Science fiction cinema, once relegated to the undervalued "B" movie slot, has become one of the dominant film genres of the 21st century, with Hollywood alone producing more than 400 science fiction films annually. Many of these owe a great deal of their success to the films of one defining decade: the 1950s.
Essays in this book explore how classic '50s science fiction films have been recycled, repurposed, and reused in the decades since their release. Tropes from Don Siegel's
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1956), for instance, have found surprising new life in Netflix's wildly popular
Stranger Things. Interstellar
(2014) and
Arrival
(2016) have clear, though indirect roots in the iconic 1950s science fictions films
Rocketship X-M
(1950) and
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), and
The Shape of Water
(2017) openly recalls and reworks the major premises of
The Creature From the Black Lagoon
(1954). Essays also cover 1950's sci-fi influences on video game franchises like
Fallout, Bioshock
and
Wolfenstein
.