[4] Technology and optimism, however, continued to be foremost: In historian Adam Roberts's words, "the phrase Golden Age valorises a particular sort of writing: 'Hard SF', linear narratives, heroes solving problems or countering threats in a space-opera or technological-adventure idiom.
Another frequent characteristic of Golden Age science fiction is the celebration of scientific achievement and the sense of wonder; Asimov's short story "Nightfall" (1941) exemplifies this, as in a single night a planet's civilization is overwhelmed by the revelation of the vastness of the universe.
Robert A. Heinlein's novels, such as The Puppet Masters (1951), Double Star (1956), and Starship Troopers (1959), express the libertarian ideology that runs through much of Golden Age science fiction.
Among the most significant such Golden Age narratives are Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), Blish's A Case of Conscience (1958), and Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959).
[13] A related concurrent (and perhaps ironic) development was the "psi-boom" of the 1950s in which, largely owing to the efforts of John W. Campbell, a variety paranormal phenomena were valorized and integrated into stories.
Asimov shifted to writing nonfiction he hoped would attract young minds to science, while Heinlein became more dogmatic in expressing libertarian political and social views in his fiction.
John Clute, writing in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, asserts that it was Frank Herbert's wildly popular novel Dune (1965) that "arguably capped and put paid to the Golden Age of SF.
"Until the decade of the fifties", Silverberg wrote, "there was essentially no market for science fiction books at all"; the audience supported only a few special interest small presses.
The 1950s saw "a spectacular outpouring of stories and novels that quickly surpassed both in quantity and quality the considerable achievement of the Campbellian golden age",[2] as mainstream companies like Simon & Schuster and Doubleday displaced specialty publishers like Arkham House and Gnome Press.
[7] The English novelist and critic Kingsley Amis endorsed that view when he compiled The Golden Age of Science Fiction: An Anthology (1981), with two thirds of the stories from the 1950s and the remainder from the early 1960s.