A transitional 1950s novel of colonisation I'm somewhat sympathetic to Robert Silverberg's suggestion that the 1950s were the real "golden age of science fiction". In any case, that decade is notable for its fascinatingly transitional works, as SF shifted from the sometimes naive adventurism of the 1930s and 1940s, towards the more contemplative uncertainties of the 1960s and 1970s. Originally published in 1953, West of the Sun is a good example of this transition. The debut SF novel by Edga...
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A transitional 1950s novel of colonisation I'm somewhat sympathetic to Robert Silverberg's suggestion that the 1950s were the real "golden age of science fiction". In any case, that decade is notable for its fascinatingly transitional works, as SF shifted from the sometimes naive adventurism of the 1930s and 1940s, towards the more contemplative uncertainties of the 1960s and 1970s. Originally published in 1953, West of the Sun is a good example of this transition. The debut SF novel by Edga...
#167 The thing itself: science fiction and its aesthetic
Classic SF with Andy Johnson
9 minutes
3 months ago
#167 The thing itself: science fiction and its aesthetic
Science fiction is famously difficult to define. In 1952, the writer and editor Damon Knight famously wrote that "science fiction is what we point to when we say it." But what if what we point to is just the surface, just an aesthetic, and what really matters is what is underneath? This episode is a brief exploration of what I see as the important gap between two linked, but different things: the living, breathing genre of SF, and the host of images that it has spawned and carried with it thr...
Classic SF with Andy Johnson
A transitional 1950s novel of colonisation I'm somewhat sympathetic to Robert Silverberg's suggestion that the 1950s were the real "golden age of science fiction". In any case, that decade is notable for its fascinatingly transitional works, as SF shifted from the sometimes naive adventurism of the 1930s and 1940s, towards the more contemplative uncertainties of the 1960s and 1970s. Originally published in 1953, West of the Sun is a good example of this transition. The debut SF novel by Edga...
