“Alfred Bester’s short stories are fevered, mile-a-minute narratives, and “5,271,009” has even more ideas than most: the protagonist keeps jumping through clichéd paradises of science fiction (the last man on earth, a kid with the knowledge of his adult self, the usual), realizing each one isn’t actually that great, and moving on to the next. One number keeps reappearing over and over, but it’s not until we reach the end that the meaning of it all is revealed.

According to Bester himself, the entire romp was inspired by one illustration, a picture of a space convict chained to a meteoroid. The number on his black and white striped jumpsuit became the driving force behind the bizarre short story.”

From 42 to 2001: Science Fiction by the Numbers

“Harrison Ford starring as Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter tracking rogue humaniod replicants through neo-noir Los Angeles? How could it lose? Well, pitting a dark-as-night noir against the warm-hearted ET: The Extraterrestrial was probably the first mistake. Scott’s film grossed a million under its $28 million budget. 

But all was not lost: VHS developed as a technology just in time for audiences to realize that the film is very rewatchable, particularly after the director released two alternate cuts, each with a higher concentration of creative freedom than the last.”

6 Awesome Science Fiction Books Behind Box Office Flops

ROM: Spaceknight Might Be The Best Science Fiction Comic Of All Time

“In the 1970s, science fiction began to fragment into smaller subsets: the New Wave fizzled out, leaving its own imprint on the genre, while new subgenres grew in the aftermath. One author of the time looked back to her roots for inspiration for her stories, developing her own brand of science fiction that at once revered the classics of the genre while using the same building blocks to subvert them.”

Andrew Liptak on The Not-So-Typical Adventures of Lois McMaster Bujold (artist above: Alan Gutierrez)

Ghost Rider’s Satanic Seventies

“Today’s younger generation will never know a time period in which Captain America, Hulk and Spider-Man weren’t big screen icons with accompanying cartoons, action figures, and video games. However in the early 1970s, these and other classic comic book characters came to life outside of their pop art medium only through a series of analog vinyl releases. Unleashed by Power Records, the vibrant cover artwork promised ‘The action comes alive as you read!!’”

The Avengers’ Age of Analog: The Power Records Story

“Mad Max: Fury Road is among the best action films of 2015. Maybe the best of the decade. It’s packed full of high-octane apocalyptic mayhem, set in a world that revers its rides to the point that fuel is an object of worship.

This led me to consider the other car-centered speculative fiction. Sure, there’s the occasional cool car in sci-fi or fantasy, but it’s only once in a while that a vehicle plays an integral role in the plot. Here’s a list of the fast and the fantastical vehicular fiction.”

Mad Max and 8 More Car-Based SF/F Stories

madddscience:

“In the action movie, an evil ruler becomes enraged when he discovers that Charlize Theron’s character, Furiosa, has helped his sex slaves escape his grasp. Behind them they leave the message: ‘Women are not things.’ Furiosa encounters Max on the road, and they team up in search of a matriarchal promised land with bad guys in hot pursuit. Theron, not Hardy, leads the charge; she also does the majority of the fighting.”

How Mad Max: Fury Road Became a Feminist Action Film

“Born in 1946 in Guernsey, Channel Islands, Chris Foss is a British illustrator and a powerhouse of science fiction design and invention. His work is a celebration of future machinery, impossibly sized constructions exist on a planetary scale; a showcase of hardware so large that the human figure is dwarfed by comparison.”

Read a feature on Chris Foss, by Jeff Love, on Sci-fi-o-rama 

Star Wars has been taken with ominous seriousness. It should not be. The single strongest impression it leaves is of another great American tradition which involves lights, bells, obstacles, menace, action, technology, and thrills. It is pinball-on a cosmic scale.

The Man Who Made Star Wars, The Atlantic