Joshua Glenn, Author at Gizmodo

The Best Year of Science Fiction Ever: 1912

Today, we look at the year that gave us works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hugo Gernsback — does 1912 deserve to be crowned the Best Year of Science Fiction Ever? From February through July 1912, All-Story Magazine serialized Under the Moons of Mars, an epic pulp adventure loosely inspired by the…

io9 Joshua Glenn May 25

10 Scariest Eco-Catastrophes from Early Science Fiction

These days, SF thrillers in which natural disasters end human life as we know it are mainstream fare. But long before M. Night Shyamalan and J.G. Ballard flirted with disaster, the authors of SF’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) speculated wildly, and sometimes presciently, about the possible causes of dire biospheric transformations. During science fiction’s Golden Age…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn May 26

The Mad Mentalists of Pre-Golden-Age SF

Paving the way for Vulcans, Slan, Espers, Professor X and Babylon 5’s Lyta Alexander, SF writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) dared to imagine how normal people might react if telepaths were discovered among us. In the late 19th century, scholars and scientists in Europe and America turned their collective attention not only to the…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Apr 15

The Super-est Supermen of Pre-Golden Age SF

Long before Alan Moore asked “Who will watch the Watchmen?” science fiction writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) worried whether supermen would rescue us ordinary mortals – or try to dominate us. https://gizmodo.com/science-fictions-pre-golden-age-1904-33-an-introduct-5099771 Dreamed up by American and European SF writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – at a time when Lamarckian-Bergsonian…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Feb 16

The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF

During science fiction’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), writers dreamed up mechanical and quasi-organic humanoids so compelling that they continue to haunt today’s scifi, forcing us to ask what it means to be human. https://gizmodo.com/science-fictions-pre-golden-age-1904-33-an-introduct-5099771 Forget WALL-E and GORT. Forget sexy Summer Glau and Tricia Helfer in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica. OK, don’t…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Jan 12

The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF

Click to viewSome of the most gorgeous, evocative, and strange science fiction art you’ve ever seen comes from the covers of novels written between 1904-33, in SF’s “pre-Golden Age.” Readers, here is the long-awaited second installment in my Pre-Golden Age SF series. I can’t afford first editions of PGA SF novels, but I’ve managed to…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Dec 15

The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)

With Wall-E director Andrew Stanton working on a film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1917 novel A Princess of Mars, you need a crash course in books from this seminal era in science fiction. Hollywood adaptations of Brave New World and When Worlds Collide, based on books released at roughly the same time as Princess…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Nov 29

Science Fiction’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), an Introduction

Earlier this year, I formulated an eccentric but strict periodization scheme, in which the Nineteen-Oughts (not to be confused with the 1900s), for example, run from 1904 through 1913; the Teens (not to be confused with the ’10s) from 1914-23; and the Twenties (not to be confused with the ’20s) from 1924-33. And so forth.…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Nov 29

Joshua Glenn

The Best Year of Science Fiction Ever: 1912

10 Scariest Eco-Catastrophes from Early Science Fiction

The Mad Mentalists of Pre-Golden-Age SF

The Super-est Supermen of Pre-Golden Age SF

The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF

The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF

The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)

Science Fiction’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), an Introduction

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