Publisher's Weekly
Although science fiction got its name in the pages of inventor Hugo Gernsback's 1920s pulp magazine Amazing Stories , its development can be plausibly traced to Horace Walpole's fantasy The Castle of Otranto (1764). In a massive, colorful history sure to please SF fans, the Panshins, a husband-wife team ( SF in Dimension ; Earth Magic ), link the genre's pedigree to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells. They call Edgar Rice Burroughs the first great SF innovator of the 20th century. By extrapolating trends in science and technology, SF writers create symbols of transcendent possibility, yet their art, as the study demonstrates, has also mirrored earthly changes--the horrors of two world wars, the holistic universe posited by quantum physicists. The Panshins carry their story through 1945, focusing on such writers as Olaf Stapledon, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Lyon Sprague de Camp and A .E. Van Vogt. (Nov.)

Library Journal
This discusses ideas presented in the Panshins' earlier book, SF in Dimension: A Book of Explorations ( Advent, 1980. 2d ed.). The first half deals with how and why the myths of science fiction have changed their focus over the last few centuries. The second half gives a vivid portrait of the editor John W. Campbell working with his stable of writers--Asimov, DeCamp, Heinlein, and Van Vogt--to create the Golden Age of modern science fiction from 1939 to 1946. The writing is verbose and not well integrated, but the book is always interesting.-- Katherine Thorp, St. Louis Univ. Lib.