Summary of chapters from

The Creation Of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction By Paul A. Carter

Copyright 77 by Paul A. Carter published by Columbia University Press

The majority of this summary comes from chapter one titled “Extravagant Fiction Today, Cold Fact Tomorrow” because it talks about the history of the genre over all and what went on to make it what it is today. The rest of the chapters are about different themes in the genre such as rockets to space and the downfall of future utopia.

Chapter One: Extravagant Fiction Today, Cold Fact Tomorrow pages 1 – 28

The author starts out by talking about the bad rap that SF had gotten during it’s early years as far as magazines are concerned. He also defines SF by saying “ Science Fiction is an imaginative extrapolation from the known into the unknown.”

The author discusses the early years of SF magazines and gives background history into Amazing Stories. In 1926 Hugo Gernsback founded the magazine and it was the first publication that was entirely made up of SF. Gernsback hoped that SF would inspires scientists and engineers to bring what they read in SF into reality. He also wanted to make sure that science was always properly supplied so that the reader can have an access to science.

Gernsback put his faith in SF and took it very seriously. He believed that it could show what life might be like in the future and even said “It is most unwise in this age to declare anything impossible because you may never be sure but that even while you are talking it has already become a reality.”

Other magazines followed Gernsback’s lead by making sure that the science they showed was possible. In fact, Science Wonder Stories mentioned in an issue from August 1929 that they had a panel of experts that included astronomers, chemists, mathematicians, and even an astrophysicist.

Although adding a good amount of accurate science is the very thing that defines SF, this can be taken too far. Some authors tried to put too much science in their fiction causing a great amount of damage to the literature. Stories that should have told about a journey or some sort of resolution to a conflict ended up being more like a textbook. Isaac Asimov commented on this occurrence by saying “It is as easy to ruin everything by loving science too much as by understanding it too little.”