Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Legends of Science Fiction

In these highly-candid radio interviews, more than fifty legendary, larger-than-life personalities trade anecdotes about the Golden Age of science fiction. Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Frank Kelly Freas, and many more, depict the wild personalities, sparks of contention, and vivid imagination that made science fiction thrive.

“Amazing, astounding, fantastic.” –Jonathan Lethem

Today, depictions of aliens, rocket ships, and awe-inspiring, futuristic space operas are everywhere. Why is there so much science fiction, and where did it come from anyway? Radio producer and author Richard Wolinsky has found answers in the Golden Age of science fiction, between 1920 and 1960.

Wolinsky and his fellow writers and co-hosts Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, interviewed a veritable who’s who of famous (and infamous) science-fiction publishers, pulp magazines, editors, cover artists, and fans. The interviews themselves, which aired on the public radio, Probabilities, span over twenty years, from just before the release of Star Wars through the dawn of Y2K.

Probabilities was the home of a vivid cross-section of the early science fiction world, with radio guests offering a wide range of tales, opinions, theory, and gossip. It speaks to how, in the early days, they were free to define science fiction for themselves and push the genre to explore new ideas and new tropes in creative (and sometimes questionable) ways.

Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! is ultimately a love letter to fandom. Science fiction wouldn’t have survived as a genre if there weren’t devoted fanatics who wrote fanzines, organized conventions, and built relationships for fandom to flourish.