Futurians
Entry updated 18 August 2025. Tagged: Community, Fan.
An sf group active 1938-1945, significantly located in New York, then and arguably still the publishing centre for American sf. The group was notable for radical politics and the conviction that sf fans should be forward-looking and constructive; the name came from J Michael Rosenblum's UK fanzine, The Futurian. Though deeply involved in Fanzine publishing and internal fan politics, The Futurians also brought together many young fans who hoped to become sf writers, and whose works tended to reflect a more intense and less hostile focus on the future of Cities than typical of American sf. From mid-1939, various Futurians successively coinhabited several large apartments in various parts of New York, partly out of solidarity, partly to afford living space, beginning with "Futurian House" (1939), most famously "The Ivory Tower" (1939-1940), and "Prime Base" (1940-1941); the slightly later term slanshack (see Fan Language) was applied retrospectively to these meeting-place/dwellings (and to several other similar 1940s arrangements).
Futurians included Isaac Asimov, James Blish, C M Kornbluth, Walter Kubilius, David A Kyle, Robert A W Lowndes, John B Michel, Leslie Perri, Frederik Pohl – who described this period in The Way the Future Was: A Memoir (1978) – Arthur W Saha, Richard Wilson and Donald A Wollheim. Also associated with the group were Hannes Bok, Judith Merril, Larry T Shaw; and also Damon Knight, who in The Futurians: The Story of the Science Fiction "Family" of the 30's that Produced Today's Top SF Writers and Editors (1977) published an informal history of the group. [PR/PN/JC]
further reading
- Damon Knight. The Futurians: The Story of the Science Fiction "Family" of the 30's that Produced Today's Top SF Writers and Editors (New York: John Day, 1977) [nonfiction: hb/Tony Greco]
- Frederik Pohl. The Way the Future Was: A Memoir (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1978) [nonfiction: hb/Joseph Lombardero]
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