Noted author and researcher Mark Voger is back once again with another deep dive into nostalgia, this time focusing on 1950s and 1960’s sci-fi in Futuristic: Rockets, Robots and Rayguns of Space Age Pop Culture.
Futuristic (currently available at your local comic shop and bookstore or directly from TwoMorrows Publishing) is another exhaustive look at pop culture by Voger, with enough features and images to launch the book into space without the benefit of a warp drive.
We got a chance to speak to Voger all about Futuristic and also got a preview of his second dive into monster culture in the upcoming Son of Monster Mash (due next year) in this exclusive interview with the author.
You’ve put together many examinations of pop culture through many different lenses. Why did you think it was time to tackle 1950s and 1960s sci-fi culture?
Mark Voger: Thanks for your interest, Nick. I can’t pretend that I had a “viola!” moment that this was the perfect time. But when you think about it, it kind of is. All of George Orwell’s 1984 came true — the incessant surveillance, the rewriting of history, the suppression of free speech. And a lot of The Jetsons has come true. Just not the flying cars.
How did you decide to organize your examination of sci-fi pop culture in Futuristic and why did you do so?
Voger: After my 2015 book Monster Mash, which is about Fifties-Sixties monster culture, a friend suggested I do a sci-fi book next. But I thought the topic was too big and serious for me; I’m more of a Lost in Space guy. Then early last year, when my publisher John Morrow suggested a Space Age book, a bell went off. I realized I could be as goofy as I wanted to be, and focus on Fireball XL5 and Tang and Dr. Smith and pop songs about Sputnik. It was freeing, because I’m writing about an era, more so than a genre. But it soon dawned on me that all of the geopolitical stuff — the A bomb, the Cold War, the Space Race — would have to be dealt with in a sober, significant way. So before I got into the fun stuff, I did a section where I cover all of the realities that led to it. Then I was home free to just write about pop culture — TV, toys, comics, movies and, of course, Tang.
The pictures and illustrations in Futuristic are prolific. How did you assemble such a treasure trove of images, especially when many might have been lost to time?
Voger: I design the books as well. I try to give them a look, a flow. As a graphic artist for print, I go back to the caveman days, when we put pages together with knives and wax, literally. I rolled with every change in technology, sometimes reluctantly, so I have lots of tricks. My late wife, the photographer Kathy Voglesong, took many of the photos you see of cast members from The Thing From Another World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Isaac Asimov, and others. A lot of the scans are from my print collection — comics and magazines and books. I’m a Photoshop guy. I might find a small, degraded image online, enlarge it, clean it up, print it out, and re-ink it on my light table. Then I’ll scan that in, perfect it and/or colorize it. The Rocketman silhouette on page 117 was inked and colored by me.
Which section of the book brings back the most personal memories for you?
Voger: The most personal is always the introduction, in which I talk about my own introduction to whatever trend I’m writing about. Because in life, the first time you see something — be it a monster or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or Santa Claus — it can be confusing and even scary. In Futuristic, that moment came when, at age 4, I unexpectedly saw the moon face get a rocket ship in his eye in Georges Melies’ 1902 silent short A Trip to the Moon. Goop came out of the eye! I was 4. It freaked me out. Still does.
Sci-fi television and films were prevalent in both decades. Is there a hidden gem(s) that modern readers may have forgotten or never explored before that you reference in Futuristic?
Voger: To the kids of today, I would recommend four movies: Metropolis (1927), Fritz Lang’s silent German masterpiece; The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), with Michael Rennie as an alien who comes to Earth with a warning; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), an engrossing Cold War allegory; and, as a palette cleanser, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Ed Wood’s totally bananas cheapie that uses toys for flying saucers. In the realm of TV, I’d tend toward The Outer Limits (1963-65), a brilliant black-and-white anthology that still challenges viewers, and The Invaders (1967-68), sci-fi noir that gets under your skin.
Sci-fi comics also explode in popularity in this era. How would you compare DC and Marvel’s Silver Age sci-fi comics in terms of the stories they were telling and the approach that both took?
Voger: Both publishers were generally doing straight-up anthologies, three stories per book. DC’s one-off stories sometimes felt like science lessons from (DC editor) Julie Schwartz. DC veered into “space opera” series with regularly appearing heroes like Adam Strange and Captain Comet, while Marvel became heavily invested in giant monsters like Fin Fang Foom. Of course, after both publishers made the irreversible pivot to superheroes, sci-fi was never far behind. Martian Manhunter was a green guy from Mars; Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider; Iron Man wore a hopped-up robo-suit. Probably the best sci-fi stuff came from EC, but that was killed in the crossfire of the 1954 Senate hearings. Undeservingly, EC’s intelligent, well-illustrated sci-fi got cancelled along with the gory horror stuff.
How did the sci-fi pop culture of the 1970s differ from the previous two decades?
Voger: The Seventies came in with a bang with a lot of cool, bleak dystopian movies. Right off the bat, you had Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). These were part of a trend begun in the late Sixties with movies like Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey (both 1968). All of those movies have aged well, I believe. But once Star Wars came along in ’77, everything was all space operas and box-office-focused. I have to admit, Nick, that I only saw the first Star Wars one time, 48 years ago when it came out. I went to see Peter Cushing, who I love, who played Dr. Frankenstein in Hammer’s Frankenstein movies. But I felt Cushing had a thin role in Star Wars. I can’t remember if he even had a closeup.
Many fans enjoyed your Monster Mash book and you have Son of Monster Mash coming out in 2026. What was there left to explore about monster culture in the upcoming book?
Voger: Oh, tons. It’s definitely a sequel, a companion book. It brings you back to that same time period, roughly from 1957 to 1972. But I take a deeper dive into the history of the horror movie going back to the silents through the Golden Age of monsters, the Thirties and Forties. I examine Roger Corman’s Poe cycle of films starring Vincent Price, and Hammer’s British horrors with Christopher Lee and Cushing. I’ve interviewed movie monsters like Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning, who both played the Creature; Gary Conway, the Teenage Frankenstein; David Hedison, the Fly; and Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla. You’ll see characters and themes from the original Monster Mash like the Addamses and the Munsters and Barnabas Collins and the Zanti Misfits. But I promised myself there would be no redundant reporting, and no redundant images — except for the cover boy in a different color scheme.
Other projects that you are working on?
Voger: Thanks again for having me, Nick. This has been a blast. I’m just finishing up Son of and furiously writing for RetroFan and Cryptology (magazines), and doing the odd Sketch Card commission. Way back in 1993, I drew the first pack-inserted Sketch Cards — another story for another time — so I sometimes hear from fanatical Sketch Card collectors, bless them. My old band has been threatening to play some shows, which would be our first since 2007. We’d better hurry.
Futuristic: Rockets, Robots and Rayguns of Space Age Pop Culture is currently available at your local comic shop, bookstore, or directly from the TwoMorrows Publishing website.
