8th+grade+-+Golden+Age+of+SF+-+Military+(5th+block)

The relationship between the Golden Age of Science Fiction and the military.

Military and Sci-Fi

By: Lyle Higginbotham

Science fiction and the military have been closely intertwined ever since World War Two. In 1940 the Cavity Magnetron was developed (key to Radar). The Cavity Magnetron was invented by a man in Berlin, who got the idea from science fiction, the story had stated that the main character had created a technology that could let humans see in the dark, but the Nazis didn’t like it, so he gave it to the British, that’s why the radar on the British planes was far superior to the radar on the Nazi planes. In this way, the military has pulled science fiction into real life, and voila, it worked.

In 1942, Enrico Fermi split the first atom, he also got the idea for it from science fiction. He had been trying to make the first fusion reactor, instead, he made the first fission reactor. Also in 1942, the United States of America invented the first electronic computer. The government got the idea from reading books about robots, and now we have the internet and everything.

So as you can see, all the time, the government and military is using what they read about in science fiction to influence their weapons and achievements. The Atom bomb was invented thanks to science fiction, that stopped a war for crying out loud. This also proves that reading could save your life, or at least end a war. So the military is using all of science fiction’s glory to make weapons that nobody thinks could ever exist, and use them to beat the crap out of their enemies. Isn’t life just grand?

"World War Two." __Modern Marvels.__ History,