Science Fiction Hub

 

The University of Liverpool's Science Fiction Collections is the largest catalogued collection of science fiction materials in Europe. It contains a collection of printed materials comprised of 35, 000 books and over 3000 periodical titles; and the archives of individuals and organisations key to the history of the genre, including Olaf Stapledon, John Wyndham, and Ellen Datlow. 

The bulk of the collection is made up of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection. The collection was founded in 1971 as the research library of the Science Fiction Foundation and was transferred to the University of Liverpool in 1993, where it joined science fiction archives held by the university.  

For more information about the collection please see our finding aids.

Below are some of the recent digital projects undertaken using the Science Fiction collections, including digitised material available on the Digital Heritage Lab.

Decolonising Science Fiction

A curated resource for students, researchers, and teachers who want to engage with and take part in the process of decolonising science fiction. It provides links to critical texts and anthologies held in the collections that either read science fiction through the lens of colonialism or explore science fiction voices from beyond or against colonial perspectives; and to resources for decolonising the curriculum and teaching with Science Fiction Collections.

Olaf Stapledon Collection

A selection of the archive of Olaf Stapledon, lecturer for the UoL Philosophy Department and key figure in science fiction, whose novels' philosophical depth and imaginative breadth signified an important stage in the development of the genre. The digital archive includes unpublished lecture notes, dustjackets of his novels, and some of his famous ‘time charts’ created to accompany his work.

Brian Aldiss Archive

The University of Liverpool holds a portion of the archival material of Brian Aldiss, a genre-defining science fiction author. The digital collection includes selections from the Liverpool material relating to Aldiss’s early life, including essays, puzzles, drawings, designs, and poems. 

How do you communicate with people whose language won’t share any human languages’ roots? Will aliens even share our range of sensory perceptions? How can we leave instructions to help them decode what we send them?

The probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA in 1977, to gather scientific information about the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. But both probes exceeded their expectations and have continued to transmit data from interstellar space, and will continue to do so until their power runs out in the 2030s. They are the only human-made objects to have left the solar system, and Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth.

Because their trajectory would take them out of the Solar System, the Voyager probes were both equipped with a Golden Record, which contain images and sounds representing the diversity of life on Earth, intended for any form of extraterrestrial life that may find them. The contents include greetings in various human languages, images and sounds of humans and nature, and music from various cultures. 

2027 will mark fifty years since the Voyager probes were launched. Inspired by the Voyager missions, this exhibition uses items housed in the University of Liverpool’s Science Fiction Collections to explore how science fiction has imagined the problems that could arise when trying to communicate with aliens, and how we might overcome them.

Brian Aldiss and the Natural World

Brian W. Aldiss (1925-2017) was a key figure in the history of science fiction. To celebrate the centenary of Aldiss's birth in 2025, 'Brian Aldiss and the Natural World' presents the author's fiction through the lens of ecology. Drawing on items from the Science Fiction Collections at the University of Liverpool, the exhibition traces Aldiss's ecological thinking in four sections each of which looks at a different era of the author's life and career.

 

Aldiss viewed science fiction to be at its core about the interaction of people and their environment, returning to this theme again and again in his fiction, and considering 'environmental fiction' to represent the best of the genre. In a time of impending climate catastrophe, Aldiss's work speaks to us of the bonds that tie us to the world around us and reminds us of the need to care for, protect, and maintain the environment, as much for our own survival as for the survival of the ecosystems that sustain us.