Rebecca Johnston | She Was a Beauty in a Cage responds to the prompt of ‘gender issues in science fiction for children and young adults’. I wrote it in response to a real life experience that gave me cause to reflect on pervasive gender issues in our society which also exist in the media we consume…
Lenise Prater | Andrew Milner has recently argued that fantasy and science fiction (and utopia) are ‘cognate’ genres: “above all, because they are each tales of wonder” (44). He adds that this is an argument for analysing fantasy ‘in addition to and alongside’ science fiction (198). It is precisely the element of ‘wonder’, the ‘non-realistic’…
Tom Steward, Independent Scholar | When Doctor Who first aired in 1963, the BBC’s principal design focus for the series was education (Chapman, 2006; Haining, 1990). Much of pilot episode ‘An Unearthly Child’ takes place inside secondary school classrooms and features montages of lessons. Prior to broadcast, two publicity stills of the Doctor’s original companions, schoolteachers…