tag archive: science fiction

I think Robert Heinlein’s Red Planet was the first “grown up” science fiction book I read, in 1982. It was published in 1949, but seemed modern enough to my eleven-year-old self. (With one notable exception, which prompts this post.)

Wikipedia says: “The first Golden Age of Science Fiction — often recognized as the period from the late 1930s through the 1950s — was an era during which the science fiction genre gained wide public attention and many classic science fiction stories were published.”

Or maybe you’ve heard the saying, “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is ‘twelve’?”

Putting those two things together made 1949′s Red Planet a good introduction to science fiction for nearly-twelve-year-old me. My dad had always been a voracious SF reader. One day I came across this book he had left out on the table, decided to give it a try, and was pleased to find I could follow the story.

Except, what was this …

I’m reading Han Solo’s Revenge, which I first read as a teenager in the 80s. (The book was published in 1979.)

In one scene, at a spaceport on a “highly industrialized, densely inhabited planet,” Han has sent Chewie away on a task, but then a potentially dangerous meeting comes up:

His first impulse was to find Chewbacca [...] But if he had to hunt the Wookie among the guild halls and portmaster’s offices, it could take the rest of the long Bonadan day.

What, they don’t have cell phones in the Star Wars universe?

That’s the peril of science fiction. Writers of SF can be so forward looking, but they’re still rooted in their time, which makes for increasing “reality shear” over the years. George Lucas, and by extension, Brian Daley, imagined this advanced star traveling civilization in much detail, yet personal communications devices are conspicuously absent.

It’s the kind of thing that becomes jarring in 2009, when even …