Science in Science Fiction
Step 1 - Exercises
Radiation plays an important role in the film “Atom Age Vampire”. Radiation is also a feature in these three films:
- “The incredible shrinking man”,1957, black and white, 78 Minutes, director Jack Arnold. After sailing through a radio active fog, a man starts to shrink until he is only a few centimetres in size. The film shows in what dramatic ways his life changes and how he manages to survive and still stay human.
- “Them”, 1954, black and white, 89 Minutes, director Gordon Douglas. In the desert of Nevada, where the USA have tested an atomic bomb, radioactive rays have turned small ants into gigantic dangerous monsters that kill everything they meet. A biologist gives the clue, and with military force the queens can be destroyed.
- “Godzilla”, either the 1998 American science fiction film directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich or the 1954 original Japanese science fiction film directed and co-written by Ishirō Honda. Both films deal with a monster created by radiation.
Especially for the 50s and 60s, negative effects of atomic power and radiation were often used in science fiction and horror films. Why, do you think, this was the case?
What do you think, has replaced atomic power and radiation as the “bad science” of yesterday in today's science fiction?
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There is no simple answer for this phenomenon. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cold war, atomic tests and fallout were certainly partly responsible for this point of view. On the other hand, scientific research and technological development were widely regarded as positive progress especially in the United States.
A good read to study this phenomenon is “Paranoia, the bomb, and 1950s science fiction films”, by Cynthia Hendershot or “Monsters, mushroom clouds, and the Cold War: American science fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism”, 1946-1964, by M. Keith Booker
