Science Fiction—Its Rise to Popularity
THE year 1982 saw a first for the American movie industry. During the 1982/83 season, the most popular film “performer” was not a person at all. According to The Illustrated History of the Cinema, it was ET, the grotesque but somehow cute character from outer space that starred in the film ET: The Extraterrestrial!
This remarkable circumstance is just one evidence of the overwhelming popularity science fiction (SF) has enjoyed in recent years. Once relegated to pulp magazines and considered the fare of loners and dreamers, science fiction has become an established part of mainstream entertainment. But what is behind its dramatic rise in popularity?
To answer this question, we must first consider the history of science fiction. From time immemorial men have told fantastic tales in order to awe, impress, or simply entertain. However, during the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe entered an era of scientific and material progress. Many began to challenge traditional ideas and authorities. In this atmosphere some began to speculate on how scientific progress would affect mankind in the future.
Exactly who invented science fiction is a matter of debate. Seventeenth-century authors Francis Godwin and Cyrano de Bergerac wrote fictional works that involved space travel. In 1818, Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus portrayed a scientist with the ability to create life and depicted the horrific consequences.
Some writers used this kind of fiction to highlight the shortcomings of human society. So when Jonathan Swift derided 18th-century English society, he wove his satire into a series of fictitious voyages. The result was Gulliver’s Travels, a biting allegory that has been called science fiction’s “first literary masterpiece.”
But writers Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are usually credited with putting the science-fiction novel into its modern form. In 1865, Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon—one of a string of successful novels. In 1895, H. G. Wells’ popular book The Time Machine appeared.
Fiction Becomes Reality
By the early 1900’s, scientists were beginning to make some of these visionaries’ dreams come true. According to the book Die Großen (The Great Ones), German physicist Hermann Oberth spent years trying to make Jules Verne’s dream of manned spaceflight a reality. Oberth’s calculations helped lay a scientific basis for space travel. However, he was not the only scientist influenced by science fiction. Says popular science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury: “Wernher von Braun and his colleagues in Germany and everyone in Houston and Cape Kennedy read H. G. Wells and Jules Verne when they were children. They decided that when they grew up, they would make it all come true.”
Actually, science fiction has been the springboard for innovation in many areas. Author René Oth claims there have been few “inventions or discoveries that science fiction did not predict in advance.” Submarines, robots, and manned rockets were all the staples of science fiction long before they became realities. Science-fiction writer Frederik Pohl thus maintains that “to read science fiction is to stretch the mind.”
Of course, not all science fiction is really about science. Some of the most popular science-fiction books and films are actually forms of what some call science fantasy. Scientific plausibility is often the hallmark of science fiction, whereas fantasy stories are limited only by the imagination of their author. Magic and sorcery may even play a role.
How accurate, though, are science fiction’s views of the future? Is all science fiction worthwhile for reading or viewing? The following articles will address these questions.
[Picture on page 3]
Jules Verne’s novel “From the Earth to the Moon” did much to spark interest in space travel
[Picture Credit Line on page 3]
Rocket Ship: General Research Division/The New York Public Library/Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations