It remains an active and productive genre which has evolved in conjunction with anglophone science fiction and other French and international literature.
As far back as the 17th century, space exploration and aliens can be found in Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's Entretien sur la Pluralité des Mondes (1686).
Between the two world wars, Rosny aîné published his masterpiece Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (1924), in which he invented the word "astronautique".
Nevertheless, Le Rayon Fantastique helped begin the careers of a number of French authors: During 1951, publisher Fleuve Noir initiated Anticipation, a paperback series devoted mostly to French authors which released a steady series of pulp-like novels.
Authors like Michel Jeury, Jean-Pierre Andrevon and Philippe Curval began to attract acclaim for their redevelopment of a genre which, at the time, was still considered primarily a juvenile entertainment.
The influence of postmodernism on literature and the development of cyberpunk themes catalysed a new body of French SF, near the end of the decade: the so-called "Lost Generation" (represented by such writers as Claude Ecken, Michel Pagel, Jean-Marc Ligny or Roland C. Wagner) At present, French SF is particularly well represented by graphic novels, and a number of titles are printed annually.
Despite the space opera revival of the beginning of the 1990s (Ayerdhal, Serge Lehman, Pierre Bordage, Laurent Genefort) the influence from English language science fiction and movies has diminished considerably since the "Lost Generation", while the influence of animation, video games and other international science fiction traditions (German, Italian) has increased.