ABSTRACT
A case can be made that the 1950s were the most consequential decade in the history of sf. The pulp magazines, whose ragged pages and gaudy covers had defined the genre for over two decades, were gone by 1958, supplanted by digest publications whose trimmer, less seedy appearance indicated an appeal to a more adult readership. The magazine culture itself was steadily giving ground to a burgeoning book market, from specialty presses run by sf fans to major lines at mainstream houses. Newer writers like John Wyndham and Ray Bradbury were soon household names, and works originally published in genre magazines (e.g., Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)) became bestsellers when released in book form. Sf was thriving not only in film and television, but also in general-circulation periodicals, reaching a broad postwar audience primed to receive its vision of a world transformed by powerful new technologies. Ideas and inventions long championed within the field – space exploration, atomic energy – were imminent realities, which contemporary sf treated with growing sophistication as pulp styles of writing gave way to more polished and even experimental techniques. By the close of the decade, sf stood poised to achieve a cultural visibility, commercial success, and literary acclaim of which the pulp era could only have dreamed.
