This essay proposes a translation sociology starting from Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on culture sociology. It analyses science-fiction as it was implanted in France in the nineteen fifties by Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau and Michel Pilotin. Originating in the twenties, science-fiction is itself a translational phenomenon, emerging from the Luxemburger Hugo Gernsback’s impulses, Jules Verne’s mould but also from H.G. Wells and Edgar A. Poe. First, the reception of H.G. Wells in the Mercure de France and the NRF (before the Second World War) is sketched, together with the first attempts before the Second World War. Second, the great tradition of science fiction is studied that took a firm hold in France after the Second World War: translation and its agents, translation in Rayon Fantastique, Boris Vian, translator of Alfred E. van Vogt, the translation of onomastics in the journal Galaxie. In a final instance, the author reflects on the double reflexivity of translatology.