What Was Wrong with the Golden Age of Science Fiction?

Original Post: 28 May 2012
Posted Here: 4 December 2017

As I think I have pointed out before, I began reading science fiction when my maternal grandmother began to forward her well-read Astounding, Galaxy, Future, F&SF, and a few other SF magazines to me. The time was the 1950s and ‘60s. My grandmother and my days in college and graduate school were gone when I finally allowed my own magazine subscriptions to fade away. Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine hadn’t even been born.

Why did I stop reading SF? Because it had become the exact opposite of what I loved about science fiction. I had grown up in the heat of the Cold War. Civilization could have ended at any moment. But science fiction predicted that we would survive, spread beyond the moon and  solar system, and meet the other fascinating “people” of our galaxy. Sure, not everyone was optimistic about Man’s chances of avoiding nuclear war. And some were downright pessimistic about the results of trying to coexist with aliens. But most editors seemed to realize that new environments and new races were more fun than nuclear apocalypse. Eventually, though, the apocalyptics won out. The purpose of SF seemed to be to make us feel bad. And I stopped reading SF. If I want to feel bad, I don’t need fiction. I can read about what’s going on in the Middle East, in Huttig, AR, or at our local Animal Protection Society.

Retiring has given me the time to change what I read to something more hopeful. I can write science fiction that’s fun to read. Some of my colleagues at the Short Fiction Workshop at the University of Kansas last summer thought my stories were somewhat “retro”—they harked back to the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Unlike some of them, I’m not an SF scholar. I wasn’t sure what the “Golden Age” was. I guess they were referring to the days when almost all stories came from just a couple of guys, and editors had to create pseudonyms by the bushel. But those couple of guys really knew how to write fun stuff! (Sorry, but I told you I’m not an SF scholar—I don’t make notes about what, where and when I read interesting tidbits.)

Well, this week I finally got around to the February 2012 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. I read a very short story, Going Home, by Bruce McAllister & Barry Malzberg. Maybe it won’t win any awards—after all, good people didn’t have to die to provide tension and conflict. Besides that, it was a story with a message that most editors probably don’t want to hear (so, I’m not sure how it got published in the first place.) The message was an answer to my title question: Nothing is wrong with the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Someone needs to start writing and publishing those kinds of stories (hint, hint.)

Last summer, while I was in Lawrence for the Short Fiction Workshop, I attended the Campbell Conference. One of the speakers was Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s SF magazine. One of the most interesting things that she mentioned was that she received something like 600 (spell it out—six hundred!) submissions each month. I presume that similar statistics apply to other science fiction magazines. With that many writers, I can’t be the only retro/Golden Age voice out here. (Actually, Ken Liu’s The People of Pele, in the February Asimov’s, was pretty good.)

I hope that I’m not the only one that appreciated Going Home. Please, let us see more upbeat SF, stories that are fun to read, stories that help us look forward to a bright future for Mankind and our neighbors.

Keep reading/keep writing – Jack