Viagens Interplanetarias - Importance in The History of Science Fiction

Importance in The History of Science Fiction

The Viagens series is notable in the development of American science fiction of the 1950s for bringing a more realistic attitude to bear on some of the less credible features then commonplace to the genre, reimagining them in terms of the possible. It also leavened the hero-worship, sexism, prudery, ethnocentricity and nationalism then characteristic of the genre with a more skeptical view of human nature, strong characters of both genders (and of both same-sex and opposite-sex inclinations, though the latter predominate), for whom sex was a normal aspect of life, and an ethnically varied, international cast. De Camp's work helped prepare the field for the works of later, more iconoclastic writers, to the degree that when he returned to the series in the 1970s his own innovations had themselves come to appear routine and commonplace.

Rogue Queen in particular is important in the history of science fiction for breaking the genre's taboo on sexual themes, paving the way for more daring works by Philip José Farmer and others. Steven Silver speculated that "without Rogue Queen to lay the groundwork, it is possible that the anthropological science fiction of a later age, as well as its gender examinations, would not have occured in the manner it did."

Additionally, Colleen Power has pointed out that "the overwhelming concern ... to prevent modern technological humans from influencing or interfering with the normal development of native cultures" in the Viagens novels "predat 'Star Trek's' 'prime directive' by nearly twenty years."