SOURCE: Clareson, Thomas D. “1926-1950: The Flowering of a Tradition.” In Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Formative Period (1926-1970), pp. 5-39. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Clareson provides an overview of the Golden Age of Short Science Fiction literature.

To appreciate the complexities and significance of contemporary American science fiction, one must immediately clear away a number of problems which cloud even such central issues as the definition of the field. On the one hand science fiction belongs to a complex literary tradition going back at least to the medieval travel books; as a result, from the outset it has inherited and cherished certain conventions, both of content and narrative strategy. Almost paradoxically, however, SF has been one of the most topical areas of fiction. What one must recall is that almost nothing has been lost. Once some motif or some narrative...