A Look At Science Fiction Books

My favorite hobby is reading and I love to settle down to the classics and contemporary fiction too. I like science fiction books very much, for their imagination and thoughtful stories. Science fiction in the modern age, started out in comic strips with heroes such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. They became popular in the 1950s, often referred to as The Golden Age. People had become fascinated by technology and space travel. Against the background of the Cold War, it was good to have someone who could swoop in and save the day. Wireless, and then TV further popularized the genre and many books and magazines were written on the subject.

Authors of science stories went further back, to the nineteenth century, when H.G Wells and Jules Verne wrote their inspirational science fiction books. Wells was particularly good at predicting the concerns that would dominate future generations. His stories include The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau. The War of the Worlds, which depicts an alien invasion, still terrifies us today and Steven Spielberg recently adapted the book for a modern audience. Jules Verne liked to speculate about future technology in From the Earth to the Moon and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. These science fiction books may not startle us now but we must remember that they were written at a time when the general public thought that it would never be possible to explore underwater or to travel in space.

Other past stories have delved into the human psyche, using science as a means to comment on human nature. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was shocking at the time. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein influenced modern science fiction writers to write about mutation, cloning and genetics.

Modern authors, like Arthur C. Clarke, write about space exploration in a very sophisticated way. In fact, Clarke is respected in the scientific community, having helped to design the first artificial satellite. His major work, 2001, A Space Odyssey attempts to address the lofty question of where we came from and what is the meaning of existence.

Some fans prefer stories, which are not about aliens, ray guns and so on. Science fiction books don't have to be concerned with space at all. They are still considered to be within the genre when they involve scientific developments not achieved yet or future societies as in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Science Fiction is here to stay, as books and as adaptations for Hollywood special effects films.