The purpose of the Scifist blog is to create an extensive history of science fiction films in the form of reviews, or rather essays, in chronological order. Science fiction is here understood in its broadest possible pop cultural sense, including genres that may be excluded from the SF canon by other critics, such as space fantasy or futurism. I use IMDb’s lists of science fiction films as a starting point for my reviews, but try to pick up pictures that these lists omit along the way.

I strive to dig up as much as possible about the background and inspiration of the films, and sometimes use up quite some space for discussing a film’s literary inspiration. There are already a number of wonderful bloggers who have reviewed and researched most of the movies that I cover, and many more, I am thinking in particular of gentlemen like Glenn Erickson, Dave Sindelar and Richard Scheib. Going somewhat deeper than some of these do, giving more background information and analysis on the pictures is a way for me to carve out a niche of my own, rather than just adding another opinion to the pot. As a journalist I am also interested in the socio-political context of the films and try to give some sort of an analysis based on the era and country in which they were made, and who the filmmakers are.

Navigating
Hover over the Films by year button in the top menu to access a drop-down menu of decades (for example 1900-1909). If you click on these links, you will be taken to an overview page where I briefly summarise the decade in question from the point of view of science fiction films and the social, cultural and political background in which they were made. Hovering over these links in the menu will give you another sub-menu with individual years. Clicking on, for example, the year 1931, will give you a list of all films published in 1931 that I have reviewed.

I have tried to create a system of categories based on subgenres. Tags are used to help you find specific films based on people involved in their creation. These include directors, prominent sci-fi actors, crew and authors. I have also included popular book adaptations, films that have been remade several times and in some cases characters or franchises, for example Superman or Star Trek. In every review I have tagged cast & crew so that they show up as a link. If you click the link, you will get a clickable list of all science fiction films they have been involved in (or at least those that I have reviewed). At the bottom of the front page, there is a tag cloud where you can see the most used tags on the site, in other words: which are the most prolific science fiction actors and filmmakers in the world. There is also a text search window in the upper right corner that searches both the full texts and tags.

For my personal favourite science fiction films – and my list of worst movies, please head over to Editor’s Picks. I have also created a number of Top Lists.

What do I not review?
First of all, films I cannot find are naturally left out. Children’s films and and comedies that don’t really bring anything new to the table or don’t feature science fiction prominently are so I have taken the liberty to leave some of these out. Films in which an SF element is only used as a minor plot enhancer (subtle sci-fi), or merely as a gizmo MacGuffin, might get the axe as well. I will be reviewing the some of the major Anime and animated SF films, but it is a subgenre of its own that 1) there are far better experts on than me, and 2) is extremely prolific, and just too much for me to get into if I’ll ever have a chance to catch up with modern days on this blog.

I generally do not include series or serials, unless they have had a profound influence on science fiction films, in which case I try to watch the first season or parts of it, depending on the length. I also, as a general rule, don’t review TV or straight-to-video films, simply because my life is not long enough to get through all the movies id’ like to review, so I’m sticking to films that have had a theatrical release. I also don’t review short films made after the feature film became the industry standard, so I do not review short films made after around 1920.

Me, the creator and writer of the blog is Janne Wass, an award-winning Finnish journalist and culture geek. I work with political, current affairs and culture journalism as the editor of Ny Tid magazine in my day-time job, and the Scifist blog is a way for me to channel my love for and interest in science fiction into something substantial.

I hope you enjoy the reviews.