from its humble beginning to the
stuttering steps of the pulp era science
fiction had grown from an obscure
sub-genre into an emerging cultural
force now it's time for it to take
center stage fiction defines culture
culture defines fiction the cycle
continues forever the Golden Age began
in the fires of the Second World War it
assured in the Space Age and it came to
an end in a world which could no longer
deny that it staggered on the precipice
of nuclear annihilation different people
date the Golden Age of science fiction
differently some say it began in 1938
when Campbell took the helm of
astounding stories while others say it
didn't end until 1963 when Michael
Moorcock became the editor of New Worlds
but we're not going to worry about that
sort of rigid structure because we're
going to be far more concerned with an
ethos a worldview that tied all of the
Golden Age of science fiction together
because Golden Age science fiction came
out of an American understanding of the
world that was born in World War two
this vision came from a victorious
America that believed the American Way
had triumphed and had been proven
conclusively right in doing so it
highlighted some of the greatest
strengths of the American system while
at the same time falling prey to the
same blind spots that very system
creates it was filled with all of the
odd idiosyncrasies and contradictions in
the American psyche of the period it
showed a love for individual freedom and
military hierarchy of democracies ruled
by men of action who didn't listen to
what anyone said of bringing American
virtues to other civilizations Without
Really stopping to think if they'd asked
for it trade capitalism and the free
flow of Commerce will play a big part in
these stories it's here that we get the
romanticized space trader roguish out in
the unknown trying to turn a profit
a few parsecs past the reach of the law
it's here too that corporations and
corporate concerns start to creep into
science fiction from us robotics and
mechanical men to the amusingly wacky
magic Inc the Golden Age also brings
with it a truer focus on science
abandoning some of the slipshod science
writing of the pulp era it enshrined
science and engineering as the solution
to every problem
quick action technical know-how and
clever jerry-rigging almost always save
the day leaving little room for
well-rounded characters finding subtle
human answers to what confronts them the
Golden Age argued for a liberation from
the past for an escape from superstition
and religion to break the shackles of
tradition and truly walk free into the
era of rationality unfortunately many of
the Golden Age authors weren't cognizant
of what worldviews ideologies and biases
they carried with them so I'll give you
three guesses as to the gender of most
protagonists in these books
don't worry I'll wait you guessed it Zoe
they were male and while the men argue
loudly for personal freedom or total
liberation the non male characters tend
to exist only to support these men or
more tragically still as an object for
the liberated man to do with as he
pleases and then discard to demonstrate
that he's not bound by traditional
morality even the most rational women in
these novels are often shown overcome by
emotions or in hysterics in ways that
men are not though to give credit where
credit is due this is also the period
where we start to see women as engineers
and scientists rather than only wives
and mothers even if those roles are
often in service to the men but in the
history of sci-fi this was also the
period where sci-fi grew up new science
fiction magazines began hitting the
scene so the genre wasn't totally
dominated by astounding stories Worldcon
the first major science fiction
convention and where the Hugo awards are
chosen to this day was established the
idea of the fix-up taking a group of
already published short stories tying
them together with a narrative wrapper
and publishing them as a novel came into
being
this allowed far more people to get
access to short stories and fix ups like
iRobot or the Martian Chronicles
but perhaps the largest change was the
growing up itself Campbell's idea
centric sci-fi meant science fiction was
no longer just aimed at children and
teens rather it became a tool to explore
concepts and play with philosophy in a
way science fiction hadn't been since
the days of the forgotten foundations
this time though it was for a mass
audience and as part of this new idea
centric approach the Golden Age laid
down most of the fundamental concepts in
science fiction the ideas that still
dominate sci-fi today
semi-feudal interstellar empires future
histories which span not hundreds or
thousands of years but hundreds or
thousands of millennia robots working
around their programming temporal
paradoxes and the effects of vastly
extended human lifespans they were all
established as pillars of science
fiction in this period more than that
though the way we think about these
ideas in science fiction all the way up
to today was created and solidified by
those Golden Age authors even now many
of our new takes on these themes are
simply subversions of that Golden Age
thinking that is of course when we get
any new takes at all and many of these
ideas were first brought to us by the
three men that dominated the Golden Age
Isaac Asimov Robert Heinlein and arthur
c clarke their influence over modern
science fiction and their importance in
bringing science fiction into the modern
age cannot be overstated so for the next
several episodes we'll be looking at
these three men and their careers will
span the full scope of what they did
even when their work continued past
what's traditionally considered the
Golden Age so we can talk about them
holistically because these men defined
the Golden Age and the Golden Age
defined them we'll pick that up next
time
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