Science fiction originally published 1984.ContentsIntroduction page 11PART ONE: 1920 to 1930PART TWO: 1931 The Man Who Evolved - Edmond Hamilton 37The Jameson Satellite - Neil R. Jones 57Submicrosoopic - Capt S. P. Meek 83Awlo of Ulm - Capt. S. P. Meek 113Tetrahedra of Space - P. Schuyler Miller 183The World of the Red Sun - Clifford D. Simak 227PART THREE: 1932Tumithak of the Corridors - Charles R. Tanner 259The Moon Era - Jack Williamson 323TO MANY science fiction readers who are now in their middle years, there was a Golden Age of Science Fiction—in capital letters.That Golden Age began in 1938, when John Campbell became editor of Astunding Stories and remolded it, and the whole field, into something closer to his heart’s desire. During the Golden Age, he and the magazine he edited so dominated science fiction that to read Astounding was to know the field entire.In that sense, the Golden Age endured till 1950, when other magazines, such as Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, entered the field. The editorial personalities of H. L. Gold and Anthony Boucher were as strong in their ways as Campbell’s, so the field grew wider and more diverse. In many ways, it improved still further as it spilled out of the magazines and into the books, the paperbacks, and the electronic media.But then the individual could no longer comprehend the field entire. It grew too large for one to do more than sample, and the Golden Age, when all of science fiction could belong to the reader, was over.I lived through the Golden Age in the best possible way, for I was among the first of the new writers Campbell discovered, and I am sure there was no other in whom he took so personal and paternal an interest. My book The Early Asimov (Doubleday, 1972) is both my memorial to those years and my tribute to John.