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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Books / Nerd An Illustrated History of Science Fiction

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 7:52 AM

Here is an incredible, zoomable history of science fiction. Here's a tiny detail that I consider to be the golden age of sci-fi:

Screen_shot_2011-10-25_at_4.50.56_PM.png

But there's much, much more to explore over at the full-sized version, including TV, movies, and other genres. This should be a wall-sized print; Christmas is coming.

(From How to Be a Retronaut, via MobyLives.)

Comments (12) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Hm. It's a neat attempt, at least. It ignores most of the actually interesting current genres in SF/F / specfic, but it gets to Star Wars and Harry Potter, so I guess most people will dig it.

(Funny how the 'golden age of sci-fi' was when boring white men wrote boring predictable stories for other boring white men...)

Posted by Cow on October 26, 2011 at 9:00 AM

Ah, the stupidity of youth. Yeah, it's boring to you, because it's all been done a million times. It wasn't so boring 60 years ago when those guys were doing it for the first time.

Grow up.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on October 26, 2011 at 9:06 AM

>golden age of sci-fi
>L. Ron Hubbard
LOLNOPE

Posted by venomlash on October 26, 2011 at 9:30 AM

I think this thread might be most fun as glaring omissions and odd examples.

For my money, the absence of any acknowledgement of Tom Swift may be the most intellectually and personally offensive.

I also was surprised that it was "Bill the Galactic Hero" over Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat".

Posted by Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle on October 26, 2011 at 9:40 AM

Asimov ruled.

Posted by R.I.P..... on October 26, 2011 at 9:41 AM

Call me crazy. But maybe at least one person in the string of links to that image should credit the actual illustrator, Ward Shelly.

Posted by tkc on October 26, 2011 at 10:09 AM

It's Jack McDevitt, not Joe McDevitt, who wrote Seeker and many, many more awesome, stay-up-all-night-to-read sci-fi novels.

Posted by PizmoSF on October 26, 2011 at 10:53 AM

@3, venomlash fiiiinally gets something right!

Posted by sgt_doom on October 26, 2011 at 10:56 AM

@6 is absolutely right. Ward Shelley is great artist and has had work shown at the Lawrimore Project when it was in its former space. More info (and to buy prints, which is a lemon into lemonade scenario, since his work has floated around with little to no attribution) can be found here: http://www.wardshelley.com/indexgrot.htm…

Posted by William D. Brattain on October 26, 2011 at 10:59 AM

"The golden age of science fiction is twelve." -- Damon Knight.

In some versions, it's 13, but the point stands. So my golden age was Again Dangerous Visions, the Orbit anthologies, Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. LeGuin, and so on.

Posted by LMcGuff

on October 26, 2011 at 12:10 PM

Everyone is super into Asimov - last summer I started rereading the Foundation series and quit when I realized that I had read the entire first book and I don't think there was a single named female character.

Posted by tau on October 26, 2011 at 2:01 PM

@8: Obama is substantially different from, and his methods of governing superior to, any Republican candidate.
TAKE IT, SARGE, TAKE IT!

@11: You think Asimov doesn't have any strong female characters? Read his robot books and learn about Susan Calvin.

Posted by venomlash on October 26, 2011 at 10:31 PM