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THE 1950S & 60S Cordwainer Smith and the Strange, Beautiful Future of the Instrumentality of Mankind Dive into the unique, mythic future history of Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind, exploring its origins in mid-century sci-fi and its enduring resonance today. Discover a universe where genetically engineered Underpeople and god-like Scanners reshape the very definition of humanity. Read more → THE 1960S Ikarie XB-1 (1963): The Czechoslovak Starship Film That Came Before 2001 A beacon of early cinematic deep-space exploration, the 1963 Czechoslovak film Ikarie XB-1 offered a vision of interstellar travel years before many Western audiences saw its true potential. This film's thoughtful approach to the human condition amidst the void remains as compelling today as it was in the Cold War era. Read more → THE 1950S Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (1956): Revenge at the Speed of Thought Alfred Bester’s 1956 novel rips across the page with the velocity of a teleporter and the fury of a man wronged, setting a benchmark for kinetic science fiction. More than sixty years on, its exploration of identity, obsession, and power feels as urgent and electric as ever. Read more → THE 1950S The Unforgiving Logic of "The Cold Equations" Tom Godwin’s 1954 short story, "The Cold Equations," remains one of science fiction’s most potent and contentious works, an elegant and brutal demonstration of hard science principles. Its unflinching premise about a stowaway in space still sparks fierce debate about the intersection of logic, empathy, and the unforgiving cosmos. Read more → THE 1950S Forbidden Planet (1956): Monsters From the Id and the Dawn of the Electronic Score In 1956, amidst a wave of B-grade creature features, Fred M. Wilcox's *Forbidden Planet* soared beyond the pulp, offering a sophisticated space opera rooted in Shakespeare and Freudian psychology. It also pioneered the first entirely electronic musical score, forever changing the sound of science fiction. Read more →
THE 1950S & 60S Cordwainer Smith and the Strange, Beautiful Future of the Instrumentality of Mankind Read more → THE 1960S Ikarie XB-1 (1963): The Czechoslovak Starship Film That Came Before 2001 Read more → THE 1950S Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (1956): Revenge at the Speed of Thought Read more → THE 1950S The Unforgiving Logic of "The Cold Equations" Read more → THE 1950S Forbidden Planet (1956): Monsters From the Id and the Dawn of the Electronic Score Read more →
Sci-Fi Timelines

The future,
as it used to be

Science fiction past, present and future: the landmarks, the cult corners and the stories time forgot, from the atomic-age bloom of the 1950s to the screens and pages of today, looked at again with fresh eyes.

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PastPresentFuture
The timeline

Signals through time

  1. 1818ORIGINS

    Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the novel many readers count as the first true work of science fiction.

  2. 1926THE PULPS

    Amazing Stories

    Hugo Gernsback launches Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction. The pulps become the genre’s training ground.

  3. 1950sATOMIC AGE

    The great bloom

    Paperbacks, digests and drive-ins fill up with the future: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956), Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1956).

  4. 1960sNEW WAVE

    Inner space

    The Twilight Zone and Star Trek reach the living room, Herbert’s Dune (1965) and Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) deepen the page, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) remakes the screen.

  5. 1977BLOCKBUSTERS

    The big screen era

    Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979) turn science fiction into the main event at the movies.

  6. 1980sCYBERPUNK

    The near future

    Blade Runner (1982) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) move the future down to street level, wired and rain-soaked.

  7. TodayNEXT

    The signal continues

    Prestige series, translated novels and new voices from around the world carry the genre on, and the old stories keep finding new readers. This is where we follow it.

Browse by era

The eras

1926–1949

Pulp & Golden Age

Rocket ships on newsprint, and the editors and writers who taught the genre to think.

1950–1964

The Atomic Age

Saucers, giant ants and cold-war parables: the decade science fiction bloomed.

1965–1979

The New Wave

Inner space, experiment and the turn to the big screen.

1980–Today

Cyber to Now

Wired futures, franchise worlds and the stories still being written.

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The podcast

Lost Transmissions

Science fiction’s forgotten frequencies, tuned back in. Each week Hollis and Margo pull one story out of the archive (a paperback, a B-movie, a radio play, a lost TV episode) and ask what it still has to say about the future.

With Hollis and Margo. New episodes every Wednesday.

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