For years I thought Back to the Future was the first film to portray a science fiction fan. That 1985 movie featured Crispin Glover as George McFly, a nerdy kid who grows up to become a science fiction writer. Most of the action was set in 1955. Well, the other night I watched Artists and Models that came out in 1955. It features Jerry Lewis as Eugene, a nerdy guy who loves Bat Lady comics and talks about a lot of crazy science fiction stuff.

In neither role, does the science fiction fan come across as competent. They are goofy space cadets. Is this how the world thinks of us? Life Magazine introduced science fiction fandom to the world in a May 21, 1951, issue. (See my essay that reprints those pages.)

In the late 1950s, Philip K. Dick wrote a mainstream novel about a science fiction fan, Confessions of a Crap Artist. It’s my favorite PKD novel. The book was made into a 1992 French movie I’ve never seen.

Science fiction movies go back to the early days of film making, but readers and writers of science fiction have seldom been portrayed. Can you think of any other examples?

The most loving and positive example of science fiction I can think of is from television, the 1998 episode of Deep Space Nine called “Far Beyond the Stars.” In it, Captain Sisko is shown as a struggling African American science fiction writer working at a Galaxy-like SF magazine in 1953. There’s also a wonderful paperback novelization of the episode by Steven Barnes.

Let me know of any movies or television shows you know about that featured a science fiction reader or writer as a character, or even discussed the subject of science fiction?

James Wallace Harris, 11/1/23

Artists and Models is quite silly, but very colorful. It’s Shirley MacLaine’s second film, and she’s the model for the Bat Lady.

2 thoughts on “When Did Movies and Television First Portray a Science Fiction Fan?”

  2. Many thanks for this piece, Jim! I remember Back to the Future (which I liked), but apart from this, I can’t think of many examples of portrayals of SF fans or writers in movies or TV shows–a curious omission. There was a 2010 movie about Temple Grandin, and one scene shows a room with a copy of Astounding Science Fiction–a brief, oblique reference to the fact that Grandin was apparently a fan of SF (or so I’ve read elsewhere).

    The only other example I can think of is the movie Slaughterhouse-Five. There is a brief scene with Eliot Rosewater, the main character of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, who also appears in Slaughterhouse-Five. The scene shows Rosewater in the hospital where he was staying at the same time as Billy Pilgrim, with a copy of Kilgore Trout’s novel Venus on the Half-Shell.

    In those two novels (Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five), Vonnnegut portrayed Pilgrim and Rosewater as ardent SF fans, exploring what SF meant to them. Both novels of course also featured the SF writer Kilgore Trout, one of Vonnegut’s most memorable creations. The movie of Slaughterhouse-Five dropped the Trout character entirely, apart from the brief glimpse of Rosewater reading one of his books, missing the chance to portray SF and its writers and readers in any depth, as Vonnegut did in his novels.

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