John Wade grew up in the 1950s, a decade that has since been dubbed the
'golden age of science fiction'. It was a wonderful decade for science
fiction, but not so great for young fans. With early television
broadcasts being advertised for the first time as 'unsuitable for
children' and the inescapable barrier of the 'X' certificate in the
cinema barring anyone under the age of sixteen, the author had only the
radio to fall back on - and that turned out to be more fertile for the
budding SF fan than might otherwise have been thought. Which is probably
why, as he grew older, rediscovering those old TV broadcasts and films
that had been out of bounds when he was a kid took on a lure that soon
became an obsession.
For him, the super-accuracy and amazing technical quality of today's
science fiction films pale into insignificance beside the radio, early
TV and B-picture films about people who built rockets in their back
gardens and flew them to lost planets, or tales of aliens who wanted to
take over, if not our entire world, then at least our bodies. This book
is a personal account of John Wade's fascination with the genre across
all the entertainment media in which it appeared - the sort of stuff he
reveled in as a young boy - and still enjoys today.