Here’s an interesting contrarian take on the history of SF: that the “Golden Age” of Campbellian SF was actually the end of the true Golden Age … the era of the pulps:
Here’s the Great Myth of the Golden Age of Science Fiction:
“Science Fiction sucked until the coming of John W. Campbell and the Big Three — Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Together they swept away the puerile garbage of the Pulps and brought about Science Fiction’s Golden Age.”
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter tosh. Bunk. Hokum.
It’s horseshit.
The coming of Campbell and co. did not save or elevate the Fantasy and Science Fiction genre. Before them, it was already popular and widely read. In addition to the Pulps, there were novels, radio serials, and (eventually) cinema serials.
Nor was F&SF at that time a literary ghetto, a genre thought fit only for teenage boys and pencil-necked geeks. Men and women, adults and children — all read the Pulps. Some F&SF magazines were aimed solely at the adult audience.
It took the twin assaults of Campbell and the Socialist-Libertine wing of the Futurians to turn the mainstream off of SF. And, despite periodic attempts to revive SF, it remains a ghetto today.
I find this extremely unlikely, based on my own experience of reading sf in the 1960s. As a teenager reading what was available, the sf of the pulp era had no appeal. If there was a pulp Golden Age, what were its products and why did people not seek out this great pre-Campbell stuff?
Comment by Steve.muhlberger — February 15, 2017 @ 07:30
I did label it “contrarian”, and for the most part I agree with you. I started reading SF in the early 1970s, but found the earlier “Golden Age” Campbell-era stuff to be much more to my taste than the “New Wave” of that time. I’ve read some books from the pulp era, but the tendency to purple prose makes it a much harder slog for a modern reader.
Comment by Nicholas — February 15, 2017 @ 09:54