The visit to the science fiction archive was a new experience for me. Although I have been in and out of the library I have never heard of an archive or visited one before. Now that I understand that an archive is where historical document are kept and preserve. It makes it more interesting for me when I visit the library, but an appointment is needed. The only draw back of the archive is that it’s badly positioned in the library. Throughout the visit we learned about the history of the archive and the content of the archive. We also did some research in the archive to help us understand more about the history of science fiction.
In the first half of the class we were presented with the historical background of the science fiction archive. The archive was donated from anonymous donor. What stood out to me was the person life works of collecting all of the science fiction work was just given away like that. If it was me who did that I would of sell it for some profit. Nonetheless it was the person hobby to collect these science fiction article, and he/she enjoyed it. It is really a great collection of work. If it wasn’t for the donor we wouldn’t have had an archive to research about science fiction. I have also learn that it was a great deal moving all those article of science fiction from one side of the country to another required.
We researched as a group about our science fiction magazine. The first thing I notice about the magazine was that they are different from the magazine of today. The research provided information about what the book was made of, “pulps.” They where cheap wood paper that was used to print the magazines. It was also known as the “pulp era”(1896-1950s), since science fiction articles was very popular, to keep up the demand they were made with cheap materials (pulps). The pulp era correlate with the golden age of science fiction, the period was from 1938 to 1946. World War II (1939-1945) was a great affect on the golden age of science fiction. The golden age of science fiction left an impression in history. The result of my research was confirm when I went into the archive and found an enourmous amount of science fiction magazines, books, and many more.
The science fiction archive is enormous, one shelf was filled with the same author and there are many different author. The name of these author are really intriguing, seeing that people from around the world with their different ideas of science fiction. Sadly we were limited by time and did not get to see the full extend of the archive. We hope to return to explore more of the archive.
The visit to the archive greatly improve my understanding of what science fiction as a genre is. It made me more curious about the history of science fiction and the different types of science fiction out there.
