ON THE WEB: PAST FEARS ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION
by Hazed
Once upon a time, science fiction was a marginal genre. Beloved of teenagers and nerds, it was mostly ignored by”ordinary” people, and only occasionally troubled the TV schedules or cinema screens.
Now, of course, it’s everywhere, and it’s fashionable to be a geeky sci-fan fan.
Back in 1975, just before Star Wars and Close Enounters were released, Newsweek Magazine predicted that this would happen – and they hated the idea! In an article about how science fiction was taking over, writer Peter S Prescott sounded alarm bells about the rise of science fiction.
He doesn’t much mind the old”golden age of science fiction” stuff, what he abhors is the idea that the new writers of the time were tackling issues of race, gender, social class and so on.
Viewed with hindsight his scaremongering is risible. Read about it on the io9 website here.