Saying science fiction in German

February 25, 2026

Students in "GERMAN 388: German Science Fiction and Fantasy" spent time last semester working on their German while looking at a very rare resource in the Special Collections Research Center.

The library holds one of only two known instances of the entire series of Terra Utopische Romane, a West German science fiction pulp magazine published from 1957-1968.

The magazine was acquired at the behest of Mary Rodena-Krasan, lecturer and undergraduate adviser in the German Department, who uses it in German Science Fiction to help spark discussion — in German, of course — about the role science fiction has played in the German imagination in the post-war period. This comes after the class spends time considering Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and other pre-war works in the genre.

The well preserved issues of the magazine are a kind of time capsule: their vivid covers clearly communicate some of the preoccupations of the time — weapons, space explorations, technology — even to a non-German speaker. Their insides, black ink on yellowing newsprint, include ads for cosmetic interventions (ear tape, body building) and other solutions to the problems plaguing West German science fiction readers in the 1950s and 60s.

In other words, there’s plenty for students to talk about, from these very recognizable advertising tropes to critical explorations of how science fiction as a genre can highlight social and political issues that are verboten in mainstream discourse in any language.