"'If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . "' was published in 1951, when most mainstream and literary critics thought science fiction had little literary value. This view persisted despite the fact that English authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, had written critically acclaimed science fiction works. Still, science fiction readers were hungry for short stories by their favorite authors, which they often read in science fiction magazines like Future, where "'If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . "' was first published. In fact, science fiction's many pulp magazines helped give science fiction a negative image with critics, even while the cheap magazines attracted popular readers. When the story was collected in Clarke's Expedition to Earth in 1953, it did not receive much critical attention.

However, in the second half of the twentieth century, as the science fiction publishing trend...