Pittsburgh: Science Fiction Encounters

Science fiction has always been a staple of Geek Culture, from the early writings of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to modern day films and television shows. Pittsburgh has been featured in many of those narratives, beginning with the original Buck Rogers and the 25th Century comic strip in 1929. Numerous TV shows – including Quantum Leap and The X-Files – have likewise used the region as a setting for various episodes, while novels Hemlock Grove and Tomorrow and Tomorrow take place in the Steel City as well.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

The popular science fiction comic strip was first published in 1929 with the title character trapped in a coal mine outside Pittsburgh, stuck in a state of suspended animation for 500 years.

Cities in Flight, Pittsburgh on Mars

Although primarily focusing on New York, the Steel City is mentioned nonetheless within the science fiction omnibus of James Blish, who was honored in Pittsburgh at the 1960 Worldcon.

Enterprise: The Day a Vulcan Came to Pittsburgh

The television series Star Trek: Enterprise suggests that Vulcans crash-landed in Western Pennsylvania during the 1950s and briefly lived among humans, as well as visited Pittsburgh.

Hemlock Grove: A Novel

Exploration of the debut novel by Steel City native Brian McGreevy, which spins classic horror narratives into a modern murder mystery involving a small town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.

The Final Quantum Leap

In the series finale of the classic time-traveling television drama, Sam Beckett ends up in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania, in 1953, where he meets a bartender who is more than he seems.

The Lost Room

The 2006 SciFi Channel miniseries was created by three Carnegie Mellon University graduates who put a Pittsburgh-spin on the story of a mysterious motel room and its supernatural objects.

The Mercury Men

The Pittsburgh-based web series is a homage to classic science fiction of the 1950s featuring an unlikely duo tasked with stopping invaders from the planet Mercury intent on destroying Earth.

The X-Files and the Steel City

FBI Agents Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and John Doggett made a small handful of visits to the Pittsburgh region during their X-Files investigations into the supernatural and paranormal.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Steel City native Thomas Sweterlitsch’s novel is a sci-fi murder mystery in which Pittsburgh has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb but still exists as a virtual reality known as the Archive.

Warehouse 13 and Joshua’s Trumpet

Federal Agents Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering visited Pittsburgh during the sci-fi television drama’s third season to recover a lost artifact responsible for numerous deaths in the Steel City.