Inklings
"Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections." As was typical for university literary groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. 
Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet", and Williams's "All Hallows' Eve" were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien's fictional Notion Club (see "Sauron Defeated") was based on the Inklings. Meetings were not all serious; the Inklings amused themselves by having competitions to see who could read the notoriously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing.
British literature
A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is "A Voyage to Arcturus" by Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920, and was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy".
From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the University of Oxford were "The Inklings". Its leading members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for "The Screwtape Letters" (1942), "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Space Trilogy", while Tolkien is best known as the author of "The Hobbit" (1937), "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion".