The fiction and threat of swords of Damocles hanging over all our heads - orbital weapons platforms.

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

Looking at the science fiction of hypothetical worlds on the Other Side of the Sun.

Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!

Ever since Jack climbed the beanstock in search of treasures, and likely long before, humanity has dreamed of building an elevator to the stars.

Human beings have evolved in an environment of constant gravity. Here we explore the challenge of artificial gravity in SF

Space Nazis... enough said

One common thread in SF stories is the idea of precursor civilisations - ancient races that lived, died and passed out of general knowledge long before humanity took to the stars.

Exploring the role and impact of astronomical clouds and nebulae in science fiction.

Did humanity originate elsewhere? Why does Mars appear so prominently as the origin of the human race in science fiction?

World ships - planets which move under the deliberate control of their inhabitants or others - are a staple of science fiction. But how plausible are representations of world ships in SF, and why are they so popular?

The threat to space travel presented by space junk - the debris left behind by earlier human activity - has long been recognised. Naturally, science fiction has not failed to explore both the threat and the potential dangers of ignoring it.

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.

Human settlement of space has been a given since the earliest science fiction stories were written. The High Frontier was an influential popular science book published in 1976 by an American physicist Gerard K O’Neill. The High Frontier had an enormous impact, and cylindrical space habitats have since acquired the name O’Neill Cylinders, both in fact and in fiction.

The vision of space portrayed in near-future science fiction often speaks to the hopes and fears of contemporary society. Children’s SF in particular can influence the scientific and technical innovators who might bring such visions to fruition. This week we take a look at the coherent vision of human space utilisation presented in the recent animated television series Thunderbirds are Go.

Fermi’s Paradox - the lack of alien contact despite the a Universe that should be teeming with life - has excited the interest of scientists as well as philosophers, and some of the many possible solutions have been explored both by popular science writers and the writers of science fiction.

The concept of a scanner - a remote sensing device that can identify evidence of life at a distance - is a common staple of science fiction. While some science fiction takes this to an extreme, it’s neither a new idea nor one that is entirely divorced from science fact.

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?

For the many young people who thrilled to the adventures of characters such as Dan Dare or Doctor Who, the factual information presented in Annual gift books may well have provided their first insights into the genuine science and sweeping discoveries which lay behind their idols.

In a universe in which faster-than-light travel is, to the best of our current underssanding, impossible, journeys to other stars are likely to be measured in decades or centuries rather than days or weeks.