Back

100 years of science fiction

100 years of science fiction

A virtual journey through the history of this genre on the centenary of three of its greatest authors.

If you like science fiction, you will surely know Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Frank Herbert. They have been three of the writers with the greatest historical and editorial impact in the genre, with reference works such as The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury, 1950), I, Robot (Asimov, 1950), Dune (Herbert, 1965) and many others, some of which have subsequently been released in cinemas. A curiosity: all three were born in 1920 and this year is their centenary, so the Diputació de Barcelona’s Network of Municipal Libraries has taken this opportunity to organize a virtual exhibition that takes you back in time and explains the last 100 years of history of science fiction.

Through three explanatory videos and some computer graphics, the exhibition puts into context the birth of science fiction, its historical background, its most recurrent themes and their social implications, as well as the gender roles and the invisibility of LGBTIQ+ people. In addition, the exhibition includes small anecdotes such as some linguistic loans that have become widespread today, for example the word "robot", which comes from the Czech language and originally means "worker".

Over the last 100 years, science fiction has offered us a series of literary resources closely related to contemporary history that have anticipated today's society, allowing us to travel to other corners of the universe and imagine dystopian civilizations that are sometimes not far from reality. These are the cases of great works such as 1984 (George Orwell, 1949), Foundation (Isaac Asimov, 1951), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953) and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry, 1966), among many others. Do not miss this summary of the last century and get a better understanding about the evolution of the literary and cinematographic genre of science fiction until today.

You can visit the exhibition here.

 

Publication date: Thursday, 11 June 2020
  • Share