[Professional] science-fiction writers have rarely been encouraged to be good stylists…. This is partly because SF publishing and marketing methods make little distinction between the kind of star-schlock in which intergalactic cops battle hypothyroid blobs, and a well-wrought literary work in which far-reaching concepts and social problems are dramatized with intelligence, wit and verbal skill….

More important, critics and reviewers who confer literary status rarely know much about science or technology…. Even journeymen practitioners of SF are likely to know more about literature than most novelists and critics know about science. And in the 20th century, ignorance of the fundamentals—and social implications—of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics constitutes an embarrassing form of illiteracy.

Despite much misunderstanding over the past half-dozen years, SF has undergone an explosive growth…. In perspective, the interest in SF can be seen as part of the natural anxiety about the future of...