Futurians

FUTURIANS. The Futurian Society of New York, usually referred to simply as “the Futurians,” was a left-leaning science-fiction fan club of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Of the thirty-plus members, nearly a dozen were at one time or another members of the Young Communist League and at least one, John B. Michel, was an active (though unadmitted) member of the Communist Party. Most of the membership, however, was at most liberal but unaffiliated (for example, Isaac Asimov) or simply nonpolitical. What held the Futurians together was not so much politics as a general desire to succeed as professional editors or writers of science fiction. More than half of the members attained that goal.

In the late 1930s a smaller group within the Futurians, styling itself “the Committee for the Political Advancement of Science Fiction,” led by Michel and Donald A. Wollheim, attempted to politicize the science-fiction fan community along generally socialist lines. They published pamphlets and “fanzines”—amateur mimeographed magazines devoted to science-fiction fan affairs—espousing the doctrine of “Michelism,” a sort of generic Marxism with heavy emphasis on future speculations. The Committee and Michelism died young, and it would be hard to detect any overt impact they may have made on the political thinking of science-fiction fans and writers in general. However, the many Futurians who went on to sometimes distinguished careers as professional editors or authors in the field (Wollheim, Robert W Lowndes, Damon Knight, Asimov, James Blish, C.M. Kornbluth, and Frederik Pohl among them) were influential as individuals, in political as well as other areas. World War II thinned the ranks of the Futurians, as most of the members went into the armed services. Although it continued a sort of shadow existence until the late 1940s, its most active phase ended around 1943.

Pohl, Fredrik. The Way the Future Was. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.