Science Fiction... started as therapy for off world inhabitants?

Start with the assumption that in 1945 humans began living off world due to first contact with alien/other dimensional beings around the development of the nuclear bomb.

These people would likely suffer from significant home sickness. But not just home sickness of wanting to see home again... but even to be understood and welcomed. Traditional novels or movies from earth wouldn't truly satisfy that human connection that the different entertainment mediums offer. Connections from afar with people just like yourself.

Consider you need something to offer that will make them feel connected to people at home, but integrating the sort of things you deal with day in and day out in your completely alien life.

Enter Asimov, Clarke, (and earlier)... feed them advanced information on technology in some roundabout manner, give them some basic circumstances that characters might be found in, and let them loose. You as a fledgeling branch of the US military can bring in a hefty profit from the book and movie sales on earth. But more importantly... you get to show your men serving "afar" things that speak to them, and connect them with people back home. Even if the people at home don't realize it.

In Ender's game people on world were aware of the space program, but not the true scope of it. Look at that book from the vantage point of *actually* being a kid in some secret off world space program where you couldn't talk to your friends or family anymore. Think about how important a book like that would be to your mental well being?

It's what I'd do if I had a secret space/dimensional program that took intense emotional strains on those early participants.

So rather than an APO or an FPO parents would send them packages of books to a SPO?
Sorry, I don't buy it. I suggest you think of young kids being influenced right here on earth to unworldly things, ideas and concepts. The writers you cited, maybe they were the ones influenced for the likes of myself, a young American that cut my wisdom teeth on sci-fi books back when that word was dispicable in the regular world. Very few of you alive today can even handle that concept, it is so far out of your reality.

No, all of the "education" has been done for the folks right here on Terra, subtle way through the proliferation of strange ideas mixed with bits of strange realities that kept surfacing and direct experiences for some of us.

Science Fiction has been around for quite awhile and its history might be an
interesting study especially date wise. We know H.G. Wells had his hand in
the alien invasion topic.
www.google.com...

The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds Publication date, 1898 ..... By the time Wells came to write The War of the Worlds, there had been three centuries of observation of Mars through .... H.G. Wells was a student of Thomas Henry Huxley, who was a major influence upon him.

I even heard of J J Astor being a SiFi writer of space travel.
Astor being a friend and financier of Tesla may have had so called technical assistance in
the writings. I think by 1893 Tesla may have been sure of his space ship design and how
it would operate using space itself to move the ship. Pay no attention to the elite who say
space is void of matter and a complete vacuum.

By 1945 I figure the Tesla space ship was finally developed in Germany during the war years
under the full knowledge of Hitler and his top crew at the old Count Zeppelin factory and all
the alien stories were ready as well. However I do not think any one has been in space as
Tesla said we would need three feet of lead shielding in the space ship hull to travel safely.

Yeah the 1945 date doesn't quite work with all the sci-fi published in the 1930's - eg Astounding has been going since 1930.

It's an interesting idea - but as with so much on here it starts with a conclusion and then tries to make the known facts fit it - poor technique.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this thread.

The presumption wasn't that imagination of Science Fiction wasn't possible, but that the surge and in particular the *style* of Science Fiction possibly being influenced by this new "market". I could have titled it better... perhaps "boomed" instead of "started' or something akin to that.

It's in highly speculative for a reason... the details would be the least important and more just the general concept of writing books that would provide comfort for those in the difficult position of being off world when most don't know it's actually possible.

Thank you for the responses everyone!

Namaste.