They say the golden age for reading science fiction is 12. The cusp of adolescence when our sense of wonder is at its greatest. But the genre's Golden Age is historically dated from the mid 1930s to the late 1950s. From its humble origins in the pages of pulp magazines (the mass entertainment of the 1920s), Golden Age SF launched its assault, lasers ablaze, on the shelves of respectable book shops around the globe.

Golden Age SF conjured amazing visions of the future that, for many people, are still the epitome of science fiction. Vast galactic empires warring across millennia. Alien invaders from other planets. Super-science countering the threats that faced mankind. And at the heart of it all, heroic men, heroically saving the world with their problem-solving powers of reason and logic. Oh, and plenty of huge, thrusting rockets.

The recent death of Frederik Pohl marked the passing of the last great writer of Golden Age SF, as Neil Gaiman noted. Many of the authors who shaped the Golden Age are long forgotten, but a few are still remembered among those who can list all 29 Grand Masters of Sci-Fi: Robert A Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Clifford D Simak, AE van Vogt. What the greats of Golden Age SF may have lacked in literary skills they made up for with blistering powers of imagination and the cunning deployment of middle initials. And between them they created a genre that is arguably among the most influential literary movements of the last century.

What other literary genre can claim the influence over popular culture, and hence the hearts and minds of the masses, of sci-fi? From blockbuster Hollywood movies to the vast popularity of video game franchises such as Halo, Mass Effect and Bioshock, sci-fi is a constant in the lives of today's generation. What lasting influence, in contrast, do modernism, or the Lost Generation, or the Beats, have in the commercialised, capitalistic, mainstream culture of today?

And yet science fiction is still largely ignored by our cultural elite. The recent Man Booker prize shortlist has many great strengths, but SF is still systematically excluded from consideration. English departments at UK universities lead research across 20th century and contemporary literature, but SF is still shunned as an explicit research discipline. Perhaps it is the very popularity of science fiction that prevents elitists from seeing its value?

Or perhaps the values of science fiction itself are to blame. Much as we might love its ability to transport us on flights of fantasy, the conservative values of Golden Age SF are in stark contrast to the progressive literary movements it eclipsed. The esteemed SF critic Paul Kincaid presents a convincing argument for SF as an essentially rightwing genre of literature in his 2008 essay Hard Right. The ongoing arguments about the representation of gender and race within the genre highlight problems which should come as no surprise, given that the early authors of Golden Age SF were almost exclusively white and male.

But science fiction has moved on in the decades since its Golden Age. A series of artistic movements including the New Wave of the 1960s, cyberpunk in the 1980s and New Weird in the years post 2000 have transformed the genre in weird and radical ways. The science fiction stories of Lauren Beukes, Charles Stross, Madeline Ashby, G Willow Wilson, China Miéville and a growing cohort of younger novelists might not even be recognised as SF by the early creators of the Golden Age. And yet I am certain every one of those authors would acknowledge the influence of that era, even if they rebel against its values.