A compelling, fully illustrated account of the worldwide phenomenon of science fiction as depicted in film, literature and art, and the scientific advances and imagination behind it.

Drawing on a wide range of examples from the literary and visual canons – short stories, novels, films, television programmes, video games, graphic novels, artworks and more – in both cult and popular culture, this extensively illustrated book examines how science fiction has provided a human response to science, exploring every reaction from complacency to exhilaration, and from hope to terror.

Across five chapters this volume reviews the role played by science fiction in exploring our world and a multitude of ideas about our relationship with the human condition. This encompasses a fascinating range of themes – machines, travel, aliens (the Other), communication, threats and anxiety. Featuring a range of essays by experts on the subject as well as interviews with well-known science-fiction authors and reproductions of classic ephemera, graphics and objects throughout, it also focuses on the darker elements of this fascinating genre – the anxieties, fears, dystopias, monsters and apocalypses that have populated science fiction from the beginning. Ultimately, science fiction asks what makes us human, and what lies in the future to test, threaten and even destroy humanity. This publication has these questions at its core, making it especially relevant for a contemporary readership in an age preoccupied with the climate emergency, the coronavirus pandemic, the development of nuclear missiles and military technologies, and other global challenges.