From Doctor Who to Red Dwarf, Thunderbirds to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, some of the most memorable and cherished British television has been in the area of science fiction.This pioneering book, by leading writers in TV history and science fiction, offers for the first time a detailed national survey of this most well-loved of TV genres and provides in-depth reassessments of these shows, as well as others including Threads, Sapphire and Steel, Invasion: Earth and The Last Train. The volume argues that British science fiction television, too often in the past critically derided for the quality of its special effects compared to American equivalents such as Star Trek--deserves to be taken seriously as a legitimate object of cultural analysis, both in terms of its ambition and ideas and its value in illuminating wider aspects of recent social and cultural history. The book also features a contribution from an acclaimed biographer of the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as an exclusive published interview with Thunderbirds creator and producer Gerry Anderson.

John R. Cook is Senior Lecturer in Mass Media at Glasgow Caledonian University and the author of Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen (1995; 1998).

 

Peter Wright is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies at Edge Hill College of Higher Education and the author of Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader (2003).

Notes on Contributors * 'Futures Past': An Introction to and Brief Survey of British Science Fiction Television--John R. Cook and Peter Wright * Quatermass and the Origins of British Television sf--James Chapman * TARDIS at the O.K. Corral: Dr Who and the USA--Nicholas J. Cull * Countering the Counter-Culture: The Prisoner and the 1960s--Sue Short * The Age of Aquarius: Utopia and Anti-Utopia in late 1960s and early 1970s British Science Fiction Television--John R. Cook * The Man Who Made Thunderbirds: An Interview with Gerry Anderson--Nicholas J. Cull * Everyday Life in the Post-Catastrophe Future: Terry Nation's Survivors--Andy Sawyer * TV Docudrama and the Nuclear Subject: The War Game, The Day After and Threads--David Seed * Resist the Host: Blake's 7: A Very British Future--Una McCormack * Echoes of Discontent: Conservative Politics and Sapphire and Steel--Peter Wright * Counterpointing the Surrealism of the Underlying Metaphor in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--M.J. Simpson * 'O.K. homeboys, let's posse!': Masculine Anxiety, Gender, Race and Class in Red Dwarf--Elyce Rae Helford * British Apocalypses Now--Or then?: The Uninvited (1997), Invasion: Earth (1998) and The Last Train (1999)--Catriona Miller * Further reading