{"id":1798,"date":"2012-05-23T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2012-05-22T23:03:34","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T06:03:34","slug":"the-futures-of-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2012\/05\/23\/the-futures-of-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"The futures of SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There’s an interesting chart over at io9<\/a> that “Reveals How Science Fiction Futures Changed Over Time.”<\/a> The accompanying article, by Annalee Newitz<\/strong>, discusses the methodology for creating the chart, by Stephanie Fox<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

They divided the future into three ranges \u2014 Near Future (up to 50 years from the “present”); Middle Future (51-500 years out); and Far Future (501+ years) \u2014 then looked at literature published each decade from the 1880s through 2000s.
\n
\nIf you click the thumbnail at right, you can see a larger version of the chart. (Or click here to read the article<\/a> on io9.)<\/p>\n

Newitz analyses the survey of SF stories and provides some conclusions based on the results. But she doesn’t spend much time on the 1930s, when the bulk of SF stories took place more than 500 years in the future. That was the age of Space Opera, one of my favorite pulp genres.<\/p>\n

Technology was developing at a quickening pace; aircraft were flying all around the globe; so why wouldn’t spaceflight be just over the horizon? And just beyond that, we’d be flying between the planets, and then the stars.<\/p>\n

I was on a big Captain Future<\/strong> kick<\/a> a few years ago (then moved on to Asimov<\/strong>, including his sweeping Foundation series \u2014 which does span beyond those 500 years). What makes those stories so appealing is the excitement that the writers had \u2014 that we’d be out there at some point in the future and they were giving readers of the pulps a glimpse at what to expect.<\/p>\n

This all, of course, was before most folks had any idea what was actually out there. And before spacecraft began sending back photos of barren, cold worlds, uninhabited by other humanoids or odd creatures.<\/p>\n

The 1930s (and early ’40s) was a golden spot where everything and anything could happen in the future. And it was all right there in Amazing Stories<\/em>, Astounding<\/em> and other pulp magazines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an interesting chart over at io9 that “Reveals How Science Fiction Futures Changed Over Time.” The accompanying article, by Annalee Newitz, discusses the methodology for creating the chart, by Stephanie Fox. They divided the future into three ranges \u2014 Near Future (up to 50 years from the “present”); Middle Future (51-500 years out); and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-pulps"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-t0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}