What's So Special About Mid-20th Century Short Form Science Fiction?

The Science Fiction Genre

C. S. Lewis, in his 1961 book An Experiment in Criticism, writes about how critics have a habit of talking about science fiction as a "homogeneous genre. But it is not, in the literary sense, a genre at all. There is nothing common to all who write it except the use of a particular 'machine.'" He goes on to talk about different types of sci-fi writers, including those "primarily interested in technology," those who use sci-fi to write "literary fantasy," or satire, or simply as a backdrop for "spy-stories or love-stories which might as well or better have been located" somewhere in the real world. He sums up his point: "You can, if you wish, class all science fiction together; but it is about as perceptive as classing the works of Ballantyne, Conrad, and W. W. Jacobs together as 'the sea-story' and then criticizing that."

How to define sci-fi, then? Theodore Sturgeon wrote, "A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content." I appreciate Sturgeon's human-focused definition of sci-fi, an understandable emphasis by an author who asserted that all of his stories are, at their root, about love. (And while a sci-fi story can be built around non-human aliens, they are, of course, stand-ins for us.) For Sturgeon what sets sci-fi apart from other fiction is its "scientific content," that is, the sci-fi stuff in your sci-fi story.

H. G. Wells calls that stuff "imaginations," and notes that "the thing that makes such imaginations interesting is their translation into commonplace terms and the rigid exclusion of other marvels from the story... Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen." We can quibble with the "rigid" part of "rigid exclusion of other marvels," and invite in stories that include multiple "marvels," but the basic truth to Wells' argument remains: there have to be limits. As he explains: while stories about a man who finds himself invisible or changed into an animal or where pigs fly at him provide an opportunity to ask how we would feel about those individual circumstances and what might happen as a result of them, "No one would think twice about the answer if hedges and houses also began to fly, or if people changed into lions, tigers, cats, and dogs left and right, or if anyone could vanish anyhow. Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen."

A major point of An Experiment in Criticism is that the distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" literature - and science fiction was certainly "lowbrow" in 1961 - is not productive. There are certainly many examples of critics (or snobbish readers) starting from the assumption that genre alone is reason enough to downplay the literary quality of a book or story, making it unworthy of a careful, thoughtful reading and consideration of its themes (and certainly unworthy of further study) by the critic, and unworthy of the reader's time. Or, if they are feeling generous, pointing out that "if you like this sort of thing" (implying you shouldn't, but, unfortunately, many do) it's worthy only of reading once, maybe at the beach, as a diversion, but it's clearly unworthy of re-reading or thinking deeply about.

Some of the most famous examples of dismissive criticism of this sort, due largely to genre-pigeonholing, come from reviews of The Lord of the Rings, written by Lewis' close friend J. R. R. Tolkien. Tom Shippey (one of an ever-growing number of scholars who have decided LOTR is extremely worthy of further study) quotes several of these (and then gleefully skewers them) in J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Shippey traces this literary snobbery to the embracing of modernism by academics in the early 20th century, ultimately creating a sharp line between highbrow and lowbrow. All the while, he points out, in the real world, people - including well-educated people - are reading and re-reading the "wrong" books, such as LOTR and many other fantastical works, far more than they are the "right" books (modernists like James Joyce).

Why 1930 to 1975?

While the beginnings of science fiction are often in dispute, the rise of sci-fi as a "genre" (apologies to Lewis) can be said to really take off in the wake of the wildly successful late 19th-centruy and early 20th-century writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. There are earlier examples, most notably Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818), and slightly later authors who could be called pioneers (Edgar Rice Burroughs, for example), but with Verne and Wells, for the first time, science fiction books and stories took hold and persisted, becoming firmly established in the early decades of the century.

My central argument is that sci-fi experienced its first full flowering between about 1930 and 1975. This period of expansion and development was fed particularly by the rise of science fiction magazines. There were the mighty three, Galaxy Science Fiction, Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog), and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as many others that came and went or - if they persisted - struggled but managed to stay afloat. This proliferation of publications meant that short stories and novellas dominated the genre, to the point that even some of the most famous sci-fi books of this time were collections of linked short stories. Examples include The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), I, Robot (1950), Foundation (1951) and City (1952), and there were many others.

By my start date, 1930, Amazing Stories (probably the first successfully American sci-fi magazine) had been publishing for four years. The earliest sci-fi anthologies came out in the late 1930s, and in later anthologies, the earliest stories (excluding a bit of Wells or a novelty from the 1800s) often do not date from much before 1930. While a strict cut-off date of 1930 (and why would we have a strict cut-off date, really?) misses a few stories that should be in-the-mix, it picks up early great stories such as Sidewise in Time and A Martian Odyssey (both 1934), and Who Goes There? (1938), the source story for the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World and its various remakes as The Thing (1982, 2011). Post-1930 the genre experiences a steady growth, with occasional explosions, all the way through to today.

My end date of 1975 is even looser, and, admittedly, based more on my personal opinion. My thesis is this: starting around 1970 the commercial successes of sci-fi and fantasy as genres led eventually to ossifications in publishing and style. For economic reasons, publishers favored longer novels that were part of a series. By 1980, this development had taken over nearly all science fiction. If you wrote a hit, it was "necessary" it be part of at least a trilogy. Even better would be creating the kind of universe that could spawn near-endless sequels. This trend even infiltrated older sci-fi works, such as Asimov's Foundation and Robot books, which were eventually combined into one universe and continued by other writers after his death.

Style also ossified. Here we can point to highly original and groundbreaking (and, ultimately commercially successfully) books which cast such a shadow that authors either elected to, or were pushed by the market into, some form of imitation. In fantasy, LOTR stands alone as the longest shadow-caster. While Frank Herbert's success with the Dune books was, in some ways, similar to Tolkien's, Dune shared the stage with other sci-fi novels which came out of the pulp-age. As a result, science fiction had more models, and it also had more sub-genres (as Lewis noted).

Both LOTR and Dune also provided the model for what became the all-mighty trilogy, although neither was strictly a trilogy in the sense that became standard. LOTR was a single book, published in three volumes because of post-war paper shortages. Frank Herbert's trilogy was short-lived (five years). He thought of the initial three Dune books as telling a single story, but he eventually wrote six Dune books, establishing one of the early "universes," one that was continued posthumously by Brian Herbert and others, and now contains over 20 books. (The universe LOTR is part of only became visible after Tolkien's death; it remains not only the work of a single author, but the way Tolkien's legendarium developed, and how it was revealed to us, will likely always remain unique in the history of fiction.)

Do these books belong in the Mystery section?

But more insidious was the rise of books that, as C. S. Lewis had noted, simply used sci-fi as a backdrop for "spy-stories or love-stories which might as well or better have been located" somewhere in the real world. I contend that the majority of these are mysteries, another genre that has largely gotten locked into limited, standardized forms. What I mean by saying many sci-fi and fantasy books are mysteries is that they follow the conventions of mystery novels. Some mechanism is devised in the way the story is told to ensure particular facts are hidden from us as readers, even when the narrator is omniscient, but clues are carefully provided. Clues are not facts; they are deliberately placed breadcrumbs which both point towards and away (red herrings) from the surprising truth (or truths) which will be revealed at the climatic end of the book.

This can occur even if there is no in-world detective who pulls aside the proverbial vail to reveal the truth - no Hercule Poirot who explains it all in a drawing room. The author, or semi-omniscient narrator, can stand in for that role. The point is to surprise us at a crucial moment near the end of the story, through a sudden illumination which, retroactively, changes our understanding of much of what has gone before. At the same time, we are led to believe we could have come to this truth if we had cleverly connected the clues and made working at the mystery a priority while reading, while avoiding falling for the misdirects. As a result, the reading experience itself can be impacted if the reader preceives the book to be a mystery.

Apologies for again referencing sci-fi's "cousin" fantasy, but it provides what I think is my clearest example. As Tolkien noted in his introduction to the LOTR, he preferred history to allegory. (I would add that he also preferred history to mystery.) The runes on the title page of the LOTR, literally spell this out, as they read, in part, "Herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King as seen by the hobbits." For those who don't know how to read the runes, the end of the story is also given away in the prologue. And so on. No mystery here! While the book contains what are (at the time we encounter them) many unexplained things, some are unknowable to the hobbits writing the book within the frame narrative (and so are never explained - for example, what or who caused the snowstorm on Caradhras). Other initially unexplained matters are revealed later, in the course of the book, but naturally, as part of the narrative, such as finding out the source of the voice Frodo hears on Amon Hen (spoilers, it's Gandalf). This is something Gandalf reveals on meeting up again with the remains of the fellowship. But in all cases, there is never a detective-like figure who dramatically (or even undramatically) reveals how the clues all fit together to point to some truth.

In contrast, I contend all of the books in the Harry Potter series are mysteries. I'll use The Goblet of Fire as an example. Clues are provided in an information dump early in the book (what a portkey is, for example), or in an earlier book (what a polyjuice potion is). These specifically covered items then play an important role at the climatic moment of the book (the reveal that the Triwizard Cup is a portkey) or in uncovering one of the book's central mysteries (who placed Harry's name in the goblet?). Even the B-plot involving the shape-shifting Rita Skeeter is given a mystery-genre resolution. The clues were in front of you the whole time! (As were plenty of red herrings.) The portkey particularly sticks out as a heavy-handed "Clue" as it is only introduced to Harry (and the reader) for the first time at the start of Goblet, even though it seems common item in the wizarding world and this is the fourth book of the series.

I realize I would be overstating it if I claimed all genre sci-fi books are mysteries. I also admit to dipping only a toe or two into post-1980 genre sci-fi novels, so my depth of knowledge there is far shallower than my knowledge of mid-century short form sci-fi. I will own that limitation.

There is a related reason for setting "circa 1975" as my end date in talking about sci-fi short stories specifically. This increase in commercialization of sci-fi (and fantasy) over the course of the 1970s, which favored novels (with their higher profit margins) in a series (creating dedicated readers ready to buy the next sequel), meant that short fiction suffered. (The economics of 1950, on the other head, favored the sci-fi short story in many ways.) At the same time, the short fiction that was published tended to echo the same genre-narrowing occurring in sci-fi novels. Writing style also seemed to coalesce around a norm, most notably with the mandatory inclusion of the infamous early-story exposition dump (many times found in chapter 2 in novels, as lampooned by William Goldman in The Princess Bride).

Science Fiction and Fantasy and Literature

While much of the "story of sci-fi" over the last 100 years is similar to fantasy literature's development as well, fantasy has a much longer history. Even pre-1900 stories that seem naturally to align with science fiction, such as tales about travel to the moon, are better called fantasy stories because there is no science (real or fictitious) in them. If you get your character to the moon by magical means (Lucian) or in dreams (Kepler) or by conventional hot-air balloon (Poe), it can be argued your story is fantasy, not science fiction. As Wells and Sturgeon noted, we must have a scientific-based marvel for the story to be sci-fi.

But admittedly the line between the two is sometimes blurry, and the pulp magazines and publishers who specialized in one genre often published the other as well, sometimes in the same magazine. Bookstores which don't have the room to separate the two genres into separate sections just combine them into one sci-fi/fantasy section; if they do have the room, the two sections are always placed right next to each other.

Which leads to another piece of evidence for my claim of "genre-fixing" which took place over the 1970s. It is this: most bookstores place some of the best sci-fi and fantasy books, especially those written since 1980, in their general fiction or literature section. I am thinking of books like Midnight's Children, Never Let Me Go, 1Q84, Slaughterhouse Five, The Handmaiden's Tale, The Book of Dave, Infinite Jest, The Road, White Noise, and Klara and the Sun. Most of the time, these decisions are being made through same highbrow/lowbrow lens Lewis argued against, primarily based on who the author is, and not on the genre of the individual book.

And, of course, books such as Delany's Dhalgren, literary sci-fi books, written by authors who have been labeled by the industry as sci-fi authors, will always be found in the sci-fi section.

And that is somewhat understandable. I have found the two Ishiguro books listed above (Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun) in the sci-fi section of one bookstore, but that does mean they were separated from his non-science fiction books, like The Remains of the Day, in that bookstore. But this labeling of authors rather than books pigeonholes those who dare to write both non-speculative and speculative fiction, and it seems to be making silent value judgements about the quality of writing which is expected of genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, etc.) vs. literary fiction. Importantly, none of the books listed above do not conform to the norms that have been established for genre sci-fi or fantasy. They are not published by sci-fi/fantasy publishers. They are not part of a series.

At the end of the day, if science fiction "looks" like a very narrowly defined thing to publishers and bookstores, then the fact Klara and the Sun is a robot story is irrelevant; they will place it with Ishiguro's other books in general fiction or literature. Or maybe the publishers and bookstores are making assumptions about those who read sci-fi and those who read Nobel Prize winners (again, Ishiguro), and they figure they can't possibly be the same people.

Obviously, I would disagree.

Themes: The Many Genres of Science Fiction

While the start and end dates I am using to define "mid-20th-century" are up for debate, I am happy to defend the high quality of a fair number of short stories, novellas, and short novels that came out of this slice of time, keeping in mind Sturgeon's Law ("ninety percent of everything is crap"). While the value of a science fiction story often gets reduced to the quality of its "idea" - or, to use Lewis' term, its "machine" - it is, for me, always about good ideas married with good writing, and good writing is the more important component. In my opinion, one of the few exceptions, Philip K. Dick, proves the rule. I find Dick to be maybe the only author whose ideas are so interesting as to often overcome the weaknesses of his writing. (I think this is also one of the reason movies based on his stories are usually better than the stories.)

Some other observations: In the 1930s and 40s writing sci-fi was essentially swimming against the current, so many of those who choose to write sci-fi were true devotees of the "genre," which remained highly flexible. The writers in the generation that followed often started as fans, often fans who started fanzines and ran conferences before they got their first story published. For those who fought in World War II, their experiences in the war impacted much of what came out in the latter part of the 1940s and the 1950s. These experiences including being in far flung parts of the world, of being part of a unit, of experiencing the best and worst of humanity during wartime - these experiences are reflected in stories about encounters with aliens, space travel, other worlds, and apocalypses. American writers dominated the genre, but the 1960s saw significant international growth, especially in Britain, where some of the leaders of the New Wave movement came from. This generation of writers consciously pushed the genre in new directions, reacting to what they saw as limitations in the stories from the previous decades.

Admittedly, the writers that populate this 45-year slice are overwhelmingly white, male, and straight. While there are a number of women who should make any list of the best authors of this time, they often felt they needed to write under a pseudonym or initialize their first and middle names to obscure their gender. Few were black, Samuel "Chip" Delany notwithstanding. It's hard to gauge the number who are queer (Delany, again, notwithstanding), but it might not have been an insignificant percentage as science fiction provided a means to write about queerness in ways that were publishable and even could be celebrated (see Delany's Aye, and Gomorrah...).

Too often the translation of war experiences to space resulted in all male crews in rockets, so there are too many stories with no female characters. Unfortunately, there are stories where the inclusion of women produces an even worse result than stories with no women at all. On the other hand, many sci-fi writers were forward-thinking, and some of the best stories, regardless of the author's identity, can be surprisingly enlightened when it comes to gender, race, and other issues. Alien beings, in particular, provide a blank canvass on which to paint "the other," and most writers were far less afraid of their alien creations than they were curious about them.

As Lewis wrote, while it is generally assumed science fiction is a genre, it is many things. Like "all sea-stories," there are many themes which run through science fiction. These include, but are not limited to, stories about aliens, alternate pasts, apocalypses (pre- or post- or in the midst of one), clones, travel to different dimensions, beings with extended lifespans, extraterrestrial mining, human colonies on other planets, fantastic evolution and mutations, producing gods or mutants, incredible inventions, post- and hyper-industrial societies, precognition and mindreading, robots and cyborgs, space travel and exploration, strange Earthlife, virtual reality, weapons of war, stories where it turns out WE are the aliens, and visions of the future: from fantastical technological societies to repressive ones to over- or underpopulated worlds to the future of entertainment - usually entertain gone bad - and so on.

All that and the moon, the planets, and the stars as well! What more is there?

-David Heuser, June 2026
(and... check out these recommendations, a list of over 200 Great Science Fiction Short Stories.)