Word: heinlein
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...Burt, science fiction, as a highly self-conscious genre, lends itself to this sort of analysis. But being cognizant of how a text expects to be read, he says, is as important for comprehending poetry as it is for understanding science fiction. For Burt, the experience of reading Robert Heinlein and Octavia Butler is similar to going line-by-line through the poetry of John Ashbery or Jorie Graham. Reading science fiction helps students grasp other literature as much as it encourages them to ponder space ships, telekinesis, and sentient robots...
...Scifipedia, an online biographical dictionary, defines Ackerman first as "American fan." That's good enough. As much as almost any writer in the field, he created a devoted, informed audience for speculative fiction. If he didn't coin the term "sci-fi" - Robert Heinlein used it first - then by using the phrase in public in 1954 he instantly popularized it (to the lasting chagrin of purists, who preferred "SF"). Forry, as everyone called him, was the genre's foremost advocate, missionary and ballyhooer. His love for the form, stretching back more than 80 years, godfathered and legitimized the obsessions...
...would have included girls but at that time female fans were as rare as unicorns' horns."). His dream of bringing together the writers and readers of science fiction was starting to bloom. He brought his young friend Ray Bradbury to the Clifton's Cafeteria Science Fiction Club, hangout of Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, Fredric Brown and other future giants of the genre. He bankrolled Bradbury's own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia...
Huxley and Orwell, of course, didn't think of themselves as science-fiction writers. The true artists of the genre are a tribe apart. Many created "future histories" that are worked out in exquisite detail. Robert A. Heinlein, for instance, was a hugely popular SF writer but of a surprisingly gloomy and gothic cast. His prediction for the late 20th century was summed up briskly: "Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in mass psychosis." It was hard to watch the Clinton impeachment trial without feeling...
...Heinlein also forecast a 21st century America seized by evil right-wing Christian fundamentalists plugged into cunning propaganda networks. These way-out notions of Heinlein's were composed in the 1940s; he probably thought he was being very provocative, out there and outrageous...