A few weeks ago my girlfriend & I spotted a struggling raccoon. She was stumbling in the street in a way that looked to me like she was suffering from brain damage, but not rabies. We could see the confusion in her eyes. Using the only thing I could find, a traffic cone, I kept her from going into the busy intersection. We called the police because animal control closed 15 min earlier at 6. The cop was nice and had a DPW guy come by. He unsympathetically scooped her into a bin and took her away, likely to end her life.
It was a sad encounter. I painted this to memorialize her.
A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I started in on a role playing game together in the sci fi Traveler system. Out at dinner she mentioned she didn’t get a lot of the references we’d been making. She asked if I wouldn’t mind making her a list of the books and movies that would help her feel caught up for the next time we played, adding she’d like to feel more included when sci fi & fantasy topics pop up in general. Of course I said I’d be happy to.
The real challenge came with limiting the list so it wouldn’t become totally overwhelming. I knew Frankenstein was essential as was Bladerunner, but so many works in between have contributed to our shared imagined space. Sci fi and fantasy are our go-to metaphors, our cautionary tales, and prepare us for what’s to come.
So what I’ve assembled is a collection that I think solidly represents our current narrative landscape in a manner that lays out how we got to now in as concise a manner as I can muster. Mind you, I’m aware of the bias I bring having grown up in the State and being a straight, white male. Ideally I would be more globally inclusive.
I’m sharing those who would like a summer’s crash course on the broadest encapsulation of speculative fiction. My goal is to touch upon the works that have made a notable contribution, not simply homaged or revelled in familiar tropes. Lastly, I’ll point out that I (mostly) left off works from the past 5-10 years because it usually takes a span before we’re aware of how much new content has made an impact. Ok, enough qualifying, here it is:
-Key-
(Wiki) Read up for cultural significance * Personal Favorite + Hugely influential ^ Non-Essential but worth listing
-Literature-
8,000 BC Aboriginal mythology (pre written language)
2,300 BC Egyptian & Chinese myths+
1,000 BC The Old Testament+
900 BC Greek myths, fables, and all the rest
300 BC – 1800 AD Folk and fairy tales+
1000 AD Beowulf (Wiki)
1100s Legend of King Arthur+
1300s The Inferno – Dante Alighieri+
1600s Paradise Lost*
1700s Gulliver’s Travels The Arabian Nights (Wiki)
1800s Frankenstein* – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly+ Grimm’s fairy tales+ (Wiki) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde* Dracula – Bram Stoker+ Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll+ The Time Machine & #War of the Worlds – HG Wells+ Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne+ Flatland The Tell-Tale Heart – Edgar Allan Poe+
1900s Peter Pan The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka+ (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum+ John Carter of Mars – (Wiki) Call of Cthulhu or The Outsider – HP Lovecraft+ Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (Teacher of Orwell https://bit.ly/2xayA23) 1984 – George Orwell+ Amazing Stories & Weird Tales magazines
After 1950 Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien+ Chronicles of Narnia* – CS Lewis I Am Legend – Richard Matheson (The first real zombie story. Also wrote for Twilight Zone) Childhood’s End – Arthur C Clarke+ I, Robot – Isaac Asimov+ Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury Funes the Memorious or The Garden of Forking Paths – Borges+ Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula LeGuin Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein Dune Where the Wild Things Are The Neverending Story* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (inspired Bladerunner) Philip K Dick+ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy A Wrinkle in Time The Stand – Stephen King+
After 1980 Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino Xanth series* Communion – (True account of alien abduction) Neuromancer – William Gibson+ Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton+ Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson Ender’s Game* – Orson Scott Card A Song of Ice & Fire – George RR Martin ^Hunger Games Harry Potter – JK Rowling+ Who Fears Death
-Comics/Superheroes-
-DC Comics- Superman (Wiki how he came to be) Wonder Woman (Wiki how she came to be or watch Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Very interesting) Batman The Sandman – Neil Gaiman Watchmen* – Alan Moore+
-Marvel Comics- Spiderman* (Wiki how he came to be) X Men* Avengers (the hugely popular films all started with decades of comics) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* Hellboy*
1900s Maxfield Parish NC Wyeth+ John Tenniel Windsor McCay+ Arthur Rackham – fairy tales Jack Kirby – superhero comics Picasso – Cubism Chesley Bonestell Frank Frazetta MC Escher
After 1980 Jeff Easley – D&D Jim Lee – X Men Michael Whelan – book covers H.R. Giger – Alien films Brian Froud Syd Mead – Bladerunner & other films Roger Dean – album covers Jean Giraud Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon James Gurney – Dinotopia Mike Mignola – Hellboy Mary GrandPré – Harry Potter
-Radio-
1930s -1950s Flash Gordon War of the Worlds (Wiki Orson Welles hoax) Buck Rogers The Shadow and much more in the ensuing years, including adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide
-TV Shows-
After 1950s Twilight Zone – Rod Serling. Learn more at https://bit.ly/2Ll1Evy Lost in Space Star Trek – (Wiki) Gene Roddenberry Dr Who (Wiki) The Jetsons (Wiki) Cosmos – Carl Sagan+ (Science fact)
After 1980s Transformers Buffy the Vampire Slayer* – Joss Whedon X Files*
After 2000 Firefly – Joss Whedon Lost* – JJ Abrams Battlestar Galactica Black Mirror* Game of Thrones Rick & Morty* The Expanse Westworld* – reboot of Michael Crichton 1970s film
-Films-
1900s King Kong (Wiki) The Wizard of Oz+ Fantasia- Disney+ Monster movies- Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein (Wiki)
After 1950 Godzilla+ (Wiki) Seven Samurai or Hidden Fortress – Akira Kurosawa+ (Not SF or fantasy but influential) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – Special effects by Ray Harryhausen (Wiki) Invasion of the Body Snatchers 2001 A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick+ (Wiki) Planet of the Apes Night of the Living Dead+ (Wiki) Superman #Star Wars Trilogy – George Lucas (owing to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth)+
After 1980 Bladerunner* – Ridley Scott ^Legend Mad Max series Alien or sequel Aliens Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind – Steven Spielberg+ ET Star Trek series Back to the Future Brazil – Terry Gilliam+ Tron+ Ghostbusters* Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure* Princess Bride* Labyrinth* The Terminator & Terminator 2* – James Cameron+ Akira The Fifth Element Robocop Beetlejuice ^Nightmare Before Xmas* Jurassic Park – Steven Spielberg+ City of Lost Children* Iron Giant* 12 Monkeys Groundhog Day* Sixth Sense Ghost in the Shell (1995 anime) ^Gattaca Donnie Darko* The Matrix*
After 2000 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Spirited Away ^Underworld Minority Report Lord of the Rings Primer ^The Incredibles Shaun of the Dead* Pan’s Labyrinth Moon* Marvel Cinematic Universe ^Idiocracy Inception* &/or Interseller – Christopher Nolan+ Her Snowpiercer
I’m so pleased to be able to tell you the playmats are finally here. Thank you for your patience. They took longer than expected. Most of you know that while in-production on Android:Netrunner, Fantasy Flight Games wasn’t able to give me permission to make playmats out of my card artwork. This all changed a few months ago. So I took polls, collected the most popular images, and tailored them all to fit the mat proportions and resolution requirements.
You can order them from Overpoweredmats. I teamed up with these folks because the mats they make are thick, have a beautiful black trim, and are made in the USA.
Preliminary stocks are limited, so order yours soon!
You all have been so great. It was such a pleasure to be involved with bringing Netrunner to life. I hope it continues to bring you joy in the years ahead. Happy gaming!
