![]() ![]() As you’ll see from these notes, Campbell’s crowd was rather reactionary even by the standards of their own time. Postmodern sensibilities began creeping in later with writers like Philip K. In that environment, science fiction was, in my opinion, a critical factor in constructing postmodernity as tolerable, inhabitable, and perhaps even stimulating human condition one that had things to offer besides war and misery.Ĭampbell and his early cohort of writers were not exactly postmodern. There was a lot of grim reality to deal with, and rapidly falling motivation to deal with it. Much of what happened during that period was forced, ugly, unpleasantness. The Golden Age of science fiction was a period that coincided with the global industrial mobilization for WW2, the reconstruction afterwards (which I’m reading about now, and livetweeting, in a book about the Marshall Plan,), decolonization, and the dawn of the atomic, space, robotics/automation, and computing ages. What follows are some prefatory remarks, followed by a slightly cleaned-up version of the live tweetstorm. Campbell, and partly because I had this sense that the Golden Age of science fiction (loosely, 1938-1960), understood in context, had a set of important lessons to offer for us in 2020, dealing with the Great Weirding, and the aftermath of Covid. ![]() I read the book partly because I was interested in the life and career of John W. ![]()
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