The Post-War Era (1946-c. 1965): science fiction written in the shadow of the nuclear arms race

• Key Figures in the Post-War Era
• Post-War Kissing Cousins to Science Fiction

The explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 triggered an explosion of interest in science fiction.

During the years immediately following World War II, science fiction began to be published in book form as hardcover anthologies of short stories.

• The Other Worlds (1941), edited by Phil Strong
• Adventures in Time and Space (1946), edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas

Galaxy was founded in 1950.

In October, 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite, and the Space Age officially began.

Ironically, people now began to expect the unexpected.

The Future was Now.

Science fiction had to reach out for new subject matter.

Astounding changed its name to Analog in 1960.

Knight was also an editor.

His short story "To Serve Man" was dramatized as a memorable episode of The Twilight Zone.

Orwell (1903-50) was a novelist, essayist, and critic.

His socialist political beliefs are illustrated in his two most famous works:

• Animal Farm (1945)
• 1984 (1949)

Blish, who is also a respected critic and academic scholar, used science fiction to tackle religious issues first raised by C.S. Lewis in his Perelandra Trilogy.

Key Works:

• A Case of Conscience (1958)
• Black Easter

His Cities in Flight (1970) set the model for stories set on generational space ships.

Bradbury, one of the best known science fiction writers of his generation, tends to write science fiction that verges on fantasy.

Key Works:

• The Martian Chronicles (1951), a series of linked short stories
• "The Fireman," novelized as Fahrenheit 451 (1954)

Key Work: The Demolished Man (1952)

Vonnegut insisted that his novels be marketed as mainstream literature, though his early works are indisputably science fiction.

Key Works:

• Player Piano (1952)
• Sirens of Titan (1959)
• Cat's Cradle (1963)
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Key Work: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

A posthumous sequel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was published in 1997.

Key Works:

• The Day of the Triffids (1951)
• The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), filmed as Village of the Damned

Key Work: "Flowers for Algernon" (1959), later novelized; it won a Hugo as a short story and a Nebula as a novel.

The story was filmed as Charly; Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for portraying the title character.

Leiber wrote science fantasy:

• The Big Time (1958)
• The Wanderer (1964)
  

Borges (1899-1986), an Argentinean and a practitioner of magical realism, wove fantastic elements into his stories.

Key Work: Ficciones, or Fictions (1944; trans. 1962)

Best sellers that dealt with the Cold War often had a science fiction edge.

The most famous of these are:

• Fail-Safe by Burdick and Wheeler
• Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel

Tolkein, a medievalist and Beowulf scholar, is best known for The Lord of the Rings, a fantasy trilogy first published in 1954-5:

• The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers
• The Return of the King

The novels reached cult status with their U.S. paperback publication in 1965.

A prequel, The Hobbit, had been published in 1937.

Tolkein is a major influence on fantasy fiction.

Peake's key work is the Gormenghast Trilogy (1946-59):

• Titus Groan
• Gormenghast
• Titus Alone

During the years following World War II, sales of magazines dropped dramatically and were revived only after the release of Star Wars in 1977.

However, by this time magazine science fiction had begun to spread into traditional publishing.