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In 1950, issues of science fiction magazines outnumbered science fiction paperbacks in the United States. The opposite was true in Britain, as paper rationing during World War II meant an insufficient supply of paper, and starting any new serial publication was restricted. This situation led to the demise of fiction magazines, including the grandfather of them all, The Strand Magazine, which folded in March 1950. Britain's two premier science fiction magazines, New Worlds and Science-Fantasy, became the bedrock of high-quality science fiction in the country. Arthur C. Clarke, Eric Frank Russell, John Beynon Harris, John Christopher, and Charles Eric Maine represented a higher proportion of the rank and file of British science fiction writers than their American counterparts. British writers were especially fascinated with computers and automation.

This chapter demonstrates how Wolfe disguises The Urth Cycle, a work of science fiction, as fantasy by recontextualizing genre conventions that encourage critical misreadings. It considers how the novels are designed in part to substantiate Wolfe's definition of science fantasy as ‘a science fiction story told with the outlook, the flavour of fantasy’ whilst constituting a slyly deceptive conflation of the two frequently discrete genres. Drawing on the work of Brian Attebery, Michael McClintock, Colin Greenland, and Carl Malmgren, it reads The Urth Cycle as a science fantasy about science fantasy. It frames the cycle as an historical megatext responding to, and embracing aspects of, the ‘dying sun’ tradition in science fiction. As such, it explores connections between The Urth Cycle and its literary antecedents: Wells’ The Time Machine, Hodgson's The Night Land, Smith's Zothique stories, and Vance's The Dying Earth. It assesses its analogical historicity and concludes that Wolfe's narrative is a means of encouraging the reader to reflect on how meaning is ascribed to a text as a consequence of its generic, or apparent generic, conventions. It reveals how that process of ascription can be manipulated to elicit conclusions contrary to those pertinent to the texts at hand.

Reprinted from The Writer, August 1980, this article explores the generic resonances of the abbreviation ‘SF’. Interpreting it variously as science fiction, speculative fiction and science fantasy, it explores briefly each of these forms in terms of their characteristics and relative histories. It concludes by suggesting aspiring writers reflect on their experiences of each form and to write in the genre that satisfies them before isolating the importance of an additional ‘SF’: the solidness and freshness of genre writing.

In an interview reprinted from Australian Science Fiction Review, November 1985, Wolfe discusses his conception of ‘the landscape of fantasy’ ss ‘the landscape of the future’. To illustrate his position, he discusses the biological or genetic ‘revolution’ that may produce a future populated by engineered creatures inspired by mythology. In response to subsequent questions, Wolfe considers repetition and variation in sf and fantasy, the academic study of his work, science fiction readers, science fantasy, brainstorming, and the importance of sustained reading and writing in the creative process.

World of Warcraft is a persistent, online world that millions of players log onto and create heroic identities. Although World of Warcraft was built for entertainment, it takes on a very serious role in the lives of its players, for whom game play is part of a larger cultural matrix in which the fantastic, including both science fiction and fantasy, is vital in the establishment of meaning. World of Warcraft is described as an “authentic fake,” a secular practice that does the authentic work of religion, with the theoretical structure present to guide readers through the following chapters. This chapter also introduces the author’s approach to the ethnography of virtual worlds.