The influential classic of enhanced intelligence with a breakneck pace An early novel by Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954) is also a landmark science fiction story on the topic of intelligence enhancement. Unlike in the later Flowers for Algernon (1966) - see episode 148 - an explosive rise of brainpower is not the work of human scientists. Instead, the whole world gets a huge intelligence boost, as the Earth exits a vast cosmic field which for millions of years had inhibited "c...
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The influential classic of enhanced intelligence with a breakneck pace An early novel by Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954) is also a landmark science fiction story on the topic of intelligence enhancement. Unlike in the later Flowers for Algernon (1966) - see episode 148 - an explosive rise of brainpower is not the work of human scientists. Instead, the whole world gets a huge intelligence boost, as the Earth exits a vast cosmic field which for millions of years had inhibited "c...
#178 The new Argonauts: West of the Sun (1953) by Edgar Pangborn
Classic SF with Andy Johnson
9 minutes
1 month ago
#178 The new Argonauts: West of the Sun (1953) by Edgar Pangborn
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...
Classic SF with Andy Johnson
The influential classic of enhanced intelligence with a breakneck pace An early novel by Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954) is also a landmark science fiction story on the topic of intelligence enhancement. Unlike in the later Flowers for Algernon (1966) - see episode 148 - an explosive rise of brainpower is not the work of human scientists. Instead, the whole world gets a huge intelligence boost, as the Earth exits a vast cosmic field which for millions of years had inhibited "c...