Didactic Science Fiction
When Isaac Asimov was nine years old, in 1929, he worked in his father’s Brooklyn candy store. The store also carried a lot of magazines, both slicks and pulps, many of a sensational nature. Isaac’s father, Judah, did not allow Isaac to read such lurid material, as it was “cheap literature,” and would rot his brain.
Then, one day in July of that year, Isaac noticed a new title among the magazines. It was the August issue of Science Wonder Stories, the third issue of Hugo Gernsback’s new science fiction magazine. Isaac had never seen a science fiction magazine before this, and what caught his eye was the word, “Science.” He knew, he wrote in his Introduction to Before the Golden Age, that “science was considered a mentally nourishing and spiritually wholesome study. What’s more, I knew that my father thought so from our occasional talks about my schoolwork.... and the word ‘science’ gave me the necessary leverage.
“I picked up the magazine and, not without considerable qualms, approached my formidable parent.... I spoke rapidly, pointed out the word ‘science,’ pointed to paintings [by Frank Paul] of futuristic machines inside as an indication of how advanced it was...,” and his father gave his permission to read the magazine, and others like it, as it obviously was not just cheap literature if it taught kids about “science.”
In the beginning, that was also the belief of Hugo Gernsback, the founder of science fiction magazines. Hugo had long believed in science as the main, if not sole, means of human progress. In this, he was far from alone. By the 1920s Americans had fallen in love with science and that decade witnessed the beginnings of the exponential growth in our fascination with the subject. It thus became an age when Americans built museums of science which looked like cathedrals.
And it was an age when Americans also began turning dry and factual science books into bestsellers. Indeed, the first science book to make the Publishers’ Weekly top ten bestseller list came in 1924 with Albert E. Wiggam’s "The New Decalogue of Science." It wasn’t the sexiest title for a bestseller, but perhaps it attracted the interest of people like young Isaac’s father.
Because of his own interest in science, Hugo had long published a factual science magazine called Science and Invention, which found a ready audience in that science-hungry decade and became quite profitable. Being somewhat of a missionary, Hugo also published proto-science fiction stories in his magazine, such as “The New Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” written by himself. In place of the fantastic devices of the original Baron Munchausen stories, in these new ones the Baron used wondrous scientific inventions to achieve fantastic results. Hugo hoped by such means to interest young boys more in science and invention.
Such experiments in fictional science proved so popular that Hugo entertained the idea of publishing an entire magazine devoted to such “science fiction,” as Hugo was to call it by 1929. Thus, in April, 1926, Hugo Gernsback launched the world’s first “science fiction” magazine, Amazing Stories, for the express purpose of using “science fiction” to teach science.The experiment proved so popular, and profitable, that by 1930 even Hugo was coming to see science fiction primarily as a form of entertainment, rather than education by proxie.
But the didactic urge in the science fiction universe remained strong down through the decades. Thus, over the years, there have appeared anthologies which have sought to teach myriad topics via science fiction: anthropology, sociology, psychology, what have you. "Political Science Fiction," edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Patricia S. Warrick in 1974, was about, of course, political science.
Science fiction has also been used to introduce teens to self-knowledge, as with Bernard Hollister’s 1976 anthology, "You and Science Fiction." In it editor Hollister used science fiction to view the human condition and selected SF stories that explored four big questions: Who am I? How do I relate to others? What kind of society do I want to live in? What kind of world do I seek?
Science fiction has even been used to teach history. “Alternative history” is now a sub-genre unto itself with acknowledged classics, such as Ward Moore’s 1955 alternative history of the Civil War, "Bring the Jubilee." And there are myriad anthologies taking this pedagogic approach to history, such as 1973’s "Transformations: Understanding World History Through Science Fiction" and 1974’s "Transformations II: Understanding American History Through Science Fiction," both edited by Daniel Roselle. And, as might be expected, there have even been college courses using science fiction to teach history, using anthologies such as those by Roselle.
Nor has science, the original pedagogical subject of science fiction, been neglected. In 1996 Isaac Asimov, still in love with science, presented us with "Isaac Asimov Presents the Best Science Fiction Firsts," which included the first science fiction to describe battle tanks (“The Land Ironclads,” by H. G. Wells, 1905), solar power obtained via satellites (“Reason,” by Isaac Asimov, 1941), a home computer (“A Logic Named Joe,” by Murray Leinster, 1946), and a collapsed star (“Neutron Star,” by Larry Niven, 1966), among other things. Nor has this approach yet run its course, as shown by Robert Bly’s 2005 book, "The Science in Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions that Became Scientific Reality."
And science fiction is also used to teach, yes, science itself at prestigious universities throughout the land. Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, home to the Robotics (a word meaning the study and development of robots and coined by Isaac Asimov, as he was never reluctant to tell you) Institute, has also been the place where, for the past decade, physics professor Barry Luokkala has taught his course “Science and Science Fiction” to in-coming freshmen in the Mellon College of Science. Hugo Gernsback would be happy to know that, in the 21st century, science fiction is still being used to teach science.