Film posters science fiction

With its unique ability to bring our wildest fantasies to life, the cinema has done more than any other medium to popularize the science fiction genre throughout the world. From Metropolis to Godzilla and from Invaders From Mars to Star Wars, science fiction movies have peopled our universe, and others, with some of the studios' coolest creations - including a vast range of aliens, robots, bug-eyed monsters and spaceships.

Considering the visual richness of the subject matter, it is no wonder that successive generations of the most talented illustrators, painters, art directors and designers, all with imagination to spare, have signed on to produce posters for science fiction films. Their creations not only provide us with a record of how they and their contemporaries saw the future, they also serve as a visual running commentary on all that has happened in graphic design since Lumière invented motion pictures.

The images in this book, representing the crème de la crème of science fiction posters from artists in different countries and cultures, show what has been luring audiences into the cinema from 1902 to the present day.