ALIENS AND IMPERIALISM

摘要

The many species of aliens which populate science fiction texts have long been recognized as providing an adaptable mythology for the management of cultural anxieties. It was the challenge of realizing believable monsters and aliens, working within the budgetary constraints of B movie production in 1950s Hollywood, which brought fame to special effects artists like George Pal and Ray Harryhausen. In Screening Science: Contexts, Texts and Science in Fifties Science Fiction Film, Errol Vieth pays homage to the decade which established science fiction as the film genre which first gave special effects a starring role. He attempts to 'validate [...] the claim to legitimacy of the genre as a significant, important cultural product' (p. xvii), while locating that significance in the importance of science understood in a global context.