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The Science Fiction Factor
By Curt Sutherly
FATE :: April 2006

It was 1947: the year aviator Kenneth Arnold spotted nine glistening objects flying at high speed among the peaks of the Cascade Mountains; the year the phrase “flying saucer” was coined and the UFO phenomenon took hold in the public consciousness.

Longtime readers of FATE are undoubtedly familiar with the Ken Arnold saga and the events that transpired soon thereafter. The more astute among those readers will recognize that the flying saucer activity of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s was significant not because of any intrinsic notion about visiting alien spaceships, but because the UFO phenomenon forced us to reexamine our lives and our place in the scheme of things. Simply put, it raised the question: are we alone in the universe as we had previously assumed, or are we one civilization of many in the vastness of space?

The sudden awareness of UFOs and the questions they pose was one of two sociological events to dramatically affect Western society beginning in 1947. The second event was less blatant, though no less significant, and can best be described as a major shift in cultural outlook and philosophy. The catalyst for this second phenomenon was itself no big thing; nothing more than the rise to popularity of an obscure literary form—a genre known as speculative fiction or science fiction, but most often simply referred to as SF.

A product of the early pulp magazines (with some small overlap into specialty publications), SF was viewed by the mainstream publishing industry as a tasteless form of entertainment. But all this changed with the publication of a single book. The book was Rocket Ship Galileo, released in 1947 by Scribner’s, a highly respected publisher.

Written by the late Robert A. Heinlein, then 40 years old and a former naval officer turned writer, Rocket Ship Galileo was the first novel of teenage-oriented SF to be picked up by a mainstream U.S. publisher. As such it broke new ground for the genre, and is widely credited for taking science fiction out of the pulps and into a much larger arena. Galileo was also the first in a long series of SF novels written by Heinlein for teens and young adults. However, his “juveniles,” as they were called, also drew older readers, and many of these books have since been reprinted as adult fare. A prime example is Starship Troopers (1959), Heinlein’s epic tale of interstellar war. To this day arguments erupt over whether the book is a novel for teenagers or a story intended for adults.

One of the first novels I read as a boy was Rocket Ship Galileo. The book had a profound effect on me. Like the early stories I read about UFOs and Fortean phenomena, it opened a door to wonder and imagination and forced me to think far outside the norm ...

Read the rest of this article in the April 2006 issue of FATE

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