Science Fiction

B

The Science-Fiction Movement

From the beginning science fiction attracted young boys with scientific interests. Some of these young fans grew up to change the world. Famous scientists such as rocketry expert Wernher Von Braun, astronomer Carl Sagan, and astrophysicist Freeman Dyson all began as science-fiction readers. Gernsback encouraged new young writers, and he formed fan clubs for his magazines among the readership. Young boys all over North America, and later in Britain and elsewhere, formed science-fiction clubs in the 1930s. They began to correspond with one another and to circulate amateur magazines, known as fanzines. One such fanzine led to the creation of the comic-strip character Superman, just as an Amazing story, “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” by Philip F. Nowlan, was the source of the popular movie and cartoon character Buck Rogers. In this way science fiction became more than a literary genre; it turned into a movement. Fans were encouraged to develop their interests and become scientists and engineers. They also were encouraged to write, imagine, and create.

V

Modern Science Fiction

Despite its popularity, science fiction remained primarily a magazine genre until the 1960s. The fiction published from 1926 to 1962 is often called modern science fiction, and almost all the novels published as science fiction during this period appeared first as magazine serials or were revised from magazine stories. By the end of the 1930s there were more than 20 science-fiction magazines in Britain and America.

After the founding of Amazing Stories in 1926, the next stage in the literary evolution of American science fiction began in 1937. That year, John Wood Campbell, Jr., became editor of Astounding Stories, and under his direction the magazine began to feature a new type of science fiction. As an author, especially when writing under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart, Campbell had already added mood and characterization to the technical and prophetic aspects of the genre. As an editor Campbell encouraged other writers to produce work of literary merit and fostered what has since been called the golden age of science fiction (1939-1949). Campbell’s magazine introduced many soon-to-be famous science-fiction writers, including L. Sprague De Camp, Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, L. Ron Hubbard, Fritz Leiber, A. E. Van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. Heinlein and Clarke went on to become two of the most popular and recognized writers in the history of the genre. Other major writers that began publishing during the golden age included Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.

A

Post-World War II

The greater urgencies of World War II not only ended the development of science fiction in Europe, but they also created a paper shortage in Britain and America that closed down many magazines. After the war science-fiction magazines came back strongly in the United States, however, with a new generation of editors. By the early 1950s as many as 40 titles were being published. Science fiction also began to be published in the new mass-market paperback form and in hardcover, first from small presses devoted to science fiction and then by major publishers.

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The new magazines included Fantasy and Science Fiction, founded in 1949 by American authors and editors Anthony Boucher and Jesse Francis McComas, and Galaxy Science Fiction, founded in 1950 by American author and editor Horace Leonard Gold. In these leading magazines the emphasis shifted more toward literary, psychological, and sociological preoccupations, with some loss of scientific content. This era (1950-1962) is now often referred to as the silver age of science fiction.

B

The 1950s

Beginning in the 1950s a new concern for humanist values and literary technique emerged in science fiction. This was evident in the magazine reviews of editors Damon Knight and James Blish. It was also present in the stories of Theodore Sturgeon and in the literary pyrotechnics of the work of Alfred Bester. This concern could also be detected in Judith Merril’s annual anthology, Year’s Best Science Fiction (beginning in 1956), and it rose from the growing influence of writers’ workshops held in Milford, Pennsylvania—the home of Knight, Blish, and Merril—at the annual Milford Science-Fiction Conference.

Science fiction also flourished in other parts of the world, most notably in eastern Europe and Russia, where a strong science-fiction tradition developed. Polish writer Stanislaw Lem used science-fiction settings to explore both scientific and philosophical concerns. His books include Solaris (1961; translated 1970) and Dzienniki gwiazdowe (1957; translated as two books: The Star Diaries, 1976, and Memoirs of a Space Traveler, 1982). In Russia important science-fiction writers included Ivan Efremov, author of the utopian Tumannost' Andromedy (Andromeda Nebula, 1956), and brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who began their prolific publishing career in the 1950s.

VI

Contemporary Science Fiction

A

The 1960s

In the United Kingdom a movement known as the new wave entered science fiction primarily through the British magazine New Worlds, when Michael Moorcock became editor in 1964. This movement was committed to introducing the literary styles and attitudes of modernist literature into science fiction. Moorcock broke with science-fiction tradition, declaring all earlier science fiction to be obsolete. British science-fiction writers Brian Aldiss and James Graham Ballard were the new models. Their writings often focused on the near future, and they preferred to call what they wrote “speculative fiction.” In the United States a great deal of new wave science fiction was published in anthologies of original work—in particular Knight’s Orbit series (1966-1980) and Harlan Ellison's anthologies, beginning with Dangerous Visions (1967).

Many top science-fiction authors first became prominent in the 1960s, including Walter M. Miller (A Canticle for Liebowitz, 1960), Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle, 1962), Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969), Samuel R. Delany (Dhalgren, 1975), and Roger Zelazny (Lord of Light, 1967). Perhaps the most famous of all was Frank Herbert, whose Dune chronicles include Dune (1965), Children of Dune (1976), and God Emperor of Dune (1981).