May 25, 2010 – Today, we look at the year that gave us works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hugo Gernsback — does 1912 deserve to be crowned the Best Year of Science Fiction Ever? From February through July 1912, All-Story Magazine serialized Under the Moons of Mars, an epic pulp adventure... More »
10 Scariest Eco-Catastrophes from Early Science Fiction
May 26, 2009 – These days, SF thrillers in which natural disasters end human life as we know it are mainstream fare. But long before M. Night Shyamalan and J.G. Ballard flirted with disaster, the authors of SF's Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) speculated wildly, and sometimes presciently, about the possible causes of... More »
The Mad Mentalists of Pre-Golden-Age SF
April 15, 2009 – Paving the way for Vulcans, Slan, Espers, Professor X and Babylon 5's Lyta Alexander, SF writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) dared to imagine how normal people might react if telepaths were discovered among us. In the late 19th century, scholars and scientists in Europe and America turned... More »
The Super-est Supermen of Pre-Golden Age SF
February 16, 2009 – Long before Alan Moore asked "Who will watch the Watchmen?" science fiction writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) worried whether supermen would rescue us ordinary mortals - or try to dominate us. Dreamed up by American and European SF writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - at a time... More »
The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF
January 12, 2009 – During science fiction's Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), writers dreamed up mechanical and quasi-organic humanoids so compelling that they continue to haunt today's scifi, forcing us to ask what it means to be human. Forget WALL-E and GORT. More »
The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF
December 15, 2008 – Click to viewSome of the most gorgeous, evocative, and strange science fiction art you've ever seen comes from the covers of novels written between 1904-33, in SF's "pre-Golden Age." Readers, here is the long-awaited second installment in my Pre-Golden Age SF series. More »
The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)
November 29, 2008 – With Wall-E director Andrew Stanton working on a film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's 1917 novel A Princess of Mars, you need a crash course in books from this seminal era in science fiction. Hollywood adaptations of Brave New World and When Worlds Collide, based on books released at roughly the sa... More »
Science Fiction’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), an Introduction
November 29, 2008 – Earlier this year, I formulated an eccentric but strict periodization scheme, in which the Nineteen-Oughts (not to be confused with the 1900s), for example, run from 1904 through 1913; More »
