20 things you (probably) didn't know about Science Fiction

[Bob Russell]

One of the consistent themes of e-books has been the popularity of two specific genres... romance and sci-fi/fantasy. True, there has been consistent interest in older classic works such as collections of the Harvard Classics and Charles Dickens. But the gadget freak favorite always seems to be sci-fi/fantasy.

Whether you fit that pattern or not, you might just find these 20 facts (and speculations) about science fiction to be fascinating.

1. Arguably the inspiration for much science fiction traces back to classical mythology. Think of it—Earthlings abducted by beings from the sky, humans morphing into strange creatures, and events that defy the laws of nature.

2. Birth of the (un)cool: In 1926 writer Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first true science-fiction magazine.

3. Gernsback loved greenbacks. He tried to trademark the term science fiction, and he paid writers so little that H. P. Lovecraft later nicknamed him “Hugo the Rat.”

4. Rat’s revenge: The most famous sci-fi writing award is called the Hugo.

5. Writers for the early pulp magazines would often write under multiple pseudonyms so they could have more than one article per issue. Ray Bradbury—taking this practice to another level—used six different pen names.

See the entire list at Discover Magazine's Top 20 article. You'll find out which technology was avoided by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, the book that apparently inspired Second Life and Google Maps and much more.

[jwhayn]

Not meant to be a flame but I thought this was a superficial article.

I wonder if any of the authors had ever read much science fiction other than a generic college textbook about fiction or a Wikipedia search. They included mostly factoids and trivia questions (interesting but not significant) and one rather vague claim (#1) about the source of science fiction with weasel words like "Arguably" and "much". True for some of the science fiction genres but also "arguably" true for "much" of standard fiction.

My assessment is a "C".

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Nice list (in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way). I was surprised that they mentioned Gene Wolfe helped develop the machine that cooks Pringles, while Robert Heinlein conceived the first modern water bed... but they neglected to mention that Arthur C. Clarke conceived of the communications satellite.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by jwhayn

Not meant to be a flame but I thought this was a superficial article. I wonder if any of the authors had ever read much science fiction other than a generic college textbook about fiction or a Wikipedia search.

I bet that our readers can come up with more interesting facts as than the article if there's interest. Steve started us out with the missing tie between Arthur C. Clarke and the communications satellite. Anyone here read enough SF to chip in, or as readers are we just as superficial as the article writers?

<Forgive me for the obvious baiting, but I'm really curious to see what you folks might know!>

[carandol]

Alright, here's a factoid for you...

SF writer Brian Aldiss has argued that the first real science fiction novel was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, because it was based on the cutting edge science of the day, at a time when science had really only just been invented.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

I bet that our readers can come up with more interesting facts as than the article if there's interest. Steve started us out with the missing tie between Arthur C. Clarke and the communications satellite. Anyone here read enough SF to chip in, or as readers are we just as superficial as the article writers?

#3 was a new one on me. Gernsback subtitled Amazing Stories "The magazine of Scientifiction", and his innovation was devoting a magazine to the genre and giving it a name. Stories that were SF had been published in the pulps for a while. Gernsbach was the first to devote a publication to them.

Calling the genre Sci-Fi can be blamed on Forrest J. Ackerman, who coined it as a contraction of Scientifiction. It's a touchy topic in SF fan circles (#5), who vastly prefer SF as the name, and consider Sci-Fi a term used by people who don't know anything about the genre and equate it with cheesy TV and grade B movie offerings.

Gernsbach's business practice of "payment upon presentation of lawsuit" has been well known in SF circles for years, and Uncle Hugo was hardly the only practitioner of that tactic.

#4: I wouldn't call it the rat's revenge. The folks who first created the Hugo were well aware of Gernsbach's flaws, but he did effectively create the genre the award honors.

#5: The practice of multiple pseudonyms carried on well past the pulps. The late Randall Garrett a/k/a Walter Bupp, Darrell T. Langart, and (with Laurence M. Janifer) Mark Phillips is one example, and there are many others. I once spent several years looking for the novelette that was a prequel to the late Henry Kuttner's _Fury_. Turned out I had it all along: it was titled "Clash By Night", and had been published under the pseudonym Laurence O'Donnell.

#8 and #9: Well, Alice Sheldon had been a government operative during WWII. Tragically, she took her own life in a murder/suicide when caring for her aged and invalid husband became too much.

#18: Dick had bouts with mental illness all along. Most of his work concerned the boundary between reality and fantasy, and how you knew which side you were on. No surprise, since Phil often didn't know. Should you get a chance, ask David Hartwell, currently a Senior Editor at Tor Books, about Dick. He'd been Dick's editor at another house, and still expresses bemusement about the experience.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by carandol

Alright, here's a factoid for you...

SF writer Brian Aldiss has argued that the first real science fiction novel was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, because it was based on the cutting edge science of the day, at a time when science had really only just been invented.

Read Aldiss's _The Billion Year Spree_. He traces the roots of SF a lot farther back...
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Nice list (in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way). I was surprised that they mentioned Gene Wolfe helped develop the machine that cooks Pringles, while Robert Heinlein conceived the first modern water bed... but they neglected to mention that Arthur C. Clarke conceived of the communications satellite.

I hadn't know the bit about Wolfe, but it wasn't a surprise. He was editor of Plant Engineering magazine for many years before retiring to write full time, and was someone who could do something like that.

(I've met him. Nice guy as well as brilliant writer. I treasure my signed copies of the Urth of the New Sun series.)
______
Dennis

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by carandol

Alright, here's a factoid for you...

SF writer Brian Aldiss has argued that the first real science fiction novel was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, because it was based on the cutting edge science of the day, at a time when science had really only just been invented.

Nope. A much earlier SF novel was The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Nope. A much earlier SF novel was The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri.

Since when is a three-part epic poem a novel?
______
Dennis

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

people who don't know anything about the genre and equate it with cheesy TV and grade B movie offerings.

But...but...but I LIKE cheesy TV and B-grade movies! (Looks happily at Space:1999 and Land of the Giants box sets.)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by stxopher

But...but...but I LIKE cheesy TV and B-grade movies! (Looks happily at Space:1999 and Land of the Giants box sets.)

I concur, though I'll pass on Space:1999 and Land of the Giants. For cheese, give me "Buzz Corey in the 30th Century", Commando Cody, and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

The problem is that "Sci-Fi" has negative connotations, along the lines of "Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff!" that used to be applied to the genre.

OTOH, there has been a bit of discussion on what SF stands for, with many folks preferring "Speculative Fiction", and the late Judith Merrill once proposing in an anthology ("England Swings SF") that it might stand for "Space Fish".
______
Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Here's one for you guys: The form of the modern science-fiction motion picture traces its roots to Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Though not technically the first SF movie made (Melies' A Trip To The Moon is the first, I believe), Metropolis gave moviegoers:

• An allegorically-based storyline;
• Styles based on a current artistic movement (in this case, Expressionism);
• Massive futuristic cityscapes;
• futuristic vehicles and fashions;
• Cutting-edge special effects;
• The humanoid robot, simultaneously attractive and menacing;
• The futuristic laboratory, as depicted by incomprehensible control panels, flashing lights, moving objects, and anything else that had a wildly kinetic look;
• The "Mad scientist" (actually a mistake: The original movie was so badly sliced up before reaching the Americas, that the motivations of the character Rotgang were lost on the cutting room floor, leaving him apparently posturing like a maniac to viewers); and
• Full orchestral score (recently re-discovered... its Germanic styles inspired the original Buck Rodgers serials to run German opera in the background);
• (Edit, added 2/9) Technology Run Amok, the idea that technology, out of our control, can rise up and destroy us.

To date, every "big budget" science fiction movie, and most of the small ones, owes its heritage to this movie.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Here's a slightly more modern item: Michael Crichton, writer of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, is a Harvard Medical School graduate, and wrote and produced the series ER.

And another Arthur C. Clarke factoid:
Although Clarke is generally credited with writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, that credit is actually shared with Stanley Kubrick. The movie was based on a Clarke short story, The Sentinel (which essentially covered the Moon sequence when they discovered the monolith), but Clarke and Kubrick collaborated on creating a cinematic version of the story, and Clarke wrote the novelization of the story based on their collaboration.

[Nate the great]

Did you know that he wrote his first books during med school? Apparently he didn't have enough to do.