A while ago, I shared the results of my single-question survey: ‘What science fiction novels from the past twenty-five years do you genuinely believe will be remembered as classics fifty years from now?’ I chose the time period because it was a neat number, 2000-2025. In essence, quarter of a century. This then got me thinking.

What if I had asked the same question fifty years ago? Clearly, I don’t have a time machine. But I have read a lot of older works, so I could use myself as a one man survey response. If I was asked what books from 1950-1975 would be remembered in the year 2025, what might I have said?

Handily, this is squarely in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, so a lot of big names from the period are still remembered. Others, however, were not so lucky.

The Ones We Remember

To give you an idea of the calibre of the era’s authors, we need look only at the Big Three. Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. All three were active in the 1950s and are still discussed today.

Asimov is remembered largely for I, Robot and Foundation, which were largely written prior to 1950, but collected in book form during the 50s. Not all of his work is remembered however, and I suspect few people uphold The Currents of Space as a classic. Likewise, not all of Clarke’s works are still discussed, with his later works 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama being more famous than his earlier material. Heinlein is perhaps more famous as a personality than for any of his individual books, with only Starship Troopers still being as famous, and this largely due to the film adaptation.

The other well-known author from this era is Frank Herbert, with his novel Dune. This is possibly the most influential space opera novel ever written, and is just as famous today as it was when first released, if not more so.

Other authors from the period are better known for their collective bodies of work than for individual stories. These authors include Ray Bradbury, Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, and James Tiptree Jr, and John Wyndham.

Forgotten Classics

First of all, I want to look at some names who were very famous back in the day, but aren’t really discussed much anymore. That’s a long list, and it starts with C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. This husband and wife team are best known for Fury (released under Kuttner’s name) and the Northwest of Earth stories (attributed to Moore), but they wrote individually, collaboratively, and under a number of pen names, which makes tracking authorship difficult. Some of their work has now been reprinted, but was out of print for a very long time, which explains some of their absence from the general SF conversation.

A. E. Van Vogt is another highly prolific name who is rarely discussed today. This is possibly due to the fact that his writing is often terrible, but his ideas and plots remain phenomenal even in comparison to today’s SF. I would argue the same is true of his contemporaries Keith Laumer and Jack Vance.

There are three authors I think are still remembered, but perhaps not outside of certain SF niches. These are Alfred Bester, John Brunner and R.A. Lafferty. Bester perhaps suffers from the sheer oddness of his style, while Lafferty almost certainly does. Brunner marks an interesting transition from pulp space opera to more series social SF, but is largely forgotten beyond Stand on Zanzibar. Other authors such as Fritz Lieber and Clifford D. Simak achieved some acclaim during their careers, yet are almost totally forgotten today.

Of course, there are some authors who never achieved the acclaim they deserve. First and foremost among these authors is H. Beam Piper. Despite being nominated for a Hugo Award for Little Fuzzy, Piper’s career stalled due to mismanagement, resulting in Piper’s suicide. Less tragic, but equally overlooked is fellow space opera authors Edmond Hamilton and Richard C. Meredith. Their contemporary Poul Anderson is slightly better remembered, owing largely to his longer career, but none of these authors ever achieved the success their work merits.

Going Forward

If there’s any kind of lesson here, it’s that the books we remember as classics are not always the ones that were popular at the time of publication. So don’t just chase trends. read whatever appeals to you and maybe you’ll keep its legacy alive a little longer. And if you are interested in reading older fiction, don’t be afraid to search deeper than the familiar names. What you find may just surprise you.