Formats

Formats of Science Fiction

Comics

Comics or comic books are usually lower quality softcover paper books. They're fairly cheap and tell their story in a sequence of drawn panels with text bubbles.

Pure SF found in comics focused on the hero, especially in the US. Post-war comics in NA were either superheroes or comedy. Japan's post-war comics and SF unsurprisingly had strong post-apocalyptic and mutated monster content.

My favourite SF comic/illustrated magazine in the 1970s was the French comic Métal Hurlant. The American version, which survives to this day, was called Heavy Metal. Note: it was and still is an adult publication. It presented serialized versions from well-know authors who would normally publish in the much more expensive graphic novel format. My favourite story from the magazine was The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius, the serialised form of The Airtight Garage by Mœbius (Jean Giraud).

Graphic novels can be thought of as high-end, hardcover comics. There more prevalent in Europe than North America although they've gained ground in the last few decades. They also tend to put forward a more thoughtful plot, though not always.

Manga is the Japanese version of comics and graphic novels.

 

Books

 

Science Fiction books are often collections of short stories, novellas and novels. There's a growing tendency in recent years to publish more series of novels, three books in a series seems popular. There's a good summary of the timeline of SF publishing here.

Digital content has become prevalent both in the production and distribution of literature and film. Science Fiction eBooks are available from various distributors such as Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo and others.

 

Screen

Early SF on TV was hard to come by and somewhat simplistic, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Blob come to mind. Today, SF on the screen has become extremely popular in the last 30 years or so. Much of it is the adaptation of comic heroes to movies e.g. the flood of superhero movie franchises. 

 

With the advent of streamed content, many new characters and new superheroes have made their appearance.

 

Animation has been around since the early 1900s and this has become an important format with many boxoffice and cult titles available.