8th+grade+-+Golden+Age+of+SF+-+Politics

The role/effect of politics during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. (Hannah Davis Hancock)

Though at first science fiction stories seem like just fantasy, they are often conveying a deeper meaning or message. Political opinions and views are sometimes exposed in such ways. Current events in politics are also major influences on writing of all kinds, though it is displayed in more unique and creative ways in science fiction writing than in a regular fiction piece. Science fiction uses a combination of fantasy, real world situations, and futuristic technology and scenarios to describe political occurrences, and to display the effects of politics on not just writers but their whole culture and society.

There were several major political occurrences during the time called the golden age of science fiction. The government's actions during World War II were apparent, with themes obviously pointing towards war and conflict, as well as later in time, when soldiers were writing and indirectly using their experiences for aspects of their stories, such as Eric Frank Russell's story Allamagoosa. Other writing began to include protagonist and antagonist forces similar to those as portrayed in real-life government and politics, on small scales like political candidates, but even to much larger scenarios as well. Figures of power were being portrayed in certain ways. Technology relative to the time, such as warfare materials or space exploration, were also more apparent when they were political topics.

Social conditions were also displayed through science fiction. During the 1950's, families were meant to uphold the strong husband/trophy wife/perfect children image. The government was meant to portray a perfect world image; the [|President's family] was meant to be the ideal family and what every American should be like. Authors exploited this "perfect world" image into other scenarios, such as aliens invading and what would happen in this perfect society. Another idea about the perfect image was a too-perfect-to-be-true scenario, which came up in writings from time to time. Other social conditions, such as racism, were apparent in stories. In "Who Goes There?" the crew saw the thing, and seeing it being so different, they were automatically scared of it. This is similar to how the media portrayed foreigners as being scary or bad just because they were different, especially Asians during the golden age of science fiction. Such social commentaries were sparked by politics and how the government was enforcing such ideas into American culture.

Far-out, "crazy" ideas about spaceships and aliens and such were common throughout science fiction, though generally only seen as fantasy ideas, not really relevant to anything important going on during the time period of the Golden Age of Science fiction. However, these ideas were turned when space exploration began. NASA engineers began turning to authors for ideas. Seeing how the space exploration was the central focus of politics, this is an example of how science fiction was a part of politics, rather than just having political ideas apparent in the stories. So often is it forgotten that science fiction was a big part of current events, even if not the most obvious.

Not just restricted to the time identified as the golden age of science fiction, authors have been using science fiction to display politics, especially social conditions and their effects. Commonly the stories are inferring what could possibly come, or the same instances under different conditions and what life was/would be like. Though not what people usually consider as contributing factors, politics were a major influence on the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Outside Sources: [|Wikipedia Politics in Science Fiction] (*note: this is wikipedia, so nothing on here is 100% reliable and could be completely fake... but still a nice source)