Science Fiction had existed at least since the nineteenth
century when fantasists such as Mary Shelley and Jules Verne imagined a technologically
advanced, sometimes horrific future. However, the genre positively exploded
during the 1950s as the world became fixated on atomic energy, UFOs, and the very
real possibility of conquering space. Suddenly cinemas were overrun with little
green men; pulp novels and comic books dripped with lurid images of hulking
robots carrying away scantly clad damsels; the new medium of TV offered small,
blurry tales of tomorrow; and at least in England, soon-to-be-extinct radio
dramas hung on by spinning similar sci-fi stories.
John Wade pays tribute to the decade’s various imaginative
fictions in his breezy new book The
Golden Age of Science Fiction. In five chapters each devoted to radio,
television, film, books, and periodicals, respectively, Wade gives a run down
of the major fictions of the era. Because he is English, he offers a
perspective that often strays from the most commonly discussed fictions of the
fifties. Wade shines when discussing
such British artifacts as Nigel “Quatermass” Kneale’s TV work (particularly
since he bolsters the discussion with tidbits from his own interviews with
Kneale), Dan Dare—a sort of British Buck Rogers, and British radio series such
as Journey into Space. His chapters
on film and long fiction are less riveting because they focus on such
well-covered topics as The Day the Earth
Stood Still, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke and depend too much on long
synopses of films and books that are more interesting to actually watch and read.
Yet the author offers enough critique to give these chapters some sense of
purpose.
I also liked Wade’s personal point of view, which lends a
nostalgic air to this study of a particularly nostalgia-stimulating topic. Wade
shares autobiographical stories of discovering science fiction as a fifties kid
and the complex process of sneaking into X movies (settle down…an X rating
implied something very different in the UK). Best of all is the abundance of
high quality, full-color photos of pulp mag and comics covers, film posters,
spectacular sculptures of the Mekon from the Dan Dare stories, Robbie the
Robot, and other items that will transport you back to the fifties’ deliciously
distinct vision of things to come.
