Looking at Scotland's role in space, both in the fiction of the past and in the present.

Looking at early representations of Venus in science fiction

For the Homo Superior

In the science fiction of the 1940s, 50s and 60s atomic power is ubiquitous, to the extent that it permeates domestic as well as industrial and military settings. But just how common is this atomic future in science fiction, and what can we learn from its rise and fall?

The asteroid belt is a collection of small rocky worlds, ranging in size from pebbles to the dwarf planet Ceres at almost a thousand kilometres across. Located in orbit between Mars and Jupiter they have been an important site in the imagination of both SF writers and scientists alike.

Exploring a 1950s short story and radio play which itself critiques the relationship between science and science fiction

Time travel is a wide-reaching topic in science fiction, but one recurring area of fascination is the predestination paradox - the idea that an event may only occur because of efforts to prevent it, or as a result of its own consequences.

Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, in his journeys through the Solar System, has given us a fascinating snapshot of how our understanding of solar system habitability has changed. Here I take a look at Saturn's moon system and its very different representations in 1953 and 2017.

In the mid twentieth century, young children were wowed by tales of heroism by a succession of space pilots with unlikely or alliterative names. But what was their attraction and impact?

If the laws of mathematics and science are the same everywhere in the Universe, then these might provide a key common ground for communication - as science fiction has explored.

Looking at science fiction which considers rule by science in a variety of forms.

One of the key functions of science fiction is to explore both the potentialities and the risks of technologies, particularly those which are new or to which we aspire. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, automation has been a preoccupation of SF almost since it began.

Looking at Jodrell Bank's representation in science fiction and SF paratexts.

A look at the Solar System of Captain W E Johns' classic juvenile science fiction series, starting with "Kings of Space" (1954)

Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex became the new home of the Royal Greenwich Observatory research organisation in a gradual transition that spanned the late 1940s and 1950s. As this article discusses, Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, and its host comic The Eagle provides a fascinating insight into the observatory at this moment of transition, as well as introducing children to the key features of a working observatory.