La Jetée: French New Wave's 1962 Sci-Fi Classic
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
Release Date: 09/14/2025
First Men in the Moon: From HG Wells to 1964
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. First Men on the Moon was written by HG Wells and serialised in The Strand Magazine beginning in 1900. The book was published in 1901 a year before Georges Méliès kicked off science fiction cinema with La Voyage dans la Lune in 1902. (You can learn more about that film in episode number 2 .) Then in the swinging 60s as the space race...
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Missed Episode, Medicine & Metropolis
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
I am very sorry but I have been unwell this past week. (But I am on the mend!) Multiple visits to the hospital mean that although I have the next episode recorded I have not been able to edit it. I've heard many podcasts serve up older episodes in this circumstance. Maybe an annoyance to those who have already heard all the episodes but for those who haven't since it is 2026 it's probably a good opportunity to watch Metropolis (1927) as this year is the year it was set. I have two remarkable and engaging academics speak about it. Sonja Fritzsche is a professor of German Studies and an...
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Dr. Strangelove: Cold War Comedy & 1964 USA
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. In 1958 the Peter George novel Red Alert was published about the dangers of nuclear war. A few years later when Stanley Kubrick was looking to make a (serious) film about the topic he was recommended the book. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was the resulting film. The film takes aim at...
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What is Afrofuturism?
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
Time for another detour! An introduction to Afrofuturism with two magnificent guests. You can follow the podcast on social media on Threads, Instagram and Bluesky. If you would like to be a patron of the podcast it would be greatly appreciated! You can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. The symbol mentioned in the podcast a few times is the Sankofa symbol which is a recurring symbol in Afrofuturism. It represents the idea that there are things that you go back for (and things you leave behind). You can read more about it on this wiki page: Julian...
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Ikarie XB-1: 1963 Communist Utopia in Space
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! We’ve discussed Czech scifi before with Karel Zeman’s gorgeous steam punk offering from 1958 Invention for Destruction (dubbed into the English language The Fabulous World of Jules Verne) and we’ve also covered Communists in Space with 1960s The Silent Star (AKA First Spaceship on Venus). The Czech Ikarie XB-1 (1963) has connections to both of those films but also offers an aesthetic that . The year is 2163, communism has won, and a crew of 40 are sent to find life on the white planet in Alpha Centauri with a journey fraught with sociological,...
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X-Ray Eyes: Roger Corman’s 1963 Psychedelic Sci-Fi
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. Roger Corman produced hundreds of films in his lifetime and directed dozens. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a colourful, psychedelic, 1960s extravaganza with aspirations of transcendence. If you wanted to join in, you can watch the film X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes from 1963 first. DVDs of the film are available, but it is also...
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The Manchurian Candidate 1962: Politics, Power & Paranoia
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. In 1959 at the cusp of a new and exciting decade Richard Condon wrote a book that is largely described as a political thriller. And it is a political thriller. But it also fits neatly into my concept of science fiction. To learn more about what is and isn’t science fiction you can head to the heady days of the first episode where the topic...
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The Day of the Triffids: Wyndham vs Sci-Fi Spectacle
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
There are spoilers ahead for all versions of The Day of the Triffids and also for the film Signs. You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. This episode had been edited down to a more digestible length of under an hour but a longer (audio only) version is available for Patreon subscribers (alongside the shorter option). We are doing things a little differently and discussing the 1963 film along with the source material...
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Panic in Year Zero: Nuclear Apocalypse & the Nuclear Family
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. There is a trigger warning for discussion of rape in this episode. I have marked the beginning of that part of the discussion with a beep and the discussion lasts for four minutes and four seconds after the beep if you wanted to skip past it. Last week we told you “” but this week we focus in on the panic. ...
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Don't Panic: The Hitchhiker's Guide Phenomenon
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead. You can buy the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book in most bookshops and you can listen to the radio play on YouTube and also on the Internet Archive. You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show and be revered amongst both the G'Gugvuntts and the Vl'Hurgs: As mentioned elsewhere this is not an analysis of the film or any kind of review of the book but more like a chat...
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A quick note that I shall be at the London Film Festival on October the 16th giving a whistlestop tour of sci-fi cinema. It is a free event but you have to reserve tickets so if you happen to be in London and wanted to attend here is the information.
Translation for the beginning of the podcast:
“Later, he knew he had seen a man die.
And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.”
You can follow the podcast on social media on Threads, Instagram and Bluesky.
If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. https://www.patreon.com/everyscififilm
La Jetée is very different from the science fiction films I have covered so far. A 28-minute art film mostly made of still images that went on to inspire many films as well as the 1995 12 Monkeys. The filmmaker, Chris Marker was an elusive French multimedia journalist, artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer who very rarely did interviews. He was part of the Left Bank group in Paris which was part of the larger French New Wave movement.
My amazing science fiction authorities today are Lisa Yaszek who is Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech and has written/edited multiple books on science fiction and Mark Bould who is a professor of Film and Literature at the University of West England, Bristol. He has also written/edited numerous books on science fiction.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:15 The French New Wave
08:50 The New Wave of science fiction literature
13:00 The New Wave science fiction films
17:53 Vertigo’s influence
21:10 Eros and Thanatos: Love and death (and time loops)
23:55 A very different science fiction film: Un photo-roman, sound and reliable narrators
32:00 The darker future: gritty retrofuturism and echoes of WWII
36:59 What is real? (And why is it so beautiful?)
40:52 Distressing distortions and more death
46:03 The one moving image
48:33 12 Monkeys
51:47 Legacy of the film
55:30 Recommendations for the listener
NEXT EPISODE!
Next episode is episode 42 and it seems patrons on Patreon would like a detour to cover the meaning of life the universe and everything. So we shall be talking about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You do not need to watch the film but if you felt like reading the book , listening to the original radio play, watching the TV series or indeed watching the film either as a new experience or to refresh your memory you absolutely can!