ABSTRACT
Like some ageing space-freighter, the language of SF has usually been content to lumber along with its cargo of corn towards Lunarport Bathos. From an orthodox literary standpoint, science-fictional prose – especially that of the pulps – has been viewed with embarrassment, with fond condescension, and even with horror. It was not until the 1960s that there emerged a generation of SF novelists who were self-conscious stylists; before that time, one has to look to the occasional European writer, such as Zamyatin and Čapek, for the sense of linguistic experiment. The beginnings of the stylistic and semiotic analysis of the genre are still more recent.
