Heralds of a “Golden Age”
To the extent that nerds agree on anything, the decade from roughly 1936/37 to 1947/48 is regarded as Science Fiction’s “Golden Age.”
Why 1937? Because that’s when John W. Campbell assumed his legendary editorship of Astounding Stories, the premier periodical market for SF fiction at the time. Campbell shepherded science fiction from its infancy as a new style of adventure story, replete with bug-eyed aliens and ray guns, to its budding maturity as a respectable forum for thoughtful, ingenious creative artists.
But SF had been around for a few decades before Campbell, beginning with the fathers of the genre in the late 19th century (especially Verne and Wells) and continuing with the writers of the early 20th century. These 20th century “heralds” of the Golden Age are the groundbreaking authors whose stellar careers coincided with the hey-day years of the “pulp magazines.” Periodicals of this aptly-named “pulp era” of science fiction included The All-Story, Argosy, Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories.
Many writers had a go at this exciting form of storytelling, but the following authors are stand-outs from those halcyon, “wild West” days of Science Fiction:
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
Most general readers are familiar with his enormously popular Tarzan series. For this, Burroughs is sometimes known as the “father of heroic fantasy.”
But SF readers know him from his Barsoom series. The first installment, Under the Moons of Mars (serialized in the February to July 1912 issues of The All-Story) introduced us to John Carter, a man minding his own business on Earth, who is transported, he knows not how, to the world of Barsoom—the planet we call Mars. In 1917, the story was published in book form under the title The Princess of Mars. More Barsoom stories followed, to great popularity and acclaim.
Burroughs was a multi-genre author. In addition to Science Fiction and Heroic Fantasy/Action-Adventure (Tarzan), he wrote Westerns and Historical Romances. His other SF series are Amtor (Venus), Caspak (The Land That Time Forgot), and Pellucidar (interior of the hollow earth). His primary markets were All-Story and The Argosy.
E.E. “Doc” Smith (1890-1965)
Why “Doc?” Because he had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He was a food engineer who specialized in doughnut and pastry mixes.
The production of decadent baked goods was not “Doc” Smith’s only talent. He is also known as “the father of space opera.” Space Opera is the SF equivalent of the Western, featuring wide open spaces, the taming and conquering of wild frontiers, and xenophobia (green bug-eyed aliens), all set in a world where ingenuity, violence, and heroism get our hero out of every tight scrape.
His first series was The Skylark of Space, published in three parts in the August, September, and October 1928 issues of Amazing Stories. Sequels followed.
The first of the Lensman series, the novel Galactic Patrol, appeared in serial form in Astounding in 1937. The other books in the series are Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen, Children of the Lens. All were originally serialized in the 1930s and 40s. All the Lensman novels were eventually published as books from 1950 through 1954. Additionally, Smith wrote two prequels to the series. The first prequel was called Triplanetary, a 1948 “fix-up” of an earlier set of short stories, reworked and expanded to fit into the Lensman saga. The second prequel was First Lensman (1950), the only Lensman book not to be serialized before appearing in book form.
Smith’s SF career continued into the “Golden Age” of the late 1930s through the 1940s and beyond. In Spacehounds of IPC (a novel serialized by Amazing Stories in 1931), Smith coined the term “tractor beam.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) British
Last and First Men, published in 1930, was Stapledon’s first novel. It’s a “future history” of humanity’s evolution. Other notable SF works include Starmaker (1937), an expansive “history of the universe,” and Sirius (1944), starring a dog with enhanced, humanlike intelligence.
Stapledon was not prolific, but his relatively few published works were hugely influential. Authors and academicians—including many science fiction writers—directly influenced by Stapledon include Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanislaw Lem, Bertrand Russell, John Gloag, Naomi Mitchison, Vernor Vinge, and John Maynard Smith. Ideas appearing in his work have become commonplace science fiction tropes: stories encompassing vast scopes of time and space; the concept of a “supermind;” genetic engineering; terraforming; hyperintelligent non-human animals and transhumanism; ESP; and “future history.” He is even credited with the first conceptual imagining of what are now known in real life as “Dyson spheres.”
C. S. Lewis was also directly influenced by Stapledon, but not in the way you think. Lewis wrote his own science fiction trilogy in part to refute what he regarded as Stapledon’s immoral ideas. For example, in Last and First Men, the intelligent, sentient beings on Venus are annihilated in order to allow colonization by humans. In Lewis’s science fiction, the characters who advocate wholesale genocide of a planet’s inhabitants are definitely the villains of the story.
Stapledon counted among his correspondents and personal acquaintances Virginia Woolf and H. G. Wells. Indeed, he was member of the H. G. Wells Society.
Honorable Mention #1 - Stanley Weinbaum (1902—1935)
One of the most famous authorial debuts in the pages of the early pulp magazines was Stanley Weinbaum’s, with his short story, “A Martian Odyssey.” It appeared in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories, under the editorship of Hugo Gernsback, from whom we get the name of Science Fiction’s most prestigious award, the “Hugo.”
Tragically, Stanley Weinbaum only had a year and a half to make his mark: he died of cancer at the age of 33. But make his mark he did. Among the many accomplishments of his short career was going beyond the “bug-eyed alien” trope and creating aliens who were real persons. According to Isaac Asimov, Weinbaum’s was one of the very few science fiction stories that influenced all subsequent science fiction stories—and for the better.
“A Martian Odyssey” appears in many science fiction anthologies. One of the best is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964. Edited by Robert Silverberg. Also included in this incredible collection is John W. Campbell’s “Twilight.” (see below).
Honorable Mention #2 - John W. Campbell (1910—1971)
Campbell was at the editorial helm of Astounding Stories for 34 years. But early on in his career, he was a writer himself and a contributor to the early issues of various SF pulp magazines. He is the author of the classic short stories “Who Goes There?” “Night,” and “Twilight.” He also wrote a trio of novelettes: Piracy Preferred, Solarite, and The Black Star Passes.
If you’d like to pick up your own copies of the books mentioned in this article, consider following this link to my Bookshop.org store and heading over to the Science Fiction & Fantasy section. Mind the triffids! This is an affiliate link, which means you will still receive a discount on your purchase, but Bookshop.org will give me a small commission in return for sending my readers to them. Thank you so much for your support — it means a lot!