Science fiction did not exist until 1929. There were, of course, plenty of novels and stories to which the term would be retrospectively applied – the scientific romances of H G Wells in England, some of Jules Verne's voyages extraordinaires in France and many of the tales by Edgar Allan Poe in America – but the term itself had yet to be used. The story of how the genre got its name begins in 1926 with Amazing Stories, the first of the pulp magazines specializing in what its founder and editor Hugo Gernsback called scientifiction. Stories by Wells, Verne and Poe regularly appeared in Amazing but scientifiction was a mouthful, so when Gernsback launched a new magazine in 1929 he changed it to science fiction.

In 1930 another magazine Astounding Stories was launched under the editorship of Harry Bates, whose own Astounding story Farewell to the Master was turned into the classic sf movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, it was the appointment of John W Campbell Jr as editor in 1937 and a change of name to Astounding Science Fiction the following year that marked the beginning of the so-called 'golden age' of science fiction, with stories by a new generation of young writers such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Robert A Heinlein and Ray Bradbury.

Astounding's dominance in the 1940s was challenged by the launch of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950 and in the years that followed both magazines began serializing novels prior to their publication in book form. Frank Herbert's The Dragon in the Sea, Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, Eric Frank Russell's Three to Conquer, Harry Harrison's Deathworld and Cyril Judd's Gunner Cade were all serialized in Astounding, while Galaxy did the same with Drunkard's Walk by Frederik Pohl, The Space Merchants and Wolfbane by Pohl and Kornbluth, and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and Tiger! Tiger!.

This move away from short stories to novel-length fiction led to a resurgence of sf published in book form and a corres- ponding decline in the pulps, which are now remembered chiefly for their colourful, cartoonish cover art which typically depicted strange scenes from other worlds, or alien invaders wreaking havoc in this one. Rockets arcing through space were also common, as were technicolor visions of futuristic cities, home-grown mutants and super-sized creepy-crawlies.

But the image that sums up the pulps best of all is that of a muscular all-action hero in a fish-bowl helmet, who arrives just in time to see off the monstrous jaws and claws that loom over a virginal young girl in a half-swoon and not much else. Brandishing a ray gun, he scoops the girl up, lases the tentacles off her bug-eyed assailant and thus puts an end to any further mischief. It is chivalry transported to a far-flung future, an sf-esque reworking of the knight in shining armour who leaps from his trusty steed (now a rocket in a rock-strewn crater), slays the dragon and saves the damsel in distress. Whether such interplanetary derring-do bore any relation to the magazine's contents was another matter.

When Penguin turned to pulp for the covers of its Classic Science Fiction series in 1987 it seemed the golden age of sf had returned. One of the first three titles was Edward Abbott's Flatland with a computer-generated graphic on the cover, though this was relatively restrained compared to the comic-strip facsimiles of pulp-inspired covers that followed, and a medley of red, white and yellow typography emblazoned across the covers in various shapes and sizes added further verisimilitude. Seen here, they barely look like books at all and could easily be mistaken for the magazines they mimicked. What gave them away was their size, though this had increased from the traditional A-format of 181 x 111 mm to the larger B-format of 198 x 129 mm that Penguin had first used in 1945 and reintroduced in 1980.

The series came with its own atom logo which streaked across the top of the front and back covers, leaving in its wake an incandescent afterglow and the series name ablaze in fiery colours. The atom also hovered at the top of the spine above the letters CSF, while the penguin was relegated to the base of the spine and a lower corner of the cover.

The series was presumably intended to attract a younger audience, although this seemed at odds with the inclusion of more 'challenging' sf such as Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker or Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and in truth the series appeared to be little more than repackaging for any sf title released at that time. As proof of this the reissue of Last and First Men still contained the foreword by Brian Aldiss for the edition that had launched the Penguin Science Fiction series in 1963. In fact, most of the books were reissues and the only new titles were the three that launched the series, plus Men Like Gods by H G Wells.

Penguin's pulp revival proved to be short lived and the series fizzled out after fourteen titles, but its demise marked more than just the end of a series. Rumours that Penguin was axing its sf list had first circulated in 1980 and appeared to be confirmed by the departure that year of the company's sf editor Paul Sidey. The rumours came to nothing and the sf list continued for another eight years but was finally killed off when the Classic Science Fiction series was dropped.