Why am I passionate about this?
I’ve always been fascinated by the Golden Age of science fiction, when a group of young dreamers formed the genre as we know it today. I grew up far away from their world, on a small kibbutz in Israel, and the lives of those god-like beings seemed as remote and as impossible as the moon. I grew up to eventually write stories of my own, and even got to meet some of my childhood heroes, and eventually I thought it would be fun to write a book that was partially about them. I read every book I could get my hands on to try and better understand that time when science fiction was born.
Lavie's book list on science fiction’s golden age
Why did Lavie love this book?
Growing up in New York around the same time as Asimov was Fred Pohl, young, ambitious, argumentative, and occasionally brilliant.
We meet many of the same people – and see the same events – that Asimov describes, in a somewhat different light, as Pohl forges his own path through the emerging world of science fiction, as an agent, editor, and writer in his own right.
It’s beautifully written and again, provides a fascinating insight into that long-ago world, complete with its many petty feuds – that the socialist Pohl was banned from the first Worldcon only to start his own competing event across the street is a marvelously entertaining anecdote recounted both here and by Asimov.
1 author picked The Way the Future Was as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
One of the Grand Masters of SCi-Fi relates tales of the early days of the genre becoming important.