been on my [...]
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, while varying significantly in physical, [...]
