Episode: 4260
Title: HPR4260: The Golden Age
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4260/hpr4260.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:09:47

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,260 for Friday the 29th of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled The Golden Age.
It is part of the series science fiction and fantasy.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 16 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a look at the early history of science fiction.
Hello, this is Ahukah, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
this time in our new series on science fiction and fantasy.
And what I want to talk about today is something that we refer to as the golden age of science
fiction, but I want to lead up to that with a little bit of history as well.
Now where does science fiction come from?
I have seen people argue that you can go as far back as the Samurian story of Gilgamesh
and Enkidu, though I would argue that mythology should more properly be considered fantasy.
Then Lucian of Samusota, the Samusata, sorry, that pronounced properly, whose dates are
rather estimated, probably born somewhere around 125 AD and died sometime after 180 AD.
But he wrote a book that is often called the first science fiction novel called A True
Story, though in many ways it is more a satire on people who tell tall tales.
It does include outer space aliens and interplanetary warfare.
But generally recognized as the first science fiction story is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
This is of course the story about a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who creates a living
and intelligent person by rather unorthodox means.
And of course this person is not named Frankenstein at all, he is simply the creature.
But it is an interesting story that does not bear much resemblance to the movies that
were made.
Then came two writers who, more than anyone made science fiction, a recognized genre of
literature.
The first of these Jules Verne, 1828 to 1905, was a French author of seminal works such
as Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864, 20,000 leagues under the sea, 1870, and around
the world in 80 days, 1872.
His novels were set in the time they were written and used technology that either existed
or could be reasonably extrapolated, making them true science fiction in a way that Frankenstein
arguably was not.
Now the other early master was H. G. Wells, 1866 to 1946, who wrote a number of science
fiction novels, including The Time Machine, 1895, The Island of Dr. Moro, 1896, The Invisible
Man, 1897, and The War of the Worlds, in 1898.
Now Wells was more of a futurist, so unlike Verne, who set all of his stories in sort
of the time they were written, he set his more in a future.
The other thing about Wells was he was a committed socialist that shows up in his works.
And in America there was a fellow named Edward Bellamy, who wrote a very influential novel
called Looking Backward, which was one of the largest silly novels published in America
at that time, and also reflected a strong socialist philosophy.
Now we come to Hugo Gernsback and the Pulps.
As the 19th century turned into the 20th century, and inventors like Edison, Tesla, and
Marconi were creating a new world, it should not be surprising that many people were inspired
to write about the possibilities of science and technology, and how they might change
the world.
One of the first was Hugo Gernsback, 1884 to 1967.
He was initially attracted to radio.
He founded a radio station, WRNY, in New York.
He also created the magazine Modern Electrics in 1908, the electrical experimenter in 1913,
and radio news in 1919.
These were primarily science and technology publications, but he began to include stories,
supporting one of his own, called Ralph 124c41.
Now this was spelled out, number 1, number 2, number 4, capital C, number 4, number 1.
But when you say it, 1 to 4c41, you see it's a clever title.
Then in 1926, he started the first science fiction magazine called Amazing Stories.
This magazine was followed by others, and they are collectively referred to as pulps due
to the low quality of the paper.
And the pulps were not just science fiction.
There were also western and detective pulp magazines.
What they had in common is if they were cheap to produce and could therefore be sold cheaply,
and the low rates paid to writers, also made them cheap in every sense of the word.
Now Hugo Gernsbach was certainly one to employ sharp business practices.
But because of his pivotal role, the annual awards voted on by fans are to this day called
the Hugo Awards.
And that gets us to the golden age, and that starts with a fellow named John W. Campbell,
1910 to 1971.
Now he was initially a writer of science fiction.
For instance, his novella Who Goes There, which he wrote in 1938, has been adapted for
film three times under the name The Thing.
And chances are many of the people listening to this have seen that movie The Thing, and
never knew exactly where it came from, but it was John W. Campbell.
But his real significance derives from his role as editor of astounding science fiction.
That was later renamed to analog science fiction, in fact, and that was founded in 1937.
During his time at the helm, and in particular during the first decade of his editorship,
he nurtured many of the best known writers of the time, so that this first decade is referred
to as the golden age, and we'll call it roughly 1939 to 1950.
Now his finds included authors like Lester Del Rey, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon,
Robert A. Heinlein, and A.E. Van Vot.
When he became editor, he basically stopped his own writing and favor of developing other
authors.
This is not a bad thing.
I've read a number of his novels that is fair to say they do not measure up to the
work of the above authors he helped to develop.
As an example in one novel, he has aliens arrive who come from the star Sirius, and Sirius
is sometimes called the dog star, so of course his aliens are distinctly canine in appearance.
You simply cannot imagine authors like Heinlein or Asimov doing anything of the sort.
Other writers he helped to develop included Elron Hubbard, Clifford Simack, Jack Williamson,
and El Sprague the Camp.
Isaac Asimov had this to say about Campbell.
By his own example and by his instruction and by his undeviating and persisting insistence,
he first forced astounding and then all science fiction into his mold.
He abandoned the earlier orientation of the field.
He demolished the stock characters who had filled it, eradicated the penny dreadful plots,
extirpated the Sunday supplement science.
In a phrase, he blotted out the purple of the pulp.
Instead he demanded that science fiction writers understand science and understand people,
a hard requirement that many of the established writers of the 1930s could not meet.
Campbell did not compromise because of that.
Those who could not meet his requirements could not sell to him.
The carnage was as great as it had been in Hollywood a decade before when silent movies
had given way to the tockies.
Now, we're mentioning in passing Campbell went to MIT, so he had a good technical background.
That was the basis of the golden age.
One of the things that really takes off here and we want to look at this is the whole
idea of fandom.
The golden age was also when science fiction fandom really developed.
You can read more about this, for instance, in Isaac Asimov's autobiography in Memory
at Green, which records not only his earlier experiences in fandom, but also his early
relationship with John W. Campbell.
And Frederick Poll, and that spelled P-O-H-L, wrote a nice history of his experiences in
fandom called The Way the Future Was.
Poll went on to become a writer, an editor, and a literary agent.
And I enjoyed reading his blog right up until he died in 2013.
But the biggest fandom development in this time was to start conventions.
Now, there are many of them now.
Some devoted to specific properties like Dr. Who, or Star Trek, others more general.
But the grand eddy of them all is the World Science Fiction Convention, usually abbreviated
as WorldCon.
Now, the first of these was held in New York City in 1939 in conjunction with the World's
Fair, and the World's Fair had a theme of the World of Tomorrow.
So kind of appropriate.
Also appropriate, of course, is that they had a controversy at the very first WorldCon
when a group of fans, including Frederick Poll, was specifically not invited.
But you can read more about it in the book mentioned above.
Now among the guests were John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Elsprague the Camp, Ray Bradbury,
Jack Williamson, and Harry Harrison.
The WorldCon would go on to be an annual event, except for the years 1942 to 1945, when World
War II kind of preempted it.
In the early years, it was always held in the United States.
But eventually, it started to live up to its name and move to other countries.
The 2023 WorldCon, for instance, was held in Chengdu, China.
Now in years where the WorldCon is outside of North America, there is another convention
called the North American Science Fiction Convention, or NASFIC.
I attended the 11th NASFIC, which was called DebtCon 1 in Detroit, Michigan in 2014.
A WorldCon is owned by the World Science Fiction Society, WSFS, which has an interesting
membership.
Basically each person who purchases a ticket to a WorldCon becomes a member with voting
privileges.
And the main voting issues are to select the winners of the Hugo Awards and to select
the site of WorldCon two years later.
Now because organizing one of these WorldCon's is such a major task, you have to allow the
committee that does that two years to pull it together.
So the 2023 Chengdu WorldCon selected Seattle, Washington as the site of the 2025 WorldCon.
While the 2022 Chicago WorldCon selected Glasgow, Scotland as the site of the 2024 World
Con.
Now there has been controversy, of course, because science fiction fans don't agree on everything.
And the Hugo Awards is one area where this has showed up.
These awards are voted on by the fans who attend WorldCon, and this has been the case
since the Hugo Awards were created back in 1953.
But in 2013, an author named Larry Corea formed a group called Sad Puppies to try and
get one of his novels, a Hugo Award.
It started as a voting block, then became a slate of suggested nominations.
And a more radical off-shoot called Rabid Puppies was formed.
Now these groups did succeed in getting a number of works nominated and even swept the
nominations in two categories.
The result was that the voting members decided to vote for no award in both of those categories.
The campaign sputtered on for several more years, and then the World Science Fiction Society
modified the voting rules to prevent block voting, and that was the end of it.
Then in 2023, the Chengdu WorldCon ruled that a number of prominent works that had won
other awards and should have been considered were ineligible.
At first it was thought that the Chinese government had put pressure on the organizers.
But then it came out that this was more of a self-sensorship by some of the people on
the organizing committee.
They have been dismissed and will probably never again be involved with the World Science
Fiction Society, that would be my guess.
And I suspect that the Glasgow WorldCon, which is as I record this, is the next one coming
up, will probably implement some changes and if not definitely by Seattle.
Now in addition to the WorldCon, there are many local conventions.
Among the ones I know are DragonCon, which is held in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boscon, which
is held in Boston, Massachusetts.
And of course, near and dear to my heart is PenguinCon, here in the Detroit Metro area.
I've recorded a number of episodes of Hacker Public Radio talking about what went
on at PenguinCon.
I was on the staff of this convention for a few years, and you know, it's still a favorite
of mine.
It's unusual because it combines all of the science fiction with free and open source software,
which is where the Penguin part comes in.
You can usually find me attending that each year.
So this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support
free software.
Bye bye.
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