Review: 'Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s'

The mutual explosion of sci-fi and cheap paperbacks in the seventies necessitated a similar boom in sci-fi art. Near household names like Ralph McQuarrie, Roger Dean, Frank Frazetta, Robert McCall, and Alan Aldridge helped fulfill industry needs with nearly photorealistic depictions of otherworldly worlds, freaky tech, weird monsters, and excessively sinewed and/or buxom humanoids. The art adorning books by the likes of Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, and Ellison were often selling points as major as the words within. Some of it was garish or tacky, but even the most ghastly covers displayed a wealth of imagination and technique. A good deal of it was truly beautiful.

Review: 'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'

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.

Five Truly Frightening Stories

Serious horror fans are often victims of a frustrating catch 22: we love to be scared, but our constant consumption of scary stuff leaves us almost impossible to scare. As much as I love to reread Stoker’s Dracula and Shelley’s Frankenstein, they do not actually frighten me, and I am highly dubious when some twenty-first century person includes them on one of those “50 Scariest Books Ever!” lists that litter the Internet. How many of the entries on those lists actually frightened the people who wrote them?

I, dear reader, refuse to cheat you in such a manner. When I tell you a book is frightening, it’s because it actually frightened me, because sometimes a work is effective enough to hack through that thick horror callous I’ve built up over the years. It should be telling that I searched and searched through the cobwebby attic of my memory to come up with books and stories that actually scared me and was only able to come up with five, but I assure you, the following five frightening stories scared me, indeed. And if you’re not careful, they may scare you too.

1. The Bad Seed by William March (1954)

Surprise is horror’s best friend. That’s why lazy scare meisters like sudden loud noises and scary faces popping out of shadows unexpectedly. The Bad Seed is a surprise of a different sort, because if you are familiar with Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 cult classic, you probably regard the tale of evil little Rhoda Penmark as a work of high camp. Stripped of Patty McCormack’s googly eyes and the rest of the cast’s ham sandwiches, there is nothing funny about children killing children. March’s conception of the development of a calculating murderer without an ounce of human empathy is inherently scary and deeply troubling because Rhoda’s mother still loves the girl and wants to believe she did not give birth to a demon even though she knows she totally did. Rhoda completely exploits that fact, manipulating her mother’s emotions with ruthless crocodile tears. Rosemary’s Baby is the nightmare of every pregnant woman, but The Bad Seed will chill all parents…and based on the fact that I first read it long before becoming a parent, plenty of other people too.

2. Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry (1974)

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 3

Series: Ray Bradbury Theater

Episode: “Gotcha!”, in which Saul Rubinek takes his girlfriend up on her offer to play a game called “Gotcha!” and really, really ends up wishing he hadn’t. Bradbury was the king of purple prose, but in the short story that inspired this episode of his anthology series, he really worked his tendency to over-describe to his advantage, crafting an utterly terrifying sequence devoid of any concrete action. A shadow flits here. A shape appears in the corner there. That sort of thing. My love for that story (featured in another post that I posted today...now that’s love), which is essentially about how finding out something unsavory about your significant other can really ruin the giddy joy of new love, is probably why I’m fond of this episode even though its full wallow in eighties cheese is awful. The music! The hair! The interior decorating! Ghastly! And don’t expect me to explain the weird Laurel and Hardy theme that runs through the episode. Brad Turner doesn’t come close to recapturing the blood-chilling terror of Bradbury’s game of Gotcha!, but the director hardly embarrasses himself. And just look at that scary face in the photo above. It’s scary!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 342

The Date: September 6

The Movie: Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

What Is It?: François Truffaut does a fine yet icy job with Ray Bradbury’s dystopic novel about a society in which all books are banned and burned. Although the film has received mixed reactions throughout the years, I continue to admire it as an interesting marriage of sixties style-design and conscience, and Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of the best things he didn’t do for Hitchcock.

Why Today?: Today is National Read a Book Day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 24

The Date: October 24

The Movie: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

What Is It?: A strange carnival comes to town, and top-hatted carny Jonathan Price grants wishes for steep prices. Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel is rich in nostalgia and autumnal atmosphere, and it doesn’t skimp on the terror just because it’s aimed at youngsters. This will really get to you if you have a thing about spiders.

Why Today?: This is the day the carnival comes to town in the novel.

Farewell, Ray Bradbury

I had my issues with Ray Bradbury's prose, which is purple as grape Kool-Aid, but not even I can question the man's influence on science-fiction, and more on point for this particular site, horror fiction. Bradbury had such high regard for the written word that the greatest horror he could imagine was its outlawing, and Farenheit 451 still stands as one of the few truly original dystopian novels because its focus is so keen and its resolution is so strangely optimistic. He was also able to locate the terror in more personal matters, such as aging (Something Wicked This Way Comes) and the realization you never really know your partner (the seemingly silly yet utterly terrifying short story "Gotcha!"). Without Bradbury there probably would not have been a "Twilight Zone" or E.C. Comics or, well, "Ray Bradbury Theater". With such a rich life, Bradbury's death at the ripe age of 91 yesterday can't quite be called tragic, but it is sad and he will be missed.