Abstract
Comics, and especially superhero comics, increasingly assumed a central place in later 20th century SF. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s a new sophistication entered into the world of anglophone comics. In addition to the traditional magazine format comics, there came on the market a new mode known as graphic novels, usually issued in a series of part-formats but later collected together and bound as a single volume. In earlier chapters I argued that the vogue for SF superhero icons expressed, in a popular cultural idiom, one of the root concerns of SF: the role of the Saviour and the status of atonement in a modern, scientific post-Copernican cosmos. Few people nowadays think of these questions in theological terms.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See the book Latham wrote with Stephen Todd: Evolutionary Art and Computers (San Diego, CA: Academic Press 1992).
- 2.
Leafing through a book such as Mark Cotta Vaz and Patricia Rose Duignan’s Industrial Light & Magic: Into the Digital Realm (New York: Del Rey 1992) provides evidence for how strikingly beautiful these visual effects can be.
- 3.
There is a vast literature about this phenomenon. A good place to start is Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press 1994).
Works Cited
Carter, Sally. 2011. The emergence of art-science. BMJ, 343–344: d5133
McCurdy, Howard E. 1997. Space and the American imagination. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press.
Miller, Russell, and Bare-Faced Messiah. 1987. The true story of L Ron Hubbard. London: Michael Joseph.
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. 1986–7. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics.
Moore, Alan, Gary Leach and Alan Davis. 1988. Miracleman. Book one: A dream of flying. Columbia, MO: Eclipse Books.
Paul, Christiane. 2003. Digital art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Savage, John, and Time Travel. 1996. Pop, media and sexuality 1976–96. London: Chatto.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roberts, A. (2016). Late 20th Century SF: Multimedia, Visual SF and Others. In: The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave Histories of Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56957-8_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56957-8_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56956-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56957-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)