Looking at cloth and clothing in science fictional textiles.

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

Exploring Moholes - high profile projects to drill through the Earth's crust.

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

Looking at the futuristic underwater craft that appear in fiction - and were particularly popular in the 1960s!

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

Looking at our ears on the sky - the giant radio telescopes that extend our studies of the Universe beyond the range of optical light.

Space Nazis... enough said

Exploring megastructures - artificial structures on enormous scales - in SF.

The Manhattan Project developed the first atomic bombs, and in doing so changed the world. Here we look at representations of the Project in SF.

A recurring aspiration in visions of the future is the idea that machines, and particularly robots, will come to dominate key aspects of our lives and societies.

Exploring space weather - an important problem both in science fiction and in our contemporary world.

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 ability to control the weather has been one of the goals of science for decades - with limited success - and, inevitably, science fiction has explored its possibilities and possible consequences.

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?

One of the key limitations in converting physics theories into practical technology is finding a material capable of taking the forces, temperatures or other physical requirements. Science fiction has, unsurprisingly, hypothesised a variety of such materials - with varying degrees of plausibility.

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.

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

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.

A lot of science fiction assumes we will adapt and use alien technologies, despite dramatic differences in their development and background physics. But how realistic is this?

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.

The visual imagery of humans struggling with everyday objects many times their own size, or encountering usually benign animals as terrifying monsters, captures the imagination. Hence the popularity of the SF of miniaturisation.