The Rise of Science Fiction

“Science fiction is the major non-realistic mode of imaginative creation of the human epoch. It is the principal cultural way humans locate themselves imaginatively in time and space” (Franklin 2). Science fiction’s domain is based on the possible. It ranges from the present Earth the human mind knows to the limits of any possible universes the human imagination can project, whether its the past, present, future, or alternative time-space continuums (Franklin 1). Science fiction embraces the American ideology of technological utopianism like beliefs that technological advances will improve human and social cultural relations fiercely and imagines alternative worlds where current developments are pushed to logical extremes like social, political, scientific, technological, and cultural developments. “Social reformers who wrote utopian fictions about future societies, often saw improvements in communication as vitally linked to the restructuring of the social order” (Jenkins 1). It offered sarcastic perspectives on the rise of television and advertising (Jenkins 2), but also suggests illogical and counterfactual possibilities and throws of flashes of potential futures that readers are not likely to face (Ghiglione 1). There was pulp adventure of “space opera, more rigorous “speculative fiction”, and “social science fiction” that developed a self-aware identity that attracted young fans and gained new levels of imaginative and stylistic sophistication (Wolfe, Introduction 1). “Science fiction has been linked to the increasingly visible role of communications media in our nation culture” (Jenkins 1). Science fiction became a popular subject to write about in the 1950s because of the advancement of technology, there was a greater expre...

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...inant ‘50s writers for the fundamental body of ideas and technique with which they work today” (Silverberg 3). The 1950s science fiction became the codex of the future (Wolfe, Golden 1), where there was more diversity and ambition than in the ‘40s. Numerous outpouring of stories had been published quickly because of the considerable achievement of Campbell’s golden age. “New magazines like Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were more amenable to literary or satirical forms of science fiction than Campbell had been” (Wolfe, Why 1). Author of Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card says, “We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we’ll already know how to live in that universe.” Science fiction has become so popular because it enables the mind to expand and think of new concepts that predicts the lives of humans in the future as time goes on.