Forbidden Planet: 2025 Village Awardee and a Living Archive of Imagined Futures

Village Preservation is proud to honor Forbidden Planet as a 2025 Village Awardee! Join us in recognizing Forbidden Planet and the five other remarkable awardees at Village Preservation’s Annual Meeting and Village Awards on Wednesday, June 11th, at the historic Great Hall at Cooper Union. Registration is free and open to all. Click here to register.

At 832 Broadway, just a stone’s throw from the iconic Strand Bookstore, stands one of New York’s most beloved—and enduring—temples to science fiction, fantasy, and pop culture: Forbidden Planet. For decades, this comic book and collectibles megastore has been a beacon to fans of all things otherworldly. Its survival in a rapidly changing city, where many similar establishments have shuttered, is nothing short of remarkable. But the story of Forbidden Planet is also the story of New York’s sci-fi and fantasy subculture—much of which has long thrived in and around the artistic and countercultural heart of the Village.

The original Forbidden Planet was founded in London in 1977, named after the 1956 cult classic science fiction film starring Leslie Nielsen. The New York outpost opened a few years later, quickly establishing itself as a mecca for comic book lovers, collectors, and fantasy aficionados. Read more about Forbidden Planet’s genesis, the roots of its success, and an interview with its longtime manager, Jeff Ayers, here.

Forbidden Planet’s location is no accident. Just a short walk from Union Square and Washington Square Park, the store occupies a cultural crossroads that has long served as the nexus of alternative culture, activism, bohemianism, and experimental art. Its proximity to the Village helped it tap into a natural audience—students, writers, punk rockers, gamers, queer creatives, and fans of underground cinema—many of whom have helped shape New York’s cultural landscape over the last half-century.

Greenwich Village has always been a place where the strange and speculative are welcomed with open arms. In the mid-20th century, it was home to beat poets who explored dystopian futures, radical feminist science fiction writers, and early adopters of fantasy role-playing games. Bookstores like the short-lived Eighth Street Bookshop and science fiction clubs that met at local cafes helped nurture a community hungry for imagined worlds.

Judith Merril, famed writer, one-time Greenwich Village resident, and former member of the science fiction club the Futurians – whose members included the likes of Isaac Asimov and James Blish – helped host one of the first meetings of a new science fiction club, the Hydra Club, with her partner and fellow sci-fi writer Frederik Pohl at their apartment on Grove Street in the late 1940s. From the 19th century onward, our neighborhoods have been home to and an influence on the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, who would each have a lasting and profound impact on the genres of science fiction and horror. Forbidden Planet inherited this legacy and became a natural hub for the next generations of fans.

What sets Forbidden Planet apart is its commitment to celebrating both the commercial and the countercultural aspects of sci-fi and fantasy. Forbidden Planet keeps space for zines, queer creators, underground comics, and the kinds of out there genre experiments that wouldn’t survive at a chain store.

It is also one of the few places in Manhattan where fans from multiple generations and subcultures still gather. Where else might you overhear a conversation between a retired science fiction writer, a teenager dressed in full cosplay, and a first-year NYU student discovering Dune for the first time?

As a bridge between mainstream pop culture and Greenwich Village’s history of fringe creativity, Forbidden Planet is more than a retail space—it is a cultural archive and a communal hearth. In a time when much of the city’s idiosyncratic character is being pushed to the margins, Forbidden Planet remains defiantly weird, welcoming, and wonderfully alive.

Join us on June 11 at Cooper Union to celebrate the continuing cultural oasis that Forbidden Planet offers generations of geeks, sci-fi aficionados, and future writers and artists. Learn more about and register to attend the Village Awards here.