From Bradbury to Butler: Los Angeles Science Fiction and the Aerospace Industry

Los Angeles is famous, and infamous, for many things—the Hollywood movie industry and Skid Row, surfing and smog, freeways and traffic, palm trees and urban sprawl. But while the city is often conceived of as a science fiction space itself, as a utopia or dystopia, so far little has been made of the fact that Los Angeles has also been the site of production of both hard science and science fiction, and even less of the relationship between the two. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society is the oldest active science fiction club in the world, and the city has been home to many prominent writers of the science fiction genre. Los Angeles was also home to the aerospace industry for almost a century. Moreover, science fiction and aerospace share a long, but under-recognized, history in Los Angeles, one that is reflected in the works of Ray Bradbury and Octavia Butler.