Tech-Noir: The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir

Meehan, Paul.Tech-Noir: The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.

Students and fans of SF film will hear "Tech-Noir" as an allusion to Tech Noir, the Los Angeles club in THE TERMINATOR.[1] There is also a song by Gunship.[2]

Reviewed by Mark Decker, SFRA Review #289 (Summer 2009): pp. 25-26.[3] In Decker's judgment, Meehan

amasses so many examples of these entertaining hybrids that a fair-minded reader cannot finish this book without being convinced that films like Blade Runner and the Matrix trilogy represent recent iterations of a filmic subgenre that combines noir’s surreal depiction of crime and human depravity in the metropolis with such SF staples as mad scientists, aliens, and deranged robots. [...]

[... Tech-Noir] makes a convincing argument that science fiction and film noir have been deftly blended in films ranging from Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler and the 1927 film Metropolis through scores of films like 1936’s The Walking Dead, 1957’s Not of This Earth, 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1965’s Alphaville, 1972’s Solaris, 1981’s Blade Runner, 1997’s Gattaca, and 2006’s A Scanner Darkly. (Decker p. 24)

RDE, finishing, 22Feb21