Sci-Fi Now

Alan Frank’s Sci-Fi Now is a 1978 snapshot of science fiction at that delightful historical moment when the future had chrome, jumpsuits, matte paintings, computers the size of filing cabinets, and absolute confidence that by the year 2000 everyone would either live in space or be menaced by something rubbery. It is a book from the age when “sci-fi” still smelled faintly of cinema foyers, paperback racks, model kits, television schedules and the exciting possibility that a spaceship might be represented by a photograph of a carefully lit object on a string.

This is science fiction as it stood in the late 1970s: film, television, literature, icons, monsters, machines, starships, robots, aliens, apocalypses and speculative futures jostling together under one broad, enthusiastic roof. The timing is delicious. Star Wars had just blown open the airlock of popular culture, Doctor Who was still cheerfully bending the BBC budget into improbable shapes, 2001 lingered as the serious monolith in the room, and the older pulp traditions were still very much alive in the collective imagination, wearing capes, helmets, antennae and occasionally no scientific credibility whatsoever.

Alan Frank’s book belongs to that richly illustrated popular reference tradition: not a dry academic autopsy, but a colourful survey of the genre’s machinery and mythology. It is the kind of volume that introduces films, programmes, authors, themes and creatures with the generous conviction that science fiction is not merely entertainment but a complete alternative weather system. One can almost hear the pages humming with ray guns, synthesiser noises and the sincere belief that robots might soon be serving breakfast, overthrowing humanity, or both.

The irony, of course, is that a book called Sci-Fi Now from 1978 is now itself a fossil from the future’s past. This is yesterday’s tomorrow, preserved in hard covers: the future before smartphones, streaming, CGI saturation and billion-dollar franchises with continuity supervisors. Its “now” is full of futures that have since become retro, which is one of science fiction’s finest humiliations. Nothing dates faster than prophecy, except perhaps beige office technology.

That is exactly the charm. The book captures SF when it was expanding from cult enthusiasm into mass spectacle, but had not yet been polished into the enormous corporate space-empires of later decades. There is room here for the odd, the earnest, the cheap, the brilliant, the clumsy, the visionary and the completely mad. Science fiction has always been a genre where genius and cardboard can share a corridor quite happily, provided the lighting is dramatic enough.

For collectors of vintage science fiction, film and TV reference books, 1970s pop culture, old genre surveys, space-age artwork, robots, monsters and futures that now look wonderfully second-hand, this is lovely shelf material. It is not just a book about sci-fi; it is a piece of sci-fi history itself, from the moment when the future was arriving loudly and nobody had yet checked whether the moonbase had planning permission.

Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. A solid Octopus volume from 1978, ready to sit among paperbacks, annuals, VHS memories and suspiciously optimistic predictions. No guarantee that its future came true, but frankly the one we got could have used more silver boots.

Keep browsing: See more Film books Other books by Alan Frank