Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (19)
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July 16, 2016
One in a series of 75 posts about the best science fiction novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (from 1934–63, according to HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn’s periodization schema). For the complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.
B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two (1948).
Our narrator, the psychologist Dr. Burris, brings Dr. Castle, a philosopher colleague, and others to visit Walden Two, an experimental community — founded in the 1930s by T.E. Frazier, a former grad school classmate of Burris’s — where behaviorist principles of reinforcement are experimented with in order to generate a utopian sociocultural system. Human behavior, according to Frazier, is determined not by “free will,” but by environmental variables; therefore, why not alter environmental variables in order to produce optimized behavior? Over four days, the visitors marvel at a community where nobody works more than four hours per day; children are raised by the collective (and incentivized, through a system of rewards and punishments, to behave well); advanced technology has been developed to facilitate domestic chores; and everybody gets along. Burris and Castle debate behavioral modification and free will with Frazier… but in the end, Burris decides to join up.
Fun fact: The author was an esteemed behavioral psychologist at Harvard. Despite vociferous criticisms, the novel became a cult hit in the ’60s; in 1967, Kat Kinkade founded the Twin Oaks Community, using Walden Two as a blueprint.
GOLDEN AGE SCIENCE FICTION at HILOBROW: Golden Age Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1934–1963 | Robert Heinlein | Karel Capek | William Burroughs | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Clifford D. Simak | H.P. Lovecraft | Olaf Stapledon | Philip K. Dick | Jack Williamson | George Orwell | Boris Vian | Bernard Wolfe | J.G. Ballard | Jorge Luis Borges |Poul Anderson | Walter M. Miller, Jr. | Murray Leinster | Kurt Vonnegut | Stanislaw Lem | Alfred Bester | Isaac Asimov | Ray Bradbury | Madeleine L’Engle | Arthur C. Clarke | PLUS: Jack Kirby’s Golden Age and New Wave science fiction comics.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.