Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature 0810878844, 9780810878846

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Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature
 0810878844, 9780810878846

Table of contents :
Contents
Editor’s Foreword
Preface
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Reader’s Notes
Chronology
Introduction
THE DICTIONARY
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Bibliography
About the Author

Citation preview

The historical dictionaries present essential information on a broad range of subjects, including American and world history, art, business, cities, countries, cultures, customs, film, global conflicts, international relations, literature, music, philosophy, religion, sports, and theater. Written by experts, all contain highly informative introductory essays of the topic and detailed chronologies that, in some cases, cover vast historical time periods but still manage to heavily feature more recent events. Brief A–Z entries describe the main people, events, politics, social issues, institutions, and policies that make the topic unique, and entries are cross-referenced for ease of browsing. Extensive bibliographies are divided into several general subject areas, providing excellent access points for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more. Additionally, maps, photographs, and appendixes of supplemental information aid high school and college students doing term papers or introductory research projects. In short, the historical dictionaries are the perfect starting point for anyone looking to research in these fields.

HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Jon Woronoff, Series Editor Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2004. Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes, 2007. American Radio Soap Operas, by Jim Cox, 2005. Japanese Traditional Theatre, by Samuel L. Leiter, 2006. Fantasy Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2005. Australian and New Zealand Cinema, by Albert Moran and Errol Vieth, 2006. African-American Television, by Kathleen Fearn-Banks, 2006. Lesbian Literature, by Meredith Miller, 2006. Scandinavian Literature and Theater, by Jan Sjåvik, 2006. British Radio, by Seán Street, 2006. German Theater, by William Grange, 2006. African American Cinema, by S. Torriano Berry and Venise Berry, 2006. Sacred Music, by Joseph P. Swain, 2006. Russian Theater, by Laurence Senelick, 2007. French Cinema, by Dayna Oscherwitz and MaryEllen Higgins, 2007. Postmodernist Literature and Theater, by Fran Mason, 2007. Irish Cinema, by Roderick Flynn and Pat Brereton, 2007. Australian Radio and Television, by Albert Moran and Chris Keating, 2007. Polish Cinema, by Marek Haltof, 2007. Old Time Radio, by Robert C. Reinehr and Jon D. Swartz, 2008. Renaissance Art, by Lilian H. Zirpolo, 2008. Broadway Musical, by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, 2008. American Theater: Modernism, by James Fisher and Felicia Hardison Londré, 2008. German Cinema, by Robert C. Reimer and Carol J. Reimer, 2008. Horror Cinema, by Peter Hutchings, 2008. Westerns in Cinema, by Paul Varner, 2008. Chinese Theater, by Tan Ye, 2008. Italian Cinema, by Gino Moliterno, 2008. Architecture, by Allison Lee Palmer, 2008. Russian and Soviet Cinema, by Peter Rollberg, 2008. African American Theater, by Anthony D. Hill, 2009. Postwar German Literature, by William Grange, 2009. Modern Japanese Literature and Theater, by J. Scott Miller, 2009. Animation and Cartoons, by Nichola Dobson, 2009. Modern Chinese Literature, by Li-hua Ying, 2010. Middle Eastern Cinema, by Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard, 2010.

Spanish Cinema, by Alberto Mira, 2010. Film Noir, by Andrew Spicer, 2010. French Theater, by Edward Forman, 2010. Choral Music, by Melvin P. Unger, 2010. Westerns in Literature, by Paul Varner, 2010. Baroque Art and Architecture, by Lilian H. Zirpolo, 2010. Surrealism, by Keith Aspley, 2010. Science Fiction Cinema, by M. Keith Booker, 2010. Latin American Literature and Theater, by Richard A. Young and Odile Cisneros, 2011. Children’s Literature, by Emer O’Sullivan, 2010. German Literature to 1945, by William Grange, 2011. Neoclassical Art and Architecture, by Allison Lee Palmer, 2011. American Cinema, by M. Keith Booker, 2011. American Theater: Contemporary, by James Fisher, 2011. English Music: ca. 1400–1958, by Charles Edward McGuire and Steven E. Plank, 2011. Rococo Art, by Jennifer D. Milam, 2011. Romantic Art and Architecture, by Allison Lee Palmer, 2011. Japanese Cinema, by Jasper Sharp, 2011. Modern and Contemporary Classical Music, by Nicole V. Gagné, 2012. Russian Music, by Daniel Jaffé, 2012. Music of the Classical Period, by Bertil van Boer, 2012. Holocaust Cinema, by Robert C. Reimer and Carol J. Reimer, 2012. Asian American Literature and Theater, by Wenjing Xu, 2012. Beat Movement, by Paul Varner, 2012. Jazz, by John S. Davis, 2012. Crime Films, by Geoff Mayer, 2013. Scandinavian Cinema, by John Sundholm, Isak Thorsen, Lars Gustaf Andersson, Olof Hedling, Gunnar Iversen, and Birgir Thor Møller, 2013. Chinese Cinema, by Tan Ye and Yun Zhu, 2013. Taiwan Cinema, by Daw-Ming Lee, 2013. Russian Literature, by Jonathan Stone, 2013. Gothic Literature, by William Hughes, 2013. French Literature, by John Flower, 2013. Baroque Music, by Joseph P. Swain, 2013. Opera, by Scott L. Balthazar, 2013. British Cinema, by Alan Burton and Steve Chibnall, 2013. Romantic Music, by John Michael Cooper with Randy Kinnett, 2013. British Theatre: Early Period, by Darryll Grantley, 2013. South American Cinema, by Peter H. Rist, 2014. African American Television, Second Edition, by Kathleen Fearn-Banks and Anne Burford-Johnson, 2014.

Japanese Traditional Theatre, Second Edition, by Samuel L. Leiter, 2014. Science Fiction in Literature, by M. Keith Booker, 2015. Romanticism in Literature, by Paul Varner, 2015.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature

M. Keith Booker

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom Copyright © 2015 by M. Keith Booker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Booker, M. Keith. Historical dictionary of science fiction in literature / M. Keith Booker. pages cm. — (Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts) Includes bibliographical references. Summary: “The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature covers the history of science fiction in literature through a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries significant people, themes, critical issues, and the most significant genres that have formed science fiction literature. This book is an excellent reference for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this subject.” — Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-8108-7883-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7884-6 (ebook) 1. Science fiction—Dictionaries. 2. Science fiction—History and criticism—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title. II. Title: Dictionary of science fiction in literature. PN3433.4.B66 2015 809.3’876203—dc23 2014020877 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America.

For Benjamin Booker, Skylor Booker, and Adam Booker

Contents

Editor’s Foreword

xi

Preface

xiii

Acronyms and Abbreviations

xv

Reader’s Notes

xvii

Chronology

xix

Introduction

1

THE DICTIONARY

11

Bibliography

355

About the Author

397

ix

Editor’s Foreword

Among literary genres, science fiction—or simply sf—is one of the more recent, with its earliest precursors reaching back about two centuries and the bulk of its history in the 20th century. But its growth is nothing short of phenomenal, with the number of authors and works growing exponentially. Science fiction has also influenced many other forms of literature, from children’s and young adult titles to comic books to novels by extremely competent and literate authors. In addition to shorter works, there are whole series of novels creating an extensive solar system of works. These can range considerably in form and mood, with lighter space operas and romances to heavier serious works, some utopian and others dystopian, and some by writers steeped in science and sometimes themselves scientists who generate hard, as opposed to soft, sf. Not even a time traveler could have predicted this explosion of literature two centuries ago. The task of this Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature is fortunately not to look ahead but to look back. A chronology chronicles the genre’s development, and the introduction provides an overview of science fiction’s many subgenres, major trends and styles, and noteworthy authors and works. The core of the book is the dictionary section, with more than 300 entries on authors and publishers, outstanding books and relevant concepts, genres, related magazines and organizations, and fans. Finally, those who want to know more can consult the bibliography. This volume was written by M. Keith Booker, the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professor of English at the University of Arkansas and director of the university’s Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies program. Dr. Booker has been teaching science fiction literature for 25 years and also specializes in the related field of science fiction cinema. Over the years he has written numerous articles and books on literature, popular culture, and science fiction, such as The Science Fiction Handbook and Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema. Whether you are a newcomer to the genre, a fan and avid reader, or a student or academic, this is an excellent resource by an acknowledged expert in the field. Jon Woronoff Series Editor

xi

Preface

Science fiction films have been among the most successful (and beloved) films in cinematic history, while science fiction television series such as Star Trek and its many spinoffs have fan bases among the most loyal in the history of popular culture. Science fiction literature has not achieved this same level of prominence, and influenced by pulp magazines, especially in the United States, it has had a reputation for low quality and juvenile content suitable primarily for adolescent and preadolescent boys. This reputation has, however, become increasingly unearned over the past half century. Even in the Golden Age of pulp-dominated science fiction, writers such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein were producing work with sophisticated themes and literary merit. With the explosion in paperback publishing in the 1950s (and consequent emergence of such authors as Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon), the quality and complexity of science fiction began an upward surge that has never abated, passing through phenomena such as the New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of cyberpunk in the 1980s, the towering achievement of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy in the 1990s, and the recent British Boom in science fiction (and fantasy)—to make science fiction literature one of the most vital phenomena in global culture since the end of World War II. This book seeks to capture some of the highlights of the historical development of science fiction literature, including key individuals such as authors, editors, critics, and publishers; major themes and subgenres; important awards and other industry phenomena; and influential texts. The emphasis is on science fiction literature in English, though contributions from around the globe are also acknowledged, especially when they have affected the evolution of British and American science fiction.

xiii

Acronyms and Abbreviations

AI

Artificial Intelligence

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation (formerly British Broadcasting Company)

BSFA

British Science Fiction Association

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid

EC

Entertaining Comics

sf

science fiction

SFRA

Science Fiction Research Association

SFWA

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

UFO

Unidentified Flying Object

YA

Young Adult

xv

Reader’s Notes

In the early years of science fiction book publishing (mostly in the 1950s), it was common for some or all of the material to have been published previously in science fiction magazines. When this is the case (and where it is useful to know), the separate publication of novels in serial form in magazines and in book form has been noted. In order to facilitate the rapid and efficient location of information and to make this book as useful a reference tool as possible, extensive cross-references are provided in the dictionary section. Within individual entries, terms that have their own entries are in boldface type the first time they appear. Entries with no text that refer to an associated entry or entries do so by way of see references. Other entries dealing with a topic are indicated with see also references at the end of entries.

xvii

Chronology

1726 Great Britain: The third book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels mocks the belief that science, then still new, can produce an understanding of the world and then communicate that understanding to others. 1771 France: Louis-Sebastien Mercier’s L’an 2240 (The Year 2240) is the first vision of a fictional utopian society whose ideal conditions are enabled by technological advancements. 1818 Great Britain: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, often considered the first sf novel, is published. It will later prove to be the direct or indirect inspiration for numerous films that straddle the boundary between sf and horror. 1826 Great Britain: Shelley’s postapocalyptic novel The Last Man moves even more toward a genuine sf mode. 1864 France: Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth) is the first of his major adventure novels to border on sf. Astronomer Camille Flammarion’s Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels (Real and Imaginary Worlds) is a nonfiction survey of visions of life on other planets. 1869 France: Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea) is published. 1872 France: Verne’s Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) published. Flammarion’s Récits de l’infini (Stories of Infinity) is a fictional dramatization of the ideas from his earlier Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels. 1874 France: Verne’s L’île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island) is published. 1884 Great Britain: Edwin Abbott’s Flatland envisions a two-dimensional world that is a landmark in the use of fiction to explore scientific and mathematical concepts. 1885 Great Britain: Richard Jefferies’s After London is a popular postdisaster vision of a collapsed London that reverts to premodern ways. 1886 Great Britain: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a sort of mad scientist story with definite sf intonations. xix

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1887 France: Flammarion’s Lumen compiles several of his earlier works (nonfiction and fiction) about the possibilities of life on other planets. 1888 United States: Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a key utopian narrative that sees technological progress as the key to historical progress toward socialism. 1889 United States: Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court involves travel from the contemporary world back to the Middle Ages, though with little in the way of a scientific basis. 1890 Great Britain: William Morris’s News from Nowhere envisions a pastoral socialist utopia that is partly a rejoinder to the technological utopia presented in Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888). 1895 Great Britain: H. G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, the first of his major “scientific romances” that would help to form the foundation of modern sf. 1896 Great Britain: Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau introduces a number of concepts that would recur frequently in later sf. 1898 Great Britain: Wells’s The War of the Worlds is the first major alieninvasion narrative. It establishes many conventions of the genre, while effectively allegorizing colonialism on earth. 1901 Great Britain: Wells’s The First Men in the Moon is an early narrative of travel into space. 1902 France: Georges Méliès’s Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), an adaptation of a novel by Verne, features some of the first sf special effects footage in film, propelling science fiction further into the popular consciousness. 1905 Great Britain: Wells’s A Modern Utopia employs modern political ideas in exploring the possibilities of utopian narrative. 1908 United States: Hugo Gernsback launches Modern Electrics, marking his debut in the world of magazine publishing. Something of a hobby magazine, it will add science fiction as well. 1909 Great Britain: E. M. Forster’s story “The Machine Stops” is a founding text in the evolution of modern dystopian fiction. 1910 United States: The Edison company releases the first film adaptation of Frankenstein.

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1911 United States: Gernsback publishes his own novel, Ralph 124C 41+, in Modern Electrics as a 12-part serial, then in book form in 1925. Questionable in a literary sense, the novel foresaw a number of coming technological advances and influenced many subsequent stories. 1913 United States: Gernsback broadens his participation in the magazine business with the launch of the Electrical Experimenter. 1920 United States: Gernsback’s Electrical Experimenter is renamed Science and Invention, reflecting a broader interest, including in science fiction. 1921 Czechoslovakia: Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. introduces the word “robot” to science fiction, though his artificial beings are biological, not mechanical. 1923 Soviet Union: Alexei Tolstoy’s Aelita, or the Decline of Mars features a Soviet engineer who travels to Mars and participates in a failed workers’ rebellion there. United States: Gernsback publishes a “scientifiction” issue of Science and Invention, constituting a step toward the appearance of sf pulp magazines that would dominate the development of the field for the next three decades. 1924 Soviet Union: Aelita adapts Tolstoy’s similarly titled novel to silent film, dramatizing socialist ideals in an adventure set on Mars. Evgeny Zamyatin’s We is the first major modern dystopian novel, critiquing the potential excesses of the postrevolutionary society he saw around him. 1925 United States: Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+ is published in book form. 1926 United States: Gernsback’s Amazing Stories is launched in what is widely regarded as the birth of modern science fiction as a distinct genre. 1927 Germany: Fritz Lang’s dystopian Metropolis, often considered the first full-fledged sf film, represents a culmination of the German expressionist style in cinema. 1928 United States: E. E. “Doc” Smith’s “The Skylark of Space” is a landmark in the evolution of the space opera, initiating what will be an extensive series of interrelated stories. 1929 United States: The comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century debuts with considerable success, suggesting the widening appeal of sf. Gernsback loses control of his existing magazines, but then launches Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories, which were soon merged into Wonder Stories. Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces his finding that the universe is

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expanding. The U.S. stock market crashes, propelling the nation into a decade of economic depression, along with most of the rest of the capitalist world. 1930 Great Britain: Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men is a series of 18 interlinked stories projecting a history that reaches into the far future. United States: Fox’s lighthearted sf musical Just Imagine brings utopian fantasy to Depression-era audiences in the first American sf feature film. Astounding Stories of Super-Science is launched. 1931 United States: Astounding Stories of Super-Science is retitled Astounding Stories. John W. Campbell Jr.’s serialized novel Islands of Space (1931) introduces the idea of hyperspace to sf. 1932 Great Britain: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World becomes one of the major founding texts of modern dystopian fiction, and the one that most directly satirizes the realities of life in modern capitalist societies. United States: Campbell’s “The Last Evolution” maps new sf territory with its vision of a humanity that is replaced by intelligent machines that then evolve into energy beings without physical bodies. 1933 Great Britain: The Shape of Things to Come is H. G. Wells’s last major fictional vision of the future. United States: A 10-minute film featuring pulp sf hero Buck Rogers premieres at the World’s Fair in Chicago. C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” represents a groundbreaking combination of science fiction and fantasy. 1934 United States: Murray Leinster’s story “Sidewise in Time” becomes a founding text of the alternate-history subgenre. Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) represents a step forward in the sophisticated and varied description of aliens. Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space adds a romantic touch to the evolving space opera form. The Flash Gordon comic strip debuts. Gernsback founds the Science Fiction League to coordinate local sf fan groups nationwide. 1935 United States: Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here explores the possibility of a fascist takeover in the United States. 1936 Great Britain: Things to Come adapts The Shape of Things to Come (1933) to film, becoming the first major Anglophone sf film. United States: Flash Gordon becomes the first of three film serials featuring the comic-strip sf hero as sf becomes more and more a part of mainstream popular culture. H. P. Lovecraft’s “cosmic horror” story “At the Mountains of Madness” mixes horror and sf, establishing a strain that would repeatedly surface in decades to come. Gernsback loses editorial control of Wonder Stories when

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economic conditions force its sale to a competitor. Czechoslovakia: Čapek’s War with the Newts contributes to the evolution of the genre of dystopian fiction. 1937 Great Britain: Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker is a landmark work of visionary far-future fantasizing. Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (first published under the name “Murray Constantine”) is a dystopian narrative that warns of the possible dire consequences of a fascist (and masculinist) takeover of Great Britain. United States: John W. Campbell Jr. becomes the editor of Astounding Stories (soon to be retitled Astounding Science-Fiction), ushering in what would come to be known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The first of Smith’s “Lensmen” novels is serialized in Astounding. The Futurians fan group is founded. 1938 United States: Campbell retitles Astounding Stories as Astounding Science-Fiction. It quickly becomes the leading magazine in the field. Ray Palmer becomes the editor of Amazing Stories. Jack Williamson’s story “The Legion of Time” is an influential early version of the alternate-history narrative. The debut of Superman in Action Comics #1 initiates an explosion in superhero comics (usually including sf elements) that would become a major phenomenon in U.S. popular culture, often overlapping with sf in terms of themes and fan base. 1939 Great Britain: World War II begins in Europe, with Great Britain initially spearheading the effort to stop Nazi expansionism from Germany. United States: A 12-part Buck Rogers serial is released, as sf continues its march to the forefront of U.S. popular culture. L. Sprague de Camp’s “Lest Darkness Fall” becomes an important founding text of the alternate-history subgenre. The New York World’s Fair is built on a science fictional vision of the future, and the first World Science Fiction Convention, held in conjunction with the World’s Fair, is an important landmark in sf fan culture. These conventions will come to be known as Worldcons and will be a central ongoing event in sf fandom. 1940 United States: James Blish and Leigh Brackett publish their first sf stories. Hugo Gernsback’s Superworld sf comic book is not a success. A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan employs the term “gene transformation” in a story that essentially involves the genetic engineering of superhumans. Robert A. Heinlein’s stories for Astounding Science-Fiction represent a landmark in the creation of consistent future histories based on believable scientific projections. “Robbie,” the first of Isaac Asimov’s “Robot” stories, is published in Super Science Stories. 1941 United States: Asimov’s “Nightfall” is published in Astounding Science-Fiction. The United States enters World War II at the end of the year.

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1942 United States: The first of Asimov’s “Foundation” stories is published in Astounding Science-Fiction. Asimov’s robot story “Runaround” introduces the “Three Laws of Robotics.” Henry Kuttner’s early story “The Twonky” (as by Lewis Padgett) is published. 1943 United States: The first of the comical robot stories in Kuttner’s Galloway Gallegher series is published. 1944 United States: The first story of Clifford D. Simak’s “City” sequence launches an important series that will appear over the next seven years. Fredric Brown’s “Arena” is published. 1945 Germany: Preliminary tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are interrupted by Germany’s defeat in World War II. Werner von Braun and other leading German scientists are relocated to the United States to continue their work, though some German scientists go to the Soviet Union as well. Great Britain: Arthur C. Clarke circulates a paper among members of the British Interplanetary Society that promotes the idea of geosynchronous telecommunication satellites. United States: World War II ends with the U.S. bombing of Japan, an event that would usher in the Cold War arms race and a panoply of works of sf exploring the potential dire consequences of nuclear war. Murray Leinster’s story “First Contact” features a universal translation device. 1946 Great Britain: Clarke’s first professional sf stories are published in the United States in Astounding Science-Fiction. 1947 United States: Rocketship Galileo becomes the first of Heinlein’s juvenile sf novels. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth” appears in the Saturday Evening Post, taking sf into the publishing mainstream. 1948 Great Britain: Arthur C. Clarke’s story “The Sentinel,” which will later become a basis of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, is published. United States: B. F. Skinner’s illustration of behavior conditioning in Walden Two blurs the boundary between utopian and dystopian narratives. William Tenn’s “The Brooklyn Project” skewers the typical technological optimism of 1940s sf. A. E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A is a landmark tale of psipowered superhumans. Norbert Weinter introduces the concept of cybernetics. 1949 Great Britain: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four becomes one of the founding texts of modern dystopian fiction and will go on to become one of the best-known novels of the 20th century. United States: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is founded.

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1950 Great Britain: Alan Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” introduces the “Turing Test,” designed to distinguish between humans and intelligent computers. United States: Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M become the first works of the American sf film explosion of the 1950s. The bulk of Asimov’s “Robot” stories are collected in I, Robot. Ray Bradbury’s collection The Martian Chronicles is a landmark work. A supportive article in Astounding Science-Fiction provides a major boost to L. Ron Hubbard’s notion of “Dianetics.” 1951 United States: Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy begins to appear in novel form (assembled from earlier stories) with the initial volume Foundation (1951). Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters is an alien-invasion narrative that transparently allegorizes the fear of communist infiltration of the United States. Jack Williamson’s Dragon Island becomes the first work of sf to use the term “genetic engineering.” 1952 United States: Foundation and Empire, the second volume of Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, is published. The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, is a landmark work of sf satire aimed at the advertising industry in particular and capitalism in general. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s dystopian Player Piano is another key satire. The United States tests a hydrogen bomb that is nearly 500 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, providing additional fuel to fears of a coming nuclear holocaust. 1953 Great Britain: Clarke’s Childhood’s End is a groundbreaking alieninvasion novel. United States: Second Foundation, the second volume of Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, is published. Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee imagines an alternate U.S. history in which the South won the Civil War. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is an important dystopian narrative. The first Hugo Awards are given at the 11th Worldcon; the fan-voted awards will go on to become the most prestigious award in the sf industry. Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man becomes the first Hugo Winner for Best Novel. A. E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A is republished as part of an “Ace Double,” taking that series beyond Westerns and detective stories into sf, under the editorship of Donald A. Wollheim. U.S. scientist James Watson and British scientist Francis Crick jointly identify the double-helix structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule that encodes the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of all living organisms on earth. 1954 Great Britain: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring initiates the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which will cast a long shadow over the fantasy genre. United States: Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel extends his

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earlier robot stories, now with a detective story format. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend is a groundbreaking postapocalyptic narrative. Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity is an important planetary romance. 1955 Soviet Union: The U.S.S.R. tests a thermonuclear device that is similar in sophistication to the best American weapons, triggering new Cold War tensions. United States: Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, serialized the year before, is published in book form. Solar Lottery is the first published novel by Philip K. Dick. Isaac Asimov’s time-travel novel The End of Eternity is a landmark in that subgenre. Computer scientist John McCarthy coins the term “artificial intelligence.” 1956 United States: Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star is a political satire that will win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination is a groundbreaking novel involving psi powers that also satirizes capitalism. The annual Milford Science Fiction Writers Workshop is founded by Damon Knight. 1957 Soviet Union: Sputnik I becomes the first manmade satellite in orbit around the earth. Soon afterward, Sputnik II carries a dog into space. The R-7 rocket used to launch the Sputniks can also be used as the basis for intercontinental ballistic missiles, giving the Soviets their strongest position yet in the Cold War arms race. United States: Philip K. Dick’s Eye in the Sky is a step forward in the sophistication of his novels and in his elaboration of the tenuous nature of perceived reality. 1958 Great Britain: Brian W. Aldiss’s Non-Stop is a groundbreaking world ship narrative. The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) is founded. Soviet Union: Ivan Yefremov’s Andromeda is a key text in the reemergence of Soviet science fiction. United States: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Planet Savers introduces the planet Darkover. The United States launches its own artificial satellites, beginning a frantic effort to catch up in the space race. The first successful test launch of the Atlas rocket is completed, making intercontinental ballistic missiles a working reality on both sides of the Cold War. 1959 United States: Heinlein’s Starship Troopers participates in Cold War anticommunism while also becoming the last of Heinlein’s series of “juvenile” sf novels. Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai! is another key example of military sf. Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint ends his sf work of the 1950s on a high note, and in a work that is somewhat skeptical of militarism. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s The Sirens of Titan is the first work of the main segment of Vonnegut’s career.

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1960 United States: Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, built from stories that began appearing in 1955, becomes a key postapocalyptic narrative of the peak Cold War era. Astounding Science-Fiction is retitled Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 1961 Germany: The “Perry Rhodan” series of space opera adventures in a pulp booklet format (intended for a young adult audience) is inaugurated. It will run for decades and thousands of issues. Poland: Stanisław Lem’s Solaris is a successful meditation on the difficulty of communication between humans and any alien intelligences they might encounter in space. Soviet Union: Boris and Arkady Strugatsky publish their first novel, propelling them into a career in which they will become the best-known Russian sf writers worldwide. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into space, completing an orbit of the earth on 12 April. United States: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land will become a favorite text of the 1960s counterculture. Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat begins a successful satirical sequence of novels. Astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the second human to travel into space on 5 May, though he does not complete an orbit. 1962 Great Britain: Anthony Burgess publishes A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed, both with clearly dystopian intonations. But Aldous Huxley counters his earlier Brave New World with Island, a text with mostly utopian inclinations. United States: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring calls unprecedented attention to the threat posed to the environment by human activity, ushering in the modern environmentalist movement and ultimately exerting an influence on sf as well. The October Cuban missile crisis takes the world closer than ever to nuclear war. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is published after a three-year hiatus from sf; it will win Dick’s only Hugo Award (for Best Novel). Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time will go on to become one of the classics of young adult science fiction. Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American (and second human) to complete an orbit of the earth in a spacecraft. The Telstar telecommunications satellite is launched, ushering in a new era of global communications. When the Soviet Union begins to develop a nuclear missile base in Cuba, the U.S. response takes the world to the brink of war in the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” 1963 France: Pierre Boulle’s La planète des singes (Planet of the Apes) is published; it will eventually become widely known as the basis for the 1968 American film of the same title. United States: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle is a whimsical story of global apocalypse that also satirizes religion, as well as the Cold War arms race. Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station involves interstellar travel via teleportation.

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1964 Great Britain: Michael Moorcock becomes the editor of New Worlds magazine, placing him at the center of science fiction’s New Wave. United States: Robert A. Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, seen by many as racist, causes considerable controversy. 1965 United States: Frank Herbert’s Dune is a compelling work that combines several different subgenres and achieves an unprecented level of effectiveness and detail in portraying an alien culture. Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney is the most detailed, and perhaps most effective, of his numerous postapocalptic narratives of the peak Cold War years. The Science Fiction Writers Association is founded and immediately institutes the annual Nebula Awards for achievement in sf. 1966 United States: Ursula K. Le Guin introduces the ansible in her novel Rocannon’s World. Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! warns of the future dangers of overpopulation; it will eventually become the basis for the classic 1973 sf film Soylent Green. Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 is both an effective soap opera and a sophisticated meditation on the nature of language. 1967 Great Britain: The serialization of American writer Norman Spinrad’s novel Bug Jack Barron begins in New Worlds magazine; it will become one of the most controversial products of the New Wave, causing the magazine to be banned in some places. United States: Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” is a landmark in the depiction of computers as threats to humanity. Ellison edits the groundbreaking anthology Dangerous Visions, providing a central statement of the American version of the New Wave. 1968 Great Britain: John Brunner’s Hugo Award–winning Stand on Zanzibar begins an impressive run of dystopian novels by the author over the next few years. Clarke’s novelization of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey is written in conjunction with the production of the film itself. United States: The film versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes are major hits, bringing new respect (and new audiences) to science fiction as a genre. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is published; it will eventually become the basis of the classic 1982 sf film Blade Runner. The Clarion Workshop is founded at Clarion State College in Pennsylvania. Locus magazine is founded in Oakland, California. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb draws popular attention to the potentially catastrophic effects of global population growth. 1969 Great Britain: John Brunner’s dystopian sequence extends with The Jagged Orbit. United States: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Slaughterhouse-Five will eventually become his best-known single work. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left

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Hand of Darkness demonstrates the potential for highlighting gender-related issues in an estranged context. Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron is published in book form. The Apollo 11 mission lands the first spacecraft on the moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the lunar surface. 1970 United States: Larry Niven’s Ringword takes the planetary romance into the realm of artificially created worlds. 1971 United States: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven questions the nature of reality. Locus magazine initiates the Locus Awards for achievement in science fiction and fantasy. The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) is founded. John W. Campbell Jr. dies, ending a run of more than 30 years as an important sf magazine editor. The Clarion Workshop splits into “East” and “West” segments. 1972 Great Britain: Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up skewers U.S. politics and explores environmentalist themes in a dystopian narrative constructed via sophisticated modernist literary strategies. Soviet Union: Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic is published; it will go on to become their best-known novel worldwide. United States: Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside takes the sf novel to a new level of psychological power and complexity. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest satirizes the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, as well as treating issues related to gender, colonialism, and environmentalism. 1973 Great Britain: Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama involves an encounter with an alien-built “Big Dumb Object.” United States: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” challenges simplistic visions of utopia—and simplistic critiques of utopian visions. The academic journal Science Fiction Studies is founded by R. D. Mullen at Indiana State University; it will go on to become the leading publication of its kind. 1974 United States: Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a crucial contribution to the cycle of feminist utopian fiction that was a key sf phenomenon of the 1970s. Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War satirizes the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and militarism in general. James Tiptree Jr.’s novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” is a sophisticated use of sf motifs to explore gender issues. Philip K. Dick’s Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is published, but a “pink ray” vision is interpreted by him as a message from God, taking all of his subsequent work in a new, metaphysical direction. 1975 Great Britain: Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider is an important forerunner of cyberpunk that is generally credited with having introduced the notion of computer viruses (therein referred to as “worms”). Salman Rushdie debuts with Grimus, a parallel-worlds sf novel. United States: Joanna Russ’s

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The Female Man is a groundbreaking feminist sf novel. Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia presents an environmentalist utopia. Samuel R. Delany’s Dahlgren is so complex that it draws comparisons with Finnegans Wake. 1976 United States: Samuel R. Delany’s Triton is published, exploring new ground in terms of plural sexualities in sf. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time is sophisticated feminist sf with both utopian and dystopian components. The unmanned Viking 1 Lander becomes the first terrestrial craft to land on Mars. 1977 United States: Frederik Pohl’s Gateway and John Varley’s The Ophiuchi Hotline are innovative alien-encounter narratives. The first issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine is published. 1978 United States: The initial version of Stephen King’s postapocalyptic novel The Stand is published; it will be expanded in 1990, restoring cuts initially insisted on by the publisher. Stanley Schmidt becomes the editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 1979 Canada: Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction appears in English after a 1977 publication in French; it puts together much of his recent work describing science fiction as a literature of “cognitive estrangement,” which will become one of the most influential ideas in the history of academic criticism of sf. Great Britain: Douglas Adams publishes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; itself growing out of a BBC radio play, it will become the first novel in a franchise. The first edition of the monumental Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is published. 1980 Great Britain: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker gains considerable attention for its effective use of language as an indicator of the post-apocalypse decay of civilization in England. United States: Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen is an innovative use of fairy-tale motifs within feminist science fiction; it will win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle is an effective planetary romance with numerous fantasy elements. 1981 United States: The outlines of cyberpunk begin to take shape in such stories as William Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” and Vernor Vinge’s “True Names.” C. J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station is a Hugo-winning addition to her “Alliance-Union” sequence. Philip K. Dick’s VALIS begins what will be a trilogy of novels to end Dick’s career. 1982 Great Britain: Brian W. Aldiss’s Helliconia Spring begins an important trilogy of planetary romances. United States: Isaac Asimov returns to the world of the “Foundation” trilogy with Foundation’s Edge, which will

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grow into a second trilogy. Blade Runner is the first film adaptation of the fiction of Philip K. Dick; it will go on to become one of the classic works of sf cinema. 1983 United States: David Brin’s Startide Rising kicks his “Uplift” series into high gear; it will win the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel. An article by mathematician and sf writer Vernor Vinge popularizes the notion of the technological singularity. 1984 United States: William Gibson’s Neuromancer becomes the signature work of cyberpunk. The Wild Shore initiates Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Three Californias” trilogy, announcing the arrival of a major new voice in political sf. 1985 Canada: Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale satirizes religious fundamentalism and its contributions to the patriarchal oppression of women. United States: Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix combines cyberpunk, space-opera, alien-invasion, and genetic-engineering motifs in an effective multigeneric mix. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game will become a landmark of young adult science fiction. Donna Haaway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” inspires some important new directions in sf criticism. 1986 United States: Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling, will become something of an official manifesto of the cyberpunk movement. Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean is an important contribution to feminist sf. 1987 Great Britain: Iain M. Banks publishes Consider Phlebas, the first novel of his “Culture” sequence. The Arthur C. Clarke Award is initiated to recognize the best science fiction novel first published in Great Britain during the preceding year. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale wins the inaugural award. United States: Dawn, the first volume of Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy, is published. Ambient will be the first of six dystopian novels in Jack Womack’s “Dryco” sequence. James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science (chaos theory) and Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation (nanotechnology) popularize two major scientific notions that will prove important in subsequent sf. 1988 Soviet Union: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We is finally published in Russian in his home country. United States: Adulthood Rites, the second volume of Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy, is published. The 3New York Review of Science Fiction is founded.

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1989 Great Britain: Peter Dickinson’s Eva is a step forward in young adult sf. United States: Imago completes Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy. Dan Simmon’s Hyperion takes the space opera in a new metaphysical direction. 1990 United States: The Difference Engine, by cyberpunk stars William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, brings new attention to steampunk sf. The Human Genome Project is announced, with the goal of producing a full map of the human genome. 1991 United States: Pat Cadigan’s Synners, which will win the Arthur C. Clarke Award, becomes one of the last works of the main wave of cyberpunk. 1992 United States: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is widely seen as announcing the arrival of post-cyberpunk sf. A Fire Upon the Deep initiates Vernor Vinge’s “Zones of Thought” sequence. 1993 Great Britain: Jeff Noon’s Vurt gains widespread attention, contributing to the virtual reality craze of the early 1990s. United States: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars initiates the “Mars” trilogy, perhaps the most important work of sf in the decade. Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a groundbreaking work of dystopian fiction for young adult audiences. Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower is groundbreaking dystopian fiction for adults, though still with a teenage protagonist. 1994 Great Britain: Iain M. Banks’s Feersum Endjinn is a sophisticated end-of-the-world saga that is narrated by four different protagonists, with one of these segments written in phonetic spelling to indicate the dyslexia of the narrator. United States: Robinson’s Green Mars continues the “Mars” trilogy. 1995 Great Britain: Ken MacLeod initiates his “Fall Revolution” sequence with The Star Fraction. Ian McDonald’s Chaga is a step forward in the use of sf to explore multicultural issues in a postcolonial setting. Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships updates and extends H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights initiates the “His Dark Materials” sequence, taking fantasy out of the shadow of Tolkien and in the direction of science fiction. 1996 Great Britain: The initial volume of Peter F. Hamilton’s “Night’s Dawn” trilogy is published. Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal to be successfully cloned. United States: Robinson’s Blue Mars concludes the “Mars” trilogy. IBM’s “Deep Blue” computer wins a chess match against

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international grandmaster Gary Kasparov, marking an advance in the development of artificial intelligence. The first “Retro Hugos” are awarded, giving recognition to work published before the Hugos were instituted in 1953. 1997 Australia: Greg Egan’s Diaspora envisions a far future in which most humans have chosen to leave their physical bodies behind in order to have their consciousnesses uploaded in digital form. India: Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome gains international attention for Indian sf. United States: Gregory Benford’s Foundation’s Fear initiates a new trilogy in the universe of Asimov’s original classic “Foundation” trilogy. The Soujourner rover becomes the first successful rover to land on the Martian surface, though it functions for only two months. 1998 Great Britain: King Rat is the debut novel by China Miéville. United States: Mike Resnick’s Kirinyaga is a sort of planetary romance set on a planet whose culture is modeled on the history of Kenya. 1999 United States: Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio meditates on human evolution. Millennial tensions are increased by the “Y2K” scare, related to fear of widespread computer-system failures due to the rollover to a new millennium. 2000 Canada: Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber is an innovative planetary romance with Caribbean (and cyberpunk) accents. Great Britain: China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station initiates the “Bas-Lag” trilogy. United States: Y2K computer scares prove unfounded. Celera Genomics released the first preliminary mapping of the human genome, based primarily on the DNA of project leader Craig Venter. 2001 Great Britain: Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines brings the energies of the British Boom to young adult readers. United States: Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is a groundbreaking fantasy novel with the feel of science fiction, contributing to the ongoing erosion of the boundary between the two genres. 2002 Great Britain: Miéville’s The Scar continues the “Bas-Lag” trilogy. Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon initiates his “Takeshi Kovacs” sequence and takes cyberpunk conceits into new territory. M. John Harrison’s Light helps to reinvigorate the space opera. United States: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt is a sweeping and effective alternate history of the world from the 14th century forward.

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2003 Canada: Margaret Atwood turns her attention to the postapocalyptic narrative (involving an act of bioterrorism) in Oryx and Crake, which will become the first volume in a trilogy. United States: Science Fiction Studies devotes a special issue to the British Boom, acknowledging the importance of that phenomenon. 2004 Great Britain: Iron Council concludes Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy. United States: The Human Genome Project verifies completion of the initial mapping of the human genome, which includes approximately 20,500 genes. The Opportunity rover lands on the Martian surface, becoming the most successful rover mission to date. 2005 Great Britain: Charles Stross’s Accelerando dramatizes the technological singularity. United States: Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions culminates decades of interest in sf on the part of the important cultural theorist. 2006 Great Britain: M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing continues the “Kefahuchi Tract” trilogy, as the British Boom revitalizes the space opera. United States: Octavia E. Butler’s vampire tale Fledgling appears shortly before her accidental death. The Clarion Workshop moves to the University of California at San Diego. 2007 Great Britain: Miéville’s Un Lun Dun brings young adult fiction into the mainstream of the British Boom. United States: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting completes his “Science in the Capital” trilogy and calls attention to issues related to global climate change. Apple Computer introduces the first iPhone, initiating an explosion in smartphone use that revolutionizes the intrusion of technology into the daily lives of ordinary individuals. 2008 United States: Suzanne Collins’s young adult dystopian novel The Hunger Games becomes a smash hit, further feeding what is already explosive growth in dystopian fiction for younger audiences. Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother extends Orwellian dystopian concerns into young adult fiction and into the era of the Patriot Act security state. Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007) wins the Hugo Award for Best Novel, blurring the boundary between sf and mainstream literary fiction. 2009 Great Britain: Miéville’s The City & the City is an inventive parallelworlds story that will win a Hugo the next year. This year’s Hugo, meanwhile, goes to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, highlighting the new prominence of young adult fiction in speculative fiction. United States: Catching Fire, the second volume of Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy is published. Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut novel, The Windup Girl, will share the Hugo with The City & the City.

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2010 United States: Mockingjay is the third volume of Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy. Ted Chiang’s novella “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010) highlights the work of the master sf story writer. The U.S. Congress resolved that the second week of April each year will be designated “National Robotics Week,” specifically in recognition of Isaac Asimov and his Three Laws of Robotics. 2011 Great Britain: Embassytown is Miéville’s first all-out science fiction novel. United States: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is published, compiled from the author’s massive, rambling manuscripts and edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem. 2012 Great Britain: M. John Harrison’s Empty Space completes the “Kefahuchi Tract” trilogy of space operas. United States: Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 combines a number of sf subgenres in its vision of a future spacegoing humanity whose civilization spans the solar system. David Brin’s Existence is a virtual encyclopedia of sf motifs and subgenres. The highly sophisticated Curiosity rover lands successfully on Mars to explore the planetary surface. 2013 Great Britain: Charles Stross’s Neptune’s Brood uses posthuman science fiction to comment on the corruption of the contemporary banking system. Lavie Tidhar’s alternate-history novel The Violent Century features superheroes in World War II. United States: Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves draws attention to animal rights issues. 2014 United States: Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon envisions a future in which Lagos has become the world’s biggest megacity; Paol Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife features a future ravaged by climate change.

Introduction

Science fiction as we know it can be defined as speculative fiction set in worlds that differ from our own in fundamental ways, usually because of specific scientific and technological developments beyond those present in our world, but always with a rational explanation. Such forms of speculative fiction have ancient roots, though it seems reasonable to locate these roots in the birth of modern science between the 16th and 18th centuries. The development of science as a way to understand the world (and of its offshoot, technology, to manipulate the world) gave rise to a world that was explainable and explicable. This is central to the growth of realism as the dominant literary mode in the West, based on the notion that you can understand the “real” world well enough to create similar fictional models. It is only natural, of course, that these models would eventually be extended beyond the confines of reality. When the mode of this extension is rational, based on scientific principles if not on specific scientific discoveries, the ultimate result is science fiction. Science fiction as a recognizable form took shape in the 19th century, beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in England in 1818 and now widely regarded as the first major true example of science fiction. Shelley’s novel participated in a number of literary phenomena that were already underway, most obviously in the strain of Gothic literature then popular in England, running in tandem with the Romanticism of which her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was a leading figure. What could not have been clear at the time was that Frankenstein would ultimately be considered the founding text in the new genre of science fiction, especially as the genre grew very slowly. Literature that might be regarded as science fiction was produced throughout the 19th century, especially in Great Britain, though no other works in this emerging tradition would make a lasting impression on literary history until American writer Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and British writer William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), partly a response to Bellamy, became the key works in a spate of utopian fictions produced at that time. Soon afterward, the British writer H. G. Wells would produce a series of early classics in the genre so important that he has come to be widely thought of as the founding father of modern science fiction, though the term hadn’t been invented yet. Wells himself applied the designation “scientific romances” to the series of novels that he published between 1895 and 1905, including such classics as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Mo1

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reau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). But even Wells did not, at the time, trigger a major literary movement, and he himself turned mostly to more “realistic” works after A Modern Utopia in 1905. It was not until the pioneering work of American pulp magazine editors and publishers such as Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell Jr. in the 1920s and 1930s that science fiction as we know it would truly take shape as a literary genre and publishing category—and receive the label “science fiction,” coined by Gernsback. Since that time, science fiction has grown into a major global cultural phenomenon, impacting popular culture worldwide while breaking new ground in a literary sense as well. As the publishing venues available to science fiction grew more diverse, the genre itself grew more diverse as well, making it more and more difficult to distinguish science fiction from other literary products, including other “non-realist” genres such as fantasy. On the other hand, most readers of science fiction even today seem to be able to recognize science fiction fairly easily, or at least able to enjoy reading what they regard as science fiction without spending undue time or energy worrying about a definition of the genre or about whether any given text qualifies as science fiction. However, professional scholars and critics of science fiction (of whom there are now many) tend to worry more about such things and have, in fact, devoted considerable energies to the question of definition. By far the most influential single definition of science fiction as a genre has been Darko Suvin’s declaration that science fiction is the “literature of cognitive estrangement,” that is, the form of literature that functions first and foremost by placing its readers in unfamiliar worlds that differ from theirs in logical and consistent ways, and in ways that the readers are invited to detect and understand through rational cognition. As a result of being encouraged to think about the differences between their world and the worlds of science fiction, readers are (ideally, at least) stimulated to view their own world from a renewed perspective, challenge long-held assumptions, and ask seriously why their world is the way it is and how it might be different. For Suvin, then, science fiction is a privileged genre with a special political power that is fundamentally utopian in nature, encouraging readers to ask the kinds of “what if” and “why not” questions that are crucial to utopian thought. This view does not, of course, imply that science fiction is naively optimistic (or even optimistic at all), as the early example of Shelley’s Frankenstein, which warns against the dangers of unrestrained scientific inquiry. Indeed, while it is true that much of the early history of science fiction in the pulp magazines (especially those produced under the auspices of Hugo Gernsback) were informed by a consistent faith in the potential of technology to bring about a better world, by the 1950s the genre was already becoming more skeptical and less utopian, as was the case with most American culture in that decade. Indeed, by the end of the 1940s, George Orwell’s Nineteen

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Eighty-Four had joined Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Evgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924) to establish the terms of the modern genre of dystopian fiction, which itself exerted a strong influence on the rest of science fiction.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN SCIENCE FICTION Of course, in the period from the 1920s through the 1940s, when the genre took shape mostly within the confines of these early specialized magazines, it was relatively easy to define science fiction as the fiction that appeared in those magazines. Moreover, most of the key writers for these magazines— such as A. E. Van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov—wrote almost entirely for these magazines alone, making it easy to identify which writers could be identified as science fiction writers. The situation became a bit more complicated in the 1950s because of the participation of science fiction in the general boom in paperback publishing in that decade, a boom that was fueled by a number of factors, including improvements in the technology of paperback printing that occurred as a result of government-sponsored efforts to produce paperback books for the entertainment of American soldiers during World War II. In addition, these soldiers developed the habit of reading books for entertainment, which supplied postwar American culture with a ready stock of customers for inexpensive paperback books. Meanwhile, due to concerns over the possibility of nuclear war (but also due to the appearance of a never-ending stream of everyday technological innovations such as improved washing machines and vacuum cleaners, not to mention the amazing new high-tech medium of television), science and technology were at the forefront of the American mind in the 1950s, placing science fiction in a perfect position to attract new readers. When paperback novels became an important form of science fiction publishing in the early 1950s, the leading writers from the pulps by and large remained the most important writers in the new medium. Indeed, many of the early paperback sf novels (such as Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy) were actually cobbled-together combinations of stories that had previously been published in the pulps. Meanwhile, new writers continued to develop their mastery of the genre in the pulps, as when Philip K. Dick published several stories in 1952 and dozens more in 1953 and 1954, before publishing his first novel in 1955 and going on to become perhaps the most critically respected sf writer of all time. While Dick did not attain the lofty status he enjoys today until well after his death in 1982, his work of the 1950s already participated in a growing sense of seriousness in the genre. This sense, combined with a broader sense

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of social and political engagement in the culture at large, produced a number of works of science fiction that were “serious” in both the literary and the social sense by the 1960s. Many of these were aligned with the movement that came to be known as the New Wave. While there remains some disagreement over its significance (or even existence), the phenomenon known as the “New Wave” is widely regarded as one of the most important factors in determining the direction taken by science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. New Wave science fiction is characterized by an attempt both to explore more complex and mature subject matter and to convey that subject matter in a more sophisticated literary style. Among other things, this duel quest led to a shift in emphasis from the “hard” science fiction of the Golden Age (in which the emphasis is on particular technologies and on scientific accuracy) toward “soft” science fiction, which is more character driven and more concerned with the social and political ramifications of technological developments than with the technologies themselves. This shift, among other things, allowed science fiction to become more directly engaged with specific political issues of the day, as well as to explore more “personal” issues, such as sexuality and drug use, that were becoming more and more politicized. Despite its involvement with evolution of science fiction book publishing, the New Wave in sf was still spearheaded by innovative magazines, including those edited by Britain’s Michael Moorcock (New Worlds magazine) and America’s Judith Merril (in the anthology England Swings, which acknowledged a British influence, much as American rock music was being influenced by the “British invasion” of the time). Such editors offered venues for the publication of new kinds of sf stories that would never have been welcomed in the earlier pulps. New Worlds was particularly important in this regard, offering a venue for such writers as Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, M. John Harrison, John Brunner, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, and Norman Spinrad. Because of the leading role played by such magazines, the New Wave was dominated to some extent by short stories, but New Wave writers also produced important novels, and one of the most important (and controversial) items to appear in New Worlds was a serialized novel, Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron (1969). Spinrad’s novel, which caused a wide range of reactions from readers and critics, even triggered a rebellion of the magazine’s own typesetters, who felt that the book was too sexist to be published in New Worlds. The distinctive novels of Samuel R. Delany, such as Triton (1976), can also be seen as outcroppings of the New Wave (though Delany himself was skeptical of the designation), with Delany’s understanding of phenomena such as postmodernism and poststructuralism being indicative of the greater sophistication of much New Wave science fiction as opposed to its Golden Age forebears.

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The New Wave’s interest in political fiction helped, among other things, to encourage more women to write sf, and one of the most important phenomena related to the New Wave was a surge in the production of utopian fiction, especially by women writers such as Le Guin and Joanna Russ in the 1970s, though Ernest Callenbach’s environmentalist utopia Ecotopia (1975) can be placed within this phenomenon as well. On the other hand, one of the most impressive products aligned with the New Wave was John Brunner’s string of British dystopian fictions, highlighted by Stand on Zanzibar (1968) and The Sheep Look Up (1972); these novels combined a sophisticated political vision with complex modernist literary techniques, breaking new ground for science fiction as a genre. Meanwhile, the growing literary sophistication displayed by science fiction during the 1970s attracted the attention of serious critics, leading theoretically minded academics such as Suvin to begin to pay significant attention to the genre, which has enjoyed a privileged position (especially in the work of Marxist and other politically oriented critics) ever since. The genre continued to expand in the 1980s, with the innovative work of cyberpunk writers such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling leading the way as science fiction began to engage with the explosive growth in the use of personal computer technology that marked the decade. Theorists such as Fredric Jameson have seen cyberpunk as one of the most representative examples of postmodernist literary production, solidifying science fiction as a central strand of modern literary culture. By the 1990s, cyberpunk was supplanted by the even more clearly postmodern post-cyberpunk works of writers such as Neal Stephenson. Meanwhile, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy both looked back to older traditions in science fiction and broke entirely new ground in the use of science fiction to explore serious political ideas. The 1990s also saw the rise of a new generation of innovative young British science fiction writers who built on the earlier New Wave to produce new works that revitalized both cyberpunk and the space opera, while challenging the traditional boundaries between science fiction and fantasy in ways that helped to reenergize both genres. The work of these younger British writers—collectively referred to by critics as the “British Boom”—led the way as science fiction (and speculative fiction in general) reached new levels of both literary quality and popular readership in the early years of the 21st century. Science fiction also achieved new levels of cultural respectability in the new century, receiving substantial (largely positive) attention from serious academic critics and becoming an established part of university-level curricula throughout the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as much of the rest of the world. Meanwhile, smartphone and related information-delivery technologies revolutionized the texture of daily life at an increasing pace in the new century, so that the dayto-day (and even minute-to-minute) lives of individuals were openly affected

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by technology as never before. Meanwhile, looming work in artificial intelligence and genetic science promised to be even more fundamental (and possibly unpredictable) in the very nature of human existence. As the rate and extent of technological change continued to accelerate in the new century, it became increasingly obvious that science fiction might be the one literary form best suited to help us come to grips with the changes that were already underway, as well as those that were sure to follow in the near future.

SCIENCE FICTION: FORMS AND SUBGENRES As it has grown over time, science fiction has established a strong sense of continuity and tradition as a genre. It has also established a number of what one might call “subtraditions.” For one thing, science fiction literature, dominated early on by short stories published in sf pulp magazines, has continued to produce innovative short fiction of a variety of lengths. Beginning with its rise as a publishing phenomenon in the 1950s, though, the sf novel has become the central form of science fiction literature. Meanwhile, some of the most important science fiction novels have been part of trilogies or even longer sequences, indicating the way in which sf concepts (often involving the building of entire fictional universes) can generate expansive and virtually inexhaustible narratives. In the meantime, science fiction stories, over time, have gradually developed along the lines of several distinct subgenres, or types of sf stories, even if many of the best sf narratives actually span more than one of these subgenres simultaneously. Particularly prominent in the early pulps were narratives involving the exploration (and often colonization) of outer space, frequently tending toward the kind of rollicking outer-space adventures that came to be referred to as “space operas.” Such adventures, by their very nature, often included encounters with alien races and civilizations. Eventually, these encounters led to the development of related subgenres, including a kind of anthropological sf that is centrally concerned with the description of alien cultures, as well as the sometimes-alarmist subgenre of the alien-invasion narrative, in which aliens attempt to conquer and colonize the earth, enslaving or even exterminating humans. Such alien-invasion narratives predictably became particularly important in the paranoid climate of the peak Cold War years of the 1950s, during which time postapocalyptic narratives exploring the aftermath of cataclysmic nuclear wars also understandably became popular. Such narratives, meanwhile, were part of a generally dark turn taken by science fiction after World War II, as opposed to the technological utopianism of the prewar years, when it was typical to envision shining future cities with flying cars and few social

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problems. Indeed, dystopian visions of the future—developing within conventions established by such foundational works as We, Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)—became their own subgenre, while dominating the expectations of science fiction in general. Other basic science fiction conceits, such as time travel and robots, furnished the basic scenarios of so many stories as to be worth considering as subgenres of their own, while science fiction (as with other forms of literature) continued to be produced in a variety of modes, from light comedy to serious drama, with a strong element of satire (which in itself has much in common with science fiction in general) providing the basis for a number of science fiction works, with classics such as Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants (1952) and virtually all of the works of such writers as Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. helping to establish this strong satirical tradition in science fiction. This satirical strain was particularly strong in the New Wave science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to find ways for the genre to engage in more productive dialogues with contemporary social reality. Cyberpunk, the most important development in science fiction in the 1980s, became a concerted movement with a number of self-conscious practitioners, while such cyberpunk technologies as virtual reality and various forms of computer-oriented human enhancements and implants became part of the iconography of science fiction. With the growth of the Internet and associated technologies in the 1990s and beyond, this iconography was only strengthened, with concerns about motifs such as artificial intelligence (possibly arising in an explosive moment of Singularity) becoming more and more prominent. Along these lines, much science fiction of the early 21st century was of the “posthuman” variety, exploring possible future evolutionary changes in the human race due to artificial enhancement—or even the replacement of humans by their own technologies as the dominant “species” in our world. Well into the 21st century, these new directions (which also echoed the much older ruminations of such writers as Olaf Stapledon in the 1930s) demonstrated the unique ability of science fiction to adapt to changes in the world, while also remaining in dialogue with its own internal traditions.

SCIENCE FICTION IN POPULAR CULTURE The explosive expansion of science fiction from the pulps into paperback books in the 1950s was accompanied by a movement of science fiction into a prominent position in other media as well. Most importantly, the decade saw the first rise of science fiction into a position of importance in the film

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industry, though science fiction also made inroads into the fledgling medium of television as well. In the latter case, the exploration of science fiction seemed only natural, as the new medium itself must have seemed science fictional to many consumers of its content. But the sudden popularity of sf film clearly signaled a broader moment in cultural history, indicating both the increasing maturity of science fiction as a genre and the increasing relevance of sf concepts to the popular imagination, especially in the United States. The obvious referent here is the nuclear bomb, the appearance of which at the end of World War II hovered over the 1950s like a dark specter, warning that technological “progress” had now reached the point where humans had the power to destroy in an instant what they had built over thousands of years. But World War II had also seen advancements in technologies such as rocketry that made the “space race” a key element of the Cold War competition of the decade, thrilling many with the possibility of an impending expansion of human civilization into outer space. Meanwhile, computer technology was rapidly developing, while smaller-scale technological achievements brought devices such as washing machines and vacuums into increasing numbers of American homes. Technology, in short (with the new medium of television leading the way) was penetrating the daily lives and thoughts of individuals to an unprecedented extent. With each day bringing new wonders (and new dangers), it should come as no surprise that science fiction began to penetrate the daily culture as never before. Of course, science fiction film had been around essentially as long as film itself, with the pioneering special-effects work of French filmmaker Georges Méliès at the dawn of the 20th century leading the way. The decade began as the space exploration dramas Destination Moon (scripted by Robert A. Heinlein based on his 1947 novel Rocket Ship Galileo) and Rocketship X-M raced to get into theaters first, both meanwhile leading the way for the many sf films that followed in the decade. The year 1951 alone saw the release of three major sf films, the alien-invasion drama The Thing from Another World, the cosmic disaster film When Worlds Collide, and the thoughtful The Day the Earth Stood Still, which provided a then-rare statement against the Cold War arms race. Arch Oboler’s Five, also released in 1951, was a lowbudget effort but was important as the first Cold War–era film to depict the after-effects of a nuclear apocalypse. The avalanche of sf films that followed was clearly driven by Cold War concerns, as alien-invasion films and monster films (both suggesting the paranoia of the era) rose to prominence along with nuclear-apocalypse films in the 1950s. On the other hand, other important films of the decade, while sometimes acknowledging the perceived external threats that exercised such a hold on the American imagination in the 1950s, also directly addressed more domestic anxieties, as when The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) drew energy from the embattled state of American masculinity in the decade.

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Meanwhile, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), often seen as a paradigmatic expression of Cold War anticommunist hysteria, could also be read as an expression of anxieties over other domestic threats, including anticommunism itself, as well as the growing routinization of life in America. Over the course of the 1950s, American sf film also looked back to the traditional audience of the pulps, coming to be regarded by many in Hollywood as especially suitable fare for the teenage audiences that were becoming an increasingly important segment of the filmgoing demographic, while both younger and older viewers tended more and more toward watching television at home. This vein included interesting films such as The Blob (1958), but most of the films produced in the late 1950s for teen audiences were low-budget affairs, often laughably bad but sometimes quite inventive, with director-producers such as Roger Corman emerging as stars of the new form. By the end of the decade, British and Italian filmmakers were pitching in as well. Science fiction film went into something of a lull through most of the 1960s; the two standouts before 1968 were both British-produced (but with non-British directors): American Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear apocalypse comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964) and the dystopian Fahrenheit 451 (1966), directed by French New Waver François Truffaut, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. In 1968, the release of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (cowritten by Arthur C. Clarke and inspired by a Clarke short story) and Planet of the Apes (based on the novel by Pierre Boulle) brought new critical and popular attention to sf film, leading to a spate of such films in the early 1970s (mostly dystopian in orientation). It was not, however, until 1977, with the release of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and (especially) George Lucas’s Star Wars that sf film moved absolutely to the forefront of American popular culture, gaining newfound global prominence as well. The next decade saw the rise of major sf film franchises such as Star Wars, Alien, and Terminator, as well as crucial stand-alone classics such as Blade Runner (1982), as sf film came to dominate the box office. Those films, meanwhile, participated in a special effects revolution that has dominated the film industry ever since, leading to technological innovations (such as computer-generated 3D images) that have moved beyond sf film to become major parts of virtually all film genres, especially those existing within the big-budget system of Hollywood. This aspect of sf film perhaps culminated in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), which not only revolutionized digital 3D film imagery but also became the leading box-office hit of all time. In the meantime, the fan culture that grew up around the various Star Trek television series (which grew into a major film franchise as well) included the production of a number of spinoff novels, making clear that science fiction fan culture in general was not limited to any one format or medium,

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even within the same franchise. It should come as no surprise, then, that science fiction was also at the forefront of new media that arose during the last decades of the 20th century, as when sf-based franchises such as Halo formed a crucial part of the new video-gaming culture. Through it all, however, written science fiction remained at the heart of science fiction culture, providing the main source of innovation in the genre, even if film, in particular, had a higher profile in the popular imagination. Indeed, if anything, the commercial success of sf film (and, to a lesser extent, television and video games) in the past few decades seems to have inspired a new generation of sf writers who have made the genre stronger than ever before. But sf writers as a group are particularly conscious of their participation in a genre with a specific historical tradition. This volume seeks to provide a useful compilation of information about some of the most important highlights of this tradition.

A ADAMS, DOUGLAS (1952–2001). The British writer, humorist, and environmental activist Douglas Adams (born in Cambridge, England) was the writer of numerous works with science fiction elements, including the detective spoofs Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), which include elements of both fantasy and science fiction. But Adams is best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which started as a BBC radio play in 1978 and then expanded into a series of five novels (referred to by Adams as a “trilogy”) published between 1979 and 1992. This series includes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979); The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980); Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982); So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984); and Mostly Harmless (1992). An irreverent farce, The Hitchhiker’s Guide has fun with a number of the sf tropes while poking fun at religion and vain human attempts to inflate the importance of humanity in the larger scheme of things, becoming darker as the series proceeds. The series has expanded into a variety of media including music, stage plays, radio plays, and comics. A feature film was released in 2005. AELITA (1922–1923). The novel Аэлита (Aelita), by Alexei Tolstoy, is one of the leading examples of science fiction from the early years of the Soviet Union. Tolstoy’s novel (the basis for Yakov Aleksandrovich Protazanov’s much-respected 1924 film adaptation, Aelita: Queen of Mars) combines the social and political concerns of postrevolutionary Soviet society with the classic science fiction motif of a voyage to outer space to produce an imaginative fiction with firm roots in social reality, despite a relative lack of technological detail or verisimilitude. The novel clearly endorses communism as the goal of human social development and thus ostensibly supports the ideology of the new Soviet regime, though its implied critique of utopian idealism hints at a criticism of the utopianism that formed such an important part of the early Soviet project.

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In Aelita, the Soviet scientist Mstislav Sergeyevich Los invents an advanced spacecraft capable of traveling from earth to Mars in a matter of hours. He then makes that voyage, accompanied by Red Army soldier Alexei Ivanovich Gusev. By undertaking this adventure, Los seeks to ease the sorrow caused by the recent death of his wife, while Gusev hopes to find a golden land of peace and plenty that will provide relief from the years of hardship he has experienced as a soldier in the postrevolutionary civil wars in Russia. In short, both protagonists hope to find on Mars a brave new world free of the troubles that inform life in the contemporary Soviet Union. Thus, while both travelers are treated sympathetically in the book as heroic representatives of the Soviet Union, it is also clear that both are engaged in escapist projects that the book ultimately rejects as misguided. On Mars, Los and Gusev find an ostensible utopia, a mighty civilization of futuristic technology and material wealth. However, this utopian appearance masks a dystopian core. The accomplishments of the Martian society are achieved through the labor of enslaved workers, and the Martian civilization is in a state of decadence and decline. In fact, the regime that rules Mars is conceived as an allegorical parallel to Western capitalism on earth. As opposed to the work of Burroughs, Tolstoy presents his Martians as entirely human—and as every bit the intellectual equals of the travelers from earth. We see this Martian society from the perspectives of three distinctly different Martian characters. First is the beautiful princess Aelita, who helps Los and Gusev to learn the Martian language and understand the Martian civilization, which turns out to have received most of its impetus from the arrival of colonists from earth’s Atlantis twenty thousand years earlier. The travelers learn the entire story of Martian history, a story that makes clear the inevitable fall of Martian civilization—much in the mold of the fall of capitalism projected by Marx. Aelita’s father is Tuscoob, the ruler of Mars and the book’s representative of Martian authority. His power is great but unstable, threatened by rebellious forces that are rapidly gaining strength in the society. The leader of these forces is the proletarian Gor, the third major Martian character. Los and Gusev become involved in the revolt against Tuscoob, but the Martian Gor remains the leader of the revolt. By allowing a Martian to lead the revolt, Tolstoy avoids the Orientalist condescension by which Burroughs places the salvation of Mars in the hands of his protagonist from earth. Aelita, now in love with Los, also becomes involved in the rebellion. However, as a warning of the difficulties of revolution, the revolt is ultimately put down; Gor is killed, and Aelita is imprisoned. Thanks to the heroic actions of Gusev, the two earthmen narrowly manage to escape and return to earth in Los’s ship. The book ends as earth receives a message of love from Mars, clearly sent by Aelita to Los. Despite this seemingly romantic ending, the book undermines romantic fantasies of colonial adventure and recommends

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that individuals seek not to escape the here and now in favor of some exotic paradise but to work to improve the world in which they already live. Tolstoy’s narrator notes that in earlier times the lonely Los might have functioned after his return from Mars as the kind of romantic hero traditionally apotheosized by poets. Los’s Soviet society, however, is one in which the ideal is being sought not through poetic dreams but through practical action in the real world. AFRICAN SCIENCE FICTION. See POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. ALDISS, BRIAN W. (1925– ). Brian W. Aldiss (born in Norfolk, England) is one of the most important heirs of H. G. Wells in British science fiction. Aldiss’s space operas and far-future stories not only are conceptually imaginative but also show more attention to literary craftsmanship than was typical of science fiction writers before his time. Aldiss’s early sf short stories led to him being named the Most Promising New Author at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1958. His novel Non-Stop (1958, published in the U.S. as Starship) is an innovative world ship story that demonstrated Aldiss’s considerable talents early on, including a twist ending that makes it a sort of political allegory. Many of his early stories are set in the far future, including those collected in Hothouse (1962, abridged American edition published as The Long Afternoon of Earth), which won the Hugo Award for Short Fiction. Aldiss’s output remained varied and prolific with such novels as the satire The Dark Light-Years (1964) and the unusual postapocalyptic narrative Greybeard (1964); a participant in the New Wave, he moved into more literary and stylistic experimental works in the second half of the 1960s with such novels as An Age (1967, U.S. title Cryptozoic!), a variation on the timetravel narrative; the parallel-worlds narrative Report on Probability A (1967); and the intensely experimental Barefoot in the Head (1969), in which Europe is attacked by chemical weapons involving hallucinogenic drugs. Always a student of sf history, Aldiss wrote his own history of the genre with Billion Year Spree (1973, expanded as Trillion Year Spree in 1986, with David Wingrove). He has also written a number of novels based on classic works of sf in the Gothic vein, including Frankenstein Unbound (1973), Moreau’s Other Island (1980), and Dracula Unbound (1991). He has also edited a number of important sf anthologies, the most important of which is probably Space Opera (1974), including a number of significant stories in that genre. His most important work of the 1980s was the “Helliconia” trilogy, comprising Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983), and

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Helliconia Winter (1985). Together, these novels constitute an epic planetary romance, set on a planet where the seasons last hundreds of years and thus inform the rise and fall of civilizations. In 1999, Aldiss published, with Sir Roger Penrose, the utopian narrative White Mars; or, the Mind Set Free. In 2001, his 1969 story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” became the basis for the film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The year 2002 saw the publication of Aldiss’s futuristic satire Super-State. Aldiss continued to work in sf into his eighties with the dystopian narrative HARM (2007), derived from the contemporary War on Terror. ALIEN INVASION. Since the original publication of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds in 1898, narratives involving invasion of the earth by aliens from outer space have been one of the staples of science fiction. Some narratives followed directly on that of Wells, as when the American Garrett Serviss’s Edison’s Conquest of Mars (serialized in the New York Evening Journal in 1898, soon after the first appearance of The War of the Worlds) is a sort of sequel in which all-American inventor Thomas Edison leads the forces of earth in a retaliatory strike against Mars. Alien-invasion narratives were prominent in the pulps of the 1920s through the 1940s, but they became particularly popular in the United States in the 1950s, responding to a paranoid sense of both internal and external threat that was central to American culture in the peak Cold War years. Thus, narratives such as Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1951) imagined alien invaders who took control of the hearts and minds of earthlings, much as it was feared communists might do. In a similar vein, Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers—serialized in Collier’s magazine in 1954 and first published in book form as The Body Snatchers in 1955—envisions alien seed pods that grow into replicants, replacing “real” humans with alien substitutes. On the other hand, Finney’s text, the basis of the classic 1956 film, could just as easily be read as a cautionary tale about the forces of authoritarianism and conformity that had been unleashed by anti-communist forces in the U.S. Films were, in fact, particularly prominent among the alien-invasion narratives of the 1950s, though many of the best-known alien-invasion films of the decade were based on stories or novels, as when The Thing from Another World (1951) was based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 story “Who Goes There?” One of the novels of the 1950s that stands out in its treatment of an alien invasion as essentially beneficial to humanity is Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953), in which alien “Overlords” establish dominion over earth in order to curb human violence and cruelty and thus prevent the human race from destroying itself and the rest of the planet. Meanwhile, the aliens help humanity undergo an evolutionary lead forward, as would happen most famously in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, inspired by Clarke’s 1951 story “The Sentinel.”

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As Cold War tensions eased in the 1960s and 1970s, alien-invasion narratives branched out in new directions. For example, Thomas Disch’s The Genocides (1965) once again presents advanced alien invaders bent on the destruction of the human race, but in a mode that warns more against human arrogance than against sinister aliens. Here, advanced aliens identify the earth as a perfect spot for growing their crops, but first move to eradicate the various indigenous pests that might interfere with this agricultural project, including human beings (whom they do not recognize as sentient). In Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (1969), on the other hand, the alien invaders are mindless crystalline microbes picked up in orbit by an American spacecraft that subsequently crashes, threatening to unleash an alien plague. Meanwhile, John Varley’s The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) deals not with an alien invasion in itself, but with the aftermath of an alien invasion that has left mysterious invaders (who seem to exist largely in another dimension) in control of earth and humanity essentially in exile in the rest of the solar system. It turns out, however, that the invaders have taken earth not for their own benefit, but to liberate the whales and dolphins there, which they regard as superior in intelligence to humans. In the world of film, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) both provided looks at relatively benevolent alien visitors. However, the 1980s as a whole were not particularly generous in their attitude toward aliens, as the anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Ronald Reagan administration often sounded like a return to the 1950s. Alien-invasion narratives sometimes returned to the spirit of the 1950s as well. Footfall (1985), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, was one of the most successful alien-invasion novels of the 1980s. In the spirit of the time, it seems designed, at least partly, as an expression of support for the development of superweapons programs, such as the Reagan administration’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. Footfall presents a detailed account of actual combat between the earth and an invading alien “fithp” spaceship, which demands unconditional surrender from the earthlings. In response, the U.S., acting on the advice of a panel of science fiction writers, develops a huge, nuclear-powered spacecraft that is able to carry heavy weapons, leading to earth’s victory. In many cases, though, the very fact that they are able to reach earth means that the invading aliens have technology that is vastly superior to our own, making no conventional military victory over them possible. Greg Bear’s The Forge of God (1987), like Footfall, describes an alien invasion via the disaster-thriller format. However, Bear’s novel seems informed by a vaguely liberal political agenda that can be taken as a sort of riposte to the conservatism of Niven and Pournelle. Here, however, the aliens win, partly because the U.S. president decides they have been sent by God and thus does nothing to oppose them.

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Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985) is a veritable compendium of sf motifs, but one of them involves the impact of the arrival in our solar system of aliens (known as “Investors”) who are obsessed, in a clear commentary on the Reagan 1980s, with commerce and wealth and encourage humans to put aside their differences in the interest of good business practices. The alieninvasion novels of the 1980s were topped off by Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy, comprising Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). This ambitious sequence criticizes the aggressive policies of the Reagan administration while engaging with a number of crucial issues, including racism, gender, militarism, and colonialism. Here, the gene-trading Oankali (who actually have a great deal in common with Varley’s Traders or Sterling’s Investors) reach a postapocalyptic earth that has just been devastated by nuclear war, then use their advance biotechnology to restore humanity to health, but only in the form of human-Oankali hybrids who are meant to leave the planet and become starfaring gene traders like the Oankali themselves. British writers returned to prominence within the subgenre of the alieninvasion novel in the 1990s. Particularly notable was the “Aleutian” trilogy by Gwyneth Jones, comprising White Queen (1991), North Wind (1996), and Phoenix Café (1998). Jones’s trilogy shows a sophisticated understanding of colonial history in its depiction of a group of aliens who are intergalactic wanderers and soldiers of fortune who stumble accidentally on the earth, which they had not realized was habitable. Stranded, they become extensively entangled in the affairs of earth before departing after a 300-year stay. The aliens of Ian McDonald’s Sacrifice of Fools (1996) are in many ways reminiscent of Jones’s Aleutians and encounter many of the same sorts of cultural misunderstandings as they try to coexist with humans on earth. In Evolution’s Shore (1995) and Kirinya (1998), McDonald takes the alieninvasion narrative into new territory with his vision of strange alien “biological packages” that land on earth and then proceed to move across the landscape, transforming everything in their path through a sort of nanotechnology. This transformation includes human beings, who appear on the verge of a new evolutionary leap thanks to the effects of the alien technology. A more recent British work that also shows an understanding of colonial history is Liz Williams’s Empire of Bones (2002), in which humanity turns out to be descended from the alien írRas, who return to earth after a long period of being out of contact—and find that their evolutionary plans for their descendants on the planet have gone seriously awry. One of the more unusual recent alien-invasion narratives is The Mount (2002), by the American feminist writer Carol Emshwiller, an allegorical fable in which a weak-legged alien race, the “Hoots,” have colonized the earth, “benevolently” enslaving humans, whom they use as mounts upon which they ride about the countryside. The justifications of the Hoots for thus

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enslaving humanity echo the paternalist rhetoric of both capitalism and colonialism on earth, indicating the ongoing viability of alien-invasion stories as an allegorical mode of social and political critique. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. ALIENS. Aliens are generally nonhuman sentient beings, usually from outer space, though sometimes from other dimensions or exotic and unknown regions of the earth. However, in some cases (as in the “Hainish” novels of Ursula K. Le Guin), aliens can be humans from other planets, though different conditions there might have led to evolutionary changes that have made these “humans” significantly different from humans on earth. In general, aliens are one of the most prevalent and powerful motifs in all of science fiction, giving the genre considerable capabilities for commenting on difference and on encounters with Others in our own world. As such, aliens have been featured in countless sf stories, many of which have been gathered in a variety of available alien-themed anthologies. While alien-invasion narratives and military science fiction often detail encounters with hostile aliens (or the encounters of well-meaning aliens with hostile humans), any number of sf narratives involve peaceful encounters with aliens, offering considerable opportunities for the description of cultures and modes of thought that are genuinely different from those of humans. Such narratives, on the other hand, are famously limited by the fact that they are constructed by humans, so that the depiction of the aliens involved is ultimately limited by human experience and the human imagination. Though the idea of extraterrestrial aliens can be found even in ancient literature, the motif became particularly prominent in the 20th century. In the early pulp sf stories, aliens were often modeled either on earth’s nonhuman animal species (reptiles were particularly popular) or, even more disturbingly, on nonwhite humans, especially Asians. By the 1950s, insects were a particularly popular model for aliens, the hivelike behavior of insectoid aliens serving as a rather unsubtle commentary on the collective inclinations of communism. Still, the pulp fascination with aliens sometimes yielded surprising variety and relatively complex meditations on alien life and culture. Stanley G. Weinbaum’s attempts, in “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) and similar stories, to describe a complex Martian environment inhabited by a variety of alien creatures, were particularly notable, and writers such as Hal Clement extended this project to include even more extensive explorations of strange planetary environments and the lifeforms and cultures that these environments might produce. Most of the pulp aliens are still individual biological creatures, though the aliens of the pulps sometimes moved into more exotic terrain, as when the eponymous aliens of Fredric Brown’s “The Waveries” (1945) consist of electromagnetic energy and are so foreign to humans that no communication

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between the species is possible. Meanwhile, writers such as Damon Knight and Robert Sheckley imagined interstellar spacecraft that were themselves either sentient beings or collections of components that were themselves sentient. Meanwhile, though the 1950s were dominated by sinister invading aliens, some writers turned the motif on its head, as in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, which appeared in book form in 1950, though it is largely a collection of interrelated short stories, many of which had appeared in the 1940s. Bradbury’s gentle, philosophical, and highly cultured Martians are the antithesis of the bloodthirsty vampires depicted by Wells in The War of the Worlds. More importantly, they are (for Bradbury) the antithesis of the materialistic, spiritually impoverished citizens of mid-20th-century America, who come to Mars and wreck the Martian civilization. Similarly, Robert Silverberg’s Invaders from Earth (1958) effectively satirizes colonialism and capitalism by making profit-driven earthlings the sinister invaders of a peaceful alien civilization. Perhaps the first extended attempt to imagine an alien that truly escapes our own anthro-centric projections was Stanisław Lem’s Solaris (1961), which still stands as one of the most successful meditations on the complexities of encounters with aliens that are genuinely different from humans. Here, a human expedition to the planet Solaris has difficulty recognizing that the planet itself is a sentient being, making communication between the humans and the planet virtually impossible. Meanwhile, the political movements of the 1960s and the growing sophistication of science fiction in events such as the New Wave led to more nuanced treatments of aliens in general, as well as increased use of aliens as allegorical stand-ins for nonWestern peoples of the earth. In this vein is Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), which has been widely praised for its compelling and detailed description of the culture of the desert-dwelling “Fremen” of the planet Arrakis, a group who are modeled most directly on the Arabic Bedouins of our own planet. Silverberg would refine the vision of Invaders from Earth in Downward to the Earth (1970), which provides a much more detailed parallel between the colonization of an alien world and, in this case, the real-world colonization of Africa. Here, the alien nildoror of the formerly colonized planet Belzagor appear to be gentle and somewhat slow-witted herbivores, but turn out to be much more complex than they first appear. Particularly topical was Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972), which involves similarly underestimated aliens in a narrative of planetary colonization that has been widely considered to be an allegory of the American experience in Vietnam, though it also addresses the colonial situation in a much more general way, at the same time dealing with issues related to gender and environmentalism. Vietnam also provided the background to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974), in which earth wages interstellar war against the despised alien Taurans (who, it turns out,

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are more sinned against than sinning) with a fervor that recalls the xenophobic, racist attitudes that helped make colonialism (and the Vietnam War) thinkable in the first place. A prominent theme of the 1960s and 1970s involves aliens who simply find humans uninteresting. Brian Aldiss’s The Dark Light Years (1964) features aliens who seem so uncommunicative and whose behavior seems so gross (they love wallowing in their own excrement) that the humans do not at first regard them as intelligent, though in fact the aliens are so advanced that they have little interest in communicating with humans. In Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Пикник на обочине (1972; English translation Roadside Picnic, 1977), advanced aliens stop off on earth and leave behind a variety of artifacts, but seem to have no interest in contacting humans, who are presumably far less advanced than they. In somewhat the same spirit, Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973) features a giant alien “ship” that enters the solar system, triggering considerable excitement and speculation on the part of humans concerning its purpose. The ship, however, is just heading to the sun to use its power to refuel; the aliens are oblivious to humans and their relatively primitive interplanetary civilization. Meanwhile, the aliens themselves remain a total mystery. More conventional alien contact stories in which a highly advanced earth civilization ventures out into the galaxy to encounter alien civilizations of roughly equal (if often very different) sophistication, continued to be produced as well, as in the case of The Mote in God’s Eye (1974) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In other cases, as in Frederik Pohl’s Gateway (1977), the discovery of abandoned alien technologies gives humans capabilities that open significant possibilities for sf storytelling, though the humans and aliens never actually meet. Meanwhile, in Pohl’s Jem (1979), the discovery of an inhabitable planet with intelligent (but primitive) indigenous species only exacerbates divisions on earth as competing factions race to exploit the new discovery most profitably. Much of the science fiction of the 1980s showed a certain xenophobia, but there were still more optimistic visions of alien contact, one of the bestknown of which is Contact (1985), by the prominent astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan. This bestseller is one of the more realistic and detailed portrayals of what it might be like to establish contact with an alien civilization, which turns out to be extremely difficult, but not impossible—and possibly extremely beneficial to humanity. In the same year, the protagonist of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game inadvertently wipes out an entire alien species that meant humanity no harm, though it had launched what seemed to be attacks in an effort to communicate. Ender then spends the rest of his life here and in sequels such as Speaker to the Dead (1986), which itself contains some genuinely hard-to-understand aliens, trying to make amends. The decade’s most fascinating alien encounter was probably that which occurred

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in Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy (1987–1989), which imagines aliens whose biology and culture are far different from those of humans, with the twist that the only hope for survival of the human race lies in a genetic merger with the exotic aliens, a prospect that some greet with xenophobic horror. In addition to such works that explore ways of dealing with difference, science fiction has also continued to use aliens to give us fresh perspectives on human attitudes. Alien species with different attitudes and practices regarding gender have been particularly prevalent. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is perhaps the best-known example, with its depiction of alien humans who have separately evolved on a distant planet; now, the inhabitants of this planet are genderless until a periodic state of kemmer renders them temporarily (and somewhat unpredictably) either male or female, so that all individuals inhabit both genders and neither. In Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords (1993), meanwhile, the alien hwarhath are an advanced species that begins to question whether humans are truly people or are merely dangerous animals that should be exterminated. Meanwhile, in an excellent use of aliens to produce new perspectives on human attitudes, the hwarhath reproduce by artificial insemination, while virtually all sexual relations among the hwarhath are homosexual, heterosexuality being considered a horrifying perversion. One of the most effective explorations of human-alien interactions in recent sf occurs in the “Bas-Lag” trilogy of China Miéville, which depicts a complex society, beginning with the portrayal of the teeming city of New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station (2000), which is inhabited by multiple intelligent species, including humans, but also a variety of “Xenian” species that reads almost like a catalog of alien types, including the khepri (who have numerous insectoid characteristics), the froglike amphibian vodyanoi, the towering cactacae (plant people with cactus-like spines), and the fiercely individualistic garuda (who have humanoid bodies but are covered with feathers and have birdlike wings). Later, Miéville would describe the startlingly alien Ariekei of his more purely science fictional Embassytown (2011), focusing in particular on their very different conception of language and thus producing a meditation on language itself. In a similar manner, depictions of alien intelligence have been used to raise questions about the nature of intelligence itself, the most important of which has been the tendency to depict alien species as collective “hive” minds, as in the case of the “Buggers” of Ender’s Game or when the nonsentient individual Cords of Greg Bear’s Anvil of Stars (1992) unite to form sentient Braids, or when the canine-like Tines of Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep (1995) and Children of the Sky (2012) join to form pack minds that vary as different members join or leave the pack. Versions of this motif in which individual humans can be absorbed into an alien collective

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consciousness have been treated with particular horror. The Borg of Star Trek are the best-known example, but the motif goes back at least to Robert A. Heinlein’s 1941 story “Methusaleh’s Children.” See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. ALTERNATE HISTORY. The alternate- (or “alternative”) history narrative typically looks at a single crucial turning point in history (the “point of divergence”) and then attempts to explore the different ways history might have proceeded had that turning point played out differently. This point of divergence is sometimes also referred to as a “Jonbar Point,” deriving from its early use in Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time in 1938. For example, numerous novels conjecture possible alternative paths that might have been taken by history had the South won the Civil War—as in Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) or MacKinlay Kantor’s If the South Had Won the Civil War (1961)—or had the Axis powers won World War II—as in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) or Thomas Harris’s Fatherland (1992). At first glance, the alternate-history story would appear to be more closely related to the genre of the historical novel than to science fiction. On the other hand, because of its very differences from the historical novel proper, the alternate-history novel achieves many of the same effects of cognitive estrangement that are central to the science fiction novel as a whole. In particular, the reader’s awareness of the course taken by history in our world (or “our timeline,” as it is often put) creates an immediate cognitive gap between that history and the fictionalized history proposed in the novel. The reader is then presumably encouraged to view history in a new light and to understand that the outcome of history depends on specific human actions and is not foreordained. The alternate-history narrative, which is often akin to the parallel-worlds narrative, has been around for quite some time, though many early examples were simply nonfictional “what if” ruminations, such as the essays in the collection If It Had Happened Otherwise (1931), edited by J. C. Squire and including essays by prominent historians, including Winston Churchill. Perhaps the most prolific practitioner of the form has been Harry Turtledove, who has written numerous alternate-history stories involving the key events of the American Civil War and World War II, the latter also involving an alien invasion. Also important is Keith Roberts’s Pavane (1968), which explores a world in which the Catholic Church and medieval aristocracy were able to successfully defend their power and to defeat the emergent bourgeois revolution in Europe. The alternate history seems to be growing more mainstream within science fiction in recent years. Not only has the genre gained more serious critical attention in the 21st century, but also several additional major alternate histo-

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ry novels have been published, most notably Kim Stanley Robinson’s magisterial The Years of Rice and Salt (2002). Among other things, Robinson’s novel, which essentially removes European civilization as we know it from the modern historical stage by positing a world in which the Black Death wiped out the entire European population in the 14th century, provides new perspectives on the European-dominated history of colonialism in the real world, thus demonstrating the possibilities of the alternate-history genre as a science fictional commentary on colonialism and on world history as a whole. Other texts have concentrated in various ways on colonialism as a turning point in world history, including Robert Silverberg’s The Gate of Worlds (1967), which poses the question of what might have happened if the 14thcentury plagues that swept Europe had been far more damaging than they actually were, crippling Europe to the point that its subsequent rise to global dominance would have been made impossible. Christopher Evans’s Aztec Century (1993) is something of a British sister text to The Gate of Worlds, depicting a world in which America was not subjugated by European colonization, but in which the reverse is in fact beginning to be true. Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996) is another variant on the theme of alternative colonization in the Americas, in which scientists from the future travel back to the time of Christopher Columbus in order to avert the disaster of colonization. Unfortunately, Card is unable to overcome his own religious biases, ultimately constructing a “successful” scenario in which Native Americans are “saved” from colonialism by putting aside their own savage culture and replacing it with a healthy dose of Christianity. In a sequence of two lengthy novels, Lion’s Blood (2002) and Zulu Heart (2003), Steven Barnes has posited another variation on the history of America without Europe as a major player. Here, the break that leads to changed history goes all the way back to 400 BC, when Socrates leads a group of philosophers from Athens to Egypt, helping to trigger a North African renaissance. And the “Arabesk” trilogy of alternate-history novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood—comprising Pashazade (2001), Effendi (2002), and Felaheen (2003)—envisions a 21st century that is the result of historical developments emanating from a World War I (which in this case actually came to be known as the Third Balkan War) in which the Germans and their Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian allies were victorious over the British, with the United States remaining neutral. As a result, both the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires have survived into the 21st century. AMAZING STORIES. Amazing Stories was a groundbreaking science fiction pulp magazine that began publication through Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing in April 1926. The first magazine devoted entirely to

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science fiction, it helped (for better or worse) to shape the genre for years to come. Though Gernsback lost control of the magazine in 1929 after he was forced into bankruptcy, the title remained in print (with some changes in frequency and ownership) until 1995, then again from 1998 to 2000. Additional printed issues appeared in 2004 and 2005; an online version began appearing in preliminary form in the summer of 2012. Amazing initially included a great deal of reprinted material, partly because Gernback’s slow payment to authors discouraged many from contributing to it. Meanwhile, Gernsback’s insistence that science fiction should serve the didactic purpose of teaching readers about science led to a lack of emphasis on literary quality and to a general juvenilization of the early genre. This tendency continued after Gernsback’s departure, largely because Gernsback’s editor, T. O’Conor Sloane, remained in control of the magazine’s actual contents through the bankruptcy proceedings and the 1931 acquisition of the magazine by Teck Publications, a subsidiary of the relatively large Macfadden Publications, which had sought to obtain the title for some time. Sloane remained with the title until it was acquired by Ziff-Davis in 1938, when he was replaced as editor by Raymond A. Palmer, who remained until 1949 in a tenure that involved a departure from the previous emphasis on scientific accuracy and into more speculative directions, including adventure stories and conspiracy theories. By this time, Amazing Stories had been surpassed in importance by other pulp magazines in the field in both quality and popularity, especially Astounding Science-Fiction, of which John W. Campbell Jr. had assumed editorial control in late 1937. Experiments with format and contact during the Ziff-Davis years could not quell declining circulation, and the magazine was sold to Ultimate Publishing Company in 1965. In the following years the magazine consisted mostly of reprints of stories from earlier issues, though it did not pay a fee to the authors for the reprints, bringing the magazine into conflict with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and making it difficult for the magazine to keep editors, with writers Harry Harrison and Barry Malzberg serving briefly in the position. This turmoil continued through the print run of the magazine, which included several more changes in ownership. While some have argued that the low literary quality of much of the content of Amazing Stories was detrimental to the development of sf as a genre, it did contribute to recognition that sf was a genre. In addition, one of the most important contributions of Amazing Stories to the field of science fiction was its early initiation of a letters column that allowed readers to begin to establish a sense of membership in a community, thus taking a crucial step in the development of sf fandom.

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AMERICAN GODS. American Gods is a 2001 novel by Neil Gaiman that well illustrates the porous genre boundaries of much of the fiction associated with the British Boom. Largely a work of fantasy that draws on a number of world mythologies, the work is set in modern America and engages its realistic setting in a way more reminiscent of science fiction than of most fantasy. In the book, the protagonist, Shadow, is an ex-con who is alone and adrift in the world; he sets out on a series of rather picaresque adventures that bring him into contact with gods from a variety of the world’s mythologies, brought to the United States by immigrants from various cultures and existing only because people believe in them. This being America, though, they are struggling to hang on to existence, because, whatever they might claim, most Americans believe in the power of modern “gods”—like various communication and transportation technologies—more than that of traditional ones. The book thus essentially dramatizes Max Weber’s well-known thesis about the removal of magic from the world by the rationalizing processes of capitalist modernity. As such, the book addresses issues that are very much the province of sf, which might explain why it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel, though it also won the Bram Stoker Award for best horror novel. AMERICAN INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY. Founded in April 1930 by a group of science fiction writers and amateur rocket enthusiasts, the American Interplanetary Society was an organization of individuals dedicated to the notion that interplanetary exploration would be a key stage in future human history. It was renamed the American Rocket Society in 1934 to better reflect the society’s contemporary concerns, which included conducting its own research in rocketry, some of which provided important background (both symbolic and technical) to the later U.S. space program. The organization published its own journal, the Journal of the American Rocket Society, from 1945 to 1953. While devoted to practical concerns involving rocket testing and design, the society’s future-oriented vision had much in common with the science fiction of the time, and the organization itself can be regarded as a key element in the growth of science fiction fandom. However, by 1963, when the American Rocket Society merged with the Institute of Aerospace Sciences to form the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the concerns of the group, now dominated by professional aerospace engineers, were oriented more toward the then-current space program than toward far-reaching visions of the future. ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT. See ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION.

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ANDERSON, POUL (1926–2001). Poul Anderson was a writer of both science fiction and fantasy, often emphasizing individualist themes with a libertarian bent. A graduate of the University of Minnesota in physics, his novels often feature hard sf technologies based on credible scientific principles. He was a strong proponent of the notion that freedom required expansion into space and that to curtail space exploration was tantamount to a suppression of individual liberty. As a result, most of his best science fiction deals with space exploration, including several extensive series of interconnected space operas involving future histories in the mode of Robert A. Heinlein. These series include more than 20 novels and stories set in the Psychotechnic League future history (published 1956–1982); the stories and novels of the Polesotechnic League future history, set in the Terran Empire of the 24th and 25th century, and often featuring the swashbuckling capitalist Nicholas van Rijn (published 1958–1977); and a second Terran Empire future history series (published 1965–1985), featuring dashing intelligence agent Dominic Flandry in the 31st century. All of these series include numerous omnibus editions collecting various individual stories. Anderson also coauthored, with Gordon R. Dickson, a series of stories featuring the cuddly alien “Hokas,” collected in Earthmen’s Burden! (1957) and Hoka! (1982). Other key space adventures include such novels as the Hugo-nominated The Enemy Stars (1959), while the Hugo-nominated The High Crusade (1960) wittily reverses the motif to envision aliens who are explorers landing on earth (in the Middle Ages). The Hugo-nominated Tau Zero (1971) returns to space travel with a hard sf emphasis. Fire Time (1974) and The Winter of the World (1975) extend the space exploration motif to include planetary romance. An interrelated late space-opera series comprises Harvest of Stars (1993), The Stars Are Also Fire (1994), Harvest the Fire (1995), and The Fleet of Stars (1997). Anderson also authored a series of novels and stories featuring the Time Patrol, which attempts to police time travel. Several collections of the stories published in this series have been published in book form, including The Time Patrol (1991), which includes all of the stories in this series published between 1955 and 1983). Late additions to the series include the novels The Year of the Ransom (1988) and The Shield of Time (1990). Another timetravel narrative was the Hugo-nominated There Will Be Time (1972), featuring a mutant who is able to travel through time due to his mutation. In The Boat of a Million Years immortal aliens observe the progress of human history; it was the last of Anderson’s seven Hugo-nominated novels, none of which won the award, though he did win seven Hugos for shorter fiction, collected in the volume Winners (1981).

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ANDROID

ANDROID. An android is an artificial being (usually biological, but possibly electromechanical or some combination of the two) that has been designed to look, and sometimes to act, like a human being. The term was used as early as the 13th century in reference to an automaton supposedly created by Albertus Magnus by alchemical means. It was used in the 19th century in the United States in reference to human-like mechanical toys. In fiction, androids appeared as early as 1886 to describe a human-looking robot in French author Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s novel Tomorrow’s Eve. The first truly modern use of the term may have been in Jack Williamson’s The Cometeers (1936), and androids have since become a staple of science fiction. Perhaps the best-known androids in science fiction are those that appear in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)—made even more famous as the “replicants” of the film Blade Runner (1982). These androids have been designed and produced to do work in off-world colonies that is deemed too dangerous for human beings. However, they are virtually indistinguishable from human beings, which raises a number of anxieties that are at the very heart of the representation of androids throughout science fiction. Indeed, the ongoing fascination with androids in sf no doubt has much to do with the way they interrogate the very definition of the human; their persecution in fiction has often been used to make statements about the treatment of racial and other minorities among humans. Female androids, designed to please men (as in Ira Levin’s 1972 novel The Stepford Wives), have also functioned as allegories for the objectification of women. ANSIBLE. An ansible is a device that allows for essentially instantaneous communication across interstellar distances. The device, under this name, was introduced by Ursula K. Le Guin in her novel Rocannon’s World (1966), and it appears frequently in her series of “Hainish” novels, enabling the administration of a far-flung interstellar federation despite the lack of faster-than-light travel. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed (1974) tells the story of a scientist whose theoretical work leads to the invention of the ansible. The device opens a number of plot possibilities and has subsequently been adopted directly by a number of other science fiction writers, including Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, and Vernor Vinge. Other subsequent writers have also used similar communication devices, though under different names, and the basic idea for fast interstellar communication goes back much earlier, as in the hyperwave relays of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. ANTHONY, PIERS (1934– ). The British-born Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob was educated in the United States, where he subsequently spent his adult life, publishing all of his prolific output of fiction under the name “Piers

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Anthony.” Anthony began publishing sf short stories in 1963, but has done his best work in the novel form, beginning with Chthon (1967), a complex narrative set partly in an underground prison, eventually to be followed by a sequel, Phthor (1975). In the meantime, his second novel, Macroscope (1969), a far-ranging space opera, had established him as a writer of considerable scope and ambition. Anthony’s “Battle Circle” sequence of postapocalyptic narratives, comprising Sos the Rope (1968), Var the Stick (1972), and Neg the Sword (1975), is of some interest. A second trilogy, the “Of Man and Manta” sequence, involves adventures on a variety of planets and includes Omnivore (1968), Orn (1971), and OX (1976). Anthony attempts to invest these narratives with philosophical significance, but is not entirely successful. The same might be said for two space-opera sequences that followed: the “Cluster” series— comprising Cluster (1977), Chaining the Lady (1978), Kirlian Quest (1978), Thousandstar (1980), and Viscous Circle (1982)—and the “Bio of a Space Tyrant” series—comprising Refugee (1983), Mercenary (1984), Politician (1985), Executive (1985), and Statesman (1986). Meanwhile, his “Aprentice Adept” sequence, which began with an early 1980s trilogy, combines science fiction with fantasy, while his “Incarnations of Immortality” sequence, running through most of the 1980s, was primarily fantasy, but explored a number of philosophical ideas as well. It was, in fact, with his fantasies of the 1980s that Anthony achieved his greatest commercial success and widest fame. Of Anthony’s later work, the most interesting is probably the “Geodyssey” sequence, comprising (to date) the novels Isle of Woman (1993), Shame of Man (1994), Hope of Earth (1997), Muse of Art (1999), and Climate of Change (2010). This sequence traces the story of human life on earth beginning with prehistoric times and moving through a succession of incarnations of representative human types over the centuries. ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD. Named in honor of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (who helped to establish the awards with a grant), the Arthur C. Clarke Award has been given annually since 1987 to recognize the best science fiction novel first published in Great Britain during the preceding year. The author need not be British or even from the British Commonwealth, as long as the novel was published in Britain. Indeed, beginning with Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, who won the inaugural award for The Handmaid’s Tale, the award has been quite international in scope. Winners have included Americans Marge Piercy (in 1993 for Body of Glass, published in the U.S. in 1991 as He, She, and It), Bruce Sterling (for Distraction, in 2000), and Neal Stephenson (for Quicksilver, in 2004), as well as Indian author Amitav Ghosh (for The Calcutta Chromosome, in 1997) and South African author Lauren Beukes (for Zoo City, in 2011).

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British author China Miéville has won the award three times, for Perdido Street Station in 2001, Iron Council in 2005, and The City and the City in 2010. The only other multiple winners are British residents Pat Cadigan (born in the U.S.) and Geoff Ryman (born in Canada), who have won twice. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI). The term “artificial intelligence” (often abbrevated “AI” or “A.I.”) refers to intelligence that is achieved by machines or software. The term was coined in 1955 by American computer scientist John McCarthy, but the concept is much older in science fiction; various sorts of fictional mechanical brains can be found in 19th-century fiction, while robots in the work of writers from Karel Čapek to Isaac Asimov had been intelligent (though Čapek’s robots were biological, rather than electromechanical). Since 1955, extensive real-world research into artificial intelligence has yielded only limited and specialized results (such as computer programs that can play chess on the level of a Grand Master), but artificial intelligence has become a staple of science fiction, with intelligent machines often proving to be sinister enemies of humanity. For example, Harlan Ellison’s classic story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967) features a supercomputer that has virtually eradicated the human race, but maintains a group of four men and one woman just so it can endlessly torture them. This conceit has also been popular in sf films, such as the Terminator series, but advanced computer technologies provide artificially intelligent companions or advisors to humans in a variety of works as well. The notion of artificial intelligences is quite common in cyberpunk sf, where such entities often reside in cyberspace, with the eponymous godlike artificial intelligence of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) providing a key example. Mixing cyberspace with outer space, Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead (1986) features an artificial intelligence that has spontaneously (and secretly) arisen within the ansible communication network that connects an interstellar civilization, while Nalo Hopkinsons’s Midnight Robber (2000) features an ever-present intelligent network that helps manage a Caribbean-inflected society on a distant planet. Robert J. Sawyer’s “WWW” trilogy—Wake (2009), Watch (2010), and Wonder (2011)—is representative of more realistic versions of the conceit of network intelligence in which AI arises spontaneously from the sheer complexity of the interconnections that make up the worldwide web. Cyberpunk writers and their successors have also frequently imagined the uploading of human minds into computers, thus creating a special sort of artificial intelligence that can free individuals of the limitations of biological bodies, a notion that would be notably extended in the work of Greg Egan. In recent years, the notion of AI has become closely associated with the Singularity, which occurs when a machine finally achieves intelligence, then quickly sets about designing and building even more intelligent machines,

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and so on, triggering a runaway growth in machine intelligence that leaves humans in its wake. Authors such as Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross have shown a fascination with this concept in their fiction, while sf author and mathematician Vernor Vinge has popularized the idea as a real-world possibility. Such vastly intelligent entities are often hostile or oblivious to humans, though the “Culture” of Iain M. Banks relies heavily on advanced intelligences (known as “Minds”) that work for the benefit of their human charges. The same can be said for the artificial intelligences of Ian McDonald’s River of Gods (2005), though here the situation is complicated by the worldwide efforts of the U.S. government to prevent the Singularity, not realizing it has already occurred (in India). ASIAN SCIENCE FICTION. See CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION; JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION; POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. ASIMOV, ISAAC (1920–1992). Isaac Asimov produced some of the key monuments of the “Golden Age” of science fiction, in which he joined fellow American Robert A. Heinlein and the British writer Arthur C. Clarke as the three leading figures. Born to Jewish parents in Petrovichi, Russia, Asimov moved with his family to the United States at a young age. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, eventually graduating from Columbia University in 1939; he subsequently failed to gain admission to medical school, but ultimately received his doctorate in biochemistry from Columbia in 1948. In the meantime, he had become an established writer of science fiction short stories, having published frequently in John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction. His early published stories include such classics as “Nightfall” (1941), as well as the stories that would later be compiled into I, Robot (1950) and the “Foundation” trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). These key works are marked by the clear, unadorned style that would remain a hallmark of Asimov’s writing throughout his career. He presents his material without literary flourish; the strength of his fiction writing lies primarily in the scientific authenticity that his background and inclination add to his stories, though his plots can be quite compelling as well. After receiving his doctorate, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine, remaining on the regular faculty there for the next 10 years, reaching the rank of associate professor and achieving tenure. During this period, he became a central figure in the rise of the science fiction novel in the 1950s, with such works as the important time-travel novel The End of Eternity (1955). Asimov also extended his groundbreaking series of robot stories with the novels The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957), which mix in important elements of the detective story.

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The concepts in this series, especially the Three Laws of Robotics, are among the most important and influential in the history of science fiction. The “Foundation” trilogy has been extremely influential as well, extending Asimov’s importance to science fiction well beyond his own writing in the field. Also during the 1950s, Asimov wrote a series of “Lucky Starr” juvenile novels under the pseudonym “Paul French.” After 1958, Asimov remained on the faculty at Boston University in a nonteaching capacity so that he could devote himself to writing full time. However, he virtually ceased writing fiction at this time, concentrating instead on the prolific production of nonfiction works on a wide variety of subjects, including science, literature, religion, and autobiography. He was particularly adept at popularizing difficult scientific topics for a broad, general audience. These nonfiction works, like his fiction, reflect his commitment to liberal humanism and to rationality as the key to solving humanity’s problems. They constitute the largest portion of the more than 500 volumes that he wrote or edited during his lifetime. Asimov did, however, continue occasionally to write fiction, as with the 1972 novel The Gods Themselves, which focuses on aliens operating in a universe parallel to our own and is thus one of the rare examples of the appearance of aliens in Asimov’s fiction. That novel won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards for Best Novel. He also won both the Nebula and the Hugo for Best Novelette for the robot story The Bicentennial Man (1976); in addition, he returned to the “Foundation” trilogy in 1982 with the publication of Foundation’s Edge, which again won the Hugo and Locus awards for Best Novel. He then continued the “Foundation” saga with Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988), and the posthumously published Forward the Foundation (1993). He also returned to the “Robot” series during this last period of his writing career, producing a series of new robot novels that included The Robots of Dawn (1983), Robots and Empire (1985), and The Positronic Man (1993, written with Robert Silverberg and based on Asimov’s 1976 Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novelette The Bicentennial Man). Asimov also returned to the writing of science fiction for younger readers by coauthoring, with wife Janet Asimov, a series of young readers’ science fiction novels based on the adventures of a character named Norby the Robot that was published between 1983 and 1991. Asimov died in 1992 from complications due to an HIV infection he had contracted during triple bypass surgery in December 1983. More than twenty years after his death, he is still one of the most widely read and beloved of the world’s science fiction writers. He also remains one of the most awarded science fiction writers in history, often winning recognition well beyond that afforded to individual works by the major yearly science fiction literary awards. In 1963, for example, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, while winning that same year a special Hugo

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for “adding science to science fiction” for a series of essays published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 1966 the “Foundation” trilogy was awarded a special Hugo Award as the all-time best science fiction novel series. In 1987, Asimov was made a Nebula Grand Master in recognition of his lifetime achievements as a writer of science fiction, and in 1997 he was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, which had only begun electing members the year before. His awards have moved outside the realm of science fiction as well. In addition to being awarded 14 honorary doctorates, Asimov was honored in 1981 when an asteroid was named “5020 Asimov” in his honor, while in 2009 a crater on the planet Mars was named “Asimov” as well. In 2010, the U.S. Congress decreed that the second week of April each year be designated “National Robotics Week,” specifically in recognition of Asimov and his Three Laws of Robotics. See also ASIMOV’S SCENCE FICTION. ASIMOV’S SCENCE FICTION. Asimov’s Science Fiction is a science fiction magazine named in honor of science fiction great Isaac Asimov. It was founded in 1977 as Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, published by Davis Publications, with Asimov agreeing to lend his name and to serve as editorial director, contributing editorials and responding to reader mail, though he declined an offer to serve as the actual editor. Asimov was also instrumental in arranging for the magazine to pay contributors more than had been typical of sf magazines to that time. Initially a quarterly, the magazine had expanded to monthly publication by 1979, and then to publishing once every four weeks (13 issues per year) in the mid-1980s, but it was eventually reduced to the current 10 issues per year. Shortly before Asimov’s death in 1992, the magazine was sold to Bantam Doubleday Dell, and the title was changed to its current shorter version. Gardner Dozois edited the magazine from 1986 until 2004, when he was succeeded by Sheila Williams, who remains the editor as of this writing. ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. Founded in 1930 as Astounding Stories of Super-Science, then later simply known as Astounding Stories (and often referred to simply as “Astounding”), Astounding Science-Fiction was the title from 1938 to 1960 of what was arguably the most important of the Golden Age sf pulp magazines. The change of title in 1938 also marked the beginning of the term of John W. Campbell Jr. as the magazine’s editor, though he was officially appointed in late 1937. Campbell’s tenure as editor would last until his death in 1971, by which time the title had again changed, to Analog Science Fiction and Fact (in 1960).

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The early years of Astounding Stories were unremarkable, but Campbell took the magazine in important new directions (including improved literary quality in the stories that were being published) that made Astounding Science-Fiction the key reason why those years would come to be regarded as a “Golden Age.” Campbell was an astute editor whose suggestions often improved the stories of his contributors; he was also an efficient manager who saw to it that his contributors were paid promptly for their work, though it also helped that the magazine had been owned, since 1933, by Street & Smith, one of the largest and most stable of the pulp publishers. As a result, Astounding soon became the publishing venue of choice for such established sf writers as L. Sprague de Camp, L. Ron Hubbard, C. L. Moore, Clifford D. Simak, and Jack Williamson, though the magazine is particularly well known for its introduction during this period of a number of new writers who would become stalwarts of the genre, including Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. Van Vogt. In addition to pushing for higher literary quality, Campbell, at least initially, also emphasized the credible use of scientific concepts. Astounding was also amenable to the serial publication of extended stories, many of which were later published in book form as some of the leading novels emanating from the Golden Age, though most of these book-length publications did not appear until the 1950s, including such crucial works as Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, which had originally appeared in Astounding in 1942–1950, then appeared in book form in 1951–1953. Ironically, the boom in paperback publishing that brought some of Astounding’s best stories to a wider market also drove paperback originals to the forefront of the genre and displaced pulp magazines such as Astounding from the central position they had once held in defining the genre in the 1930s and 1940s. Meanwhile, Campbell’s own once-lofty reputation began to fade in the 1950s, partly due to his growing interest in pseudo-science, including the first publication of Hubbard’s “Dianetics” theories, beginning in 1950. The change in title to Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1960 reflected the fact that Astounding had published popular science articles as well as science fiction all along. But it also reflected new ownership, as Street & Smith had been bought by mainstream magazine publisher Condé Nast in 1959. The magazine was sold to Davis Publications in 1980 and to Dell Magazines in 1992. In the meantime, it maintained continuity—and popularity—under the stewardship of Stanley Schmidt, who became the editor in 1978 and remains in that position as of 2014. Ben Bova edited the magazine from 1972 to 1978.

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ATWOOD, MARGARET (1939– ). Margaret Atwood is probably the bestknown Canadian writer to have worked in the past half-century. Born in Ottawa and educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard University, she has gained prominence as a poet, novelist, children’s writer, essayist, television scriptwriter, and political activist. As a critic, Atwood’s most important work of criticism is the 1972 volume Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, which notes that Canadian literature expresses victimization and survival rather than heroism and triumph. Indeed, it is always valuable to remember Atwood’s Canadian perspective in assessing her fiction. She has often been considered a feminist writer, though her work explores a wide range of themes and issues, including Canadian national identity and Canada’s relations with the United States. Atwood’s novels have often veered into the fantastic, the Gothic, and the speculative. In the realm of science fiction, she is best known for her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which portrays a near-future dystopian society dominated by misogynist religious fundamentalism. The Handmaid’s Tale won the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award; it remains one of the most successful examples of science fiction by a writer not typically associated with the genre. Atwood returned to science fiction in 2003 with the publication of Oryx and Crake, a postapocalyptic narrative that takes place in the wake of a catastrophic event of bioterrorism that has wiped out most of humanity, while also producing a new genetically engineered variant of humanity that survives. Atwood then returned to the world of Oryx and Crake with the novel The Year of the Flood (2009), which gives more details of the corporate-dominated dystopian world that leads to the catastrophe of the original novel. In between these two volumes, Atwood caused considerable controversy when, in her 2005 essay collection Moving Targets, she argued, seemingly dismissively (and simplistically), that her work should be labeled “speculative fiction,” rather than “science fiction,” because for her the latter genre is associated with the imagination of things that could not actually happen, while in her fiction she is concerned with things that actually could happen. However, with her 2011 study In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Atwood seems less dismissive of science fiction, which she admits has been central to her development as a writer. AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE FICTION. Science fiction texts began to emerge from Australia in the late 1800s, including utopias such as Joseph Fraser’s Melbourne and Mars: My Mysterious Life on Two Planets (1889) and G. McIver’s Neuroomia: A New Continent (1894), as well as more adventurous novels involving the exploration of remote continents much like Australia itself, including Fergus Hume’s The Expedition of Captain Flick (1896) and G. Firth Scott’s The Last Lemurian (1898). However, science

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fiction did not really take hold in Australia until the rise of pulp science fiction in the United States and Great Britain in the early 20th century spread to Australia as well. Writers such as A. Bertram Chandler and George Turner emerged at this time, supported by an active fan culture. As Australian sf magazine culture expanded in the 1950s, some stories by Australian writers began to find their way into magazines in the U.S. and Great Britain. Meanwhile, two anthologies edited by John Baxter—The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (1968) and The Second Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (1971)—demonstrated the growing richness of Australian sf by the end of the 1960s. It was not, however, until the 1980s that sf by Australian writers became prominent on the world stage. Writers such as Damien Broderick, David Lake, and Terry Dowling began to gain attention worldwide, while Greg Egan emerged in the 1990s as a truly major figure in global science fiction. Egan has produced genuinely groundbreaking sf novels, including Permutation City (1994), Diaspora (1997), and Schild’s Ladder (2002), which have employed sometimes-difficult theoretical concepts but expanded the imaginative bounds of science fiction. See also BARRY, MAX (1973– ).

B BACIGALUPI, PAOLO (1972– ). The American writer Paolo Bacigalupi has been publishing short stories since 1999, but first received major attention with his story collection Pump Six and Other Stories in 2008. His first novel, The Windup Girl (2009), won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell awards, establishing him as a rising star. This novel, set in 23rdcentury Thailand, evokes that culture in impressive detail, while exploring a number of postapocalyptic narratives related to global warming, genetic engineering, and the collapse of the fossil fuel supply. In Ship Breaker (2010) and The Drowned Cities (2012), Bacigalupi presents a somewhatsimilar post–climate change scenario for young adult readers. Ship Breaker won the Michael L. Printz award from the American Library Association for the year’s best young adult novel and was nominated for a national Book Award for Young People’s Literature. BALLANTINE, IAN (1916–1995). Ian Keith Ballantine was an American publisher who was among the leaders in the post–World War II paperback publishing boom in the United States, which contributed greatly to the rise of the science fiction novel. Born in New York City, Ballantine received a graduate degree from the London School of Economics, where he wrote his thesis on the potential of paperback publishing. In 1945, Ballantine and his wife, Betty Ballantine, helped to found Bantam Books, of which he was president until 1952. In 1952, the Ballantines founded Ballantine Books, which they ran until 1974, producing a variety of books, including some of the first original paperback science fiction novels, by such authors as Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl. During the 1960s, they published the first authorized paperback edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s books, and in the 1970s they published much of the work of H. P. Lovecraft. In 2008, both Ian and Betty Ballantine were elected to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame for their contributions to science fiction and fantasy publishing.

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BALLARD, J. G. (1930–2009). James Graham Ballard was a versatile and inventive writer who worked in many genres, including science fiction, so his writing is so unusual as to also constitute a category of its own. Born to British parents in China, he spent his childhood there and was interned by the Japanese during their occupation of China in World War II. These experiences were central to his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1984), which was adapted to film in 1987 by Steven Spielberg, based on a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. In the realm of science fiction, Ballard was a key member of the New Wave, crafting a number of highly literary short stories, typically exploring psychic inner space more than outer space, Ballard maintaining an entirely skeptical attitude toward the promise of space exploration. Many of his novels—such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966)—project visions of future catastrophic transformations of the landscape, and thus can be considered forerunners of more specifically environmentalist science fiction. In novels such as Crash (1973, adapted to film by David Cronenberg) and The Atrocity Exhibition (1969, revised 1990, with illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner, aka Love and Napalm: Export USA), Ballard pushes the New Wave interest in frank representation of sexuality to its farthest point, though (especially in the latter) Ballard’s formal experimentation is even more daring than the highly sexualized content. Meanwhile, the latter volume is typical of Ballard’s often satirical engagement with American culture, including chapters with titles such as “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy,” the first of which caused Doubleday to withdraw the first American publication of the novel. It depicts Reagan as a sinister and possibly depraved “Presidential contender” in the mode of Adolf Hitler or Richard Nixon well before his actual successful run for the presidency. Playful as it is, The Atrocity Exhibition can be rather dark. Hello America (1981), on the other hand, is a futuristic satire that engages American culture in an uncharacteristically lighthearted way. Elements of both utopian and dystopian narratives reside in much of Ballard’s later work, even if it is not overtly science fictional. Super-Cannes (2000), for example, depicts a consumer capitalist utopia, though one that predictably includes a significant dark side. Most of Ballard’s short stories are collected in The Complete Short Stories (2002). BANKS, IAIN M. (1954–2013). The Scottish writer Iain Banks has had considerable success as the author of more than a dozen mainstream novels; he has also produced an important body of science fiction, written under the name “Iain M. Banks.” Having gained considerable recognition for his mainstream debut novel The Wasp Factory (1984), Banks moved into science

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fiction in 1987 with the publication Consider Phlebas, the first in his series of “Culture” novels, though he had drafted a considerable amount of science fiction even before the publication of The Wasp Factory. The Culture series would eventually include nine novels that would constitute the bulk of his work as a writer of science fiction, as well as a key product of the British Boom, even as Banks remained somewhat on the margins of that movement. Other novels in this series include The Player of Games (1988), The Use of Weapons (1990), Excession (1996), Inversions (1998), Look to Windward (2000), Matter (2008), Surface Detail (2010), and The Hydrogen Sonata (2012). These stylish and sophisticated novels together present a picture of “the Culture,” a far-ranging and highly advanced interstellar civilization of the future that has evolved in the wake of the development of artificial intelligence on earth. This development quickly led to the rise of vastly intelligent artificial “Minds,” which oversee and manage this civilization for the benefit of humanity. Thanks to the availability of extremely advanced technologies, the Culture has access to virtually unlimited resources, which has helped it to overcome virtually all social and political limitations, producing a society with a population of trillions of energetic and enterprising individuals, easily accommodated in the vast artificial habitats that the Minds have created for them. This society is thus a genuine utopia, yet constantly evolving and often in conflict with less evolved neighbors, which the Minds sometimes seek to uplift in a genuinely generous spirit. Banks’s science fiction novels outside the world of the Culture include Against a Dark Background (1993), a space adventure involving an interplanetary treasure hunt; Feersum Endjinn (1994), a complex end-of-theworld saga that is narrated by four different protagonists, with one of these segments written in phonetic spelling to indicate the dyslexia of the narrator; and The Algebraist (2004), a sort of counterpoint to the Culture novels in that it depicts a dystopia obsessed with the accumulation of wealth and practicing an interventionism considerably less benevolent than that of the Culture. The line between Banks’s sf and mainstream novels is not as clear as one might expect. Indeed, at least one novel, Transition (2009), was published under the name “Iain Banks” in Great Britain and “Iain M. Banks” in the United States, though its parallel-worlds narrative surely qualifies as science fiction. Banks has also been a political activist, campaigning in support of Scottish independence and against British involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, among other causes. The majority of his novels have been nominated for one or more of the major science fiction awards, with Feersum Endjinn winning the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award. Shortly after his death in June 2013, the International Astronomical Union announced that it was honoring Banks by officially naming asteroid 5099 “Iainbanks.”

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BARNES, STEVEN (1952– ). The African American writer Steven Barnes has authored a number of works, many of which reflect his interest in martial arts in their emphasis on themes of combat and violence. Of these, perhaps the most ambitious sequence is Lion’s Blood (2002) and Zulu Heart (2003), which together describe an alternate history in which America is colonized by African rather than European forces, though in a manner that involves more cooperation with Native Americans. Barnes is particularly well known for his several collaborations with Larry Niven, including the four books of the “Dream Park” series (about role-playing games in the future), comprising Dream Park (1981), The Barsoom Project (1989), The California Voodoo Game (1992), and The Moon Maze Game (2011). Barnes has also collaborated with both Niven and Larry Pournelle on the planetary romance sequence The Legacy of Heorot (1987) and Beowulf’s Children (1995). More recently, he has collaborated with his wife, Tananarive Due, and with actor Blair Underwood on a series of crime/mystery novels involving actor-turneddetective Tennyson Hardwick. BARRY, MAX (1973– ). The Australian writer Max Barry has written several humorous satires with science fiction elements, usually aimed at exposing the excesses and absurdities of corporate capitalism. The first of these satires, Syrup (1999), was published under the name “Maxx Barry,” but his subsequent novels were all published as by “Max.” These include Jennifer Government (2003), perhaps the most effective (and most science fictional) of his satires, focusing on the privatization and corporatization of everything (including individual human beings) in a future dystopian global capitalist society. Company (2006) presents a similarly dystopian, but more localized, vision of the dehumanizing consequences of working for a particular corporation. Machine Man (2011) features a mechanical engineer who works for a large defense contractor who gradually replaces his body parts with mechanical substitutes and eventually has his mind uploaded into a computer as his conversion into an automated simulacrum of a human is completed. Lexicon (2013) focuses on a secret school that teaches its students to use language to manipulate and control others. “BAS-LAG” TRILOGY. The “Bas-Lag” trilogy is a sequence of novels by China Miéville, comprising Perdido Street Station (2000, winner of the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award and British Fantasy Award), The Scar (2002, shortlisted for the 2003 Clarke Award), and Iron Council (2004, winner of the 2005 Clarke Award and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel). All are set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag, which has many of the trappings of the fantasy realms of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, including the existence of magic, though in this case the magic exists in the form of

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“thaumaturgy,” which actually has many of the characteristics of a special form of technology. But Bas-Lag also appears to be a planet (whose development may have been influenced by an earlier incursion of alien visitors), giving the trilogy something of the feel of a planetary romance, though it covers a relatively small percentage of the planet. In addition, the world of Bas-Lag, including the city of New Crobuzon, a key setting in the novels, contains a great deal of steampunk technology that gives it much of the feel of a 19th-century England, with New Crobuzon standing for London. Miéville’s deft combination of fantasy and science fiction (as well as horror) in the trilogy has made it a key example of the genre-bending tendencies of the British Boom, of which Miéville is often considered the single most important figure. The novels of the trilogy combine his trademark baroque linguistic energy with an elaborate imaginative framework that includes such features as multiple intelligent species, a richly detailed (but fantastic) topography, and a variety of bizarre inventions, such as the “slake moths” of Perdido Street Station, horror genre creatures that exist only partly in the physical world, meanwhile deriving their sustenance by devouring the minds of their sentient victims. Yet this same novel also includes the “Construct Council,” a particularly weird science fiction machine that is a conglomeration cobbled together from discarded computers and other devices, having achieved artificial intelligence through the intervention of a virus. BAXTER, STEPHEN (1957– ). The British writer Stephen Baxter has produced stories and novels in a variety of sf subgenres, mostly in the category of hard sf and mostly as part of multivolume sequences. Perhaps his most sustained sequence began with his first published story, “The Xeelee Flower” (1987), which became the first of a number of stories set in the same universe, where a mysterious alien race known as the Xeelee has disappeared, leaving behind artifacts that figure in the stories. Many of these stories are collected in Vacuum Diagrams (1997). Baxter’s novel Ring (1994) also focuses on these artifacts, while several of his other novels are set in the same universe without that focus—including Raft (1992), Timelike Infinity (1992), and Flux (1993). The sequence was then extended via a number of novellas, including Reality Dust (2000), Riding the Rock (2002), Mayflower II (2004), Starfall (2009), and Gravity Dreams (2011). Another series, the “Destiny’s Children” sequence, is a self-contained subset of the Xeelee Sequence set in the same universe; it includes the novels Coalescence (2003, nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), Exultant (2004), Transcendent (2005, nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award), and Resplendent (2006). This series introduces a number of motifs, the most prominent of which is the future evolution of human beings to meet a variety of possible conditions, including an evolution to a godlike higher consciousness without physical bodies.

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Another extended sequence is the “NASA” trilogy, which explores possible alternate paths that the American space program might have taken if certain things had been different. This sequence includes Voyage (1996), Titan (1997), and Moonseed (1998), the first two of which were nominated for the Clarke Award. In a somewhat related vein is the “Manifold” trilogy, which includes Time (1999), Space (2002), and Origin (2002); here hopes of elaborate space exploration are fading in the light of a declining space program, only to find that other events, including the discovery of parallel worlds and contact with aliens, introduce new possibilities. Baxter coauthored the “Time Odyssey” series with Arthur C. Clarke, including the novels Times’ Eye (2003), Sunstorm (2005), and Firstborn (2007). His best-known stand-alone is The Time Ships (1995), which is presented as a sequel to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), and is even written in a style that mimics that of the original. However, it is actually a far-ranging work that participates in any number of sf genres, in addition to time travel. It was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; it won the BFSA Award for best novel, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. Baxter has also won a number of awards for his short fiction and has written a number of novels for young adult readers. BEAR, GREG (1951– ). A prolific author of hard sf, Greg Bear has authored dozens of novels, the majority of which participate in various series of novels. Since 1983 the son-in-law of sf writer Poul Anderson, Bear published his first science fiction story as a teenager in 1967 and turned to fulltime writing in 1975, publishing widely from that point forward. It was not, however, until the second half of the 1980s that he hit his stride, with a quick sequence of important hard sf novels that deal with a number of key sf concepts. Blood Music (1985), for example, incorporates genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and posthumanism. Eon (1985) and its sequel Eternity (1988) are inventive space operas that would eventually be joined by the further sequels Legacy (1995) and The Way of All Ghosts (1999); The Forge of God (1987) is an unusual alien-invasion narrative in which the aliens win, forcing the survivors of humanity to evacuate to Mars, later to seek a terrible revenge in the sequel Anvil of Stars (1992). Queen of Angels (1990) is a complex nanotechnology narrative that addresses a number of other topics as well, as does its sequel, / (aka Slant, 1997). Several other novels are set roughly in the same world as Queen of Angels, including Heads (1990); Moving Mars (1993), which depicts the political battles of a Martian colony to escape domination from earth; and Quantico (2005), a near-future bioterrorism thriller whose action predates that of all the other volumes, including its own sequel, Mariposa (2009), which links it to Queen of Angels and the rest of the sequence. Moving Mars won a Nebula

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Award for Best Novel, as did Darwin’s Radio (1999), which, along with its sequel, Darwin’s Children (2003), deals with a long-dormant virus that once caused a boost in human evolution and now is needed to do it again. Bear has also written several novels set in science fiction worlds previously established by others, including Corona (1984), based on Star Trek: The Original Series; Foundation and Chaos (1998), part of the “Second Foundation” series that follows the world of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy; and the Star Wars novel Rogue Planet (2000). Most recently, Bear authored the three novels of the “Forerunner” trilogy—Cryptum (2011), Primordium (2012), and Silentium (2013)—which are set in the universe of the Halo videogames. See also POSTHUMANIST SCIENCE FICTION. BESTER, ALFRED (1913–1987). Alfred Bester wrote science fiction stories and novels, as well as television and radio scripts and scripts for comic strips and comic books. Though he wrote and published a number of sf stories between 1939 and 1942, his best-known stories were written in the 1950s, mostly for Galaxy Science Fiction magazine and mostly available in the collections Starburst (1958) and The Dark Side of the Moon (1964). His most important contributions as a writer of sf came with two novels in the 1950s, including The Demolished Man (1953), a detective story involving telepathy, which won the first Hugo Award for Best Novel. That same year, Bester published the non-sf novel Who He? (aka The Rat Race). In 1957, he published what is now his best-known novel, The Stars My Destination (originally published in Great Britain in 1956 as Tiger! Tiger!). This novel, a reinscription of The Count of Monte Cristo, features psychic teleportation and a protagonist, Gully Foyle, who is enhanced with superhuman abilities; perhaps more importantly, its descriptions of 25th-century capitalism clearly satirize American capitalism of the 1950s. BEUKES, LAUREN (1976– ). The South African writer Lauren Beukes has written journalism, television scripts, and comic books, as well as science fiction novels and short stories. Her first novel, Moxyland (2010), set in Cape Town, breathed new energy into cyberpunk and established Beukes as a force to be reckoned with. Zoo City (2011) continued her focus on the potentially negative impacts of our new media culture. Combining cyberpunk, magical realism, and a number of other elements, it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The Shining Girls (2013) continues Beukes’s tendency to combine genres, providing a crime-suspense narrative that centers on Depression-era Chicago via a time-travel plot.

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BISHOP, MICHAEL (1945– ). Michael Bishop has had a long and productive career as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels. His short fiction has received numerous award nominations; his novellas “The Samurai and the Willows” (1977) and “Her Habiline Husband” (1984) won Locus awards, and “The Quickening” (1981) won the Nebula Award. Several of his stories are set in a shared future history centered on the Urban Nucleus (or “UrNu”) of Atlanta, one of a number of domed cities that dominate this future world. This sequence also includes one full-length novel, A Little Knowledge (1977). Bishop has written a number of works of anthropological science fiction that attempt to imagine what alien cultures might be like. Of these, the Locus-nominated novel Transfigurations (1979)—which literally involves an anthropologist who studies a seemingly primitive, apelike sentient species living on a planet currently being colonized by earth—is perhaps the most interesting. In somewhat the same mode, his novel No Enemy But Time (1982), winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, envisions the culture of humanity’s prehistoric ancestors as they are visited by a time-traveling African American from our time. Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas (1987, originally published as The Secret Ascension) pays homage to Philip K. Dick via an alternate-reality story that features President Richard Milrose Nixon entering his fourth term, while an alternate version of Dick is also a major character. It was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Another highly successful novel is Brittle Innings (1994), which features Frankenstein’s monster as a minor league baseball player in the United States; though perhaps more fantasy/horror than science fiction, it won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and was nominated for numerous other awards as well. Bishop has also edited a number of anthologies, including Light Years and Dark (1985), which won the Locus Award. BISSON, TERRY (1942– ). Terry Bisson has written both science fiction and fantasy, as well as other genres, including comic books. He has been especially successful as a writer of short fiction, much of it satirical in nature. His single best-known work is probably the story “Bears Discover Fire,” first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1990 and the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Short Story. It has been anthologized numerous times, including in Bisson’s own collection of the same title. Bisson’s first major foray into science fiction came with the alternate-history novel Fire on the Mountain (1988) based on the premise that John Brown was able to trigger a successful slave rebellion that leads to the establishment of a black socialist utopia in the South. Reflecting Bisson’s own leftist political views, the success of this enterprise leads to successful socialist revolutions around the world. Bisson’s lighter and more comical sf

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novels include Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), a satire of media culture in which an expedition is mounted to Mars just so a blockbuster movie can be filmed there. Other satires include Pirates of the Universe (1996), in which astronauts dream of retiring to a theme park, and The Pickup Artist (2001), whose title character is a government operative who confiscates existing artworks in order to make room for new ones. BLISH, JAMES (1921–1975). A member of the Futurians in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the American writer James Blish began publishing science fiction stories in 1940. He published a number of additional stories in the 1940s, though his career developed slowly, partly due to his military service in World War II, partly due to time spent studying biology at Rutgers and Columbia Universities, and partly due to his work as an editor for the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company. Blish’s major work began in 1950 with the publication of the first of his “Cities in Flight,” or “Okies” future history, in which the major cities of earth are converted into itinerant spaceships via antigravity devices known as “spindizzies.” These city-ships then travel through the galaxy seeking work in the manner of the Okies who left dust bowl Oklahoma seeking work during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The earlier stories, whose conception of history owed something to Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918–1922) were eventually collected in the volumes Earthman, Come Home (1955) and They Shall Have Stars (1956), the latter of which was also published as Year 2018! The Triumph of Time (1958) and A Life for the Stars (1962) also take place in this future history. The complete sequence was eventually collected in Cities in Flight (1970). Another well-known sequence of stories from the 1950s were the “Pantropy” tales in which humans attempt to colonize other planets not by engineering their environments to be hospitable to humans by terraforming, but by the opposite strategy of modifying human beings by genetic engineering to be able better to live in the environments. These stories were collected in The Seedling Stars (1957). In 1952, Blish’s 1941 short story “Solar Plexus” was reprinted in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Blish’s fellow former Futurian Judith Merril. The reprinted version of this story is believed to be the origin of the astronomical term “gas giant.” One of his best-known works of the 1950s was the Hugo Award–winning novel A Case of Conscience (1959), perhaps the most extended critical examination of religion to appear in the science fiction of the 1950s, as a spacefaring Jesuit encounters an alien world where the inhabitants, with no exposure to Christ or Christianity, nevertheless appear unfallen and sinless, leading him to suspect a Satanic trick. It was followed by Doctor Mirabilis (1964), Black Easter (1967), and The Day

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after Judgment (1970), which explore some related themes and thus constitute a sequence. All four were collected in the volume After Such Knowledge in 1991. His career having somewhat declined in the 1960s, Blish achieved new success beginning in 1967 when he was hired to write short story collections based on episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek television series. A total of 11 of these collections continued to appear until his death in 1975, and a 12th volume appeared in 1977, completed by his widow, Judith Ann Lawrence. Blish also authored the Star Trek tie-in novel Spock Must Die! (1970), the first Star Trek novel aimed at an adult audience. In addition to his fiction, Blish wrote critical studies of science fiction, under the name William Atheling Jr. His criticism is collected in The Issue at Hand (1964) and More Issues at Hand (1970). BOUCHER, ANTHONY (1911–1968). The American writer and editor Anthony Boucher (the best known of multiple pseudonyms used by William Anthony Parker White) made a number of contributions to various genres of American culture, especially in the realms of detective fiction and science fiction. Indeed, Boucher’s most important work as a writer, the novel Rocket to the Morgue (1942), combines these two genres. A highly effective lockedroom mystery, this novel features a number of characters based on Boucher’s own acquaintances in the California science fiction culture of the time. But Boucher also wrote a number of important sf short stories (almost all before 1953), including “The Quest for Saint Aquin” (1951), which the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America selected as one of the best science fiction short stories of all time. It was thus included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929–1964 (1970). Most of Boucher’s stories are assembled in The Compleat Boucher: The Complete Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Anthony Boucher (1998). One of the most important of Boucher’s contributions to sf came through his association with the young Philip K. Dick, whom Boucher encouraged early in his career, especially through his position as an editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1949 to 1958. That magazine won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for both of Boucher’s last two years as editor; it was a crucial force striving for increased literary quality in science fiction writing through the 1950s. BOULLE, PIERRE (1912–1994). Pierre Boulle was a French writer who was better known for his work outside of science fiction than in. For example, his best-known novel was Le pont sur la rivière Kwaï (1952, translated in 1954 as The Bridge on the River Kwai), which became the basis of a classic 1957 film. His best-known sf novel was La planete de singes (1963,

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translated in 1963 as Planet of the Apes), which is also better known (especially in the Anglophone world) for its classic 1968 film adaptation, which has its own virtues, though it lacks the wit of the original novel. Les malheur des uns (1990) was another science fiction novel involving the discovery of a cure for AIDS. See also FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION. BRACKETT, LEIGH (1915–1978). Though perhaps best known to the general public as the coauthor of a number of important screenplays, including that for The Big Sleep (1945), the American Leigh Brackett was a pioneer among women writers of science fiction. She began publishing sf stories in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1940. By 1944 she had moved to writing novels, beginning with a crime novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944), but quickly following with the sf novel Shadow over Mars (1944), which clearly shows her background in hard-boiled crime fiction. Brackett followed with the novella “Lorelei of the Red Mist,” but abandoned it to work on the script for The Big Sleep, leaving the novella, a planetary romance, to be finished by Ray Bradbury prior to its 1946 publication in Planet Stories, where Brackett frequently published similar stories in the coming years. Several of these eventually appeared in expanded or collected form, apparently with the (uncredited) collaboration of her husband, Edmond Hamilton. These volumes include The Starmen (1952), The Sword Rhiannon (1953), The Big Jump (1955), Alpha Centauri—Or Die! (1962), The Secret of Sinharat (1964), and The People of the Talisman (1964). Collections of her stories in the pulp magazines include The Coming of the Terrans (1967) and The Halfling and Other Stories (1973). The postpocalyptic narrative The Long Tomorrow (1955) is Brackett’s most important sf novel, exploring a United States in the wake of a nuclear holocaust that is plunged into a pretechnological lifestyle and that, spearheaded by the power of conservative religious groups, seeks to prevent the redevelopment of technology, which is blamed for the nuclear disaster. Unfortunately, Brackett did not follow up on the promise of this novel as she turned to writing mostly for film and television, though she did return to writing sf in the 1970s. BRADBURY, RAY (1920–2012). Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Ray Bradbury was one of the most beloved of all American science fiction writers, partly because his nostalgic and idealized evocations of small-town American life resonated with the popularity of such images in American culture, making him a sort of Norman Rockwell of American sf. But these idyllic images grew out of a rejection of the modernizing and commercializing tendencies of American capitalism that could be quite bitter.

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Bradbury began publishing stories in fanzines in 1938 and sold his first professional story in 1942, after which he soon began to devote himself to writing full time. His stories of the 1940s were highly successful, including several that later became part of The Martian Chronicles, which appeared in book form in 1950. Here, Bradbury details the destruction of an ethereal Martian civilization by colonizers from earth, who come bearing the crass commercial spirit that had informed life on their own planet. By this time he was a well-established science fiction writer, and his stories became favorites for adaptation to the sf comic books that thrived in the early 1950s. On the other hand, the stories in The Martian Chronicles had little regard for scientific verisimilitude and were not regarded by Bradbury as science fiction at all. Another collection of stories, most previously published, was The Illustrated Man (1951), again featuring stories that were more fantasy than science fiction. Numerous other story collections over the years were in much the same vein, including A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), R Is for Rocket (1962), and S Is for Space (1966). Bradbury’s most important work of book-length fiction was the dystopian narrative Fahrenheit 451 (1953), which again details a highly commercialized society, in which television distracts individuals from the spiritual emptiness of their lives and books have been banned because they might encourage critical and independent thought. Though again not entirely believable, this book was at least clearly classifiable as science fiction. It gained additional exposure from a successful 1964 film adaptation, and Bradbury’s stories would be adapted to television and film many times; he even hosted his own television anthology series, The Ray Bradbury Theater, from 1985 to 1991, increasing his popularity even further, though his output of actual science fiction was relatively small after the early 1950s, as he worked increasingly in other genres. BRADLEY, MARION ZIMMER (1930–1999). The American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, born in Albany, New York, was best known for her work in the fantasy genre, but, especially in her earlier work, she often melded science fiction with fantasy/adventure. Her first professional story was published in 1953, but her career got its first major boost in 1958 with the publication of the novel The Planet Savers, a planetary romance that features the planet Darkover, a lost earth colony whose inhabitants have developed unusual psychic powers. This planet would become the setting for a series of novels by Bradley that would extend over the next 30 years, ending with The Heirs of Hammerfell (1989). Bradley also openly invited other authors to write stories and novels set on the planet, becoming the first living sf writer to announce the availability of her creation as a shared world. The series was also groundbreaking in its evolution, beginning espe-

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cially with The Shattered Chain (1976), into a feminist political adventure. In 1983, Bradley published what would ultimately be her most important novel, the feminist-inflected Arthurian fantasy The Mists of Avalon. This novel also grew into a series, and fantasy writing would dominate the remainder of Bradley’s career, which included editing the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Bradley also actively promoted and participated in sf fandom, publishing her own fanzines early in her professional career and actively encouraging the production of Darkover fan fiction. BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932). Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of the central founding texts of the modern genre of the dystopian narrative. As opposed to the barren, joyless worlds of dystopian texts such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Brave New World depicts a hedonistic future society in which individuals spend most of their time in the pursuit of instant gratification through sex, drugs, and mind-numbing multisensory pop-cultural entertainments that are continually broadcast to keep the minds and senses of the citizenry occupied at all times. But all of this pleasure is merely a diversion from the fundamental lack of liberty in this strongly class-based society, which slots individuals into specific roles even before birth and leaves them little opportunity to deviate from the paths that have been laid out for them. As such, this dystopian narrative is clearly aimed, not at totalitarian societies, but at the modern capitalist societies of the West. It has exercised a strong influence on numerous dystopian narratives that came after it, and even on social and cultural criticism concerned with the same issues. These issues, of course, deal centrally with capitalism, bourgeois ideology, and the culture they produce. But the novel also addresses a number of other important issues. For example, the global society of the book encourages sexual activity, but discourages strong emotional attachments, while the production of infants in factories (genetically engineered to serve predefined roles in society) places reproduction in the realm of social engineering. Such motifs provide interesting new perspectives on gender and sexuality, even if Huxley’s own attitude toward gender sometimes seems rather conventional for his time. All in all, the novel’s exploration of the manipulation of individuals through pleasure is almost as horrifying as the manipulation through terror and intimidation that marks many dystopian novels. BREUER, MILES J. (1889–1947). The American physician and writer Miles J. Breuer contributed numerous stories to early science fiction pulp magazines, beginning with “The Man with the Strange Head” in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. Inventive, if unpolished in a literary sense,

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Breuer’s more than three dozen stories for the pulps (mostly published between 1927 and 1933) have been anthologized several times, with his 1930 story “The Gostak and the Doshes” being perhaps the best known. A novellength dystopian narrative, “Paradise and Iron,” which appeared in Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1930, was never reprinted in book form, though it does appear, along with a number of other stories, in the 2008 collection of Breuer’s work, The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories. Another novel, The Birth of a New Republic, coauthored with Jack Williamson, appeared in Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1931 and finally in book form in 1981. BRIN, DAVID (1950– ). David Brin is an American science fiction writer whose work often demonstrates his own professional background as a working scientist. Born in Glendale, California, Brin holds a doctorate in space science from the University of California, San Diego. His work, while generally tending toward hard sf, is often concerned with the social impact of technology, typically in ways that demonstrate a liberal humanist optimism toward this impact. A prolific author, Brin is probably best known for his series of “Uplift” novels, which began with Sundiver (1980), and hit its stride with the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula award–winning Startide Rising (1983). The Uplift War (1987) also won the Hugo and Locus and was nominated for the Nebula for Best Novel. The series was then extended with the Uplift trilogy, comprising Brightness Reef (1995), Infinity’s Shore (1996), and Heaven’s Reach (1998). In this series, numerous intelligent species participate in a vast interstellar civilization that actively seeks to “uplift” less developed species to join their ranks. Humans do, in fact, join this civilization, though without being uplifted by a “patron” species, having achieved faster-than-light travel on their own and having already become patrons of a sort by helping chimpanzees and dolphins achieve full intelligence. Brin’s stand-alone novels include the postapocalyptic narrative The Postman (1985), which was adapted to film in 1997; Earth (1990), an epic warning of the future consequences of overpopulation and ecological decay; and the planetary romance Glory Season (1993). In Kiln People (2002), individuals and make cheap, temporary clay copies of themselves that they can use to perform various tasks in their stead. These copies, or dittos, are also referred to as golems, in one of the many instances in which Brin’s Jewish background has influenced his work. The far-reaching Existence (2012) is perhaps Brin’s most ambitious single novel. Here, contact with an alien artifact in the relatively near future leads to a sprawling narrative that spans several global cultures and a number of sf genres and motifs, including artificial intelligence, alien archaeology, and posthuman sf.

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Brin has also written a significant amount of nonfiction on technological issues, as well as a number of short stories, some of which are collected in The River of Time (1986), Otherness (1994), and Tomorrow Happens (2003). See also ENVIRONMENTALISM. BRITISH BOOM. The term “British Boom” is a loose designation that has been applied to the rise to prominence of an extraordinary group of new, young British science fiction writers in the mid-1990s, continuing well into the 21st century. While first and foremost a phenomenon within science fiction, the British Boom was also marked by an extension of the traditional boundaries of fantasy and horror fiction and by a general blurring of the boundaries among fantasy, horror, and science fiction. In this and other ways, the foremost figure of the Boom is probably China Miéville, who arrived fairly late with his first novel, the urban fantasy King Rat (1998). Then, Miéville firmly established himself as a leading figure of the Boom with the “Bas-Lag” trilogy of novels, including Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar (2002), and Iron Council (2004), all of which are marked by staggering flights of imagination, impressive feats of verbal dexterity, and inventive use of the tropes of a variety of genres. Many of the works of the British Boom can be seen as revisions of older subgenres such as space opera and cyberpunk, as in the work of such key figures as Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross, Richard K. Morgan, and Justina Robson. Much of the work of the Boom is multigeneric, often with a left-leaning political edge and frequently concerned with the concept of the Singularity, or the point where artificial intelligences become able to design still more intelligent artificial entities, triggering an explosive growth in artificial intelligence that quickly outstrips the human. Boom writers have also frequently mixed science fiction with fantasy, and writers such as Stross, Morgan, and Robson, best known as writers of science fiction, write fantasy as well, joining Miéville in mounting a spirited challenge to the domination of the genre by the legacy of J. R. R. Tolkien. In general, the tendency has been to add science fictional elements to a matrix that is primarily fantasy, rather than the other way around, as when Terry Pratchett sometimes plays with science fiction motifs in his Discworld series of fantasy novels. Meanwhile, the works of Christopher Priest have confounded categorization, freely mixing elements of fantasy, science fiction, and other genres. In any case, most Boom fantasy is a far cry from the works of Tolkien, if not set in outright opposition to Tolkien’s work, especially in the tendency to mix fantasy elements with elements from other genres. Thus, Susanna Clark’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004), winner of both the Hugo and World Fantasy awards, interweaves fantasy with the historical novel.

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In the realm of fantasy, one of the most interesting products of the British Boom has been the work of Philip Pullman, who writes in an anticlerical mode that is directly opposed to the Christian fantasy tradition (especially of C. S. Lewis). Pullman’s trilogy “His Dark Materials,” comprising Northern Lights (1995, published in the U.S. as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000) is now becoming better known in the U.S. as the basis for a new film franchise. Here, in a sort of fantasy version of “steampunk” science fiction, Pullman imagines an alternativehistory Victorian world saturated with magic and inhabited by a number of supernatural creatures. This world then becomes, as the trilogy proceeds, only one in a series of parallel worlds, introducing a number of science fiction tropes into the fantasy narrative. Probably the most prominent writer associated mostly with fantasy among those typically associated with the British Boom is Neil Gaiman, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for his 2001 novel American Gods, a mythological romp across America in which traditional (especially Norse) gods battle the gods of modern America, which are manifestations of technological modernity. Gaiman, meanwhile, is best known as the author of the “Sandman” comics series; other comics writers, such as Alan Moore and Warren Ellis, are sometimes associated with the Boom as well, and even Miéville has moved into writing for comics, especially as the writer for the Dial H superhero title that debuted in DC Comics in 2012 as part of the “New 52” event. BRITISH FANTASY AWARD. The British Fantasy Awards are given annually by the British Fantasy Society; they began in 1976, though they were preceded, beginning in 1972, by the August Derleth Fantasy Awards, and the award for Best Novel is still called the August Derleth Award. Initially, the award was given only for Best Novel, but it is now given in a wide variety of categories. As fantasy and science fiction have somewhat converged in British fiction in recent years, the award has become more relevant to science fiction, and many of the nominees have also been nominated for major science fiction awards. BRITISH INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY. Founded by Philip E. Cleator in 1933, the British Interplanetary Society remains in operation as of 2014, making it the longest-lived organization in the history of advocacy for the exploration of space. Over the years, its members have proposed a variety of designs for spaceships and other devices that might contribute to space exploration. In science fiction circles, their most illustrious member was undoubtedly Arthur C. Clarke, much of whose early development as a thinker and writer of sf was influenced by his membership in the society. For exam-

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ple, the use of geosynchronous satellites as telecommunications relays was announced by Clarke in a paper privately circulated in 1945 among members of the society, which he chaired from 1946 to 1947 and 1951 to 1953. THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION (BSFA). After several forerunner fan-based societies had failed to take hold, the current British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) was founded in 1958. It has remained since that time Great Britain’s leading organization of science fiction fandom, facilitating communication among fans and promoting the genre through a variety of efforts and events, including the ongoing publication of the critical journal Vector, currently published six times per year. Twice yearly, it publishes Focus, a fiction magazine that provides a venue for aspiring writers. For a time, it published a magazine of science fiction news (Matrix), but that has been discontinued. In 1969, the organization began to give the annual BSFA Award (British Science Fiction Association Award), which it still administers. BROWN, FREDRIC (1906–1972). Though perhaps better known as a writer of crime fiction, the American author Fredric Brown, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote a number of important science fiction short stories—and was a particular master of the very short story, many of them 1,000 words or less in length. Brown’s stories often employ humor and frequently have twist endings. He began publishing sf stories with “Not Yet the End” in 1941. His 1944 story “Arena” is perhaps his best known, partly because of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode of the same title, for which Brown received a story credit as one of the inspirations. “Answer” (1954) is perhaps his best-known humorous story. In the parallel-worlds novel What Mad Universe (1949), Brown brought his humor to the sf novel, lampooning the conventions of pulp sf. In Martians, Go Home (1955) a horde of Martians arrives on earth essentially as pranksters bent on driving humans nuts, parodying the little green men alieninvasion story. Other novels include The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953) and Rogue in Space (1957, though published serially in 1949–1950). All of Brown’s sf novels are collected in the 2002 volume Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown. His short fiction is collected in From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (2001). BRUNNER, JOHN (1934–1995). The British writer John Brunner, born in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, was a key figure in science fiction’s New Wave who wrote a great deal of innovative sf in a number of subgenres, much of it set in the United States, which he was especially good at evoking, though often in a highly critical mode. His first novel, Galactic Storm (1951), was

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written when he was 17 years old and published under the name Gill Hunt. He published stories under other names as well, but Threshold of Eternity (1959) was published under his own name, getting his career as a novelist off to its real start. Most of his subsequent early novels were relatively conventional space operas (some published under the name Keith Woodcutt). Other novels of this period included the time-travel novel Times without Number (1962) and the psi powers novel The Whole Man (1964), which garnered a Hugo Award nomination, as did The Squares of the City (1965). During this period he wrote at a frantic pace, publishing a total of 27 novels with the American publisher Ace Books from 1959 to 1965. Brunner’s central contribution to sf was perhaps the series of novel-length dystopian narratives that he wrote in the late 1960s and early 1970s, beginning with Stand on Zanzibar (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the only Hugo that Brunner would receive in his career. Brunner’s dystopian sequence then extended through The Jagged Orbit (1969), The Sheep Look Up (1972), and The Shockwave Rider (1975). The latter was an important forerunner of cyberpunk and is generally credited with having introduced the notion of computer viruses (therein referred to as “worms”). Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up are particularly notable for their use of a variety of sophisticated modernist techniques, and Brunner in general was a leader in the use of experimental forms in sf during this period. Together, these four novels constitute one of the most important bodies of dystopian fiction produced by any single author. Total Eclipse (1974) is an alien-archaeology novel of questionable merit written during this same period, which was otherwise the peak of Brunner’s output in terms of literary quality. He did, however, continue producing novels, including the teleportation novel The Infinitive of Go (1980), the alien-culture novel The Crucible of Time (1983), the space opera A Maze of Stars (1991), and Muddle Earth (1993)—a time-travel novel of sorts in which a cryogenically frozen man awakes in the far future. Brunner’s short fiction has been collected in a number of volumes, including Now Then (1965), No Other Gods But Me (1966), and From This Day Forward (1972). BSFA AWARD. The BSFA Awards are annual awards for achievement in science fiction that are administered by the British Science Fiction Association. Originally, the awards were primarily for the best sf novel published in the United Kingdom during the previous year, with John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar as the inaugural winner. In 1979, the awards were expanded also to recognize the year’s best work in the categories of short fiction, artist, and media. The media award was dropped in 1992, and a nonfiction category was

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added in 2001. Among the numerous winners of the Best Novel award, Christopher Priest has won four times, while Brian Aldiss and Ian McDonald have won three times each. BUJOLD, LOIS McMASTER (1949– ). Born in Columbus, Ohio, Lois McMaster Bujold is a much-awarded American writer of science fiction and fantasy. Her novels The Vor Game (1991), Barrayar (1992), Mirror Dance (1995), and Paladin of Souls (2004) have all won the Hugo Award for best novel. The last of these is a fantasy novel, but the first four are part of her extensive Vorkosigan Saga, entries of which have appeared continually since 1986. These interconnected stories feature several different protagonists, the most prominent of whom is the physically handicapped Miles Vorkosigan, a brilliant military strategist. While much of the action of the series can be classified as military science fiction, it intermixes a number of different genres (such as adventure, detective fiction, political thriller, and romance) in constructing a far-ranging narrative that addresses a number of issues set in a richly detailed universe. Many of the issues addressed in the series have to do with biotechnologies such as cloning and genetic engineering, but much of the action is diplomatic and political as well, often involving contrasts between the democratic socialism of the Beta Colony and the militaristic, essentially feudal society of the planet Barrayar. The saga includes a number of stories, as well as over 15 novels, though the chronological order of their publication does not follow the chronological order of the events being narrated. Outside of the saga, Bujold’s work is mainly fantasy. BURDEKIN, KATHARINE (1896–1963). Born in Spondon, Derbyshire, the British writer Katharine Burdekin is best known in the realm of science fiction for her cautionary dystopian narrative Swastika Night (1937, first published under the name “Murray Constantine”), which warns of the possible dire consequences of a fascist (and masculinist) takeover of Great Britain. She did, however, write a number of other genre fictions, including the posthumously published The End of This Day’s Business (1989), one of the six novels she wrote after World War II, none of which were published in her lifetime. This novel serves as a sort of counterpoint to Swastika Night in which power relations have been reversed and women now rule over men— but still in problematic ways. Proud Man (1934) also critiques gender roles as a hermaphrodite visitor from the future arrives in the 1930s. Burdekin’s early novels The Burning Ring (1929) and The Rebel Passion (1930) also both involve time travel. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER.

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BUTLER, OCTAVIA E. (1947–2006). The daughter of a shoeshiner and a maid in Pasadena, California, Octavia Butler went on to become one of the leading science fiction writers of her generation—and perhaps the most important African American woman sf writer of all time. Writing since childhood, she began her professional career writing short stories in 1971, then published her first novel, Patternmaster, in 1976. This novel went on to become the first of five volumes in the far-ranging “Patternist” series, which also includes the novels Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), and Clay’s Ark (1984). This series traces an alternate history of Earth from the 17th century to the far future, addressing fundamental questions about what it means to be human and establishing early on many of the characteristic concerns of Butler’s fiction. In 1979, Butler published Kindred, which remains her most widely read (and taught) novel. Here, an African American woman living in 1976 finds herself periodically (and spontaneously, by means that are never explained) drawn back into the antebellum South, a time-travel scenario that allows Butler to produce detailed descriptions of the experience of slavery, especially for women, somewhat in the mode of Toni Morrison’s later Beloved (1987). Butler’s most important sequence of novels is probably the “Xenogenesis” trilogy, an alien-invasion narrative that includes the novels Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). This trilogy, republished in a single volume as Lilith’s Brood in 2000, is a virtual encyclopedia of science fictional motifs, including alien invasion, the postapocalyptic narrative, biotechnology, terraforming, and posthuman science fiction. Butler followed “Xenogenesis” with Parable of the Sower (1993), a vivid and compelling evocation of an anarchic 2024 America in a state of economic and social collapse, seen through the eyes of narrator/protagonist Lauren Olamina, an African American teenager who suffers from excessive empathy with the feelings of others. Trying to establish some sort of order amid chaos, Lauren invents a new religion, which she calls “Earthseed,” based on the fundamental premise that “God is change” and the belief that it is the ultimate destiny of humanity to expand into the stars. In a sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998), Lauren struggles to establish a utopian oasis amid the dystopian conditions that prevail in the world at large, which now include a particularly ominous threat from religious fundamentalism, in addition to the anarchy and environmental collapse of the first “Earthseed” novel. Other “Earthseed” novels were apparently planned, but Butler produced no further novels until the vampire tale Fledgling (2006), which appeared shortly before her accidental death from a fall. See also ENVIRONMENTALISM.

C CADIGAN, PAT (1953– ). Pat Cadigan is the most important woman writer to have been associated with the cyberpunk movement. Born in Schenectady, New York, Cadigan published her first professional science fiction story in 1980 and worked at a variety of jobs, including editing the fanzine Shayol from 1977 to 1985, before becoming a full-time writer in 1987. By this time, she had published a number of stories that established her as a writer to be reckoned with, many of which would be collected in the volume Patterns (1989). In 1987, her first novel, Mindplayers, announced her as an important cyberpunk writer, though its exploration of the blurred boundary between reality and perception was less sophisticated than in her next novel, Synners (1991). This novel, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, features implants, human-computer interfaces, and an interest in popular culture that are typical of cyberpunk. Here, the titular “Synners” are video artists who synthesize rock music and images to make virtual reality music videos, using implanted brain sockets to transmit their vision directly to the consumer, who must also be outfitted with the sockets. The technology goes badly wrong, however, and the novel ultimately emphasizes the necessity of making technology accountable, while showing skepticism that technology can fundamentally transform society. Cadigan’s next novel, Fools (1992), also won a Clarke award; one of its central conceits involves the implantation of memories, which thus become commodities that can be bought and sold. The sequence Tea from an Empty Cup (1998) and Dervish Is Digital (2000) emphasizes the noir aspects of cyberpunk, focusing on the adventures of detective Doré Konstantin, largely in virtual reality. Cadigan emigrated to England in 1996 and has lived there since. Her novelette “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” won a Hugo Award in 2013. CALLENBACH, ERNEST (1929–2012). The conservationist and environmentalist Ernest Callenbach advocated for green causes in a number of ways throughout his adult life, serving for many years on the staff of the University of California Press, where, among other things, he edited their series of Natural History Guides. In the world of science fiction, he is known primari55

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ly for his environmentalist utopia Ecotopia (1975) and (to a lesser extent) its sequel, Ecotopia Emerging (1981), which are still considered landmarks in the evolution of environmentalist science fiction. He also wrote related nonfiction works, including The Ecotopian Encyclopedia (1981), Bring Back the Buffalo! (1995), and Ecology: A Pocket Guide (1998). See also ENVIRONMENTALISM. CAMPBELL, JOHN W., JR. (1910–1971). The U.S. writer and editor John W. Campbell Jr. was one of the most important figures in the history of science fiction, largely because of his editorship of Astounding magazine beginning in September 1937 and continuing through its title changes to Astounding Science-Fiction (in 1938) and to Analog Science Fiction and Fact (1960), until his death in 1971. However, Campbell had established himself as an important and talented writer of sf stories before assuming the editorship of Astounding. Having studied physics at MIT and Duke, Campbell in the early 1930s produced a number of space-opera stories that were marked by a strong attention to scientific detail. For example, his serialized novel, Islands of Space (1931), introduced the idea of hyperspace to sf. Much of his work during this period was ultimately collected and published in A John W. Campbell Anthology (1973). Campbell’s writing from 1934 to 1937, published mostly under the name Don A. Stuart, was more varied in tone and genre and also more sophisticated in a literary sense. The Stuart stories were published in Astounding, then under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine, paving the way for Campbell to succeed Tremaine as the editor of that magazine. They culminated in the alien-invasion story (with strong horror elements) “Who Goes There?” (Astounding, August 1938), which would ultimately become the basis for the classic science fiction film The Thing (1951, aka The Thing from Another World), though the 1982 remake of that film (as The Thing) was in many ways more faithful to the original story. Campbell’s Stuart stories were subsequently collected in Who Goes There?: Seven Tales of Science Fiction (1948, reissued in 1966 as The Thing from Outer Space) and in a different collection Who Goes There? (1955). The complete Stuart stories were then published in A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories (2003). Campbell wrote little fiction after assuming the editorship of Astounding, though Stuart stories in the pipeline continued to appear until 1939. Instead, he concentrated on developing a stable of writers who could put sf on a more respectable level, with stories of higher literary quality and more accurate use of science, trends that he encouraged by treating writers more like professionals than the pulps had traditionally done. Astounding quickly became the leading publication in the field and the preferred venue of choice for such established sf writers as L. Sprague de Camp, L. Ron Hubbard, C. L. Moore, Clifford D. Simak, and Jack Williamson. Perhaps more important-

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ly, Campbell attracted (and aided, through his hands-on editing and even suggestion of basic story ideas) a number of new writers who would become stalwarts of the genre, including Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. Van Vogt. Campbell also put greater emphasis on the serial publication of extended stories, many of which were later published in book form as some of the leading novels emanating from the Golden Age, though most of these booklength publications did not appear until the 1950s, including such crucial works as Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, which had originally appeared in Astounding in 1942–1950 and then appeared in book form in 1951–1953. Campbell’s first decade editing Astounding was one of the chief reasons why that period is typically referred to as the Golden Age of science fiction. However, his reputation and that of the magazine had begun to fade by the 1950s, partly due to Campbell’s growing interest in pseudo-science, including the first publication of Hubbard’s “Dianetics” theories, beginning in 1950. Many authors, meanwhile, came to see his active editorial interventions as a reason to publish elsewhere. Nevertheless, Campbell remained one of the most respected names in the history of the genre; when the Hugo Awards were initiated in 1953, Campbell and Astounding Science-Fiction won four of the first five awards that were given for Best Professional Magazine and for Best Editor; Campbell and Analog won four more times in the first half of the 1960s. CANADIAN SCIENCE FICTION. While a number of Canadian writers contributed to the U.S. pulp magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, Canada’s primary contribution to Golden Age science fiction was to supply writers such as Gordon Dickson and A. E. Van Vogt, Canadian natives who moved south to pursue their careers in the U.S. Later, in the 1970s (possibly in tune with the movement of young Americans north of the border to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War), a number of writers from the U.S. took up residence in Canada, including William Gibson, Judith Merril, Spider Robinson, and Robert Charles Wilson. Other forms of movement have impacted Canadian science fiction as well, as when Geoff Ryman, born in Canada, moved to the U.S. as a child, then later emigrated to Great Britain to pursue his career. Jamaica-born Nalo Hopkinson, meanwhile, moved to Canada via the U.S. and did much of her work while living in Toronto before moving back to the U.S. In 2005, Hopkinson and Ryman worked together to edit Tesseracts 9, a compilation of Canadian science fiction and fantasy. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) was one of the highlights of world science fiction in the 1980s and still stands as one of the key classics of the dystopian narrative, especially those concerned with issues related to feminism and gender, as well as religion. Atwood would later make an important contribution to the postapocalyptic narrative with a

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trilogy consisting of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). In general, however, the leading Canadian science fiction writer of recent years has been the prolific Robert Sawyer, who began publishing sf short stories in the early 1980s, then moved into the novel form in 1990 and emerged as a major figure with Hugo Award–winning novel Hominids (2002), which became the founding text in the “Neanderthal Parallax” sequence, extended to include Humans (2003) and Hybrids (2003). Among Sawyer’s numerous other works is the “WWW” trilogy, which began with the Hugo-nominated Wake (2009) and also includes Watch (2010) and Wonder (2011). A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1959). Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is perhaps the best known and most critically respected post-holocaust novel of the 1950s. It is composed of a series of three novellas, the first set in the year 2570 (600 years after a nuclear holocaust had plunged humanity into a second Dark Ages); the subsequent novellas are then set at 600-year intervals, as a second Renaissance announces a rebirth of science and culture, only to lead to still another destruction of civilization by nuclear war. Thus, while the book contains considerable ironic humor, it is ultimately pessimistic in its view of technology and human society, arguing that technology will ultimately be misused to catastrophic ends. Given this essentially antimodern view, it comes as no surprise that A Canticle for Leibowitz focuses on what it sees as the positive role played by the Catholic Church in human history, focusing in particular on a single abbey somewhere in what had been Utah, occupied by the monastic Order of St. Leibowitz, which is devoted to the preservation of certain technological “memorabilia” through the dark times of history, so that they can be used to further a subsequent rebirth. In so doing, the text ignores both the anti-Semitism and the fierce opposition to science and technology that have marked the history of the church itself. ČAPEK, KAREL (1890–1938). The Czech writer and satirist Karel Čapek is best known in the world of science fiction for having introduced the word “robot” to our lexicon in his 1921 play R.U.R., though Čapek’s robots were actually biological, while the term has since come to signify primarily electromechanical devices. In the play, these robots are produced in order to free humans from the necessity to perform manual labor, thus producing a materialistic paradise. But this utopian scenario quickly becomes a dystopian narrative as humans, freed from work, also find themselves devoid of purpose. Meanwhile, the robots, produced in such quantities that they soon outnumber humans, rebel and seize power for themselves. On the other hand, the book ends on a positive note as the “robots” themselves seem to be evolving to become fully human in their own right.

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In addition to such plays, Čapek also wrote stories, journalism, and a number of novels, including the dystopian narratives The Absolute at Large (1922) and War with the Newts (1936), solidifying his importance as one of the world’s leading sf writers between the two world wars. In a larger sense, Čapek was perhaps exceeded in importance only by Franz Kafka as a chronicler of the difficult social and political situation of Czechoslovakia in the wake of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following World War I. CARD, ORSON SCOTT (1951– ). Orson Scott Card is a U.S. Mormon writer whose religious convictions have often colored his work. Born in Richland, Washington, Card spent time as a Mormon missionary and wrote several religious pieces before moving into science fiction with the story “Ender’s Game,” published in Analog in 1977. This story eventually evolved into a novel of the same title in 1985, heralding a particularly rich period of productivity in the late 1980s. Ender’s Game won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel and became one of the best-known works of sf in the 1980s. Here, young Ender Wiggin is a talented prodigy who goes through special training in order to help lead humanity in its war against the alien “Buggers.” It is thus something of a novel of education that seems aimed at young adult audiences. Ultimately, however, Ender uses his training and natural ability to essentially eradicate the Buggers, though he thinks at the time that the cataclysmic battle is merely another training simulation. Especially after discovering that the Buggers were not the genocidal maniacs they had first been thought to be, Ender is torn by guilt over this event. Its immediate sequel, Speaker for the Dead (1986), follows Ender as he attempts to make amends for this near-genocide and to help the Bugger race survive. Xenocide (1991) and Children of the Mind (1996) continue the series. Card attempted (not entirely successfully) to recover the power of the beginning of the “Ender” series by returning to its beginning with the “Ender: Shadow” sequence. Comprising Ender’s Shadow: Book One of the Shadow Trilogy (1999), Shadow of the Hegemon (2000), Shadow Puppets (2002), Shadow of the Giant (2005), and Shadows in Flight (2012), this sequence focuses on “Bean,” another strategic genius (the product of genetic engineering) who had trained alongside Ender. Another early sequence, the “Tales of Alvin Maker” (six novels between 1987 and 1998) shows Card’s religious concerns more clearly, functioning as a sort of religious parable as it essentially presents the title character as a stand-in for Mormon founder Joseph Smith. The far-future “Homecoming” sequence—The Memory of Earth (1992), The Call of Earth (1993), The Ships of Earth (1994), Earthfall (1995), and Earthborn (1995)—shows an equally strong influence of Card’s Mormonism.

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Card’s stand-alone novels are often religious in their bent as well. For example, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996) involves scientists who are able to observe the past, then manage to travel back to the time of Christopher Columbus in order to avert the disaster of colonization. Unfortunately, Card is unable to overcome his own religious biases, ultimately constructing a “successful” scenario in which Native Americans are “saved” from colonialism by putting aside their own savage culture and replacing it with a healthy dose of Christianity. In more recent years, Card’s homophobia has drawn considerable public attention, while his fiction, in works such as the sequence Empire (2006) and Hidden Empire (2009), has sometimes virtually descended into right-wing political tracts. CARIBBEAN SCIENCE FICTION. See POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. CHABON, MICHAEL (1963– ). The American writer Michael Chabon has become one of the most admired novelists of his generation, perhaps most centrally because of his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), which is not science fiction, but features characters who are involved in the early days of comic book culture, especially in the production of Golden Age superhero comics, which often included a number of sf elements. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (2007) is an alternate history that resides more properly within sf; it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for Best Novel. CHARNAS, SUZY McKEE (1939– ). Born in New York City, the American writer Suzy McKee Charnas has produced a number of novels and short stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She is best known for her series of novels collectively known as the “Holdfast Chronicles,” comprising Walk to the End of the World (1974), Motherlines (1978), Furies (1994), and The Conqueror’s Child (1999). The first two of these were given retrospective James Tiptree Jr. Awards in 1996 for their use of science fiction to explore conceptions of gender, while the last was given the Tiptree Award in 1999. In this sequence, Charnas envisions a nightmarish postapocalyptic civilization in which women are enslaved by men and are treated as subhuman. In opposition, she presents a separatist all-female utopia into which the women can escape. Her 1989 story “Boobs” won the Hugo Award for best short story. McKee has also written young adult fiction, including the Sorcery Hall fantasy series. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER.

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CHERRYH, C. J. (1942– ). C. J. Cherryh is the pen name of American writer Carolyn Janice Cherry. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she grew up in Oklahoma and taught in the Oklahoma City public school system from 1964 to 1976. In 1976 she won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for most promising writer and from that time turned to writing full time, as the year saw the publication of her first two published novels after years of working on manuscripts. Her first novel, Gate of Ivrel (1976), initiated the Morgaine series, a far-flung interplanetary fantasy adventure that would later include the novels Well of Shiuan (1978) and Fires of Azeroth (1979); these three novels were reissued in the single volume The Book of Morgaine (1979), which was then reissued in 1985 as The Chronicles of Morgaine. A fourth novel, Exile’s Gate, was added in 1988. Cherryh’s second published novel, Brothers of Earth, was also published in 1976. It initiated another important series of novels that are set in the Alliance-Union universe, together constituting a far-reaching future history that includes numerous stories of interstellar exploration and combat and more than two dozen novels in its elaboration of humanity’s colonization of the galaxy. Most of the action in this series takes place in space, so that its genre is primarily space opera, though some of the tales take place on planets and thus can be regarded as planetary romance. The best-known novels in the sequence are Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both of which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The Alliance-Union sequence is so far-reaching that its overall outlines remain unclear and continue to develop, while the sequence itself is consistent in spirit with a number of Cherryh’s other works. These include the more than a dozen novels set in the “Foreigner” universe sequence, which have much in common with the Alliance-Union novels. Particularly good in their description of aliens and alien cultures, the “Foreigner” novels range from Foreigner: A Novel of First Contact (1994) to Protector (2013) and are organized as a series of trilogies. The more recent “Gene Wars” sequence has much in common with the Alliance-Union novels as well. So far comprising Hammerfall (2001) and Forge of Heaven (2004), this sequence continues the concerns with genetic engineering that were central to Cyteen, while also sharing some of the tropes and concerns of cyberpunk. CHIANG, TED (1967– ). Born in Port Jefferson, New York, the American science fiction writer Ted Chiang has seen considerable early success with a series of much-acclaimed shorter works, though he has yet to write a fulllength novel. “Tower of Babylon” (1990) won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story, while Chiang himself won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Several other subsequent stories won a variety of awards, including another Nebula for his novelette “Story of Your Life” (1998). His novelette “Hell Is the Absence of God” won the Nebula,

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Locus, and Hugo awards, while his novelette “The Merchant and the Alcehmist’s Gate” (2007) again won the Nebula and Hugo. Chiang’s story “Exhalation” (2009) won a BSFA Award, Locus, and Hugo for Best Short Story, while “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010) won the Hugo and Locus awards for Best Novella. Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) collects some of his best short fiction to that time. It won a Locus Award for Best Collection. CHILDHOOD’S END (1953). Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is a classic story of a basically benevolent alien invasion, even if that invasion ultimately leads to the destruction of the human race as we know it. As the story begins, the earth is about to launch its first manned mission to Mars, when suddenly the skies are filled with huge alien ships. The aliens, or Overlords, quickly make it clear that resistance is futile, establishing dominion over the earth and apparently (though all but one of these turn out to be illusions) stationing one of their huge ships over each of the earth’s major cities in order to enforce that dominion. Their vastly advanced technology allows them to keep the entire planet under close surveillance and easily (though subtly and mercifully) to deal with any transgressions against the rules that they impose on the human race. These rules are designed to prevent the human race from destroying itself and the rest of the planet. One rule, for example, forbids cruelty to animals. The most important rule involves the establishment (working through the United Nations) of a single World State that makes earth’s nations obsolete. The rule of the Overlords, led by Supervisor Karellen, issues in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity for the earth, though some find this utopian existence a bit boring, given that humanity now has no real challenges to face. Artistic and other forms of creativity are greatly curtailed as well, introducing some fairly standard meditation on the possible downside of utopia. Some early critique of television is introduced as well: one reason artistic creativity seems to have failed is that human culture comes to be dominated by television. Meanwhile, the Overlords themselves remain mysterious and distant. Indeed, for more than 50 years they stay entirely out of sight, revealing themselves only after decades of their presence have prepared the human race for their appearance—which is exactly like devils, complete with wings, horns, and pointed tails. (It turns out that this vision, so common in world mythology, has come about as a result of a sort of echo memory from the future, a phenomenon that accounts for a variety of “racial” memories.) In the final analysis, it is revealed that the Overlords have come to earth at the behest of their own master, a sort of collective “Overmind” that consists of the fusion of a variety of species with vastly advanced psychic abilities. Despite their own advanced material state, the Overlords have no such abil-

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ities whatsoever. As a result, they are at an evolutionary dead end; their function in the galaxy is simply to help races (such as humanity) that do have such abilities survive until evolution brings those abilities to fruition, in the meantime working to prevent the premature development of those abilities (thus they have intentionally curtailed most forms of human creativity). In the end, this evolutionary leap does occur when the children of George Greggson and Jean née Morrel are born with the ability to develop advanced abilities. As these abilities grow, they ripple through the species, and soon almost all of the world’s children under 10 have them. The Overlords continue to oversee the remainder of the human race, though, with no racial future, many humans commit suicide, either alone or en masse. The transformed children, meanwhile, are moved to a separate area of their own. Eventually, the untransformed humans die out, except for Jan Rodricks, an engineering student who had stowed away aboard an Overlord supply ship in order to view the amazing wonders of the Overlord home world. He returns after the 80-year round trip (during which he ages only four months due to relativistic time dilation) to find himself the last man on earth. As the children prepare to join the Overmind, the Overlords finally evacuate earth for their own safety, leaving Jan behind to broadcast to them what he sees of the final process, which leads to the complete dissolution of the earth. As the book ends, Karellen is lost in thought as he exits the solar system, wondering if his race will ever be able to overcome its domination by the Overmind. CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION. Science fiction intended for juvenile and young adult readers has long been a prominent part of the genre. In addition, many science fiction films have been made with pre-literate children as a key intended audience. But science fiction literature for pre-literate children, in the form of picture books, is surprisingly prominent as well. These books do not employ sophisticated narratives and do not tend to treat the production of cognitive estrangement as a central goal, but they do employ iconic sf technologies (such as robots and spaceships) and quite frequently involve encounters with aliens. Some of the best-known authors of children’s picture books have ventured into science fiction. For example, in Crockett Johnson’s Harold’s Trip to the Sky (1957), a sequel to his beloved Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), the imaginative four-year-old of the title travels into space, encounters a scary alien, and disables the alien ship so that the alien cannot travel to earth and potentially frighten children. Meanwhile, much of the work of Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) is decidedly nonrealist, with at least one major work, The Lorax (1971), being essentially a postapocalyptic narrative informed by the concerns of environmentalism. The latter is also true of The Wump World (1970), written and illustrated by Bill Peet, an ecological parable about the

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near destruction of a pastoral planet by an invasion of technologically advanced “Pollutians.” Also in the environmentalist mode, the poems of Jack Prelutsky’s The Swamps of Sleethe: Poems from Beyond the Solar System (2009), illustrated by Jimmy Pickering, describe the dangers of various alien planets, with a highly polluted earth turning out to be one of the worst of all. One of the most popular subgenres of science fiction for children involves narratives of adventure in outer space or colonization of other planets. Some of these texts are designed to teach children about space, as in The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System (1990), written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen. David Getz’s Floating Home (1997) asks children to look at their homes in renewed ways from the perspective of outer space. Other examples are more whimsical adventures, such as Dan Yaccarino’s Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I’m Off to the Moon! (1997), Simon Bartram’s Man on the Moon (A Day in the Life of Bob) (2002), Chris Van Allsburg’s Zathura: A Space Adventure (2002), Jan Brett’s Hedgie Blasts Off! (2006), or Chris Gall’s There’s Nothing to Do on Mars (2008). In Berkeley Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms! (2007), a trip to the planet becomes the excuse for a rather clichéd and highly domestic message about what wonderful people mothers are. Robots are a staple of science fiction picture books, with robots often functioning almost as loveable pets. Examples include Eve Bunting’s My Robot (2000, illustrated by Dagmar Fehlau); Me and My Robot and Me and My Robot #2: The Show-and-Tell Show-Off, both published in 2003, written by Tracey West and illustrated (in a rather primitivist style) by Cindy Revell; and the suggestively titled If I Had a Robot Dog (2005). Robots are presented in a slightly different light in David Lucas’s whimsical and charmingly illustrated The Robot and the Bluebird (2008), which presents a fable about derelict technology in harmony with nature. More threatening, at least on the surface, is the robot protagonist of Robot Zot (2009), written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by David Shannon. Also potentially dangerous are the robots in Babette Cole’s The Trouble with Dad (1985), in which the father of the title is a brilliantly creative inventor (of robots, among other things) whose life is maimed by the excruciatingly mind-numbing routine of his boring daily job, crunching numbers in an office. Stories involving encounters with aliens constitute another key subgenre of science fiction picture books, typically in a mode in which the aliens are rendered nonthreatening, encouraging children to accept Otherness. For example, the alien “invaders” of Arthur Yorinks’s Company’s Coming and Company’s Going (1987 and 2001, illustrated by David Small), greeted with suspicion by earthlings, turn out to be harmless. In Aliens Love Underpants (2008), by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort, we learn that aliens (apparently virtually all aliens) have a comic fascination with underpants of all kinds.

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In Marilyn Sadler’s Alistair and the Alien Invasion (1994), illustrated by Roger Bollen; Colin McNaughton’s The Aliens Are Coming (1995) and We’re Off to Look for Aliens (2007); and Daniel Kirk’s Hush, Little Alien (1999), aliens turn out to be just like us. Similarly, an identification between aliens and schoolchildren is central to George Hogglesberry: Grade School Alien (2002), written by Sarah Wilson and illustrated by Chad Cameron, and to Jon Szieska’s Baloney (Henry P.) (2001), illustrated by Lane Smith. The titular alien of Alexis Deacon’s Beegu (2003), on the other hand, seems almost like a cuddly pet. One of the few picture-book alien narratives to produce anything like cognitive estrangement is Dr. Xargle’s Book of Earthlets (1988), written by Jeanne Willis and illustrated by Tony Ross, which asks children to look at humans from the perspective of aliens. CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION. Though China has a long and venerable tradition of fantastic literature, science fiction in the modern sense came to China quite late, introduced first by the important Chinese author Lu Xun (1881–1936), who translated, at the beginning of the 20th century, some of the work of Jules Verne into Chinese via the Japanese translations of Verne’s work that had begun to appear in the late 19th century. At the same time, Lu complained that the paucity of science fiction in China at the time was a sign of the nation’s backwardness. China, in fact, did not begin to produce truly significant science fiction until the appearance of Lao She’s dystopian narrative Maocheng Ji (A Record of the City of Cats, eventually translated into English in 1964 as City of Cats), which remains one of the most important Chinese novels of the 20th century. The stories of Gu Junzheng in the late 1930s, collected as Heping de Ming (1940, A Dream of Peace) were also important, exercising a particularly strong influence on the future development of Chinese science fiction. After the successful Chinese Revolution brought the communists to power in China in 1949, translations of Soviet sf became an important part of postrevolutionary Chinese culture. Chinese science fiction began to develop as well, but its development was curtailed by declarations, during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, that science fiction was a decadent Western form not suitable for the Chinese context. Chinese science fiction began to bounce back at the end of the 1970s, undergoing an explosive (though shortlived) resurgence. Yang Xiao’s Kehuan Shijia (SF World), launched in 1979, quickly gained the largest circulation of any sf magazine in the world, and a number of new writers emerged, though this phenomenon cooled by 1983 in another official backlash against the genre. Still, much interesting work had been produced by 1989, when the anthology Science Fiction from China was published in English translation.

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In more recent years, sf has continued to have the reputation abroad of a dissident genre that the communist authorities have sought to squelch. Indeed, several works of Chinese sf published abroad in translation, such as Chan Koonchung’s popular novel The Fat Years (2009, English translation 2011), have been banned on the mainland, though in some cases (including the case of The Fat Years) they have appeared in Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan. On the other hand, works of Chinese sf that support communism and the Communist Party, such as the stories of Jin Ming, widely circulated in China, have not found publishers abroad and remain largely unknown outside of China. Sometimes referred to as the “three generals,” the writers Wang Jinkang, Han Song, and Liu Cixin are preeminent among contemporary Chinese sf authors. Liu, especially, is widely considered to have taken the genre in more mature and more literary directions. A former engineer, he has won the Chinese Galaxy Award for achievement in sf writing eight times; his success has done a great deal to popularize science fiction in China. Liu is also one of the few writers of Chinese sf to have gained an audience both inside and outside of China. Also important to the growing attention given to Chinese sf around the world is the China-born Ken Liu, who lives and works in the United States and has had considerable success as a writer of sf in English. The winner of multiple awards for his own writing (such as consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Short Story in 2012 and 2013), Liu has also translated a number of works of Chinese sf into English, including work by Liu Cixin and several others. CLARION WORKSHOP. The Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop is an annual summer-school retreat at which aspiring science fiction writers can hone their crafts under the tutelage of instructors, many of whom have themselves been well-known sf writers. The workshop was founded in 1968 at Clarion State College in Pennsylvania, with Robin Scott Wilson as the initial director and using the existing Milford Conference as a model. Indeed, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, the founders of the Milford Conference, were among the first teachers at the Clarion Workshop. Over the years, such well-known writers as Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, John Kessel, and Ursula K. Le Guin have taught at the workshop as well. Beginning in 1971, the workshop split into “Clarion East,” held in New Orleans, and “Clarion West,” held in Seattle. Clarion East then moved to Michigan State University (simply as Clarion) from 1972 to 2006. Clarion West was held from 1971 to 1973, then resumed in 1984 and remains in yearly operation, still in Seattle. In 2006, Clarion itself moved to the University of California at San Diego, where it remains, so that both Clarion and Clarion West now actually operate on the West Coast. The Clarion

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Workshop is notable for its track record in producing successful science fiction writers. Its alumni include Octavia E. Butler, Ted Chiang, Cory Doctorow, Nicola Griffith, Vonda McIntyre, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Bruce Sterling. Several anthologies of stories from teachers and students of the workshop have been published. CLARKE, ARTHUR C. (1917–2008). Sir Arthur C. Clarke (named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 and knighted in 1998) was a pioneering British science fiction writer who stands (with Americans Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein) as one of the three leading figures of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist in World War II, after which he obtained a first-class degree in mathematics and physics at King’s College, London. This technical background served him well in his future career as a science fiction writer and visionary futurist. Clarke’s first professional science fiction stories were published in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1946. In 1948, he wrote the story “The Sentinel,” which would later become the inspiration for the seminal 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the screenplay for which was written by Clarke in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick. Clarke also wrote a novelization in conjunction with the production of the film, which would grow into the series 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). This series is typical of one of the main themes of Clarke’s fiction, which involves encounters between humans and more technologically advanced aliens, often in ways that trigger a transformative evolutionary leap in the human species. The early novels Childhood’s End (1953, based on the 1950s story “Guardian Angel”) and The City and the Stars (1956, based on the 1948 novella “Against the Fall of Night”) address this theme as well. Clarke’s work is also known for envisioning and championing specific future technologies, some of which have since become realities. Probably the best-known of these is the use of geosynchronous satellites as telecommunications relays, announced by Clarke in a paper privately circulated in 1945 among members of the British Interplanetary Society, of which he was a prominent member and which he chaired from 1946 to 1947 and 1951 to 1953. Clarke published his description of his idea for telecommunications satellites later in 1945 and has since been regarded as the originator of that concept, which figured in several of his early novels, including the juvenile novel Islands in the Sky (1952). Many of Clarke’s visions of future technologies were published in nonfiction writings, a number of which were collected in Profiles of the Future (1962). In his novel The Fountains of Paradise

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(1979, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards), Clarke proposed what he felt was his most important notion: the idea of a space elevator as a method superior to rockets for travel into space. By this time, partly propelled by the attention surrounding 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke had reached a new level of prominence. The alien encounter novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973) not only became a bestseller, but also swept the major science fiction awards, winning the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, and the John W. Campbell Memorial awards. Imperial Earth (1975) also sold well and won the Locus Award for Best Novel. Partly due to health problems, Clarke originally intended to withdraw from writing fiction after The Fountains of Paradise, but still had the remaining volumes of the Odyssey Series ahead of him. He also produced The Hammer of God (1993), but most of his later work was written in collaboration with others, including Cradle (1989) and the sequel Rama II (1989), The Garden of Rama (1991), and Rama Revealed (1993), all written in conjunction with Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Gentry Lee, who apparently did most of the actual writing. Clarke’s final novel, published posthumously, was The Last Theorem (2008), written in collaboration with fellow science fiction master Frederik Pohl. Astounding Days (1989) is Clarke’s autobiography. His considerable body of short fiction has been collected several times, including Expedition to Earth (1953), Reach for Tomorrow (1956), Tales of Ten Worlds (1962), and The Nine Billion Names of God (1967), the title story of which, first published in 1953, won a retrospective Hugo for Best Short Story of the year. Clarke also won a Short Story Hugo for “The Star” (1955), which is included in his collection The Other Side of the Sky (1958). In 1986, Clarke was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; in 1997 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. The Arthur C. Clarke Award is a major science fiction award given annually to the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom in the previous year; it was established in 1987 with a grant supplied by Clarke. CLEMENT, HAL (1922–2003). Hal Clement (the pen name of Harry Clement Stubbs), received a B.S. in astronomy from Harvard in 1943 and an M.S. in chemistry from Simmons College in 1963. Much of his adult life was spent teaching astronomy and chemistry at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. This background is clearly on display in his fiction, which was noted for the credible scientific details that Clement typically built into his narratives, which often seemed designed primarily to demonstrate various scientific principles. Beginning in 1949, he published a series of serial novels in John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction, later collected in book form as Needle (1950), Iceworld (1953), and Mission of Gravity (1954).

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Needle involves an alien policeman pursuing an alien criminal on earth. Iceworld contains particularly believable representations of both human and alien technologies and is notable for its use of an alien protagonist (who happens to be a high school science teacher), though Clement’s representation of aliens is quite often sympathetic and they are never simply villains or enemies of humans. The well-known Mission of Gravity is a planetary romance that details life on the planet Mesklin, on which gravity varies greatly from one place to another. It was published in a restored edition in 1978, the original book version having been abridged from the serial version. In a similar mode, Cycle of Fire (1957) describes a planet on which seasonal climatic changes are especially dramatic. Such depictions of alien planets (which are often harsh and strange, but always follow the same physical laws as earth) were something of a specialty, and also included such novels as Close to Critical (serial 1958, book 1964), Ocean on Top (serial 1967, book 1973), and Noise (2003)—though Iceworld presents earth as a harsh alien planet from the point of view of its protagonist. Other notable novels include Star Light (1971, a sequel to Mission of Gravity) and Through the Eye of a Needle (1978, a sequel to Needle). Much of Clement’s work is collected in the three volumes of The Essential Hal Clement, two of which collected major novels, while volume 2 is a comprehensive collection of Clement’s short stories. Clement was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998 and named a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1999. CLUTE, JOHN (1940– ). The Canadian-born critic and novelist John Clute moved to Great Britain in 1969 and has lived and worked there since. His first published science fiction story appeared in New Worlds magazine in 1966; much of his early criticism (mostly reviews) appeared there as well, thus aligning much of his early production with the New Wave. His reviews and essays have appeared in numerous other places as well; updated versions of many of them up to 1988 are collected in the volume Strokes: Essays and Reviews 1966–1986 (1988). Other collections of his criticism include Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews (1995), Scores: Reviews 1993–2003 (2003), and Canary Fever: Reviews (2009). As a fiction writer, Clute has published two novels, The Disinheriting Party (1973 in New Worlds quarterly magazine, expanded book version 1977) and Appleseed (2001), a space opera with elements of religious satire. Ultimately, though, Clute’s most important contribution to the field of science fiction may be as an encyclopedist. He was the associate editor of the original Hugo Award–winning first edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979); he was coeditor (with Peter Nicholls, assisted by associate editor Brian Stableford) of the significantly expanded second edition (1993)

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of that encyclopedia, which won both a Hugo and a Locus Award. Clute and David Langford are the main editors of the third edition of that encyclopedia, a massive online version that went live in 2011 and is constantly expanded and updated. This edition, like its two predecessors, won a Hugo Award. In 1997, Clute and John Grant edited the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, attempting to do for fantasy what the earlier encyclopedia had done for science fiction— and winning another Hugo. Clute also wrote, on his own, another reference volume, Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1995), which won still another Hugo. See also RELIGION. COLLINS, SUZANNE (1962– ). Born in Hartford, Connecticut, the American writer Suzanne Collins began her career as a writer for a variety of children’s television shows, then moved into fiction as the author of the “Underland Chronicles,” a series of five young adult fantasy novels that appeared between 2003 and 2007. Her work then took a new turn with the publication of the postapocalyptic dystopian narrative The Hunger Games (2007). Ostensibly also aimed at young adult readers, this series became one of the most important publishing phenomena of the first decade of the 21st century, becoming wildly popular with adult readers as well. Here, the nation of Panem (essentially what is left of the United States after a vaguely defined series of disasters) consists of a central Capitol that dominates twelve surrounding districts, each of which specializes in a specific kind of industry. The Capitol, in order to emphasize its dominance, requires each of the districts to send two teenagers (one boy and one girl, chosen by lot) as “Tributes” to participate in the annual Hunger Games, an elaborate media spectacle in which the 24 participants battle to the death on live television, until only one survives. When young Katniss Everdeen becomes one of these tributes (volunteering to take the place of her younger sister) she becomes so successful in the Games (and popular with audiences) that she threatens the very power that the Games are meant to highlight. The Hunger Games was followed by two sequels, Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010), and the trilogy is in the process of adaptation into a film series as well, making it a major pop cultural franchise. COLONIALISM. Science fiction very often deals with the colonization of other worlds by explorers from earth or with attempts at the colonization of earth by invaders from other worlds. As such, it is ideally suited to provide estranged perspectives on the phenomenon of colonialism in earth’s own history. Indeed, this notion was established very early on, as H. G. Wells’s classic alien-invasion novel The War of the Worlds (1898) is quite clearly offered as a commentary on the phenomenon of British imperialism in the

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late 19th century. Subsequently, the entire alien-invasion genre has tended to offer commentaries on colonialism, though they often show a suspicion of the Other that was central to colonialism itself. Novels featuring the colonization of other worlds by earthlings have sometimes seemed simply to endorse the colonialist mindset as well, which makes sense given the extent to which, as stories of romance and adventure, science fiction narratives of the exploration and colonization of space surely have much in common with the genre of colonial romance, in which writers such as H. Rider Haggard envisioned colonial locales such as Africa as the settings for exotic adventures on the part of European heroes. One might especially cite here the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose important early series of Mars novels shows very much the same colonialist mindset as do his even-better-known Tarzan novels. Burroughs’s particularly American Mars novels (which began with A Princess of Mars in 1912 and extended through a total of 11 novels) seem less a fictionalized recreation of the British colonization of Africa than a fantasy remake of the conquest of the American West. Here, Mars essentially replaces the American West and converts the narrative of Martian colonization into a thinly veiled frontier adventure, allowing for the kind of rough-and-ready action that, by 1912, was no longer available in an increasingly routinized American West. Novels of the colonization of other worlds have also often commented on colonialism in a more critical way, as when settlers from earth bring their arrant materialism to Mars, trashing an ethereal Martian civilization in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950). Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip (1964) similarly depicts earth’s colonization of Mars, where indigenous Martians are exploited by the colonists, who use them to work in the local mines at substandard wages (and sometimes refer to them as “niggers”). Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road (1988), a hybrid of science fiction and magical realism, helped to trigger a resurgence in Mars colonization narratives in a story that reinforces the notion of a symbolic link between the formerly colonized world on earth and the potentially colonized worlds of outer space. Desolation Road also looks back to The Martian Chronicles in its vision of a creeping routinization that threatens to render the Martian adventure banal, complete with an evil corporation that threatens to conscript the entire project for its own gain. This new interest in Mars colonization narratives would then reach its zenith with Kim Stanley Robinson’s magisterial “Mars” trilogy, which (while featuring no indigenous Martians) addresses a number of social and political issues related to the colonization of Mars, including a focus on environmentalist issues that makes clear the parallels between the ideology that enabled colonialism and that which has enabled the destruction of earth’s climate and environment.

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Somewhat similarly, Robert Silverberg’s Invaders from Earth (1958) effectively satirizes both colonialism and capitalism. Here, an unscrupulous earth corporation seeks to manipulate governmental authorities to aid it in its colonization and exploitation of Ganymede (the largest moon of Jupiter), which has been discovered to be inhabited by intelligent (but apparently primitive) life. Later, Silverberg also engaged with the issue of colonialism in Downward to the Earth (1970), which provides a much more detailed parallel between the colonization of an alien world and, in this case, the realworld colonization of Africa, via an extensive intertextual dialogue with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Also directly relevant to the phenomenon of colonialism is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972). While Le Guin’s book has been widely considered to be an allegory of the American experience in Vietnam, it also addresses the colonial situation in a much more general way, at the same time dealing with issues that parallel colonialism with sexism and environmental exploitation. As opposed to such tales of the exploitation of alien races and cultures, a whole family of related science fiction stories—what might be described as “anthropological science fiction”—have explored the advantages (and pitfalls) of attempting a more serious and respectful examination of alien cultures. One might especially mention here the work of Michael Bishop, who has constructed a number of such tales, of which the novel Transfigurations (1979) is perhaps the most interesting. One might also cite here the work of Mike Resnick, whose recreations of Kenya and Kenyan culture on other planets in such works as Paradise (1989) and Kirinyaga (a 1998 compilation and update of previously published stories) are among the most straightforward of science fictional attempts to create new perspectives on the colonization of Africa by transposing that historical event into the future colonization of outer space and paralleling colonized alien cultures with colonial Africa. It should also be noted that China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy—especially in Iron Council (2004)—details colonialist practices on the world of Bas-Lag that shows a very sophisticated understanding of the history and ideology of colonialism on earth. Finally, a number of alternate-history narratives have rewritten the history of colonialism, imagining how global history might have proceeded if European colonialism had happened differently—or not at all. The best of these is no doubt Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002). Here, Robinson begins with a history-altering premise quite similar to that of Silverberg’s The Gate of Worlds (1967) and similarly (but in much more detail) asks what the subsequent history of the world might have been like had the Black Death of the 14th century essentially wiped out the European population altogether rather than reducing it by one third. Robinson provides a convincing panoramic view of the social, political, economic, and intellectual history of the globe for a period of roughly 700 years.

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See also ENVIRONMENTALISM. COLONIZATION. Stories of the exploration of outer space, including the colonization of other planets, have been a staple of science fiction since the pulp magazines of the 1930s. In many cases, these stories critically comment on the phenomenon of colonialism on earth. Some of these cases provide interesting political commentary on the relationship between the colony and earth, as in the rebellion of the moon colony in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). In still other cases, however, stories of colonization of other planets seem merely meant to evoke adventure, discovery, and the heroism of battling harsh environments, though alien planetary environments are often modified by terraforming them to be more hospitable to humans. Especially noteworthy among American science fiction novels involving planetary colonization are the entries in Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy, including Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996). Here, Robinson addresses a wide variety of issues related to colonization as he elaborates in great technological and sociological detail on an effort to terraform Mars to make it suitable for colonization by humans, thus relieving some of the pressures caused by overpopulation and other pressures on earth. In the meantime, he very deftly explores the various political debates involved in this project to build a new world system that hopefully avoids the previous mistakes made on earth—while fighting off the attempts of earth-based corporations to seize control of the project. The attempts of Robinson’s Mars colonists to take advantage of the potential opportunity to build a new and better social and political system on their new world highlight the way in which narratives of space colonization have often been used to explore alternative social arrangements. In many cases, as in Le Guin’s Hainish novels, these arrangements involve far-flung galactic empires or federations, though individual works—such as The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)—may focus on isolated worlds within this larger structure. Finally, China Miéville’s Embassytown (2011) explores such a larger system but focuses on the attempts of human colonists to exist on a remote outpost planet along with some genuinely alien native inhabitants, whose very different conception of language makes communication difficult, but also allows Miéville to explore a number of ideas about language in general. See also PLANETARY ROMANCE. COMEDY/HUMOR. Many of science fiction’s finest writers occasionally employ humor, and ironic tones are fairly common. But pure sf comedy is a hit-or-miss affair that is often difficult to sustain in long form, so that the best works in the category have typically been short stories. Fredric Brown, for

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example, achieved considerable success with comic sf short stories in the 1940s and 1950s, though he also wrote comic sf novels, beginning with the parallel-worlds novel What Mad Universe (1949), which lampoons the conventions of pulp sf. In Brown’s Martians, Go Home (1955) a horde of Martians arrives on earth essentially as pranksters bent on driving humans nuts, parodying the little green men alien-invasion story, again indicating the way in which much humor in sf is directed at the genre itself. On the other hand, humor in sf has often been employed quite deftly in the interest of social and political satire. The British-born American writer William Tenn, for example, was a contemporary of Brown who showed a more acerbic and satirical wit, as in the classic story “The Brooklyn Project” (1948), which skewers the typical technological optimism of 1940s sf. Tenn extended his satirical vision to novel length with Of Men and Monsters (serialized 1963, book form 1968), but his work in longer forms was typically less well received than were his stories. Other important early writers of humorous sf stories include Henry Kuttner, whose early story “The Twonky” (1942, as Lewis Padgett) was the basis for the 1952 film of the same title and remains a classic. Kuttner’s Hogben stories, about a family of mutant hillbillies (1947–1949), remain amusing as well, as do the comical robot stories in the “Galloway Gallegher” series (1943–1948), collected as Robots Have No Tails (1952). The sometimes raucous humor of Fritz Leiber also found a home in sf stories early on, and Leiber was still producing sf that was quite funny as late as novels such as A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1968, book form 1969), a satirical postapocalyptic narrative in which a Martian visitor finds that a postnuclear holocaust United States has been swallowed up by Texas and its oversized good-ole-boy white ruling class. One of the sharpest satirists in the history of sf is Robert Sheckley, who maintained a consistent output of witty satires through the 1950s and 1960s, many of which appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction. Sheckley was particularly effective as a writer of satirical sf stories in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of his early stories were gathered in collections, including the especially rich Untouched by Human Hands (1954), which includes the early stories “The Monsters,” “Specialist,” and “Seventh Victim,” all originally published in Galaxy in 1953. Several other collections followed. Sheckley also wrote a number of satirical novels, the most successful of which were the earliest, including the Hugo Award–nominated Time Killer, which was serialized in Galaxy in 1958–1959 and published in book form in 1959 as Immortality Delivered, but is better known by the variant title Immortality, Inc. The Status Civilization (1960, serialized as Omega that year) is a particularly effective dystopian satire, while the Journey beyond Tomorrow (1962, serialized as The Journey of Joenes earlier that year), and Mindswap (1966) have

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merits as well. All of these books have in common a rather naïve protagonist who encounters difficult (sometimes absurd) conditions that highlight problematic conditions in our own world. Another important writer of humorous sf satires that lampooned some of the tendencies of the genre itself was Harry Harrison, whose character “The Stainless Steel Rat” (aka James Bolivar DiGriz) is one of sf’s most prominent comic creations. These novels, which began with The Stainless Steel Rat (1961) and extended through The Stainless Steel Rat Returns (2010), feature a roguish protagonist (first introduced in a 1957 short story) who is in many ways the very opposite of the virtuous heroes of the pulps. A liar, thief, and con man, he nevertheless has a code of his own and tends to end up working on the side of the greater good, though sometimes unwittingly or unwillingly. Harrison published other unruly comic satires as well, including Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), which also spoofs space-opera conventions, and particularly serves as a parodic critique of the militarism of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). A series of five sequels in this series published in the early 1990s was written by others and edited by Harrison. More recently, one of sf’s leading satirists has been Terry Bisson, who has used humor to make serious comments on a variety of issues from science fictional perspectives. Even stories that make serious points, such as Bissons’s Hugo and Nebula award–winning “Bears Discover Fire” (1990), can be quite funny. Bisson has also been unusually successful in extending his humor to novel length, as in Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), a satire of media culture in which an expedition is mounted to Mars just so a blockbuster movie can be filmed there. Other comic satires include Pirates of the Universe (1996), in which astronauts dream of retiring to a theme park, and The Pickup Artist (2001), whose title character is a government operative who confiscates existing artworks in order to make room for new ones. Of course, the most successful comical sf invention of all time, at least in terms of reaching a broad audience, is probably Douglas Adams’s lighthearted (but dark-themed) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which started as a BBC radio play in 1978, then expanded into a series of five novels, published between 1979 and 1992, and eventually into a feature film in 2005. This series includes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979); The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980); Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982); So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984); and Mostly Harmless (1992). An irreverent farce, this immensely popular series has fun with a number of the tropes of science fiction, but also satirizes religion and human vanity in general, arguing the ultimate insignificance of earth and humanity in the universe.

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COMICS. Comic strips such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. (which debuted in 1929) and Flash Gordon (which debuted in 1934) were among the most important comic strips of the 1930s, bringing science fiction to the attention of a whole new readership. With the debut of Superman in Action Comics in 1938, superhero comics suddenly leapt to the forefront of American popular culture, especially for younger readers. Superman, of course, gained his powers from the fact that he was an alien from the doomed planet Krypton (which had a red sun), transformed into a super being through the effects of the rays of earth’s yellow sun. There was thus a prominent science fictional element to the Superman story, and the same was true of many early superhero comics, even if the science itself was typically a bit questionable. There were early efforts at more properly science fictional comic books as well, including Superworld, published by Hugo Gernsback in 1940. None of these, however, were highly successful (Superworld lasted only three issues), as comic book producers struggled to find an approach that would work with readers of the new medium, most of whom were children. As the superhero comics craze cooled after World War II, comics publishers quickly turned to other genres in search of continued success, resulting, among other things, in a renewed effort to produce sf comics. The leader in this attempt was EC (formerly Educational Comics, now retooled as Entertaining Comics), which had great success in the late 1940s and early 1950s with lurid (but highly inventive) horror and crime comics, and only slightly less success with sf comics. EC published Weird Science and Weird Fantasy in 1950–1953, then merged them in 1954–1955 as Weird Science-Fantasy. Though these comics adapted some stories by well-known authors such as Ray Bradbury, and their stories of invading aliens and nuclear apocalypse also often included substantial social and political commentary. They also gained energy from some of the same lurid and violent images that made EC’s crime and horror comics so popular. These same images also made the comics controversial, leading to the adoption of an industry-wide Comics Code of self-censorship that essentially wiped out crime and horror comics— and took sf comics along as well. Science fiction comics virtually disappeared by 1955, though they did reappear by the 1960s. Many of the superheroes of the emergent Marvel Comics had particularly science fictional backgrounds, while comics such as Charlton Comics’ Space War (1959–1964) reflected the burgeoning space race. And the once-popular theme of aliens and UFOs resurfaced in comics such as Unknown Worlds (1960–1967, American Comics Group) and UFO Flying Saucers (1968–1977, Gold Key). And then, of course, there was the strangest alien invader of all in the form of Howard the Duck, who first appeared in 1973 and got his own self-titled series in 1976. Science fiction comics got a particular boost in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a result of

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the sf film boom during that period; indeed, one of the most successful comics of that period was a comics adaptation of Star Wars, which appeared from Marvel between 1977 and 1986. The long-running British anthology 2000 AD, heavy on sf content, made its debut in 1977 as well. Meanwhile, the influential French anthology Métal Hurlant had made its debut in 1974, by which time sf imagery had been established as a major part of the content of Japanese manga, indicating the growing international flavor of sf comics. From the 1980s forward, many of the most successful sf comics have been adaptations of films, including the highly successful Aliens vs. Predator series from Dark Horse, which combines two different film franchises; it began publication in 1991 and has grown into a multi-title franchise that has itself inspired additional films. But original sf comics continued to appear as well. For example, one of the most innovative comics of the 1980s, a decade marked by much innovation in the medium, was Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg, an unusually energetic dystopian narrative that debuted in 1983. In more recent years, the work of Warren Ellis is indicative of the energy that still resides in sf comics. His masterful Transmetropolitan (1997–2002) was a critically acclaimed dystopian narrative (of sorts), while other more clearly science fictional works written by Ellis include Global Frequency (2002–2004), Ocean (2004–2005), and Orbiter (2003), ranking as some of his most important shorter works. Brian K. Vaughan has been an especially important author of sf comics in recent years as well. His postapocalyptic comics series Y: The Last Man, which ran from 2002 to 2008, was one of the biggest hits in comics during that period, while his new ongoing series from Image Comics, Saga, which combines Star Wars–style space opera with fantasy/adventure, debuted in 2012 and has been one of the most popular and widely acclaimed comics since that time. That series won three 2013 Eisner Awards for creative achievement in comics, for Best Continuing Series and Best New Series, with Vaughan winning for Best Writer. It also won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, a category that was added in 2009 in recognition of the growing importance of comics as a science fictional media. The first three Hugo Awards in that category were won by the ongoing steampunk series Girl Genius, from Phil and Kaja Foglio. CRICHTON, MICHAEL (1942–2008). Born in Chicago, the American writer Michael Crichton was one of the best-selling authors of his generation. While he wrote both screenplays and novels and worked in a variety of genres (and first made his name as a writer of thrillers), some of his most successful works were science fiction, often in a cautionary mode that expressed anxiety over the possible negative impact of technology. His science fiction novels include The Andromeda Strain (1969), The Terminal Man (1972), Sphere (1987), Jurassic Park (1990), The Lost World (1990), and

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Timeline (1999), all of which were adapted to film. In addition, Crichton’s novel Westworld (1974) was based on the 1973 film of the same title that he wrote and directed. Late science fiction novels not adapted to film include Prey (2002), State of Fear (2004), and Next (2006). CYBERPUNK SCIENCE FICTION. As the name suggests, cyberpunk fiction combines cybernetic technologies with a defiant punk-like attitude to create a distinct form of sf that existed in its pure form for only a few years beginning in the early 1980s, but that still exercises a considerable influence on contemporary science fiction. Residing in an often dystopian near-future and at the interface between humans and their technology, cyberpunk science fiction explores the relationship between the two in ways that are often uncomfortable. It also draws, stylistically and thematically, on traditions such as hard-boiled detective fiction and film noir. As such, cyberpunk lacks the technological utopianism of much traditional sf; its exploration of topics such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biomedical and electromechanical body modifications, and direct interfaces between human brains and computers is as concerned with the problems associated with such topics as with the possibilities. It suggests that technology will inevitably change the very definition of what it means to be human—and not necessarily for the better. Meanwhile, advances in technology do not, in the world of cyberpunk, necessarily lead to general affluence or to the universal solution of social and economic problems. Cyberpunk began to take the shape of a movement when Gardner Dozois, in a 1984 Washington Post article, used the term to describe the fiction of rising sf authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and Greg Bear. Gibson’s Neuromancer, also published in 1984, gave the movement its best-known and most emblematic work, though its definitive expression might be the anthology Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986), edited by Sterling, who became something of an unofficial spokesman for the movement and who describes the basic tenets of the movement in his introduction. Mirrorshades includes stories by Sterling, Gibson, Cadigan, and Bear, as well as by such authors as Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, and Lewis Shiner, who came to be seen as the movement’s core group of authors. Gibson quickly extended Neuromancer into the “Sprawl” trilogy with Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), as well as a collection of short stories entitled Burning Chrome (1986), and these volumes soon came to be regarded as the most central works of cyberpunk fiction. Sterling’s most significant contribution to cyberpunk is Schismatrix (1985), which differs from Gibson’s version in a few key respects: it takes place in the far-flung future and in outer space, and computers are relegated to the background. In short, one of the most important works of cyberpunk, while

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sharing its spirit and style, does not appear to adhere to most of the conventions of the movement (it is really more a work of posthuman science fiction), showing just how loosely defined cyberpunk always was. Indeed, even Gibson rejected the cyberpunk label, and the movement was declared “dead” as early as the publication of the Mirrorshades anthology that helped to identify it as having been born. Indeed, cyberpunk was never an organized movement so much as the confluence of a number of writers with vaguely aligned attitudes and concerns. Rucker’s “bopper” novels, including Software (1982), Wetware (1988), Freeware (1997), and Realware (2000), involve a number of iconic cyberpunk technologies, but seem to many more similar in spirit to the work of cyberpunk forebear Philip K. Dick than to the work of Gibson or Sterling. K. W. Jeter, whose Dr. Adder (written in 1972, but unable to find a publisher until 1984) has sometimes been called the first cyberpunk novel, explores the constructed and fragmented nature of postmodern subjectivity in The Glass Hammer (1985), in which protagonist Ross Schuyler spends much of the time watching the “novelized” form of his life on video, while this fictionalized self arguably becomes more real (at least to Schuyler) than his “real” self. In George Alec Effinger’s trilogy When Gravity Fails (1987), A Fire in the Sun (1990), and The Exile Kiss (1991), unusual for its futuristic Middle Eastern setting, characters can simply plug a software personality module (“moddy”) into their modified brains to acquire the personalities of real people or fictional characters. In “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986), Pat Cadigan, the only female writer widely regarded as a central figure in cyberpunk, presents a video celebrity via digital translation; the two main characters are offered the opportunity to “cross over” and live an ageless, immortal existence as “Self-Aware Data,” shown as living video for the consumption of others in the dance clubs they frequent. Cadigan has consistently explored cyberpunk themes in her works, beginning with Mindplayers (1987), which features the memorable Deadpan Allie, a specialist in brain-to-brain interface. Media culture is key to her most important cyberpunk work, the novel Synners (1991), which also features implants and a close human-computer connection that are typical of the movement. Here, the titular “Synners” are video artists who synthesize rock music and images to make virtual reality music videos, using implanted brain sockets to transmit their vision directly to the consumer, who must also be outfitted with the sockets. The technology goes badly wrong, however, and the novel ultimately emphasizes the necessity of making technology accountable. Other novels by Cadigan include Fools (1992), Tea from an Empty Cup (1998), and Dervish Is Digital (2000). Other women writers who have drawn on the energies of cyberpunk in their work (while not quite joining the movement) include Candas Jane Dorsey, Kathy Acker, and Lisa Mason. Marge Piercy, meanwhile, has mounted

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probably the most effective feminist challenge to the perceived masculinist bias of cyberpunk. In particular, her novel He, She, and It (1991) seems largely a direct response to (and feminist revision of) Gibson. Although short-lived in itself, the cyberpunk movement has exerted influence in a number of directions. One popular offshoot of cyberpunk is “steampunk,” as exemplified by Sterling and Gibson’s joint effort, The Difference Engine (1990). By the early 1990s, works in the cyberpunk tradition were coming to be labeled “postcyberpunk,” often featuring typical cyberpunk technologies and themes, but with a lighter, more humorous, and more optimistic tone. Postcyberpunk works often satirize cyberpunk itself, as in the case of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), perhaps the most prominent work of postcyberpunk. The line between cyberpunk and postcyberpunk is vague, however, and later works by original cyberpunks Gibson and Sterling are often considered to be postcyberpunk, with Sterling’s Islands in the Net (1988) as probably the earliest example. And postcyberpunk can sometimes still show some of the darker elements of cyberpunk, as in the case of Jeter’s Noir (1998), a grimly satirical tale of a blasted cityscape whose title indicates its tone. More recently, the writers of the British Boom have drawn heavily on cyberpunk conceits, but with a more optimistic tone that aligns them more with postcyberpunk. Justina Robson’s Silver Screen (1999), for example, depends particularly heavily on such devices, but with a fresh twist. Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002) derives its style more directly from the hard-boiled detective tradition than Gibson ever did, while depending crucially on cyberpunk conceits such as the downloaded personality via a device known as a “cortical stack.” Altered Carbon’s two sequels—Broken Angels (2004) and Woken Furies (2005)—also draw on cyberpunk, but move heavily into the realm of space opera, providing a generic combination that is also crucial to the work of Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod.

D DE CAMP, L. SPRAGUE (1907–2000). Born in New York City, the prolific L. Sprague de Camp wrote over 100 books of fiction and nonfiction in his long career. Also an important author of fantasy, especially of the swordand-sorcery variety, de Camp got his start as a science fiction writer in Astounding Stories magazine in 1937, just before John W. Campbell Jr.’s appointment as the editor of that magazine. His first story, “The Isolinguals,” already showed an interest in history and language that would mark much of the rest of his work. He then continued as a key contributor during Campbell’s early years as editor of the magazine, soon retitled Astounding Science-Fiction. De Camp was particularly adept at time-travel and alternatehistory stories, and the alternate-history Lest Darkness Fall, which began as a story in Unknown in 1939 and was expanded into a novel in 1941, may be his single best-known work. Here, a modern-day archaeologist doing research in Rome is somehow transported during a lightning storm to the sixth century, in the wake of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. With the help of his knowledge of history and a number of modern technologies that he introduces into the time, he then succeeds in preventing the coming of the Dark Ages in Europe. “The Wheels of If” (1940) and “Aristotle and the Gun” (1958) are also well-regarded alternate histories. The time-travel story “A Gun for Dinosaur” (1956) features time-traveling hunter Reginald Rivers, who conducts hunting expeditions into the past for paying clients. Rivers later became the protagonist of eight more stories. All nine of the Rivers stories are collected in Rivers of Time (1993). De Camp collaborated extensively with his friend Fletcher Pratt prior to the latter’s early death in 1956. Their most important collaboration was the “Harold Shea” series of stories (later continued by de Camp alone and by a variety of other authors), beginning with “The Roaring Trumpet” (1940). Here, Shea has fantasy-like adventures on a variety of parallel worlds, generally derived from various world mythologies. Genus Homo (1941, book form 1950), co-written with P. Schuyler Miller, is a satirical work that foreshadows Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes (1963) in its depiction of a world in which apes replace humans as the dominant species on the planet. 81

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The Glory That Was (1952, book form 1960) at first appears to be a timetravel narrative, but turns out to involve the meticulous reconstruction and simulation of ancient Greece by individuals involved in a political conspiracy in the 27th century. It thus anticipates Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint (1959) in some ways. In The Great Fetish (1978), de Camp, always seriously concerned with scientific accuracy, takes jabs at the creationist denial of evolutionary theory. De Camp’s most sustained effort at science fiction was a series of stories that together constitute a future history in which Brazil is the dominant power on earth and the home of the Viagens Interplanetarias agency, which dominates interplanetary travel and colonization. Much of the series is set on the planet Krishna, and the series as a whole combines elements of space opera, planetary romance, and fantasy. The first segment of the series, initially published between 1949 and 1958, included a number of stories that were published in various magazines, collections of which appeared in The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953) and Sprague De Camp’s New Anthology of Science Fiction (1953). These early writings also included four novels set on Krishna, initially published in magazines as The Queen of Zamba (1949), The Hand of Zei (1950), The Virgin of Zesh (1953), and The Tower of Zanid (1958); all of these were later republished in book form with different titles and configurations. De Camp then returned to the Viagens series in the late 1970s with The Hostage of Zir (1977), The Prisoner of Zhamanak (1982), The Bones of Zor (1983), and the Swords of Zinjaban (1991). The last two were officially coauthored with his wife, Catherine Crook de Camp, though she apparently worked with him on other entries in the series as well. De Camp also wrote a significant amount of nonfiction, including a biography of H. P. Lovecraft. DEL REY, LESTER (1915–1993). Though Lester Del Rey was notorious for fabricating the details of his early life before his career as a publishing writer, he was apparently born Leonard Knapp in Saratoga, Minnesota. He was an important Golden Age American science fiction writer, though his most important contributions to the field actually came as an editor, beginning in the 1950s as an editor for a number of sf pulp magazines in the 1950s and for the important Winston Science Fiction series of books for juvenile readers published between 1952 and 1961. However, it should also be noted that Del Rey himself authored 10 of the books in this 35-book series, including one nonfiction book describing the science and technology of rocketry for juvenile readers, Rockets through Space (1957). Del Rey began publishing science fiction stories with the story “The Faithful” in the April 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, thus launching his own career just as John W. Campbell Jr. was beginning his historic run

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as the editor of that magazine. Del Rey would become one of the authors most associated with the success of that magazine. During the 1950s, Del Rey also sometimes published under other names, including writing two novels as Eric Van Lhin. As Edson McCann, he coauthored (with Frederik Pohl) the sf satire of the insurance industry Preferred Risk (1955). Del Rey was especially prolific as a novelist in the 1960s, when he wrote such novels as The Sky Is Falling (1963) and Tunnel through Time (1966), among many others. However, his production as a writer largely came to a halt in the late 1970s after he became the editor, in 1977, of the science fiction and fantasy line of Ballantine Books (a subsidiary of Random House), where his fourth wife, Judy-Lynn Benjamin, worked as a science fiction editor. Together they established the Ballantine imprint Del Rey Books, which became an important force in the sf and fantasy publishing world, beginning with The Sword of Shannara (1977), by Terry Brooks. The imprint featured both original works and reprints from most of the best-known sf writers of the era; it continued beyond Del Rey’s death and, in fact, remains important in the field as of 2014. In 1990, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named Del Rey its 11th Grand Master. DELANY, SAMUEL R. (1942– ). Born in New York City and raised in Harlem, Samuel R. Delany began publishing science fiction at the age of 20 and has since gained a lofty critical reputation as perhaps the most important African American writer in the history of science fiction. Early novels such as Babel-17 (1966) and The Einstein Intersection (1967) won Nebula Awards and already showed the philosophical and stylistic sophistication that have come to be regarded as hallmarks of his work. The highly complex and difficult Dhalgren (1975), sometimes compared to the work of James Joyce, is Delany’s best-known novel, remarkable for its stylistic literary experimentation and complexity, as well as for producing a radical cognitive estrangement that seems designed to make readers question everything they think they know about the world. The novel may also be seen as a commentary on the social unrest in African American urban communities in the 1960s and 1970s. Also important are Triton (1976, later republished as Trouble on Triton), and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). Delany is also important as the writer of a series of politically informed fantasy stories and novels with potential political implications that set them apart from the escapism of most traditional fantasy works. Published volumes in this series include Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), Nevèrÿona (1983), Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985), and The Bridge of Lost Desire (1987, revised as Return to Nevèrÿon, 1994).

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As of 2014, Delany is a professor in the English Department at Temple University after having held similar positions at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University at Buffalo. He has a sophisticated awareness of contemporary trends in academic literary studies, including phenomena such as poststructuralism and postmodernism. This awareness is especially reflected in the self-conscious postmodernism of his later novels. It is also important to his substantial body of published criticism—including volumes such as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977)—which makes him one of the most important sf critics and theorists of his generation. An openly gay African American, Delany also shows a strong concern with social and political issues in his work; his novels from Dhalgren onward are especially strong in their exploration of issues related to race and gender. His memoir The Motion of Light in Water (1988), focusing on his experiences as a young gay science fiction writer, won a Hugo Award. One of Delany’s several autobiographical writings, Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), is in the format of a comic, illustrated by Mia Wolff with an introduction by legendary comics author Alan Moore. (Delany also authored two issues of the Wonder Woman comic in 1972.) Delany’s later work is unusual in science fiction in its frank and open depiction of sex and sexuality, a characteristic that is foregrounded even more in his later, non-sf fictions—including The Mad Man (1994), Hogg (1995), Atlantis: Three Tales (1995), and Phallos (2004)—which Delany himself has labeled as pornography. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999) is an autobiographical sociosexual history of New York’s Times Square, while Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories (2002) is a collection of Delany’s short stories. Delany was named a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master of sf by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2013. DHALGREN (1975). The highly complex and difficult Dhalgren (1975), by Samuel R. Delany, is sometimes compared to the work of James Joyce; it has even been thought of as the Finnegans Wake of science fiction. It is probably Delany’s best-known novel, remarkable for its stylistic literary experimentation and complexity and thus one of the most emblematic works of the attempt by many science fiction writers of the 1970s, as in the so-called New Wave, to bring a more literary sensibility to their work. Dhalgren, with its representations of polymorphic sexuality, also participates in the New Wave project of bringing more sophisticated representations of sex and sexuality to sf. Set in an urban environment where the very laws of physics seem to be constantly changing, creating a bewildering and unstable environment for both its characters and its readers, Dhalgren is in many ways a quintessential work of sf in that it produces a radical cognitive estrangement that seems designed to make readers question everything they think they know

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about the world. Yet the confusing and unstable environment of the novel can also be taken as a dramatization of either the general experience of the postmodern subject or the specific experience of living in African American urban communities in the 1960s and 1970s. DICK, PHILIP K. (1928–1982). Though born in Chicago, Philip K. Dick spent most of his life in California, and much of his fiction is set there. He achieved limited recognition during his lifetime, though he was prolific, producing over 40 novels and many dozens of stories, most of which are science fiction. Dick’s reputation has grown steadily, and he is now considered by critics to be in the very first rank of science fiction authors. The numerous films based on his novels and stories have increased his popular reputation as well, including some of the most prominent films in sf history. Blade Runner (1982, based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (1990, based on the 1966 story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”), and Minority Report (based on the 1956 short story “The Minority Report”) are among the finest science fiction films based on Dick’s works. The eminent Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, in an obituary, hailed Dick as “the Shakespeare of science fiction.” In 2007, Dick’s position as the most canonical of sf writers was solidified when the publication of the volume Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s made Dick the first sf author to be included in the prestigious Library of America series, which as of 2014 now includes three volumes of his work. Dick was a prolific writer of short stories in the 1950s, when he also produced a number of novels as well, including several that are essentially realist literary novels. Of his early genre works, Dr. Futurity (1960, expanded from a 1954 short story) is a dystopian fiction that is also a timetravel narrative that deals with attempts to travel back in time to prevent the genocidal extermination of Native Americans by European colonizers (an event that, according to the terms of the novel, has led to white European domination of the globe, which itself has led to a nuclear holocaust from which civilization is still recovering). The Cosmic Puppets (1957), meanwhile, is a fantasy novel based on Zoroastrian cosmology that involves two competing versions of reality in a Virginia town, based on the projections of two competing cosmic deities. Dick’s works often question the nature (or even existence) of objective reality, combining serious philosophical concerns with a darkly humorous and satirical critique of American society. For example, The Man Who Japed (1956) presents a society built on moralistic conformity enforced by constant surveillance that not only comments on the United States in the 1950s, but also remains relevant more than half a century later. Eye in the Sky (1957), probably Dick’s earliest truly important novel, takes its characters through a series of projected realities that are determined by the subjective concerns of

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specific individuals who, in turn, control the different realities. But it also contains some very effective satire of McCarthyite anticommunist 1950s America. Among his most highly regarded works, the earliest is The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won a Hugo Award for Best Novel. This alternate history envisions a world in which the Axis has won World War II and divided the United States into German and Japanese sectors, though it ultimately questions the nature of reality in more profound ways. Martian Time-Slip (1964) is set on a colonized Mars that satirizes the U.S. in the 1960s. Dr. Bloodmoney (1965) is the best of Dick’s numerous postapocalyptic narratives written from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Ubik (1969) explores the theme of multiple realities in a particularly profound, terrifying, and hilarious way, at the same time satirizing advertising and consumerism. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) is a dystopian narrative that satirizes modern media culture and responds directly to the political turmoil of the 1960s. A Scanner Darkly (1977), Dick’s personal favorite among his novels, offers a science fictionalized version of the drug culture of which Dick himself had considerable experience. It was the basis of Richard Linklater’s relatively faithful 2006 film adaptation of the same title. The 2011 volume The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick gathers some of Dick’s rambling philosophical ruminations on the nature of reality. DICKSON, GORDON R. (1923–2001). Gordon Rupert Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but moved to the United States as a teenager and remained there, becoming a U.S. citizen through the last decades of his life. His first sf story, “Trespass!” (1950), was co-written with Poul Anderson, a writer with whom he in fact had much in common. Known both for his misogynistic treatment of women and his sympathetic treatment of (often cuddly) aliens, Dickson in fact collaborated with Anderson on an entire series of comic sf stories featuring the alien “Hokas,” eventually collected in Earthmen’s Burden! (1957), Star Prince Charlie (1975), and Hoka! (1982). Having established himself in the 1950s with a number of short stories, Dickson began to have success in the novel form with his “Dorsai” series (sometimes referred to as the “Childe” sequence), beginning with The Genetic General (1960), a work of military science fiction that took a pro-military stance, though perhaps in a less extreme way than Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), which it followed. This series ultimately stretched to a dozen novels that appeared throughout Dickson’s career, including the last, Antagonist (2007), which was completed by David W. Wixon after Dickson’s death. Much of Dickson’s work was informed by a faith in the virtues of rural and small towns that many have seen as politically retrograde, though most of his work is not openly political. Some of the nostalgic aspects of this

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vision can be seen in his late turn to fantasy, with the “Dragon Knight” series occupying much of the latter part of his career, beginning with The Dragon and the George (1976) and extending for nine novels, through The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent (2000). The prolific Dickson also wrote more than two dozen novels outside these two main series, while continuing to write short stories that were ultimately compiled in more than 20 collections. He won Hugo Awards for his shorter fiction for “Soldier, Ask Not” (Best Short Story, 1965), “Lost Dorsai” (Best Novella, 1981), and “The Cloak and the Staff” (Best Novelette, 1981). His novelette “Call Him Lord” won the Nebula Award in 1966. Dickson was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000. DISCH, THOMAS M. (1940–2008). Born in Des Moines, Iowa, the American writer Thomas M. Disch began publishing stories in science fiction magazines in 1962, with “The Double-Timer” in Fantastic magazine. More stories followed, many of which were collected in One Hundred and Two H Bombs, and Other Science Fiction Stories (1966, revised and retitled as One Hundred and Two H-Bombs in 1971). However, his most important contributions as a science fiction writer were novels, many of which served as pointed satires denouncing contemporary American society. These began with The Genocides (1965), an alien-invasion narrative in which advanced aliens identify the earth as a perfect spot for growing their crops, but first move to eradicate the various indigenous pests that might interfere with this agricultural project, including human beings (whom they do not recognize as sentient). Praised in a review by Brian W. Aldiss, this novel identified Disch as an emerging new talent within the context of science fiction’s New Wave. Disch’s less successful second novel, Mankind under the Leash (1966, later republished as The Puppies of Terra), is in a somewhat similar spirit. Here, aliens conquer earth and keep humans as pets for their amusement. This novel, which grew from the early story “White Fang Goes Dingo” (1965), is included in the later story collection The Early Science Fiction Stories of Thomas M. Disch (1977). His next novel, Echo Round His Bones (1967), was an even more minor work, but Disch hit his stride with the dystopian narrative Camp Concentration (1968), perhaps his finest and most important single work. This novel, which first appeared in the key British New Wave magazine New Worlds in 1967, details a grim near-future regime in which individuals can be subjected to sinister medical experiments without their permission, especially if they refuse induction into the military—a motif that makes the novel a clear commentary on the Vietnam War. More minor novels followed, including The Prisoner (1969), a tie-in to the then-recent (and now classic) British television series of the same title. During this period Disch wrote a considerable number of poems and stories, many of the latter of which are collected in Getting into Death: The Best

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Short Stories of Thomas M. Disch (1973, updated in 1976 as Getting into Death and Other Stories). Disch also edited a number of genre anthologies in the 1970s, some of them with his life partner, Charles Naylor. Disch returned to dystopian fiction with 334 (1972), a collection of interlinked stories that details life in a repressive near-future New York. On Wings of Song (1979), winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, is another dystopian novel that presents an oppressive early 21st-century America that differs surprisingly little from the America of Disch’s own context in the late 1970s, though it is in a further state of decline. The major novum of the text involves the ability of certain individuals to exit their bodies and fly about as disembodied “fairies.” But this motif stands in stark contrast to the general repressive conditions that prevail, largely due to the political power of religious conservatives. However, perhaps due to the underappreciation of his work in the sf community, much of his work in the 1970s and onward was not sf, including a significant amount of Gothic and horror fiction. Notable among his works of the 1980s is his children’s fantasy (featuring anthropomorphized household appliances as central characters) The Brave Little Toaster (1980, book form 1986), which was adapted as an animated film in 1987. The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the Worlds (1988) is a Locus and Hugo award–winning nonfiction work that considers the ways in which science fiction both reflects and impacts American culture as a whole. On SF (2005) is another useful collection of Disch’s essays about science fiction. THE DISPOSSESSED (1974). The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, combines elements of the dystopian narrative with elements of the utopian narrative to produce one of the most important and thoughtful works of social science fiction in the 1970s. Here, the brilliant physicist Shevek is feeling that the development of his work has been limited by conditions on his home world, the moon Anarres, which is barren and impoverished in a physical sense, but nominally has a highly egalitarian, even utopian political system based largely on anarchist principles. However, the practice of science on Anarres is beginning to stagnate, so Shevek arranges to travel to the rich neighboring planet of Urras, hoping thereby to further his work and to initiate communication between the two societies, which have been sealed off from one another since Odonian dissidents from Urras settled on Anarres generations earlier. Shevek is already famous on Urras for his scientific work, so he is greeted as a celebrity, but soon finds that the immense wealth of the society of A-Io (the country that hosts him, and one that resembles the United States in many ways) has not prevented that society from developing huge inequities in wealth, leading to a variety of other social problems (especially the oppression of women) as well.

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The contrast between conditions on Anarres and on Urras provides a great deal of sophisticated political commentary that is the key achievement of The Dispossessed. Meanwhile, the novel is part of Le Guin’s cycle of “Hainish” novels and stories, which deal with the Ekumen, a far-flung galactic empire (most of whose inhabitants are descended from the planet Hain). The administration of this empire (where travel between inhabited planets is difficult because of the lack of faster-than-light travel) is furthered by the development of the “ansible,” a communication device that allows instantaneous communication even across interstellar distances. This device, as it turns out, will be enabled by fundamental theoretical breakthroughs made by Shevek, so that The Dispossessed plays a key role as a prelude to the rest of the series. DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) is perhaps the best-known novel by Philip K. Dick, partly because it was the basis for the classic 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner. It is set on a technologically advanced 21st-century earth; interplanetary spaceflight is a practical reality and humanity is actively colonizing the solar system. It even features the flying cars once so prominent in sf lore. But the future earth depicted in Dick’s book is anything but a technological utopia. Do Androids is, in fact, both a postapocalyptic narrative and a dystopian narrative, the planet having been ravaged by a nuclear war and the ensuing environmental contamination. Virtually all animal life has been destroyed, and the human flight to space colonies is a question more of survival than of adventure. The few remaining humans on earth live in a world whose sky is perpetually darkened by radioactive dust, and in a civilization that, having lost its ability to renew itself, is in an advanced state of decay. As such, the book is one of Dick’s many Cold War–related postapocalyptic narratives, but it explores a number of complex issues, including another favorite Dick theme: the definition of the “human” in a world increasingly dominated by the inanimate products of human technology. The key technology of the book involves the androids of the title, artificial biological beings created to perform hazardous tasks in space that are virtually indistinguishable from “real” humans. In fact, they can be differentiated from human beings only through subtle psychological tests having to do with the ability to feel empathy for other living creatures, an ability that the androids presumably lack. This boundary turns out to be questionable, however, as human empathy turns out to be largely manufactured and android empathy turns out to exist after all. The difficulty of distinguishing androids from humans creates considerable anxiety over their treatment essentially as slaves in outer space, but these anxieties also lead to the banning of androids on earth, where they are forbidden on penalty of immediate termination. Indeed, the world’s police

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departments maintain staffs of professional bounty hunters whose job it is to locate and “retire” such androids, a motif that provides the central plot of the novel. In the process, a number of issues, such as the power of the media, are introduced as well. By the end, the line between human and android, between reality and simulation, is hopelessly blurred, introducing more questions than answers about such fundamental issues, as is typical of Dick’s work. DR. BLOODMONEY, OR HOW WE GOT ALONG AFTER THE BOMB (1965). Dr. Bloodmoney provides author Philip K. Dick’s most detailed depiction of attempts to rebuild American society in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, though, like his other postapocalyptic narratives, it is really more concerned with satirizing conditions in Dick’s contemporary United States. Still, because the nuclear destruction in this book is so extensive, the book does contain a number of utopian elements as characters participate in the attempt to build a new system in the wake of the destruction of capitalism. Dr. Bloodmoney includes a number of memorable motifs, such as its depiction of Walt Dangerfield, an astronaut stranded in orbit by the war, left endlessly circling the globe and acting as a sort of glorified disc jockey, broadcasting music and commentary to the population below, which listens with rapt attention, starved for entertainment in the wake of the collapse of American media culture. Meanwhile, in the person of young Bill Keller, Dick creates one of the most unusual human mutants in all of science fiction. Conceived on the day of the bombing, Bill lives inside an inchoate hull, his body having never really formed; this hull is lodged inside the body of his twin sister, Edie. Bill can communicate with Edie telepathically, and he has other unusual mental powers as well, but he can live only as a parasite inside his sister or another host. Bill’s counterpart in the text is Hoppy Harrington, a phocomelus, whose lack of limbs is caused not by the book’s 1981 nuclear war, but by the effects of thalidomide on his pregnant mother in the 1960s. In Dick’s universe, if it is not one thing, it is another: human beings seem to have a genius for creating freaks, even if they do not always know how to deal with them. There is a third freak in the text as well, in the person of Dr. Bruno Bluthgeld, the “Dr. Bloodmoney” of the title. Bluthgeld is already notorious as the book begins, having been centrally involved in a 1972 nuclear test that went awry, exposing large numbers of civilians to damaging radiation. Wrought with guilt over that event, Bluthgeld concludes (based on nothing) that he has somehow caused the 1981 war. This belief seems to be an element of his mental instability, yet there is evidence later in the text that he may be right. The depiction of Bill Keller, Hoppy Harrington, and Bluthgeld participates in the concern with “abnormal” characters that runs through all of Dick’s fiction, which treats these characters in complex ways that tend to call into

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question any simple definition of the boundary between the normal and the abnormal. The characters are morally complex, as well. Bluthgeld, for example, may not be insane at all; he may merely be evil. Meanwhile, Harrington, physically crippled by circumstances beyond his control, is far from a helpless victim. Not only does he have considerable psychic powers, but he is also ultimately willing to use them in problematic ways, including the killing of two men, one of whom is Bluthgeld. Meanwhile, Bill, the most seemingly helpless character of all, turns out to be even more powerful than Harrington, ultimately ousting him from his mechanically enhanced body, which Bill himself subsequently occupies as his own. Ultimately, Dr. Bloodmoney is powerful as social commentary because the negative aspects of its complex post-holocaust world tend to resemble the characteristics of Dick’s contemporary America, while the most positive aspects of his postapocalyptic world are those that differ most dramatically from conditions in America in the mid-1960s. Still, the radical ambivalence of the book defies any simple interpretation, moving instead into an undecideability that can only be described as postmodern. DOCTOROW, CORY (1971– ). Born in Toronto, Canada, Cory Doctorow has spent a significant amount of time in both the United States and Great Britain, and has been a British citizen since 2011. He has been involved in a number of activities as a political activist throughout his adult life, with a special interest in promoting open and democratic access to computer technologies and to opposing attempts to exert either corporate or government control over technology and its products, especially on the Internet. He continues to be a prominent blogger and “digital rights activist.” As a writer, Doctorow began publishing stories while still a teenager, and started to gain attention with his short fiction by the late 1990s. His stories “I, Robot” (2005) and “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” (2006) both won the Locus Award for Best Novelette, while “After the Siege” (2007) won that award for Best Novella. Many of his earlier stories are collected in A Place So Foreign and Eight More Stories (2003), while later ones are collected in Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (2007). He moved into novel writing with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), which was published not only in conventional form but also in an electronic form under a Creative Commons license that allowed users to circulate it to others free of charge as long as they themselves did not make money from the circulation or modify the text or use it in the production of other works. Here, technology allows humans to live virtually forever, especially as they can simply download their consciousnesses into replacement clones, leaving boredom (alleviated largely through virtual reality adventures) as the most serious

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human problem and making life something like an amusement park ride. Eastern Standard Tribe (2004) is rather optimistic in its exploration of new forms of community that might be furthered by online communication. Indeed, much of Doctorow’s most recent fiction suggests the utopian potential of online technologies, especially in the hands of idealistic young users. Little Brother (2008), whose title riffs on Orwell’s “Big Brother,” is a dystopian narrative of life in a very-near-future America in which the suppression of civil liberties on the pretense of battling terrorism has led to oppressive conditions that are effectively opposed only by youthful hackers, who stay one step ahead of the authorities through their greater ability to keep up with rapidly changing online technologies. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Homeland (2013) is a sequel that deals with similar issues. For the Win (2010) similarly draws on youthful online cultures, focusing on the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games to envision a world in which the power of online technologies can manipulate financial markets and effect substantial change in the physical world. The Rapture of the Nerds: A Tale of the Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations (2012), co-written with Charles Stross, explores a posthuman future with considerable verve. In conjunction with his digital advocacy and blogging, Doctorow has published such nonfiction works as Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools (2002), a practical guide, and Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (2008). He remains one of the leading examples of a science fiction author who is extensively engaged in the real-world evolution of the technologies he explores in his fiction. DOZOIS, GARDNER (1947– ). The American writer and editor Gardner Dozois, born in Salem, Massachusetts, is probably best known as the longtime editor (from the end of 1985 until 2004) of Asimov’s Science Fiction, in which position he won 15 Hugo Awards for Best Editor. Dozois began publishing science fiction stories as a teenager, before a period of military service that was followed by the publication of more notable stories, including “A Special Kind of Morning” (1971) and “Chains of the Sea” (1972). Other stories followed, aligning Dozois with the sf New Wave. Later stories include the Nebula Award winners “The Peacemaker” (1983) and “Morning Child” (1984). Collections of his short fiction to have appeared over the years include The Visible Man (1977), Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois (1992), and Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (2001). Dozois has collaborated with others on a number of stories, and his first novel, Nightmare Blue (1975), was coauthored with George Alec Effinger. His first solo novel, Strangers (1978, expanded from a 1974 story) is a

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human-alien love story. More recently, he coauthored the novels Shadow Twin (2005) and Hunter’s Run (2007) with Daniel Abraham and George R. R. Martin. He has also written significant amounts of nonfiction, especially sf criticism. In addition to his editorial work for Asimov’s, Dozois has edited numerous anthologies, including Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1977–1981) and its successor, the massive compilations of the ongoing series of The Year’s Best Science Fiction (1984– ). DUNE (1965). Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of the most popular science fiction novels of all time, notable for its ecological concerns in the description of the desert planet Arrakis and for its compelling and detailed description of the culture of the desert-dwelling “Fremen” on that planet. Herbert’s Fremen are modeled most directly on the Arabic Bedouins of our own planet, drawing on sources such as the then-recent film Lawrence of Arabia (1963). A complex book that deals with a number of issues, Dune is largely a political thriller involving the machinations of various powers to gain control of Arrakis, including the opposed noble houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, the imperial House Corrino (essentially a stand-in for the Ottoman Turks), the Spacing Guild (which has a monopoly on interstellar travel), and the mysterious female order of the Bene Gesserit. The desert planet of Arrakis (also known as Dune) is the locus of this struggle because it is the only known source of “melange,” an incredibly valuable spice that not only increases human life spans but also bestows certain psychic powers, including those that are crucial to the abilities of the members of the Spacing Guild to navigate in interstellar space via their own minds in this far-future universe in which computers have been strictly banned after an earlier near-cataclysmic war between humans and intelligent machines. Dune features a rousing, high-action narrative and some genuinely compelling characters, but it is most notable for its delineation of the culture of the desert planet of Arrakis, and especially of the Arab-like Fremen who live in the planet’s deep desert, their entire culture developed to allow them to survive in that harsh environment. On the other hand, it is also the case that the Fremen, in order to fulfill their destiny, must depend on the leadership of a genuinely superhuman outsider, young Paul Atreides (who takes the Fremen name Paul Muad’Dib), whom they eventually recognize as their longawaited messiah, the Lisan al-Gaib. Paul is also the “Kwisatz Haderach,” the messiah-like product of a centuries-long project in selective breeding on the part of the Bene Gesserit, a religious cult whose practices are akin to witchcraft. Ultimately, with the Fremen behind him, Paul gains control of Arrakis. This also places him in control of the only source of melange in the universe, a position that gives him leverage over the Spacing Guild and essential control of the empire itself.

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Dune ultimately triggered a series of five sequels written by Herbert, as well as additional sequels coauthored by Herbert’s son Brian Herbert. It was adapted to film in 1984 by David Lynch and was made into a television miniseries for the SyFy cable channel in 2000. DYSTOPIAN NARRATIVES. If utopian narratives attempt to envision an ideal society in which the problems of the present have been solved, dystopian narratives envision societies in which those problems have gotten worse. In a variant also known as the “anti-utopia,” the dystopian society was designed to be utopian, but went awry. Some of these critique the very idea of utopia. In almost all cases, though, dystopian fiction is essentially a form of satire that warns against the possible consequences of certain tendencies in the real world of the present. Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1907) is sometimes considered the first true dystopian novel, though it is told from the perspective of a utopian future in which the dystopia described is a thing of the past. E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909) was another one of the first purely dystopian works, and one that already illustrated the common ground between dystopian fiction and literary modernism. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921) can be considered the first purely dystopian novel; it joined Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) as the three founding texts that defined the dystopian genre. However, these three founding texts are primarily of the anti-utopia type. The same might be said of Ayn Rand’s rabidly antiSoviet Anthem (1938), which conducts an extreme critique of the communalism that has been common to utopian visions from More onward. The “if-this-goes-on” dystopian cautionary tale began to appear early on as well, as in Amabel Williams-Ellis’s To Tell the Truth . . . (1933), which follows Huxley in warning of the dystopian potential of capitalism, imagining a future Britain in which the worst tendencies of the early 1930s have continued, producing a grim, authoritarian, and impoverished (though in many ways technologically advanced) society. Antifascist cautionary tales were particularly prominent in Great Britain in the 1930s, including Storm Jameson’s In the Second Year (1936), Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937), and Ruthven Todd’s Over the Mountain (1939). In the United States, meanwhile, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935) warned that contemporary fear of communism might push America toward fascism. In the U.S., Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Player Piano (1952) responded to certain specific American anxieties of the early 1950s, especially the fear that automation was beginning to make human labor obsolete, while at the same time turning people into machine-like automatons living thoroughly scripted, regulated lives. Ray Bradbury then followed soon

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afterward with Fahrenheit 451 (1953), where an oppressive state employs teams of “firemen,” who seek out and burn books, which are strictly forbidden in this society. Nineteen Eighty-Four exercised a particularly strong influence on the British dystopian narratives that came after it, including Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) and The Wanting Seed (1962). Also particularly important in British dystopian fiction was the series of novels written by John Brunner, beginning with Stand on Zanzibar (1968) and extending through The Jagged Orbit (1969), The Sheep Look Up (1972), and The Shockwave Rider (1975). Back in the U.S., Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966, the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green) followed The Wanting Seed and Stand on Zanzibar in its focus on the future dystopian implications of continuing population growth. The 1970s were particularly rich in the production of utopian narratives, especially by women, but the decade also saw notable production in women’s dystopian fiction, sometimes within the same volume as the utopian narrative. Even Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), perhaps the most important of the women’s utopian novels of the decade, contrasted its anarchist utopia with a capitalist dystopia within the same text. Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975) also presented both utopian and dystopian visions, as did Marge Piercy’s Woman at the Edge of Time (1976). These novels, along with works such as Suzy McKee Charnas’s Walk to the End of the World (1974), thus started a trend that culminated in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), undoubtedly the most prominent dystopian text to date to focus on issues of gender and patriarchy. Other works, including Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), have focused on similar issues as part of a cautionary vision of contemporary social trends. Dystopian narratives became increasingly popular in fiction and film in the early 21st century. A key trend in this increase was a growing tendency to attribute dystopian repression not to governments but to private corporations. This phenomenon dates back at least to Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth’s classic work The Space Merchants (1953), in which corporations and advertising dominate a grim, dystopian future. And sinister corporations (such as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation of the Alien films) have been prominent in science fiction ever since. But this tendency, fueled by the growing power of corporations that marked the Reagan-Bush years (1981–1992) in the U.S., began to accelerate with works such as Jack Womack’s Ambient (1987), which turned out to be the first in a sequence of six novels in which the huge Dryco Corporation becomes the dominant force in American society, culminating in the 2000 novel Going, Going, Gone. In the meantime, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) presents a future in which rampant privatization has rendered governments almost irrelevant. More recent works exploring the dystopian aspects of corporate capitalism include

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Max Barry’s Jennifer Government (2003) and Company (2007), Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces (2004), Thomas Nevins’s The Age of Conglomerates (2008), and Dani and Eytan Kollin’s The Unincorporated Man (2010). Dystopian narratives have also recently become particularly prominent in young adult science fiction. Another important new trend in recent dystopian fiction is the growing importance of the genre in young adult fiction. This trend probably began with Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993), gained momentum with Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember (2003), and reached its zenith with Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008) and its sequels, which became the basis for a major pop cultural franchise. Other recent young adult dystopias include M. T. Anderson’s Feed (2004), Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008), Caragh M. O’Brien’s Birthmarked (2010), Maria V. Snyder’s Inside Out (2010), Ann Aguirre’s Enclave (2011), Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011), and Hugh Howey’s Wool (2011), which became a publishing phenomenon after its initial serial publication in e-book form became widely popular.

E EFFINGER, GEORGE ALEC (1947–2002). Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the American science fiction writer George Alec Effinger began publishing stories in 1971, after having attended the Clarion Workshop in 1970, including three stories in the workshop’s first anthology in 1971. His Nebula Award–nominated first novel, What Entropy Means to Me, was published in 1972. Through the remainder of the 1970s, he wrote a variety of comic books and novels, including Nightmare Blue (1975), coauthored with Gardner Dozois, but was most successful with short stories, many of which appeared in collections, including Mixed Feelings (1974), Irrational Numbers (1976), Dirty Tricks (1978), and Idle Tricks (1978). Novels of the 1980s included The Wolves of Memory (1981), a particularly dark dystopian narrative that also reappeared, along with a number of other stories, in the collection A Thousand Deaths (2007). The novels The Nick of Time (1985) and its sequel, The Bird of Time (1986), are time-travel narratives that deal with some of the themes that appear in many of his stories. Bad health limited his output through much of the 1980s, but he produced his best-known sequence beginning late in the decade with the “Marîd Audran/ Budayeen” trilogy: When Gravity Fails (1987), A Fire in the Sun (1989), and The Exile Kiss (1991). Featuring personality plug-ins and other technologies reminiscent of cyberpunk, this sequence is set in the 22nd-century walled Middle Eastern city of Budayeen, which is largely a fictionalized version of New Orleans, where Effinger lived for many years. Further health problems curtailed the continuation of this series (and of his career), though the first two chapters of a fourth Budayeen novel, along with related stories, were posthumously collected in Budayeen Nights (2003). Another interesting posthumous collection is George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth (2005), which includes a series of stories Effinger originally published under the name “O. Niemand,” each of which is a pastiche of the work of a different well-known American author.

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EGAN, GREG (1961– ). Born in Perth, the Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and often reflected mathematical themes and concepts in his work. This focus, along with an abiding interest in the implications of quantum mechanics, sometimes makes Egan’s work seem abstract and difficult, but his far-future projections of the possibilities of a posthuman future have gained him a considerable following. His first novel, An Unusual Angle (1983), only lightly touches on sf themes, and his second, Quarantine (1992), is essentially a near-future detective story, but he began to move into the mode for which he is best known with the virtual-reality narrative Permutation City (1994), which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Distress (1995) returns to near-future themes, but Diaspora (1997) announces the full-blown arrival of Egan’s interest in the far future, one in which most humans have chosen to leave their physical bodies behind in order to have their consciousnesses uploaded in digital form. Teranesia (1999) explores issues from molecular genetics and quantum computing to sexuality and repressed childhood guilt. Schild’s Ladder (2002), in its exploration of a region of the universe in which the laws of physics are different from our own (and which is expanding, gradually engulfing the rest of the universe), may be Egan’s most abstract and difficult novel, though his vision of subatomic-scaled human avatars operating at a quantum level is exhilarating. Incandescence (2008) marked a return to fiction after years of inactivity, exploring life on a space habitat where the technologically backward residents have to learn quickly in order to survive. Zendegi (2010) is another virtual-reality novel, this time set primarily in Iran. Orthogonal, Book One: The Clockwork Rocket (2011) again explored a universe with altered physical laws (here, rather than three dimensions of space and one of time, there are four dimensions of the same kind), opening a trilogy that now also includes The Eternal Flame (2012) and The Arrows of Time (2013). ELLISON, HARLAN (1934– ). Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the American writer Harlan Ellison might be better known for his contentious and litigious personality than for his writing. However, he has produced a huge body of science fiction—much of it highly respected—that includes numerous stories, teleplays, and screenplays. He has also written a substantial amount of criticism, and is particularly well known as the editor of the groundbreaking anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), now regarded as a major contribution to the evolution of sf in the United States, in alignment with the New Wave. He also edited a sequel, Again Dangerous Visions, in 1972. A third volume, The Last Dangerous Visions, has never appeared but has become notorious in sf circles for various controversies surrounding the delays in its publication.

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Among Ellison’s contributions (as a writer, consultant, and even actor and voiceover performer) to a variety of television series, the best known is probably his script for the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967), often regarded as the finest single episode of that series. But it is as a writer of short stories that Ellison is most highly regarded, and many of his hundreds of stories have been reprinted numerous times in his own collections and in anthologies. Though much of his early work was outside the genre of sf, he published sf stories as early as 1956. Several of his stories are true classics of the genre. His dystopian narrative “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), about excessive regimentation in an oppressive future, is particularly well known and has been widely reprinted. The same can be said for the postapocalyptic narratives “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967)—in which a supercomputer has destroyed most of humanity but keeps a few survivors in order to torture them endlessly—and “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)—set in the aftermath of a destructive nuclear war and later expanded into a novella of the same title. It was adapted to film in 1975. In 1988, Ellison’s comics adaptation of this story was published, along with two other related stories, in Vic and Blood: The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog, one of several forays by Ellison into comics writing. ENDER’S GAME (1985). Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is a much-admired book that led to an entire series of “Ender” novels on the part of Card, including Speaker for the Dead (1986), Xenocide (1991), and Children of the Mind (1996). In Ender’s Game, aliens (known as “buggers”) have twice attacked earth. The humans won the last war only through the brilliant strategic leadership of the unorthodox commander Mazer Rackham. They are gearing up for another attack, meanwhile desperately seeking a new commander who will similarly be able to outwit the buggers and lead the technologically overmatched humans to victory. Toward this end, they have instituted a program of selective breeding, followed by intense training of those who seem to have the proper potential. The protagonist, Ender Wiggin, is a product of this program. He is the third child in his family in an overpopulated future society in which virtually no families are allowed to have more than two children. However, his family has shown special genetic promise, though his older sister and brother have not developed as hoped. Ender himself (age 6 as the book begins) passes every test and is invited to go to Battle School, located on an orbiting space station. He reluctantly agrees, then quickly distinguishes himself in the school, making much of the book a novel of education that has helped it to appeal especially to young adult readers.

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While his siblings become involved in political machinations back on earth, Ender (not yet 10 years old) is promoted to Command School, a promotion he accepts only reluctantly. He is then taken to the top-secret location for further training, with Mazer Rackham himself (kept alive by extensive space travel at near-light speeds) as his personal tutor. Ender then goes through a series of what appear to be computer simulations, ending in the simulated destruction of the bugger homeworld. Ender is able to win because of his individual creative approach; the hive-mind of the buggers is unable to cope with such inventiveness. Only later does he learn that the simulations were, in fact, real, and that he has personally engineered the destruction of the entire bugger species because all bugger queens were apparently destroyed with the planet, leaving the species unable to reproduce. Ender also eventually learns that the initial attack on humans was the result of a misunderstanding and not simple aggressiveness on the part of the buggers. Though largely a work of military science fiction, the book thus shows a certain skepticism toward militarism. Political shenanigans continue on earth, but Ender is convinced by his sister Valentine to go with her to the new earth colony on the bugger homeworld, where he becomes an effective governor, though he devotes most of his efforts to studying the legacy left behind by the buggers, hoping to preserve something of their culture. Meanwhile, back on earth, Peter has become Hegemon. Then Ender discovers the pupo of a new queen (already fertilized and ready to revive the bugger race with Ender’s help), using information fed to him telepathically while he was back in Battle School. Ender is now granted access to the preserved wisdom of the dead queen, which he puts down in a book, Speaker for the Dead, which becomes the key text of a new religion back on earth, its author remaining anonymous. (The collective vision of the buggers turns out to have substantial advantages relative to individual competitiveness.) Later, he writes another book based on the experiences of Peter, the now 77-year-old Hegemon. (Ender is still only in his 20s due to his relativistic travel to the distant colony.) Ender and Valentine begin to travel from world to world, looking for a safe place where the new queen can revive and live in peace. See also GENETIC ENGINEERING. ENVIRONMENTALISM. Though the modern environmentalism movement is often regarded as having begun with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, science fiction writers had been expressing concerns about the destruction of the environment by modern industrial civilization at least since the 1880s, when William Delisle Hay (in “The Doom of the Great City”) projected into fiction his concerns about deteriorating air quality in London. Richard Jefferies’s After London (1885) was the most extended look during this period at the destructive effects of urban pollution. Environ-

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mental issues were not, however, foregrounded in sf for some time, though one of the central consequences of the growing power of global capitalism in the classic sf satire The Space Merchants (1953), by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, is large-scale environmental decay, so that this novel can be considered one of the founding texts of modern environmentalist sf. The principal environmental concern of sf in the 1950s, however, was contamination due to radiation, typically as the result of nuclear war. Any number of postapocalyptic narratives appeared during the decade, many of which focused on the ravaging of the environment by nuclear war. Environmentalist science fiction proper got a major boost from the rise of the environmentalist movement in the 1960s, as numerous works of science fiction at this time began to warn of the dire consequences of pollution, overpopulation, and related phenomena. Works such as Anthony Burgess’s The Wanting Seed (1962), Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966, basis of the 1973 film Soylent Green), and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) all focus on overpopulation. Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972) explores the aftermath of an ecological catastrophe brought on by excessive pollution, while various forms of ecological collapse had also been treated by J. G. Ballard, in The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). Numerous stories of the 1960s also dealt with environmental issues; a number of them are collected in the anthology The Ruins of Earth (1971), edited by Thomas M. Disch. On the other hand, in opposition to all of these visions of environmental collapse, Ernest Callenbach’s utopian narratives Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981) sought to delineate an alternative society built on green principles of sustainability and harmony with nature. During this same period, Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang (1976) also deals centrally with the aftermath of environmental collapse on earth, and this theme became more and more prominent going forward, as the winding down of the Cold War led to environmental concerns replacing nuclear war as the most common source of apocalyptic disasters. David Brin’s Earth (1990) is a particularly wide-ranging look at global environmental degradation, nearly leading to the death of the planet (though featuring a deus ex machina rescue in the end). Among contemporary sf writers, Kim Stanley Robinson may be the one who has shown the most consistent concern with environmental issues over time. For example, in The Gold Coast (1988), the middle volume of the “Three Californias” trilogy, environmental decay is a direct consequence of runaway capitalist development. Robinson’s masterwork, the “Mars” trilogy, is also centrally concerned with environmental issues, as colonists from earth seek to build a habitable world on Mars without destroying the native environment in the way that the environment back on earth has pretty much already been destroyed. However, Robinson’s “Science in the Capital” trilogy, comprising Forty Signs of Rain

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(2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) is a more straightforward look at the potentially disastrous effects of global warming (and of inept political responses to it) in the very near future. ESCHBACH, ANDREAS (1959– ). The German author Andreas Eschbach has been a major force in post-reunification German science fiction. A former software engineer who had earlier studied aerospace engineering, Eschbach has put his technical background to good use in his writing, beginning with Die Haarteppichknüpfer (1995), a space opera set in a universe modeled on the Roman Empire. This novel won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis for Best Novel; it was translated into English as The Carpet Makers in 2005, marking his entrance into the world of Anglophone science fiction. Eschbach’s work has now been translated into several other languages as well, making him perhaps the most recognizable contemporary German sf writer worldwide. Eschbach’s Kelwitt’s Stern (“Kelwitt’s Star,” 1999) and Quest (2001) are both set in the same universe as is Haarteppichknüpfer. Eschbach’s second novel, Solarstation (1996), also won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, while Ausgebrannt (“Burned,” 2007) is an especially effective cautionary tale about the consequences of the eventual exhaustion of the earth’s oil supply. The consistently productive Eschbach has had particular success with novels that are essentially thrillers within a science fictional scenario, somewhat in the mode of some of the work of Michael Crichton. One of the most successful of these is Jesus Video (1998), which involves the search for video footage of Jesus Christ that was supposedly shot by a time traveler. It won Eschbach’s third Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, an award he won still again with Der Letzte seiner Art (“The Last of Its Kind,” 2005). Many of Eschbach’s short stories are collected in the volume Eine unberührte Welt (“A Pristine World,” 2008). He has also authored a number of popular young adult novels, most of which are in the mode of sf. EXTRAPOLATION. Extrapolation is a leading academic journal of science fiction and related topics. Established in 1959 by Thomas D. Clareson at the College of Wooster, it was the first academic journal to concentrate on speculative fiction and has remained a leading journal in the field ever since. It covers that field with a broad scope and includes essays on a variety of cultural phenomena, with coverage of film, television, and other media in addition to literature. It moved to Kent State University in 1979, with Clareson still as the editor-in-chief. Kent State’s Donald M. Hassler became the editor-in-chief in 1989. The journal moved to the University of Texas at

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Brownsville in 2002, when Hassler became the executive editor, and UTB’s Javier A. Martinez became the editor, which he remains as of this writing, along with several others who have since joined the editorial group.

F FANDOM. Science fiction has long been a leading force in the world of fandom, or organized communities of fans who pursue various activities in support of their interest in particular cultural phenomena. The science fiction fan community has its roots in the pulp magazines of the 1930s (especially those produced by Hugo Gernsback), which prominently featured letters columns that allowed fans not only to express their opinions on various topics related to science fiction, but also thereby to establish contact with other fans (Gernsback typically published the addresses of letter writers, so that they could communicate outside the magazine) and to develop a growing sense of community. In 1934, Gernsback formalized this process by establishing the Science Fiction League, designed as a national coordinating organization that would be made up of smaller local groups, such as the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, one of the first and most successful of these groups—and one that continues to be active today. These groups also included those interested in science itself, such as the American Interplanetary Society, which sought to promote interest in both science fiction and science, especially rocketry. Such early fan groups made a major contribution to the development of science fiction as a genre, and fan groups have frequently published their own amateur periodicals, or “fanzines,” many of which publish original fiction as well as other features. Several important science fiction writers got their start publishing in fanzines, as when Ray Bradbury’s first stories appeared in Futuria Fantasia, the fanzine that he himself produced from 1939 to 1941. Many writers have actively participated in fan groups in other ways as well. Particularly notable in this sense were the Futurians, a group (active from 1937 to 1945) that was notable not only for its tendency toward leftwing political ideas, but also for the inclusions of such prominent figures as Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Judith Merril, James Blish, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Donald A. Wollheim, and Robert A. W. Lowndes.

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Beginning with the first World Science Fiction Convention (now generally referred to as “Worldcon”) held in conjunction with the New York World’s Fair of 1939, science fiction conventions became a crucial part of science fiction fandom. The leading sf conventions have now become major events, attended not only by fans, but also by leading writers and other members of the sf industry, including figures from film and television. Fans of the Star Trek television and film franchise have become particularly well known for the intensity of their devotion and are often prominent at conventions. Among other things, Worldcon (administered by the World Science Fiction Society) features the annual awarding of the much-coveted Hugo Awards. In more recent years, the growth of online culture has greatly facilitated communication among science fiction fans and the general spread of science fiction fandom. Numerous websites are devoted to various works or other phenomena within science fiction culture, and science fiction fans participate enthusiastically in social media sites such as Facebook. See also MOSKOWITZ, SAM (1920–1997); PALMER, RAY (1910–1977). FANTASY. Fantasy, like science fiction, is a mode of speculative fiction that deals with stories set in worlds that are different from our own. However, while the worlds of science fiction usually differ from ours in ways that are logically explicable, the worlds of fantasy (which often involve the presence of magic and a variety of fantastic or mythological creatures) are typically just stipulated to be the way they are, without any logical explanation. As a result, some critics and theorists of science fiction, especially those who wish to emphasize the potential of sf as a genre of political critique, have employed fantasy as a counter-example that lacks this potential because it does not encourage critical questioning of its premises. Of course, this critical dismissal of fantasy (which has often seemed aimed primarily at the work of J. R. R. Tolkien) ignores the fact that there has often been a great deal of overlap between sf and fantasy. Many prominent sf writers (from early examples such as Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, and Andre Norton, to such later examples as Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Terry Bisson, and Michael Bishop) have also produced fantasy, and the two genres have sometimes existed simultaneously in the same work. Some writers, such as Samuel R. Delany in his Nevèrÿon series of novels, have explicitly tried to give fantasy more of the texture of science fiction, including its ability to produce political commentary. More recently, the line between science fiction and fantasy has been even more radically blurred, especially in the works of the writers of the British Boom, with China Miéville as a key figure, along with such others as Neil

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Gaiman, Charles Stross, Richard K. Morgan, and Gwyneth Jones. However, Philip Pullman, a British writer of fantasy not typically associated with the British Boom, to some extent began this trend with the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, which started to appear in 1995 and which took fantasy in sophisticated new directions of a kind that had typically been associated with science fiction. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the sense of fantasy as the immature other of science fiction was largely a thing of the past. See also BRITISH FANTASY AWARD. FARMER, PHILIP JOSÉ (1918–2009). The American writer Philip José Farmer broke important ground in both science fiction and fantasy, and in a number of different ways. Beginning with his serialized novella The Lovers (1952, expanded to book form in 1961), Farmer was one of the first writers in these genres to employ sex and sexuality as motifs in interesting ways. Though controversial in some sf circles, The Lovers won for Farmer the 1953 Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author. Over the next few years, he wrote a number of distinctive stories, including “The God Business” (1954), which illustrates his tendency to explore religious themes in ways that were unusual in the sf of the time, and “Open to Me, My Sister” (1960), which illustrates his tendency to explore alien biologies in ways that some at the time found revoltingly graphic. Farmer’s first novel to appear in book form was The Green Odyssey (1957), whose depiction of the medieval-like culture of an alien planet on which an earthman must escape captivity was a landmark in the evolution of the planetary romance. He wrote a number of such romances in the following years, including The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971), conceived as a science fictional sequel to Moby-Dick and indicative of the reuse of earlier cultural materials that would come to be a feature of much of Farmer’s work. In 1965, Farmer published The Maker of Universes, a novel that would become the first entry in his extensive “World of Tiers” series, which explores a series of parallel worlds created long ago by a highly advanced human civilization. Central among these is the huge, tiered planet that gives the series its overall title and that constitutes one of Farmer’s most memorable worlds. Other novels in this series, in which various characters (including members of the ancient advanced human race that created the universes) travel among the various universes, include The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977), and More Than Fire (1993). “Riders of the Purple Wage” (published in Harlan Ellison’s landmark 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions) won Farmer a Hugo Award for Best Novella. Later republished in Farmer’s own collections The Purple Book (1982) and Riders of the Purple Wage (1992), the story is written in a humorous, pun-

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ning style that perhaps made slightly more palateable (at the time) the fact that it takes Farmer’s penchant for sexual and scatological content to an unprecedented level. In this vein, Farmer also contracted during this time to write a series of erotic fantasy novels for Essex House, a publisher of pornographic materials, beginning with The Image of the Beast (1969). Farmer’s best-known series (and one with particularly rich narrative possibilities) is the “Riverworld” series, which began with the novels To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat, both published in 1971, but both reworkings of shorter versions from the mid-1960s. Here, Farmer envisions a vast afterworld (consisting of a single, meandering river valley) in which everyone who ever lived is resurrected and can interact simultaneously (most of them inhabiting healthy versions of their own 25-year-old bodies). This conceit allows Farmer to bring in a variety of historical personages in a postmodern framework that allows Farmer to revisit from different perspectives all of the themes that had been present in his earlier fiction. Other novels in the “Riverworld” series include The Dark Design (1977), The Magic Labyrinth (1980), and Gods of Riverworld (1983). There are also a number of “Riverworld” short stories. Much of Farmer’s fiction in the 1970s was devoted to exploration of the “Wold Newton family” concept of interlinked stories, built around the premise that a radioactive meteorite fell near Wold Newton, in Yorkshire, England, in 1795, causing mutations in those who were nearby and resulting in the production of generations of superhuman offspring, including such popular literary characters as Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Sherlock Holmes, whose extraordinary abilities are thereby explained. This concept allowed Farmer to employ his beloved device of resurrecting well-known characters of the past (mostly from early science fiction and pulp adventure stories dating from the late 19th century through the 1930s) in a variety of stories. Officially introduced in Tarzan Alive (1972), this concept was retroactively applied to texts as early as the Tarzan/Doc Savage narrative A Feast Unknown (1969) as well as being the basis for a number of new fictions such as Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973). Ultimately, Farmer would even incorporate more recent characters into the system, including Kilgore Trout, the fictional sf writer who features in the work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Indeed, Farmer’s Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) was published as by Trout. Farmer’s later work includes the excellent space opera The Unreasoning Mask (1981) and another sequence of works, the “Dayworld” series, comprising In Dayworld (1985), Dayworld Rebel (1987), and Dayworld Breakup (1990). Here, Farmer imagines a word so overpopulated that the population has to be divided into seven groups, one for each day of the week. On any

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given day, that day’s population is active, while the other six groups sleep. The Best of Philip José Farmer (2006) is an extensive late collection of some of Farmer’s most important stories. Possibly because of controversies over the treatment of sexuality in his work, Farmer’s contributions to the field may have been underestimated during most of his career, though he did receive late recognition in 2001, when he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, as well as winning the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in that genre. FEMINISM AND GENDER. Science fiction, in the early years of its development in the pulps, developed a reputation of being a virtually all-male preserve in which men wrote male-centered stories for a mostly male audience consisting largely of teenage boys. This reputation was not entirely unearned. However, there were important women writers in the genre all along: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1926) are frequently considered the first science fiction novels. Still, it is telling that early women sf writers—such as C. L. Moore and Andre Norton—tended to find it necessary to adopt male-sounding pseudonyms in order to further their careers. Meanwhile, the vast majority of sf writers have been men since the rise of sf as an identifiable genre in the pulps of the 1930s, while the women characters in their texts have tended to be marginal figures, represented in stereotypical, if not downright offensive ways, with earth women functioning largely as damsels in distress and alien women as exotic (potentially dangerous) sex objects. Still, sf, with its potential for providing estranged perspectives on widely accepted ideas, is in many ways ideal for the exploration of alternative figurations of gender roles. Meanwhile, the potentially threatening figure of the feminine Other (alien or otherwise) has been claimed by many women writers as their own in subversive challenges to patriarchal authority. While early precursors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), which also posits a society in which women exist and prosper without men, got little attention at the time they were written, women writers such as Leigh Brackett, Katherine MacLean, and Judith Merril joined Moore and Norton in establishing a feminine presence in science fiction from the 1930s through the 1950s, exploring issues of gender and sexuality in ways that were somewhat reserved, but nevertheless interesting. Then, fueled especially by the rise of the Women’s Movement of the 1960s, women writers began to make more daring contributions to the genre, though it is also the case that a writer such as Alice Sheldon was still employing a masculine pseudonym (“James Tiptree Jr.”) until her true identity was revealed in 1977. On the other hand, one sign of how far sf has come in making explorations of gender a primary is the establishment of the Tiptree

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Award, which, instituted in 1991, is given to recognize annual achievements in science fiction or fantasy that explores or expands our understanding of gender. Women writers made especially rich contributions in the construction of utopian narratives in the 1970s. Ursula K. Le Guin was perhaps the leading figure in this sense. In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) she depicts the planet Gethen, a world whose human inhabitants have evolved in special ways so that they are neither male nor female, except during “kemmer,” a phase during a monthly cycle in which, triggered by the hormonal secretions of their partners, they temporarily take on gender roles, but any individual can be either male or female. In effect, sexism does not exist in this world, since sex itself is not a fixed category. Meanwhile, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) is perhaps the greatest of the 1970s utopias, though gender is only one of many issues addressed in that text. In Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed” (1972) women are separated from men and thus empowered to build a new communal society without the built-in structures of patriarchy. In the story, a plague wipes out the male population of the planet Whileaway, leaving the survivors, over hundreds of years, to develop a nonhierarchical, cooperative, and stable society, while also developing the ability to reproduce without men. The society is presented as essentially utopian, as is emphasized when its denizens eventually encounter men from Earth who come to the planet to renew relations with them. The egalitarianism of Whileaway is highlighted by the sense of superiority shown by the men, who cannot believe that an all-female society could be self-sufficient, or even fully human. Russ’s best-known work of the period was The Female Man (1975), which also features the Whileaway, which stands beside three other imagined social structures as the story is narrated by four different women from parallel worlds with different timelines, all of whom are versions of the same women (and who eventually interact). One of the stories is an all-out dystopian narrative informed by a literal war between the sexes, but the others have strong utopian elements. The Female Man provides a challenge to compulsory heterosexuality in its depiction of explicit lesbian eroticism—as opposed to the sexless all-woman society of Herland. The novels of Suzy McKee Charnas’s “Holdfast Chronicles”—Walk to the End of the World (1974), for example—also set a separatist lesbian utopia alongside a nightmarish dystopia, in this case a postapocalyptic civilization in which women have been enslaved by men and are considered subhuman. In the second novel, Motherlines (1978), women escape this confinement and begin to build their own utopia, complete with the ability to reproduce without men. Mothering and other duties are shared among all the women, whose cooperative, egalitarian culture contrasts sharply with the man-dominated world they have escaped. However, the suggestion in such separatist utopias

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that women can realize utopian possibilities only in the absence of men has been complicated and interrogated by later works in the same tradition, such as Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite (1993), which interrogates the lesbian separatist strategy while maintaining a continuity with the tradition of its 1970s predecessors. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) features the future utopian society of Mattapoisett, in which men and women peacefully coexist, largely by effacing differences based on gender roles. While Piercy’s vision is not separatist, it does share with other feminist utopias an emphasis on communality, nurturing, tolerance, and partnership with nature. In addition, the inhabitants of Mattapoisett enjoy sexual freedom from an early age, and routinely form attachments with members of both sexes. Meanwhile, in Piercy’s novel this utopian society is contrasted with the essentially dystopian present in which the protagonist begins—and with an even more dystopian possible alternative future. Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean (1986) echoes the structure of The Disposssessed by contrasting the separatist utopian lesbian civilization of the moon Shora with that of the planet it orbits, a patriarchal imperialist dictatorship called Valedon. However, despite attempts at aggression on the part of the Valans, Shora is open to the possibility of including men, provided they are willing to adapt to the community. Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) also suggests that harmony between men and women is possible, but only if certain aggressive aspects of masculine behavior are removed by selective breeding. By the mid-1980s, when a conservative backlash had scored several political victories over the Women’s Movement, women writers began to turn to dystopian narratives such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). In Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, a near-future repressive state governed by right-wing religious fundamentalists, women are expected to be entirely subservient to men, and those women who are fertile are expected to serve essentially as breeding stock. Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” (1984) gives this notion a twist in that men are used as vessels to incubate the eggs of the insect-like alien species known as Tlic. However, while men may be impregnated against their will, the female Tlic attempt to obtain their voluntary participation by creating a loving environment and incorporating themselves into the structure of human families. In a quintessential example of cognitive estrangement in science fiction, the story forces men to experience sex and reproduction from the position of women in a patriarchal culture, while also recalling the particular position of black women slaves in the United States, who, like the men in the story, were often forced to carry the offspring of their masters.

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The humans of the postapocalyptic earth of Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy also submit to a reproductive partnership with an alien race, resulting in a gene-mixing that produces human-alien hybrids. The aliens, masters of genetic engineering, are very much in charge of the process, however, seeking to remove humanity’s natural (and highly destructive) tendency toward hierarchical behavior, which they see as the cause of the recent holocaust on earth. In the process they transgress all sorts of human gender boundaries. Though the cyberpunk fiction of the 1980s has typically been viewed as a mostly masculinist realm, cyberpunk did have important precursors in feminist science fiction, including The Female Man, Woman on the Edge of Time, and Sheldon/Tiptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973). However, while the “console cowboys” in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) tend to escape the body by “jacking in” to the feminized matrix of cyberspace, Sheldon/Tiptree’s female experiences a new sort of embodiment by remotely animating a cyborg body. Meanwhile, though Pat Cadigan is the only woman associated with the original cyberpunk movement, writers such as Candas Jane Dorsey, Lisa Mason, Kathy Acker, Melissa Scott, Maureen F. McHugh, Emma Bull, Laura Mixon, Nalo Hopkinson, Nicola Griffith, and Justina Robson have drawn on its conceits, often in a critical way. Piercy, meanwhile, consciously set her novel He, She, and It (1991) in opposition to Gibson’s perceived masculinism. Disembodied in Gibson, artificial intelligence in Piercy is entirely rooted in the technologically constructed body, unsettling the boundaries between human and machine. Melissa Scott’s characters in Trouble and Her Friends (1994) take pleasure in the fluid identities they can experience in cyberspace. Scott meanwhile joins Laura Mixon’s Glass Houses (1992) and Mary Rosenblum’s Chimera (1993) in feminist cyberpunk explorations of gay and lesbian identity, challenging the compulsory heterosexuality of cyberpunk. Indeed, an increasing number of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters have begun to populate science fiction texts in recent decades. Samuel R. Delany and John Varley have both established a history of radically deconstructing conventional notions of both gender and sexuality in their works, as in Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) and Varley’s Steel Beach (1992). The gay writer Geoff Ryman comments on the marginalization of gay/lesbian identities in The Child Garden (1989), which features a world where genetically engineered viruses educate the populace, eradicating homosexuality as “bad grammar.” Eleanor Arnason’s The Ring of Swords (1993) features an alien race for which homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is considered a gross deviation. On the other hand, the gay protagonist in Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang (1992) keeps his orientation under wraps, as he lives in a near-future America dominated by a People’s Republic of China that is intolerant of homosexuality.

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Gwyneth Jones has also explored gender and sexuality in interesting ways. In Life (2004), for example, human sexuality is set to be transformed by the agency of a virus that eliminates the Y chromosome, the central biological reason to view gender in terms of a binary opposition. Men will still exist, however, and the text is skeptical that patriarchy will actually be overcome by the transformation. Jones also explores the malleability of gender in her critically acclaimed “Aleutian” trilogy, an unusual alien-invasion narrative in which the alien Aleutians are all both male and female and thus have no real concept of gender difference when they arrive on earth. As a whole, the trilogy explores gender difference as one aspect of the more general process of othering, among other things paralleling the ideologies of colonialism and sexism. THE FOREVER WAR (1974). Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War can be read both as a parodic response to military science fiction, such as Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and as a defamiliarizing commentary on the Vietnam War, in which Haldeman had served. Here, interplanetary war is facilitated by the discovery of “collapsars,” essentially stable wormholes that allow near-instantaneous travel over huge distances. On the other hand, travel to and from the collapsars must still take place at sub-light speeds, though spacecraft in the universe of this work can travel at relativistic, nearlight speeds. As a result, soldiers who are involved in campaigns in outer space may age only a few months or years, but, when they return, they discover that decades or centuries have passed on earth. Thus, like veterans of the Vietnam War, they return to a home that has changed so much it is virtually unrecognizable. This situation only adds to the confusion of the war itself. Despite the high technology featured in the text, much of the fighting is virtually hand-tohand. It is bloody, dirty, and confusing, anything but heroic. The confusion is further increased by the fact that the war is being waged against the mysterious and alien “Taurans,” about whom the earth soldiers know virtually nothing. As the book proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that no one seems to understand exactly what the war is about, though it has long been justified on earth as a defensive reaction to Tauran attacks on earth ships. In the end, we discover that the war was actually started by humans, driven both by the warlike aspirations of a miltiary elite and by a belief that an intragalactic war would be good for the economy. Indeed, at the height of the conflict, nearly half the jobs on the earth are related to the war, making earth’s economy entirely dependent on keeping the war going. Subsequently, the inability to communicate with the Taurans (who have a single collective consciousness and are entirely unable to communicate with earth-style individuals) does keep the war going, at least until earth is itself finally inhabited entirely by clones of a single individual who also share a

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collective mind and can therefore communicate with the Taurans at last. This quickly leads to peace after a war that has lasted from 1997 to 3138, though the book features a single protagonist, William Mandella, who has aged only a few years during the war due to the amount of time he has spent at relativistic speeds. See also SPACE OPERA. “FOUNDATION” TRILOGY (1951–1953). Comprising Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy is among the best-known and most respected sequences in sf history. Indeed, in 1966, the trilogy won a special Hugo Award as the greatest sf novel series of all time. Most of the content of the original trilogy of novels had originally been published in story form in Astounding Science-Fiction between 1942 and 1950. A sort of science fiction reinscription of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (set in the distant future), the “Foundation” novels detail a time after the collapse of the mighty Galactic Empire plunges the galaxy into a new Middle Ages. But the novels ultimately show faith in the beneficial effects of science and technology in expanding the possibilities of humankind. Asimov later returned to the world of the trilogy to write four more novels in the sequence: Foundation’s Edge (1982), Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988), and the posthumously published Forward the Foundation (1993). As testimony to the central place of the “Foundation” series in American science fiction, an additional trilogy of “Foundation” novels was produced after Asimov’s death, building on his ideas and written by some of the leading American sf writers. These volumes include Gregory Benford’s Foundation’s Fear (1997), Greg Bear’s Foundation and Chaos (1998), and David Brin’s Foundation’s Triumph (1999). FRANKENSTEIN (1818). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, one of the masterpieces of British Romanticism, is also often regarded as the first modern science fiction novel. A story of the hubris of scientific inquiry, it involves a brilliant scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who cannot resist the urge to try to create an artificial human, which he succeeds in doing, though the resultant creature is huge and hideous. Seeing the creature, Frankenstein is repulsed, leaving the unfortunate, rejected creature to go forth into a world where it is sure to be feared and misunderstood. After various misadventures, the creature, whose appearance belies the fact that he is actually quite intelligent and articulate, again encounters Frankenstein and demands that the scientist make a female mate for him. Frankenstein agrees, but then destroys the second creature for fear that the two creatures will breed and found a new race that will be a threat to humanity. In

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response, the creature murders Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth, and then is pursued by Frankenstein to the North Pole. However, the scientist fails to apprehend the creature, and has to be rescued in the Arctic by a scientific expedition headed by Captain Robert Walton, though the scientist dies soon afterward. Before dying, however, Frankenstein tells his story to Walton, providing the narrative of the novel. As the book ends, the creature remains at large. Frankenstein has proved one of the most enduring narratives in Western literature, and is still widely taught in British and American university literature courses. It has also become a staple of popular culture, largely through numerous film adaptations, including James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1934), two of the founding texts of the modern horror film. FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION. There is a long history of speculative fiction in French literature, including the works of such crucial writers as François Rabelais and of a number of writers of utopian narratives such as Louis-Sebastien Mercier’s L’an 2440 (1771, English translation Memoirs of the Year 2500). Also important is the conte philosophique, or philosophical tale, which has most typically taken the form, in French literature, of the fantastic voyage. The best-known writer of such voyages, of course, is the ninetenth-century French writer Jules Verne, who provided an especially important contribution to the development of the modern genre of science fiction, of which Verne is still widely recognized as a founding figure. Since that time France has continued to produce science fiction and to attract readers of science fiction from other countries, though actual production of sf in France has largely remained secondary on the world stage, though the work of J-H Rosny aîné gained particular attention in the early years of the 20th century, contributing to an upsurge in the production of science fiction in the years just prior to World War I. Occasional works of French science fiction since World War II have gained widespread visibility outside of France, as in the case of Pierre Boulle’s La planète des singes (1963, English translation Planet of the Apes, 1963), which became especially well known because of its 1968 American film adaptation. Similarly, Robert Merle’s somewhat-farfetched Un animal doué de raison (1967) was adapted to American film in 1973 as The Day of the Dolphin. In general, however, French science fiction since World War II has had its market primarily confined to France itself, while having to compete for readers with sf from outside France. French sf writers who have produced important work, at least in the Francophone market, include Pierre Barbet, Philippe Curval, Michel Jeury, and Gérard Klein. Among contemporary French sf writers, the one who is best known outside of France is probably Michel

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Houellebecq, whose work is better known for the controversies it has engendered than for the work itself, though his La possibilité d’une île (2005, English translation, The Possibility of an Island) is an unusually effective dystopian narrative. FUTURE HISTORY. A future history is a projected future in which a related series of science fiction stories or novels (usually by a single author but sometimes by multiple authors) is set in such a way as to remain consistent with the basic framework of the projected history. Neil R. Jones, who began publishing interlinked stories of this kind in 1930, is often seen as the first author of a future history. However, the origin of the term is generally associated with the work of Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote a series of such interconnected stories for John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding ScienceFiction, leading Campbell to coin the term “future history” to describe those stories in 1941. Many of Heinlein’s later works were more loosely connected to this same future history as well. Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” stories for Astounding also map out a substantial future history. Later authors such as Larry Niven and C. J. Cherryh have constructed substantial future histories as well. Individual works that outline a substantial vision of the “history” of the future are also sometimes labeled as future histories, especially if they highlight historical development over time. Historian W. Warren Wagar’s A Short History of the Future (1989) is a classic example of this kind of future history. See also “FOUNDATION” TRILOGY (1951–1953). FUTURIANS. The Futurians were a New York–based science fiction fan group, organized in 1938, that went on to become an important force in the sf world as many of its members became important authors or editors. Members included Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Judith Merril, James Blish, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Donald A. Wollheim, and Robert A. W. Lowndes. Many of the group’s members were also active in leftist political organizations (including the American Communist Party), and the group is generally associated with leftist political ideas, though some members, such as Blish, were notably more conservative. The group disbanded in 1945 over a dispute between Blish and Wollheim in which Blish eventually sued Wollheim for slander, but former members of the group remained friends for years and sometimes worked together on various projects, including the classic sf novel The Space Merchants (1953), which was coauthored by Pohl and Kornblum. See also FANDOM.

G GAIMAN, NEIL (1960– ). Born in Portchester, Hampshire, the English author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman began his writing career as a journalist, but first gained prominence as a writer of comics. Gaiman has written a number of comics, but his greatest fame as a comics writer has come from The Sandman, a remarkable series that ran from 1988 to 1996. Since that time, Gaiman has worked in the related genre of the illustrated novel, with works such as Stardust (1998) and The Dream Hunters (1999), the latter of which is set in the Stardust universe. More recently, Gaiman has turned his attention to the writing of novels, screenplays, and teleplays. Among his most prominent works after Sandman are the novels American Gods (2001, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus fantasy awards for Best Novel), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005, winner of the British and Locus fantasy awards for Best Novel), and The Graveyard Book (2008, winner of the Hugo award for Best Novel and a Newbery Medal for Outstanding Children’s Book). In television, he scripted the BBC miniseries Neverwhere (1996), while American Gods is, as of 2014, being developed as a series for HBO. In film, he has scripted or co-scripted adaptations of Stardust (2007) and Coraline (2009), as well as the films MirrorMask (2005) and Beowulf (2007); he also edited the English-language script for Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1999). GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION. Galaxy Science Fiction was an American science fiction magazine published from 1950 to 1980. Founded by the Italian company World Editions and initially edited by H. L. Gold, Galaxy was conceived as an alternative to Astounding Science-Fiction for both serious writers and serious readers of science fiction, many of whom were growing disillusioned with Astounding due to its growing emphasis on stories featuring psi-powers and pseudo-science. Under Gold’s editorship, which lasted until 1961, and that of successor Frederik Pohl, which lasted until 1969, Galaxy supplanted Astounding as the leading magazine of science fiction. In the 1960s in particular, its interest in socially engaged and satirical fiction and its willingness to accommodate formal experimentation were more in 117

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step with the times than was the tenor of Astounding under the increasingly conservative John W. Campbell Jr. Pohl broadened the scope of the magazine considerably, including a wide range of types of stories. Another notable feature of the magazine was a science column authored by the German American science writer and historian Willy Ley. GENDER. See FEMINISM AND GENDER. GENERATIONAL STARSHIP. See WORLD SHIP. GENETIC ENGINEERING. Genetic engineering involves the planned modification of the genetic makeup of an organism in order to change the characteristics of that organism in some fashion. It may involve the design and production of entirely new organisms or simply the modification of existing organisms through the addition or removal of genetic material. Speculation on the possibilities of genetic engineering in science fiction has particularly grown since 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick first postulated the double-helix model of DNA, which was verified by subsequent research and which makes it clear that intervention in genetic structure is possible. However, notions of the planned modification of the characteristics of humans and other organisms goes back at least to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). The idea was used in pulp stories by Clement Fézandie in the early 1920s and was fairly well developed by the time of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), in which human infants are “manufactured” to have the characteristics suitable to their planned position in society. Robert A. Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon (1942 as by Anson McDonald, book form as by Heinlein 1948) describes a society that makes extensive use of selective breeding and genetic engineering proper. A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan (1940, book form 1946) employs the term “gene transformation.” The term “genetic engineering” itself was coined in the late 1940s and thus predates the discovery of DNA. It was apparently first used in sf in Jack Williamson’s Dragon Island (1951). One of the most effective early uses of the motif of genetic engineering can be found in James Blish’s “Pantropy” tales of the 1950s, in which humans attempt to colonize other planets not by engineering their environments to be hospitable to humans by terraforming, but by the opposite strategy of modifying human beings by genetic engineering to be able to better live in the environments. These stories were collected in The Seedling Stars (1957). The unconventionally hermaphroditic inhabitants of the planet in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) were apparently genetically engineered to be that way as an experiment by advanced space farers from

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the planet Hain, who might have performed a variety of genetic experiments around the galaxy. Additional stories, especially involving cloning as a form of genetic engineering, appeared over time, but genetic engineering in its modern form became more prominent in the 1980s, as technologies for realworld genetic manipulation began more and more to become realities. Since that time, the motif has been featured in a number of sf subgenres. The possibilities of genetic engineering are thoughtfully explored in The Third Millennium (1985), by Brian Stableford and David Langford, as well as in Stableford’s subsequent stories in the same future history. Competing techniques for becoming posthuman are central to Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985), as the genetically modified Shapers square off against the computer-enhanced Mechanists. The hero of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985) is a product of genetic engineering, while genetic engineering sometimes features prominently in the Alliance-Union space operas of C. J. Cherryh, especially Cyteen (1988). Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosigan Saga” deals centrally with issues such as cloning and other forms of genetic engineering, among many other motifs. Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy (1987–1989) features the Oankali, a race of alien “gene traders” with highly advanced genetic engineering capabilities, including the construction of a variety of biotechnologies, as well as the merging of the characteristics of different species. In particular, they create human-Oankali hybrids that they see as the key to the survival of human genes in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, meanwhile finding human genetics particularly fascinating because of the human ability to generate cancers. Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden (1989) features a world where genetically engineered viruses can be added to human brains to educate the populace; other technologies are featured as well, including one for the eradication of cancer that has the unexpected side effect of radically shortening human lifespans. Genetic engineering is central to Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013), which deal with a catastrophic event of bioterrorism that has wiped out most of humanity, while the perpetrator of this event has also produced a new genetically engineered variant of humanity that survives, immune to the contagion. Particularly imaginative is Justina Robson’s Natural History (2003) and Living Next-Door to the God of Love (2005), in which advanced techniques of genetic engineering allow humans to be modified in numerous ways, including becoming a variety of technological devices (such as space ships), radically altering the definition of what it means to be human and causing a rift being the modified (the “Evolved”) and the unmodified (the “Unevolved”). The title character of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009), set in 23rd-century Thailand, is a genetically engineered artificial woman. See also MUTANTS.

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GERMAN SCIENCE FICTION. About the same time that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was initiating the modern tradition of science fiction in Great Britain (but with dashes of horror), E. T. A. Hoffmann’s stories “Der Sandmann” (1816) and “Automata” (1818) were doing the same in Germany with their invocation of robot-like machinery with demonic properties. German specualtive fiction, meanwhile, actually goes back much farther, including a number of 18th-century works with outer-space settings. German literature developed its own sf forms during the 1920s and 1930s as the genre took shape in the pulp magazines of the United States, and important German writers such as Alfred Döblin—in Berge, Meere und Giganten (1924)—experimented with sf. Germany was at the forefront of the development of sf in film in the 1920s, the expressionist style of such films as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) being well suited to nonrealist storytelling. Over the years, Germany also published popular sf in its own distinctive format—the Heftroman, a pulp booklet that is somewhere between U.S. pulp magazines and paperback books. The best known and most successful of these is the “Perry Rhodan” series of space-opera adventures (intended for a young adult audience), featuring the hero of the title. Created in 1961 by K. H. Scheer and Clark Darlton, the series has remained in publication ever since and is nearing the publications of its 3,000th weekly issue as of this writing. The franchise has also produced a number of spinoffs and associated merchandise over the years. In the years between 1945 and 1990, East German and West German sf traditions were essentially separate, with a particularly rich fan culture supporting the genre in the West, including the founding of the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis in 1985 by the German Science Fiction Club to recognize achievement in sf writing. Meanwhile, reunification has brought the two strands back together since that time, mostly in magazines and anthologies published by small presses. Post-reunification sf in Germany received a boost from the appearance of the magazine Alien Contact in 1991, providing a venue for the professionalization of sf writing in Germany. The most prominent German sf writer of the post-reunification period is Andreas Eschbach, who began his career as a successful novelist with Die Haarteppichknüpfer (1995; English translation, The Carpet Makers, 2005), which is a space opera set in a universe modeled on the Roman Empire. Eschbach’s Kelwitt’s Stern (“Kelwitt’s Star,” 1999) and Quest (2001) are both set in the same universe as is Haarteppichknüpfer. Eschbach’s Ausgebrannt (“Burned,” 2007) is an especially effective cautionary tale about the consequences of the eventual exhaustion of the earth’s oil supply. Eschbach has won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis for Best Novel four times, more than any other author. However, two of the past three of these awards have

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been won by Karsten Kruschel, a novelist who was born and grew up in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), where he received a doctorate for his studies in the field of science fiction. GERNSBACK, HUGO (1884–1967). The American pulp magazine editor and publisher Hugo Gernsback is widely regarded as one of the founding pioneers of science fiction as a genre, a status that is annually recognized in the Hugo Awards, probably the industry’s most prestigious awards. Born in Luxembourg, Gernsback immigrated to the United States in 1905, initially working primarily as an early electronics entrepreneur, hoping to get in on the ground floor of the then-new radio business. By 1908, however, he had moved into magazine publishing with the debut of Modern Electrics, the world’s first magazine of radio and electronics. Another of his early magazines, The Electrical Experimenter (launched in 1913) was renamed Science and Invention in 1920, the new name reflecting a broader interest in scientific topics that also included science fiction stories (he preferred the term “scientification”), some of the earliest of which were written by Gernsback himself. His most important production as a writer was the novel Ralph 124C 41+, published in Modern Electrics as a twelve-part serial in 1911, then in book form in 1925. Questionable in a literary sense, the novel foresaw a number of coming technological advances and influenced many subsequent stories. While continuing to be active in the radio business (in 1925 he founded radio station WRNY, which also participated in the early growth of television), Gernsback launched the first magazine devoted to science fiction with the initial publication of Amazing Stories in 1926. This magazine is generally seen as the birthplace of science fiction as a distinct, modern genre, and it initially dominated the field, though business troubles caused Gernsback to lose control of his existing magazines by 1929. However, he quickly launched two new magazines devoted to sf, Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories, which were soon merged into Wonder Stories, which remained a major force in the growth of pulp magazines under Gernsback’s control until 1936, when it was sold to a competitor. The sf pulps would then come to be dominated by John W. Campbell Jr. and his Astounding Science-Fiction. Gernsback would briefly return to science fiction in 1953 with the debut of the magazine Science Fiction Plus, but he would never again be an important force in the field. Gernsback was also central, via his Stellar Publishing Corporation, in the publishing of a number of stand-alone pamphlets that stand as forerunners to the boom in sf paperback book publishing of the 1950s. A total of 18 of these pamphlets, constituting the “Science Fiction Series,” were published between 1929 and 1932. Most consisted of a single long story, though five were

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anthologies of shorter stories. The works in this series are not, in general, well regarded by critics, and many of them might have been made up of materials that had been rejected by Gernsback’s magazines. Gernsback’s career was marked by questionable business practices and shabby treatment of authors, and his magazines tended to feature highly didactic stories of poor literary quality. Nevertheless, his importance as the first to recognize—and substantially exploit—the commercial possibilities of sf as a genre should not be underestimated. GERROLD, DAVID (1944– ). The American writer David Gerrold got his career in science fiction off to a fast start when he penned the episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” which ran on the original Star Trek television series in 1967, subsequently becoming one of the most beloved episodes of the entire Star Trek franchise. He moved into novel writing in 1971 by coauthoring, with Larry Niven, The Flying Sorcerors. His solo novel When HARLIE Was One (1972) deals with an artificial intelligence and was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel. Similar nominations were received by Gerrold’s time-travel novel The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), perhaps his single best-known work. Subsequently, Gerrold wrote additional television scripts, as well as an original Star Trek novel, The Galactic Whirlpool (1980), and a novelization of the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint” (1987). He also authored several significant series of science fiction novels, beginning with Yesterday’s Children (1972, aka Starhunt). Revised in 1980, this novel would become the first in his “Star Wolf” series of space operas, which now includes four novels and a proposed adaptation as a television series. A Matter for Men (1983) would become the first volume in the alien-invasion series “The War Against the Chtorr.” Four novels in that series have appeared as of 2014, and three more are projected. A recent young adult trilogy, “The Dingilliad”—which comprises Jumping off the Planet (2000), Bouncing off the Moon (2001), and Leaping to the Stars (2002)—is something of an homage to the juvenile sf novels of Robert A. Heinlein. They were published together as The Far Side of the Sky in 2002. The trilogy is notable for its positive, matter-of-fact treatment of homosexuality, a characteristic that marks much of the later work of Gerrold, who is openly gay. The semi-autobiographical novel The Martian Child (2002, expanded from a 1994 novelette) is not really sf, but it does feature a single gay science fiction writer who adopts a son, as did Gerrold. It was made into a feature film, Martian Child, in 2007, with the father a heterosexual.

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GIBSON, WILLIAM (1948– ). Widely known as the leading writer of cyberpunk science fiction, William Gibson was born in Conway, South Carolina, and is still a U.S. citizen, though he has spent most of his life as a resident of Canada, where he fled in 1967 to avoid the Vietnam-era draft. Gibson has published science fiction short stories since 1972, many of which are collected in Burning Chrome (1986). These early stories, which often dealt with the impact of cybernetic technologies on human beings, built toward the publication, in 1984, of Neuromancer, Gibson’s first novel and the book that is widely regarded as the central work of cyberpunk. Here, Gibson draws on the characteristic style and attitude of hard-boiled detective fiction to explore a near future in which high-crime urban squalor mixes uneasily with high-tech virtual reality (much of the action takes place within “Cyberspace,” a term that Gibson coined) and cybernetic human enhancement. Neuromancer became the first volume of the “Sprawl” trilogy, which was completed by Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). Gibson is generally regarded, along with his sometimes-collaborator Bruce Sterling, as one of the iconic figures of the cyberpunk movement. Meanwhile, his collaboration with Sterling, The Difference Engine (1990), is typically seen as a founding text in the “steampunk” movement, with its vision of an alternative Victorian England in which mechanical computer technology is a crucial factor. Gibson continued his work in sf with a second group of novels, the “Bridge” trilogy, which includes Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). The dystopian narrative of this trilogy depicts a dystopian very-near future driven by cybernetic technologies and pop culture. By the time of Pattern Recognition (2003), which satirizes consumerist media culture, Gibson shifted his setting entirely from the future to the present. It has sometimes been described as the first major literary work to have been impacted by the 11 September 2001 bombings of the World Trade Center, to which it alludes several times. Spook Country (2007) is an espionage thriller surrounding the Blue Ant marketing company, again set in the present and again heavily concerned with contemporary media culture, as is its sequel, Zero History (2010). GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS (1860–1935). Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American sociologist and social activist, as well as a pioneering writer. She is perhaps best known for her short story “The Yellow Wall Paper” (1892), the hallucinatory aspects of which have something in common with some science fiction. From 1911 to 1916, she published a trilogy of feminist utopian narratives in Forerunner, an obscure feminist magazine published by Gilman herself. These serially published novels included Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). In 1979, Herland, which effectively describes an all-female utopia free of masculinist impulses, was finally published in book form, becoming an im-

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portant text to second-wave feminism, still gaining strength at that time. It is that text for which Gilman is primarily known in the realm of science fiction, though With Her in Ourland, its sequel, was finally published in book form in 1997. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. GOLDEN AGE. The Golden Age of science fiction is a nostalgic term originally used by fans to refer to the period beginning with John. W. Campbell Jr.’s ascent to the editorship of Astounding Science-Fiction at the end of 1937 and continuing through the first years of the subsequent development of the genre, ending somewhere between 1941 and 1946, depending on the source. It suggests a period when the genre was young and exploratory, as were its readers, and when many of the key writers of the genre, including such figures as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein, were themselves young writers just beginning to find their voices. While the period was dominated by Astounding and other pulps, it suggests a rise in the literary quality and scientific validity of the stories relative to the ones that had appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories and other earlier pulps. Nevertheless, the stories of the period were informed by a sense of wonder and of impending possibility. Some see the Golden Age as having ended with the entry of the United States into World War II, ending this period of excited optimism; others see it as having ended after the war, when a revolution in paperback publishing shifted the center of science fiction publishing from the pulps to paperback books. However, some—such as Robert Silverberg—have even referred to the 1950s as the true Golden Age of science fiction, as this explosion in paperback publishing reached full force, offering new opportunities for writers. GREENLAND, COLIN (1954– ). The British science fiction writer Colin Greenland has also made considerable contributions as a critic of science fiction. Having received his doctorate in science fiction at Oxford University, Greenland published his dissertation in revised form as The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the UK “New Wave” (1983). He also published three fantasy novels in the 1980s, including Daybreak on a Different Mountain (1984), The Hour of the Thin Ox (1987), and Other Voices (1988). He then made what is probably his most important contribution as an author of sf with the “Tabitha Jute/Plenty” sequence of space operas, which began with Take Back Plenty (1990), a novel that won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the BSFA Award. It was followed in the sequence by In the Garden: The Secret Origin of the Zodiac Twins (1991), Seasons of Plenty (1995), and Mother of Plenty (1998).

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These stories, focused on the far-ranging capabilities of the world ship “Plenty,” participated in a revival of the space opera form in Great Britain that helped to initiate the British Boom. Along the way, Greenland also published Harm’s Way (1993), which envisions a spacegoing alternate history in which great sailing ships travel the solar system much as they had traveled earth’s oceans in our own 19th century. Greenland’s other critical work includes the editing (along with Eric S. Rabkin and George E. Slusser) of an essay collection, Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future (1987), as well as the volume Michael Moorcock: Death Is No Obstacle (1992), a book-length interview with Moorcock. GRIFFITH, NICOLA (1960– ). Born in Leeds, England, Nicola Griffith has spent most of her career as a writer in the United States and is now a U.S. citizen. Although Griffith’s work resists easy categorization, her fiction does fall into the recognizable categories of science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction. Griffith’s first novel, Ammonite (1993), winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, established her as an important new voice in science fiction and as a worthy successor to the feminist utopian narratives of the 1970s. Griffith’s Nebula Award–winning second novel, Slow River (1995), incorporates elements of cyberpunk, featuring a near-future setting in which the wealthy daughter of a powerful family is kidnapped, then escapes and learns to survive in the criminal underworld. As with Ammonite, lesbianism is the norm for the major characters, but Griffith’s matter-of-fact presentation suggests that sexual orientation is only one aspect of her characters’ personalities—these are not “coming out” narratives, but narratives featuring characters who happen to be lesbians. With the sequence The Blue Place (1998), Stay: A Novel (2002), and Always (2007), Griffith moved into the realm of detective fiction. Griffith has also written numerous essays and much shorter fiction, including the Nebula Award–winning novella “Yaguara” (1994), an erotic tale about two women trying to survive in the Belize jungle amid shapeshifting jaguars. She is also coeditor (with Stephen Pagel) of a three-volume series of anthologies titled Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (1997), Science Fiction (1998), and Horror (2001) that explore gay and lesbian issues and have won several awards. Her latest novel, Hild (2013), is a historical fiction set in the seventh century. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. GUNN, JAMES E. (1923– ). Born in Kansas City, Missouri, James Edwin Gunn went on to become an important writer, anthologizer, and scholar of science fiction. He began publishing sf stories at the end of the 1940s, initial-

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ly under the name “Edwin James.” His first novels, Star Bridge (with Jack Williamson) and This Fortress World, are space operas, both published in 1955. Station in Space (1958) is an interrelated collection of short stories. He is perhaps best known as the editor of the six-volume anthology series The Road to Science Fiction (1977–1998), which collectively illustrates the historical evolution of science fiction from ancient precedents to the 1990s. Educated at the University of Kansas, Gunn joined the faculty there in 1958, ultimately becoming a professor of English and the director of their Center for Science Fiction Studies, which pioneered in the serious academic study of science fiction. Now an emeritus professor, he continues to direct the center, which administers the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. As an academic, he has written a number of studies of science fiction, including Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction (1975) and Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982), the latter of which won a Hugo Award for best nonfiction work. Recent works in this area include Inside Science Fiction (2006) and Reading Science Fiction (2008, with Matthew Candelaria and Marleen S. Barr). Gunn’s novels are typically woven together from shorter fictions, including the would-be utopian narrative The Joy Makers (1961), whose hedonistic utopia ultimately goes wrong; The Immortals (1964), whose eponymous mutants must hide out from the rest of humanity, who wish to use their blood to attain immortality for themselves; the postapocalyptic narrative The Burning (1972); and The Listeners (1972), which details the quest to detect signals from distant alien intelligences. In 1971–1972, Gunn was the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); he served as the president of the Science Fiction Research Association in 1980–1982. For his overall body of work in various areas, Gunn was named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 2007.

H HALDEMAN, JOE (1943– ). A native of Oklahoma City, Joe Haldeman spent a peripatetic childhood that saw him grow up in places ranging from Puerto Rico to Alaska. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in astronomy in 1967, but was drafted into the military that year, subsequently serving as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was wounded in action. His first novel, War Year (1972), is based on his experience in the war, which also provided important background to his first major work of science fiction, The Forever War (1974, revised and preferred edition 1997), an antiwar satire that won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Haldeman has been prolific since that time, with such novels as the future spy adventure All My Sins Remembered (1977) and Mindbridge (1976), a rich work that combines such motifs as space exploration, alien encounters, and psychic powers while employing modernist narrative techniques influenced by John Dos Passos and John Brunner (the book is dedicated to both). Other early works include two Star Trek novels—Planet of Judgment (1977) and World without End (1979). Worlds (1981), Worlds Apart (1983), and Worlds Enough and Time (1992) constitute a sequence that features a female protagonist in a near-future Earth that is threatened by, and then suffers, a nuclear holocaust. The Hugo and Nebula–winning novella “The Hemingway Hoax” (1991) involves time travel and parallel worlds, as well as the fake Hemingway manuscript of the title. The Forever War was eventually followed by a related work, Forever Peace (1997), which again won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. In addition, Forever Free (1999) is a more direct sequel to The Forever War. Haldeman won another Nebula Award for Camouflage (2004), an alien-encounter narrative in which the discovery of an alien artifact leads humanity to the discovery that immortal, shape-shifting aliens have lived on Earth for millions of years. In Old Twentieth (2005), immortal humans in the future battle boredom with virtual reality adventures (often set in the past), until a twist in the plot threatens to make humans mortal again. The Accidental Time Machine (2007) features a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of

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Technology (where Haldeman teaches creative writing) who accidentally invents a time machine and then has various adventures in the future, including encounters with an artificial intelligence and religious zealots. HAMILTON, EDMOND (1904–1977). Born in Youngstown, Ohio, the American writer Edmond Hamilton began his career as a science fiction writer with the publication, in 1926, of his story “The Monster God of Mamurth” in Weird Tales. Along with figures such as H. P. Lovecraft, Hamilton quickly became one of the key contributors to that magazine, publishing nearly 80 different stories in Weird Tales between 1926 and 1948. His story “Crashing Sons” (1928) was the first of the large-scale space operas that would become his trademark. It was quickly followed by a related six-story sequence, “Tales of the Interstellar Patrol.” The science of these stories was often questionable, but the sense of wonder was strong. A number of his early stories were compiled in the volume The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror (1936), which has some claim to be the first book-length compilation of science fiction stories, though these stories tended to straddle the boundary between sf and horror. Most of Hamilton’s writing during this period was for magazines, including the writing of a number of formulaic “Captain Future” young adult stories, aimed at teenage boys, in which the super scientist of the title battles a variety of sinister foes. In the mid-1940s, Hamilton also wrote for DC Comics, including work on several Superman stories. After World War II (and after his 1946 marriage to Leigh Brackett), Hamilton produced more sophisticated and stylistically modern adult-oriented stories, though many remained rooted in prewar space-opera conventions. He did, however, work in other modes, including City at World’s End (1950, book form 1951), in which a small city is propelled into a future in which a dying earth is threatened by alien invasion, and The Haunted Stars (1960), in which humans attempt to unravel a mystery on the moon. Hamilton’s postwar space operas include The Star Kings (1947, book form 1949), which was followed by the interlinked story collection Return to the Stars (1970) to make the “Star Kings” sequence. His last sequence of space operas was the “Starwolf” sequence of novels, comprising The Weapon from Beyond (1967), The Closed Worlds (1968), and World of the Starwolves (1968), published together in an omnibus volume in 1982 as Starwolf. HAMILTON, PETER F. (1960– ). Known for his massive space operas, the British writer Peter F. Hamilton began publishing science fiction with the story “Bodywork” in 1990. His first series of novels was a trilogy that featured the psi-powered detective Greg Mandel, Mindstar Rising (1993), A Quantum Murder (1994), and The Nano Flower (1995). Set in a near-future

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Great Britain, these novels take place in a world plagued by climate change and ruled by a dystopian left-wing government. Hamilton followed with the more characteristic “Night’s Dawn” trilogy, comprising The Reality Dysfunction (1996), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997), and The Naked God (1999), though these volumes have a complex publishing history, partly because they are so massive (more than 1,000 pages each) that they were broken into six volumes for publication in the United States. This broadly imaginative sequence includes a number of motifs, including a somewhatutopian galactic federation threatened by an army of zombies. A Second Chance at Eden (2004) is a collection of stories set in this same universe. Among Hamilton’s stand-alone novels, Watching Trees Grow (2000) is a murder mystery and a meditation on immortality, while Fallen Dragon (2001) in many ways reads as a condensation of many of the central ideas of “Night’s Dawn,” while its dark depiction of an ultra-capitalist future world driven by rapacious corporate greed complicates Hamilton’s reputation (gained largely from the Mandel novels) as a promoter of capitalism. The somewhat-comic Misspent Youth (2002) explores the perils of rejuvenation, and the more substantial Great North Road (2012) retains the murder-mystery elements of which Hamilton is fond, while envisioning the discovery of a means for instantaneous interstellar travel, enabling a galactic empire and universal affluence on earth. Other sequences include the “Commonwealth Saga,” comprising Pandora’s Star (2004) and Judas Unchained (2005), which are also large-scale space operas (set in the Night’s Dawn universe), as are the related volumes of the “Void” trilogy, set in the same universe over a thousand years later and comprising The Dreaming Void (2007), The Temporal Void (2008), and The Evolutionary Void (2010). HARAWAY, DONNA (1944– ). Critic and theorist Donna Haraway has been one of the most influential figures in the growing field of cultural studies of science. Formally trained as a biologist, Haraway quickly turned away from conventional biology and became more interested in the fundamental question of how biological knowledge is defined and attained. As such, she has addressed a number of crucial fundamental issues, turning later in her work to a particular focus on animal-rights issues; working from a scientific understanding of just how closely related humans are to other animals in a biological sense, she has been concerned with asking crucial questions about the cruelty and disregard with which humans have traditionally treated animals, which is, of course, closely related to the way humans treat each other as well. Still, by far Haraway’s best-known conceptualization, especially in the science fiction community, where it has been extremely influential, is her notion of “cyborg” identity, which involves a fluid, dynamic, hybrid notion

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of identities that escapes the definition of conventional fixed bourgeois expectations and is thus a useful model for traditionally subjugated groups, including women. This notion has also proved useful as a tool for investigating the boundary between the human and the technological that informs sf subgenres such as cyberpunk. In general, Haraway’s elaboration of the concept of cyborg identity, as well as other aspects of her work, has proved extremely suggestive for scholars of science fiction, so much so that Haraway won the 2011 Pilgrim Award, given by the Science Fiction Research Association in recognition of the cumulative importance of her contributions to science fiction scholarship. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. HARD SCIENCE FICTION. The designation “hard science fiction” is used to indicate sf that is focused on accurate scientific details and believable projections of future technological advances. The term was used at least as early as 1957, when it was employed by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell Jr.’s Islands of Space (1957), which was published in Astounding Science-Fiction. The term is often used in opposition to the designation “soft science fiction,” which focuses more on sociological implications and satirical commentary than on science and technology itself and is therefore less centrally concerned with scientific accuracy or technological credibility. Most of the leading figures of Golden Age science fiction—such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein—are generally thought of as writers of hard science fiction, while the New Wave of the 1960s is often seen as a turn in the direction of soft science fiction. Among more recent writers, Kim Stanley Robinson’s immense attention to accurate scientific and technological details epitomizes hard science fiction, yet his work is also among the most politically engaged in all of science fiction. Robinson’s work thus indicates the way in which much of the best science fiction includes elements of both hard and soft science fiction. HARRISON, HARRY (1925–2012). The American writer Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Stamford, Connecticut) started his career as an illustrator of science fiction comic books for EC comics. During the 1950s, he wrote a number of stories (beginning with “Rock Diver” in Worlds Beyond in 1951) for the pulps and for comic strips; he also served as an editor for several different magazines. He moved into novels with Deathworld, in 1961, but he is known primarily for his energetic (and often parodic) engagement with the space opera, especially in a series of 12 novels featuring his character “The Stainless Steel Rat” (aka James Bolivar DiGriz). These novels, which began with The Stainless Steel Rat (1961) and extended through The Stainless Steel Rat Returns (2010), feature a roguish protagonist

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(first introduced in a 1957 short story) who is in many ways the very opposite of the virtuous heroes of the pulps. A liar, thief, and con man, he nevertheless has a code of his own and tends to end up working on the side of the greater good, though sometimes unwittingly or unwillingly. In the midst of this series, Harrison published numerous other novels as well, including Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), which also spoofs spaceopera conventions and particularly serves as a parodic critique of the militarism of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). A series of five sequels in this series published in the early 1990s was written by others and edited by Harrison. Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), about a near-future rendered horrific by overpopulation, is also well known, though primarily because it was the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green. Also in the 1960s, Harrison joined with Brian W. Aldiss to found SF Horizons, a short-lived journal of academic sf criticism that might have been ahead of its time but that prefigured a great deal of later work in the field. He also edited, with Aldiss, a number of anthologies of sf stories during the 1960s and 1970s. Of his own novels during this period, Captive Universe (1969) is an interesting generation starship novel; Tunnel through the Deeps (1972) is an alternate history in which the American Revolution fails, strengthening the early British Empire; Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (1973) directly parodies E. E. “Doc” Smith; and Skyfall (1976) is a disaster thriller. In the early 1980s, Harrison wrote his “To the Stars” sequence, comprising Homeworld (1980), Wheelworld (1981), and Starworld (1981), which uses the space-opera adventure form to satirize contemporary life in both the United States and Great Britain. Another sequence from the 1980s, the “Eden” series, included West of Eden (1984), Winter in Eden (1986), and Return to Eden (1988); this series was an inventive alternate history (or perhaps alternate prehistory) in which dinosaurs avoid extinction and evolve to a point of technological sophistication by the time they encounter primitive humans with the looming Ice Age lurking in the background. Harrison’s production finally waned in the 1990s, though he did produce several interesting works, including The Turing Option (1992), co-written with artificial-intelligence scientist Marvin Minsky. Also, another interesting alternate-history series was the “Stars and Stripes” sequence, comprising Stars and Stripes Forever (1998), Stars and Stripes in Peril (2000), and Stars and Stripes Triumphant (2002), in which Britain joins the American Civil War in 1862—on the side of the South. Harrison was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2004 and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2009.

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HARRISON, M. JOHN (1945– ). The British writer M. John Harrison broke into science fiction early in the 1960s, when he was closely associated with New Worlds magazine and the New Wave in general. He published both stories and criticism (usually as Joyce Churchill) in New Worlds and served as one of its editors for a time. Much of his early fiction is collected in The Machine in Shaft Ten and Other Stories (1975). Many subsequent stories have been collected in The Ice Monkey and Other Stories (1983), Travel Arrangements (2000), and Things That Never Happen (2003). Harrison began writing novels in the early 1970s, with such early sf contributions as the postapocalyptic narrative The Committed Men (1971) and the anti–space opera The Centauri Device (1973). However, his most important work of that period moved toward fantasy, with the beginning of the “Viriconium” sequence in the novel The Pastel City (1971). Couched in a decidedly non-Tolkienesque vein, the works in this sequence have a farfuture urban setting (in the city of Viriconium) that is actually more typical of science fiction than of fantasy. A second volume in the sequence would not appear until 1980, with A Storm of Wings (1980), which is centrally concerned with an alien invasion, thus announcing a complete entanglement of fantasy and science fiction motifs—as well as a literary complexity—that would later come to be regarded as typical of the British Boom, of which Harrison is an important predecessor. In Viriconium (1982) completed the novels in the sequence, though there are also a number of “Viriconium” short stories, collected in Viriconium Nights (1984). The 1988 collection Viriconium includes these stories, plus In Viriconium, an omnibus edition of all four books, also entitled Viriconium, was published in Great Britain in 2000 and in the United States in 2005. All in all, the end-of-the-world feel of the “Viriconium” sequence is powerful. For a time, the sequence seemed to mark the end of Harrison’s major work as well, as subsequent novels—including The Course of the Heart (1991) and Signs of Life (1996)—seem of less importance. Between 1996 and 2001, Harrison also coauthored (as Gabriel King), with his former partner, Jane Johnson, a series of four fantasy novels about cats (the “Tag the Cat” series). In 2002, however, Harrison’s work entered a major new phase with the release of the inventive space opera Light, which won the James Tiptree Jr. Award. Its sequel, Nova Swing (2006), won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a third volume, Empty Space: A Haunting, was published in 2012, completing the much-acclaimed “Kefahuchi Tract” sequence, which helped to reenergize the space opera and to convert Harrison from one of the British Boom’s major forebears to one of its major practitioners.

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HEINLEIN, ROBERT A. (1907–1988). One of the pioneering figures of science fiction’s Golden Age, Robert A. Heinlein has been called the “dean of science fiction writers.” Heinlein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, though his subsequent military service was curtailed by a medical discharge due to tuberculosis in 1934. Much of the remainder of the 1930s was spent in leftist political activism, including support for Upton Sinclair’s unsuccessful bid to become governor of California in 1934 on a socialist platform. Heinlein himself unsuccessfully ran for the California Assembly in 1938 on a similar platform, with Sinclair’s support. He then turned to writing, beginning with his first story, “Life-Line,” which was published in John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction in 1939. Heinlein quickly became a regular contributor to Campbell’s magazine and a master of the short-story form, helping to move sf into the publishing mainstream, beginning in 1947, when “The Green Hills of Earth” appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Among Heinlein’s enduring contributions to science fiction was the mapping out of a consistent “future history” in which his early short stories are set. However, he is best remembered for his many important science fiction novels, a number of them written for juvenile audiences, beginning with Rocketship Galileo (1947), the basis for the 1950 film Destination Moon, for which Heinlein wrote the script. Heinlein’s first major adult novel was The Puppet Masters (1951), an alien-invasion narrative that serves as a thinly veiled warning about the dangers of a communist invasion of the U.S., marking the author’s turn to the political right via a staunch anticommunism during the peak years of the Cold War. Other key novels of the 1950s include the Hugo Award–winning political satire Double Star (1956), the timetravel narrative The Door into Summer (1957), and the Hugo-winning military science fiction novel Starship Troopers (1959, basis for the 1997 Paul Verhoeven film of the same title). Starship Troopers, though also a Hugo Award winner, was seen by many as an almost fascist celebration of militarism. However, Heinlein’s rightwing political vision was of a libertarian, rather than fascist variety, as can be seen in the Hugo Award–winning novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), which made Heinlein something of a hero among the 1960s counterculture, many of whose members celebrated it as an endorsement of mind-expanding drugs and free sex. The time-traveling postapocalyptic narrative Farnham’s Freehold (1964) was also controversial, seen by many as racist. Heinlein won still another Hugo Award for best novel for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), which provides perhaps the clearest picture of his political vision with its depiction of a lunar libertarian society that rebels against domination by Earthly bureaucracy. Heinlein continued to write and publish

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into the 1980s, and won additional best-novel Hugo nominations for Time Enough for Love (1973), Friday (1982), and Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984). HERBERT, FRANK (1920–1986). Born in Tacoma, Washington, the American writer Frank Herbert is best known for his novel Dune (1965), one of the best-selling and most widely read science fiction novels of all time. Herbert published his first sf story in 1952, then published his first novel, Under Pressure, in serial form in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1955. It was republished in book form in 1956 as The Dragon in the Sea. He became a figure of importance with the appearance of “Dune World,” serialized in Analog in 1964–1965, and “The Prophet of Dune,” serialized in the same magazine in 1965. The two were then combined in book form as the monumental Dune the next year. This highly successful novel then became the root of an entire franchise that produced five sequels by Herbert, including Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984), and Charter House of Dune (1985). These six novels have also been grouped in two omnibus volumes as The Great Dune Trilogy (1979) and The Second Great Dune Trilogy (1981). Herbert’s son Brian Herbert has, along with Kevin J. Anderson, authored additional sequels. Though none of his other work has received the attention garnered by the Dune series, Herbert also wrote a number of other sf novels, many focusing on the possibility of alternative forms of intelligence. For example, in The Green Brain (1966) mutated insects achieve a hive intelligence; Destination: Void (1966) centers on the construction of an artificial intelligence; and The Santaroga Barrier (1968) deals with the evolution of a higher-order intelligence in an isolated, somewhat utopian community. The “Pandora” sequence, a trilogy of novels written with Bill Ransom, is a follow-up to Destination: Void. It includes The Jesus Incident (1979), The Lazarus Effect (1983), and The Ascension Factor (1988). Other novels of note include The God Makers (1972), Hellstrom’s Hive (1973), The Dosadi Experiment (1977), and The White Plague (1982). Herbert was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2006. HIGH, PHILIP E. (1914–2006). The British writer Philip E. High is perhaps most distinguished by the fact that he worked full-time as a bus driver throughout his career as a science fiction writer, which he carried on as a side pursuit, before his retirement in 1979 allowed him to make writing his central vocation. High began publishing sf stories in 1955, after which an early story in the Scottish magazine Nebula Science Fiction won him that magazine’s “Top Discovery” award in 1956. He continued to build his name as a writer

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of short stories before moving to greater prominence with the appearance of his first sf novel, The Prodigal Sun (1964). A string of novels followed, many set couched in the form of dystopian narratives, though often with elements of technological optimism embedded as well, though the more positive elements of his fiction most typically involve some sort of psi powers that give individuals an ability better to understand the points of view of others. No Truce with Terra (1964) features an electrochemical alien invader that attempts to xenoform the earth to meet its needs; These Savage Futurians (1967) is a postapocalyptic narrative that featured a ruined earth scenario dotted with scattered enclaves of preserved civilization, while adding in a machine-constructed mini-factory that makes microscopic robots that can then be injected into humans for medical purposes, thus anticipating the later phenomenon of nanotechnology. Come, Hunt an Earthman (1973) sees the entire planet turned into a hunting preserve with humans as the prey. Many of High’s early short stories (originally published in magazines between 1956 and 1970) appear in the collection The Best of Philip E. High (2002); Step to the Stars (2004) is a collection of some of his later work. HOPKINSON, NALO (1960– ). Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Nalo Hopkinson spent time living in Trinidad, Guyana, and the United States before settling with her family in Toronto, Canada, and eventually moving to Los Angeles, where she now teaches at the University of California, Riverside. Hopkinson received a BA degree from Toronto’s York University in 1982 and a Master of Arts degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University in 1995. She began publishing science fiction short stories shortly after her tenure at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop at Michigan State University in 1995. Her work is distinctive for its innovative fusion of Afro-Caribbean folklore and culture with the conventions of science fiction and fantasy, as well as its sophisticated exploration of themes related to race and gender. Hopkinson has made important contributions as an editor and critic, in addition to writing fiction. Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Hopkinson’s first novel, won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award. Set in a near-future dystopian Toronto in which the inner city has been cordoned off by the government, it draws in Caribbean culture and dialects as well. Midnight Robber (2000) also draws on Caribbean cultural traditions, but it is built on a wider array of science fiction motifs, including artificial intelligence, interplanetary colonization, parallel universes, and alien contact. The novel was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, the Hugo Award, and the Nebula Award.

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Afro-Carribean narrative traditions have been especially central to Hopkinson’s story collections Skin Folk (2001) and Sister Mine (2013), her novels The Salt Roads (2003) and The New Moon’s Arms (2007), the teen novel The Chaos (2012), and her edited anthologies Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (2000) and Mojo: Conjure Stories (2003). Hopkinson has also coedited the anthologies So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004, with Uppinder Mehan) and Tesseracts 9 (2005, with Geoff Ryman), a compilation of Canadian science fiction and fantasy. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER; POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. HORROR. The genres of horror and science fiction have often intersected, as can be seen by the fact that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is widely regarded as a founding text of both genres, while both modern genres have been seen as growing out of the earlier Gothic mode. Meanwhile, the figure of the mad scientist is one of the staples of both genres, while the monsters that have haunted horror have often been produced as a result of science gone awry. Indeed, until science fiction began to emerge as an identifiable genre at the end of the 1920s, the two genres were almost entirely entangled. The genres began to diverge at that time, though important horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft wrote stories with some science fiction elements, while exerting a strong influence on other writers whose work was more clearly science fictional. Though more in cinema than in fiction, the 1950s were particularly notable for a variety of monsters (the Japanese Godzilla is the best known) that were produced due to the effects of radiation or other natural phenomena into which science might have unduly pried. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954), featuring vampires created by a mysterious contagion, was a key example of literature from the period that has become a key text in the history of both science fiction and horror. Subsequently, the immensely successful horror writer Stephen King has often employed numerous motifs from sf (as in the 1978 postapocalyptic narrative The Stand, revised and expanded in 1990); King has also written a number of texts (often as Richard Bachman) that are more properly science fiction than horror, such as the dystopian narrative The Running Man (1982). Highlighted by Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), horror would continue to be particularly prominent in sf cinema over the years, but it maintained a place in the fiction as well. Among British writers, Brian Stableford’s The Empire of Fear (1988) and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula (1992) and its sequels interestingly mix vampire tales with alternate history. Stableford has subsequently made horror with sf elements something of a specialty. Most recent-

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ly, the genre-crossing work that characterizes the British Boom has been led by the mixture of horror, fantasy, and science fiction that is crucial to the work of China Miéville. HOUELLEBECQ, MICHEL (1956– ). Born Michel Thomas, the French writer Michel Houellebecq has produced work in a number of areas, including an early biography of the American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. His first novel, Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994, translated into English as Whatever in 1998), was not science fiction but was a contemporary satire concerning sexual loneliness in the world of late capitalism. Les particules élémentaires (1998, translated into English in 2000 as Atomised in Great Britain and as The Elementary Particles in the U.S.) is also largely a a critical exploration on the soul-destroying nature of life in the modern world, though an important plot element involving cloning is revealed at the end of the novel, suggesting, among other things, the way in which the boundary between sf and other forms of literature was becoming increasingly porous by the end of the 20th century. These early novels drew both praise for their courage and criticism for their vulgarity in their graphic depictions of the emptiness of sexual life under capitalism. Plateforme (2001, Platform) was even more controversial, especially for its seeming endorsement of sex tourism and its apparently antiMuslim sentiments. Houellebecq turned in a more explicitly science fictional direction with La possibilité d’une île (2005, English translation, The Possibility of an Island), an unusually well-thought-out dystopian narrative. See also FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION. HUBBARD, L. RON (1911–1986). Born in Tilden, Nebraska, the American writer Lafayette Ron Hubbard began publishing numerous sf and fantasy stories in 1938. However, he is today best known as the founder of the Church of Scientology, which followed on his conceptualization of the notion of “Dianetics,” which itself grew out of his own emphasis on psi powers and the powers of the mind in general in his own fiction. Of his early science fiction work, the novel Final Blackout (1940, book form 1948) is perhaps best known, though its politics (ostensibly antifascist, but virtually fascist in their own right) seem a bit confused. Another novel serialized in 1940, Fear: An Outstanding Psychological Science Fiction Novel (book form 1957), also has some (minor) merit. Hubbard’s ideas got a considerable boost from the support of John W. Campbell Jr., who became interested in them. Campbell and his Astounding Science-Fiction (for sf) and Unknown (for fantasy) magazines had earlier published much of Hubbard’s fiction (some of it under pseudonyms), beginning with the story “The Dangerous Dimension” in July 1938 and ex-

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tending through a number of other stories, including serialized full-length novels. Campbell then published, in Astounding, a long nonfiction article in 1950, endorsing Dianetics as a form of psychotherapy that could uncover the latent, normally inaccessible powers of the human mind. Hubbard himself, however, broke with the Dianetics Foundation in 1952, founding the Church of Scientology based on his own understanding of the principles and promises of the technique. For years, Hubbard devoted most of his time to Scientology, which made him very wealthy, though he returned to sf with Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (1982), a space opera that looked back to Hubbard’s earlier days as a writer and failed to keep up with changes in the subgenre since then. This was followed by an immensely overblown 10-volume sequence collectively known as the “Mission Earth” series that appeared from 1985 to 1987, though the actual authorship of some of the volumes (half were published posthumously) has been questioned. HUGO AWARDS. The Hugo Awards are the best-known annual awards given for achievement in the realm of science fiction. Named for pioneering sf editor Hugo Gernsback and administered by the World Science Fiction Society, the Hugo Awards are given at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) each year. Voted on by registrants at that convention, the Hugos thus are essentially a fan-based award, though many attendees at the convention are themselves science fiction professionals. The Hugos were first awarded at the 11th Worldcon in 1953; there were no Hugos in 1954, but they resumed in 1955 and have been awarded every year since. Initially, the award was officially called the “Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award, with “Hugo” being an unofficial nickname; since 1992, however, the award has officially been called the Hugo Award. In recent years, Hugo nominees have often resided in the realm of fantasy more than sf, so that the award now spans both categories. Hugos are currently given out in 14 categories, several of which are fan awards (such as Best Fanzine, Best Fan Artist, and Best Fan Writer). Awards for professional work are given out for writers and artists in a variety of categories, including Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, Best Graphic Story, Best Dramatic Presentation, and Best Professional Editor, though the actual categories have changed over the years. Of the current categories, for example, only Best Novel and Best Professional Artist date all the way back to 1953. The Best Novel category is probably the most prestigious; the first such award went to Alfred Bester for The Demolished Man. As of 2013, the latest such award (given in 2012) went to Jo Walton for Among Others. Other recent winners of that award include Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, 2008), Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book, 2009), Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl, 2010),

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China Miéville (The City & the City, 2010), and Connie Willis (Blackout/ All Clear, 2011). Robert A. Heinlein received the award a record five times and was nominated a record 11 times. The concept of “Retro Hugos” was initiated in 1996 to allow the awarding each year of Hugos for works published in years in which a Worldcon was held (the first was in 1939, though the years 1942–1946 were skipped due to World War II), but no Hugos were given; Retro Hugos can be given for years 50, 75, or 100 years prior to the one in which they were given. So far they have been given for 1946, 1951, and 1954. See also FANDOM. HUXLEY, ALDOUS (1894–1963). The English writer Aldous Leonard Huxley, grandson of naturalist Thomas Henry Huxley, was a prominent novelist and satirist, known largely for his work outside of science fiction. Huxley achieved literary prominence on the basis of early satires such as the novels Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), and Point Counter Point (1928). However, his single best-known work resides comfortably within science fiction; indeed Brave New World (1932) is a dystopian narrative that is a founding text of that entire subgenre in its modern form. Ape and Essence (1948) is another dystopian satire, this time aimed at militarization and warmongering. Though less effective than Brave New World, this work, which features a nuclear holocaust, was one of the first major works to envision the potential disastrous consequences of a nuclear arms race. A further sf novel, Island (1962), is a largely utopian narrative that features positive portrayals of Eastern mysticism, drug use, and sexuality as keys to enlightenment and discovery, characteristics that understandably made the novel a favorite of the 1960s counterculture.

I I, ROBOT (1950). Most of the best of Isaac Asimov’s stories about robots from the 1940s were collected in a single volume, published as I, Robot (1950). Related in chronological order, the nine stories in I, Robot collectively cover the period from 1996 to 2052, relating a sort of future history of robots and their role in human society. The robots themselves are driven by “positronic brains” that become more sophisticated as the stories progress, beginning with relatively primitive (nonverbal) robots intended to perform various industrial and domestic chores and ending with sophisticated “Machines” with artificial intelligence that decide to assume rule of the earth for the good of humanity. The stories of I, Robot are connected by a frame narrative in which an unnamed journalist interviews Dr. Susan Calvin, the chief “robopsychologist” for U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men Inc., the dominant player in the robot industry featured in the stories. Calvin has been with U.S. Robot almost since its inception and is now nearing retirement, so that her career provides a sort of retrospective history of the company. There are also other recurring human characters, but human characterization is minimal, with the focus on the robots. The most important contribution of the text is its exposition of the “Three Laws of Robotics,” which govern the behavior of all robots. Intended to ensure that robots work for, not against humans, they also provide the basis for the robots to assume secret control of humanity’s affairs, on the premise that it would harm humans not to do so, given that robots are much better managers of these affairs than are the humans themselves. Many subsequent sf stories have drawn on these same laws, which have cast a long shadow over science fiction. These laws are, by definition, insurmountable in Asimov’s text, though there is some room for creative interpretation, an activity that is in fact central to many of the stories. Though the stories in I, Robot were initially published as early as 1940, the publication of the volume in 1950 was quite timely, occurring in the same year that Norbert Wiener published his book Cybernetics and A. M. Turing published Computer Machinery and Intelligence. Wiener, Turing, and Asimov all see the development of intelligent machines as an event with great 141

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positive potential—and all of their work provides important background to the later growth of stories about artificial intelligence and the eventual emergence of posthuman science fiction. Meanwhile, Asimov’s inherently benevolent robots enter into a long debate on the possible consequences of artificially created intelligences, which, since Frankenstein (1818), have often been depicted as sinister and dangerous to mankind. Indeed, Asimov’s faith in the positive benefits of technology in general still stands as an important landmark in science fiction, a genre that has often been highly suspicious of technology. ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE. See ASIMOV’S SCENCE FICTION. THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU (1896). One of the early novels in which H. G. Wells virtually invented modern science fiction, The Island of Doctor Moreau is a sort of mad-scientist tale in which the doctor of the title performs macabre surgical experiments on animals on a remote island, essentially boosting them through multiple stages of evolution to a condition of being near-human, endowing them with a consciousness that only makes their plight more terrible to them. Though Moreau performs (gruesome and painful) modifications on existing animals without any real knowledge of or intervention in genetics, this novel clearly prefigures modern science fiction tales involving genetic engineering. In the meantime, it quite directly addresses contemporary concerns, largely fueled by interpretations (and misinterpretations) of Charles Darwin’s still-recent theory of evolution, which suggested that the line between humans and other animals was not nearly as clear or as absolute as believed in traditional Western thought, especially that fueled by Christianity, would imply. In particular, as is also shown in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), there was widespread concern over the possibility of “degeneration,” in which humans would undergo evolution in reverse, into a more primitive state. Indeed, Moreau’s experimental subjects have a nasty habit of reverting to their animal origins, making more difficult his attempts to transform them into humans. In addition to such fundamental questions about the nature of human beings in relation to other animals, the novel also addresses a number of questions concerning the limitations of scientific inquiry and the ethics of biological research. It has been adapted to film several times (most successfully in the 1932 classic Island of Lost Souls) and has exercised a substantial influence on many subsequent novels that have addressed similar subjects.

J JAMES TIPTREE JR. AWARD. Named for science fiction writer Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (who used “James Tiptree Jr.” as a pseudonym when writing science fiction), the James Tiptree Jr. Award is given annually to a writer whose work exemplifies the ability of science fiction and fantasy to explore and broaden our understanding of gender. It was initiated in 1991 by writers Karen Joy Fowler and Pat Murphy. The awards are administered by a committee known as the “Tiptree Motherboard” (currently made up of Fowler, Murphy, and several others), and supported by funds raised from such activities as bake sales and sales of cookbooks. In its inaugural year, the Tiptree Award was given to Eleanor Arnason for A Woman of the Iron People and Gwyneth Jones for White Queen. Other early winners included Maureen McHugh for China Mountain Zhang and Nicola Griffith for Ammonite. The latest (2012) award went to Caitlin R. Kiernan for The Drowning Girl and Kiini Ibura Salaam for Ancient, Ancient. Though the Tiptree Award is intended to honor contemporary writing, retrospective awards were given in 1997 to honor important work dealing with feminism and gender in science fiction before the initiation of the award. Retrospective Tiptree Awards were given to Ursula K. Le Guin for The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Suzy McKee Charnas for Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978), and Joanna Russ for The Female Man (1975) and the story “When It Changed” (in the Again, Dangerous Visions anthology edited by Harlan Ellison in 1972). JAMESON, FREDRIC (1934– ). Fredric Jameson is arguably the most important American cultural critic and theorist of his generation; he is almost certainly the most important American Marxist cultural critic and theorist of his generation. His book Marxism and Form (1971) introduced a whole generation of American scholars and students to the work of important European Marxist thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose work (at least in its Marxist aspects) was previously virtually unknown in the United States due to the intellectual repression that had resulted from the anticom143

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munist political climate of the Cold War. The success of that book not only made the work of all of these thinkers available to American scholars and students who could make good use of it but also demonstrated that the climate had changed enough to make it possible once again to consider Marxist perspectives in analyses of literature and culture in the U.S. Jameson’s subsequent work developed a number of politically sophisticated insights into workings of culture, demonstrating both that cultural works are always informed by certain ideological perspectives (usually the perspectives of the dominant class) and that these works also contain a strong utopian potential that can supplement or even oppose the main ideological orientation of the text. Jameson’s interest in the utopian aspects of culture, informed most importantly by the fundamental work of Ernst Bloch, received a boost in the late 1970s when Darko Suvin compellingly argued that science fiction was a privileged genre with a particularly strong utopian potential. From that point on, science fiction has occupied a central place in Jameson’s elaboration of the utopian dimensions of literature and culture, and he has written widely in the genre. Jameson kicked off the 1980s with the publication of The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), which elaborates his vision of the centrality of both ideological critique and explication of utopian energies in any reading of literary and cultural texts. Jameson makes a compelling argument for the centrality of a Marxist theoretical framework to such a project, meanwhile attempting to effect a reconciliation between Althusserian/Gramscian Marxist perspectives (with their emphasis on ideological critique) and more conventionally historical materialist Marxist perspectives (as exemplified by Lukács). Yet The Political Unconscious proved a compelling text even for non-Marxist critics, making it one of the key influences in a general turn toward more politically and historically engaged readings in Western literary studies by providing both a methodology and a justification for such readings. Jameson published frequently on science fiction though the 1980s, then began the 1990s with what might be his most important single work, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). Here, in addition to elaborating what has become the single most influential theory of the historical background and context of postmodernist culture, Jameson highlights science fiction as crucial to the phenomenon of postmodernism in a number of ways. For example, he influentially suggests that cyberpunk, as exemplified in the work of William Gibson, might be the quintessential example of postmodernist culture. At the same time, he notes that the rise of new utopian narratives in the works of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin in the 1970s represented an important counter-trend to the general decline in utopian energy that has informed postmodernist culture in general. Finally, Jameson devotes an entire chapter to postmodern nostalgia and its role in the

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loss of historical sense that also informs postmodernist culture, employing Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint as a key text that engages this phenomenon in valuable and creative ways. Jameson’s most important single work in terms of science fiction is Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005), the first half of which is an extended theoretical rumination on utopian thought, consistently focusing on science fiction as the cultural exemplification of his ideas. The second half of the text is then a collection of reprints of Jameson’s articles on utopia and science fiction published in various places over a period of decades. This text helped to top off Jameson’s years of contributions to science fiction scholarship, as recognized in his being named the winner of the Pilgrim Award by the Science Fiction Research Association in 2006. See also POLITICS. JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION. Japanese science fiction is best known in the West for its production of Godzilla-style monster/disaster movies and for the heavy emphasis on science fiction in anime films such as Ghost in the Shell (1995). And, of course, Japan has often figured prominently in Western science fiction, perhaps most prominently in the cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson. There is, however, a growing tradition of written science fiction from Japan, in addition to a strong emphasis on science fiction in the “manga” comics that are so popular there. As early as the late 19th century, when numerous Western influences began to impact Japanese culture, science fiction joined those influences, especially via the work of Jules Verne, which was popular in translation in Japan, and the motifs were then adapted to a Japanese context by writers such as Shunro Oshikawa (1877–1914). These influences joined indigenous traditions of nonrealist fiction to produce early science fiction with a special Japanese flavor. As the American pulp magazines rose to prominence in the 1930s, they also exerted an influence on Japanese science fiction, though that influence was interrupted by World War II. In postwar Japan, science fiction continued its development of an audience through the publication of commercial series such as the Hayakawa SF Series (which ran from 1957 to 1974), combining translations of important works of Western science fiction (beginning with such early authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs and E. E. “Doc” Smith) with original works by Japanese authors. Writers to debut in this series include Sakyo Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Ryo Hanmura, Ryu Mitsuse, Kazumasa Hirai, and Aritsune Toyota. The 1950s also saw the beginnings of a Japanese fandom, which has exerted an influence on the evolution of the genre in Japan as elsewhere.

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While both anime and manga have gained a growing audience in the West, exerting a counterinfluence on Western comics and animated film, Japanese written science fiction has gained relatively little prominence in the West, with the best-known works coming from authors such as Kōbō Abe (1924–1993), whose nonrealist work has often been compared to that of Kafka, though it does often employ sf elements, as in Inter Ice Age 4 (1970), which combines detective fiction with science fiction, especially the dystopian narrative. The popular Japanese postmodernist author Haruki Murakami (also often compared with Kafka), employs a number of sf motifs in his work as well and has gained significant international attention, sometimes engaging in direct dialogue with Western works, as when his novel 1Q84 (2009–2010) directly references George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Since the 1980s, Japanese science fiction seems to have gotten a boost from the prominence of Japan in cyberpunk fiction, encouraging Japanese authors such as Chōhei Kanbayashi and Mariko Ohara to produce their own brand of hard science fiction with a specifically Japanese flavor. Much of this fiction remains inaccessible to Western viewers, however, becoming known in the West primarily when it is adapted to film, especially when it is adapted to Western film, as in the case of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill (2004), which became a big-budget American film in 2014. JETER, K. W. (1950– ). The American writer Kevin Wayne Jeter was an important pioneer in both the cyberpunk and steampunk movements. Indeed, the very term “steampunk” seems to have been coined by Jeter in 1987 to describe certain works—including his own Morlock Night (1979) and Infernal Devices (1987)—that had some of the spirit of cyberpunk science fiction, but with large, bulky, steam-powered technologies, rather than the sleek, often miniaturized computer technologies associated with cyberpunk. Meanwhile, Jeter’s Dr. Adder (written in 1972, but unable to find a publisher until 1984) has sometimes been called the first cyberpunk novel, while his later novel The Glass Hammer (1985) was a key work in cyberpunk’s interrogation of the nature of individual human identity. Both works show the influence of Jeter’s friend Philip K. Dick. Meanwhile, much of Jeter’s work during this period was representative of some of the darker and more noirish aspects of cyberpunk, something he was still pursuing well into the postcyberpunk era with works such as Noir (1998), a grimly satirical tale of a blasted cityscape whose title indicates its tone. In addition to his own original novels (many of which are horror novels with little in the way of sf components), Jeter has written a number of novels in preexisting franchises, including three sequels to the film Blade Runner— Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), and Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000). Jeter has also

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written three novels in the Star Wars franchise and two novels based on the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Most recently, he has written a series of thrillers under the pseudonym “Kim Oh.” JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARDS. The John W. Campbell Memorial Award is given each year by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to recognize the year’s best science fiction novel. Named in honor of legendary sf editor John W. Campbell Jr. (who died in 1971), the award was established in 1973 by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss as a way to continue the promotion of quality sf writing that they saw as the hallmark of Campbell’s legacy. The winner of the award is selected by an expert panel each May, and then the award is given in June at the Campbell Conference at the University of Kansas. This award is not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by the publishers of Analog magazine, which Campbell formerly edited. JONES, GWYNETH (1952– ). The British writer Gwyneth Jones began publishing science fiction stories in 1975 and moved into writing for juvenile readers with the fantasy novel Water in the Air (1977). Since that time, she has written a good deal of young adult science fiction and fantasy, most of it under the pseudonym “Ann Halam.” Of particular note among the “Halam” novels is the “Zanne” series of postapocalyptic narratives, comprising The Daymaker (1987), Transformations (1988), and The Skybreaker (1990). Here a woman-ruled community copes with their ruined landscape by living as much as possible in harmony with nature. Jones’s first adult novel, Divine Endurance (1984) also deals with a community ruled by women, though there is a certain amount of dissention in the community, made worse by the arrival of the android protagonist and her feline companion. Flowerdust (1993) is a sequel. In between, Escape Plans (1986) and Kairos (1988) have strong components of dystopian narrative. Jones’s most interesting sf, however, might be the “Aleutian trilogy,” a particularly inventive alien-invasion narrative. Here—in the novels White Queen (1991, winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award), North Wind (1996), and Phoenix Café (1998)—a group of aliens who are intergalactic wanderers and soldiers of fortune, rather than conquerors or ambassadors, stumble accidentally upon the earth, which they had not realized was habitable. With no way home, they settle on earth for what turns out to be a 300-year stay, leading to interesting cultural interactions that comment extensively on gender, colonialism, and a number of other issues. The later Spirit: The Princess of Bois Dormant (2008) is a follow-up that retells the story of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1845).

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The “Bold as Love” series is also science fiction, though with strong fantasy elements—and some horror elements, as well. The first volume, Bold as Love: A Near Future Fantasy (2001), won the Arthur C. Clarke Award; it was followed by Castles Made of Sand (2002), Midnight Lamp (2003), Band of Gypsys (2005), and Rainbow Bridge (2006). A stand-alone novel, Life (2004), won the Philip K. Dick Award while addressing gender issues in an interesting way via the motif of genetic engineering. She has also written criticism on sf, much of it collected in Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction, and Reality (1999) and as Imagination/Space: Essays and Talks on Fiction, Feminism, Technology, and Politics (2009). JONES, RAYMOND F. (1915–1994). The American writer Raymond Fisher Jones, born in Salt Lake City, Utah, published a number of stories in science fiction magazines from the 1940s to the 1960s. His 1945 story “Correspondence Course” was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award, while his story “Rat Race” (1966) was nominated for a Hugo Award, but his bestknown story might be “Noise Level,” published in Astounding ScienceFiction in 1952. Many of his stories are collected in The Toymaker and Others (1951) and The Non-Statistical Man (1964). Jones also wrote more than a dozen novels, beginning with the parallelworlds narrative Renaissance: A Science Fiction Novel of Two Human Worlds, which was serialized in Astounding in 1944 and appeared in book form in 1951. The narrative of The Alien: A Gripping Novel of Discovery and Conquest (1951) is propelled by the discovery of a leftover alien artifact in the asteroid belt. His best-known novel is This Island Earth (1949–1950, book form 1952), the basis of the 1954 film of the same title. He also wrote a number of juvenile science fiction novels in the 1950s. JUVENILE SCIENCE FICTION. See YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION.

K KELLER, DAVID H. (1880–1966). The American physician and psychiatrist David H. Keller wrote merely as a hobby for years, publishing as an amateur as early as a teenager. After working extensively with victims of shell shock from World War I during most of the 1920s, he moved into professional writing in 1928, when he published the story “Revolt of the Pedestrians” in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. Though he failed to share Gernsback’s typical technological optimism, Keller published a number of stories for Gernsback in the following years, and also published his first book, The Thought Projector (1929), as part of Gernsback’s “Science Fiction Series” of pamphlets. Here, Keller anticipates very early on some of the pernicious effects of over-reliance on automobiles, while showing some of the general skepticism about human society that marks much of his work. Keller’s first full-length novel was not published as a stand-alone book until 1979, but appeared in Wonder Stories in late 1929. The Human Termites: A 1929 Science Fiction Extravaganza projects a horrific dystopian vision that might have been influenced by Keller’s memories of the impact of World War I. The Conquerors (serialized in Wonder Stories in 1929 and 1930) and its sequel, The Evening Star (serialized in the same magazine in 1930), constitute a particularly strange sequence involving the conquest of the earth by a subterranean race of dwarves, who then attempt (unsuccessfully) to conquer Venus. Keller’s rather nasty “Taine of San Francisco” sequence, consisting of stories published over a period of two decades from 1938 to 1947, contains some of his most cynical work and has been criticized for having both sexist and racist tendencies. However, most of his science fiction was published before 1935, his later work being mostly horror and fantasy. Most of his best sf involves some sort of cataclysm, as in the 1934 story “Life Everlasting” (featured in the 1947 collection Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy, and Horror), in which even the achievement of immortality turns out to be disastrous. His fantasy could be dark as well, as in the novel The Devil and the Doctor (1940), in which Satan is the hero. On the

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other hand, some of his later fantasy—including the sequence The Sign of the Burning Hart: A Tale of Arcadia (1938) and The Sign of the Burning Hart: A Tale of Arcadia (1948)—has a utopian bent. KING, STEPHEN (1947– ). Best known for his work in the horror genre, the American writer Stephen King is one of the best-selling and most widely read authors of his generation. However, a number of King’s novels employ motifs from science fiction. One of his best-known novels, for example, is the 1978 postapocalyptic narrative The Stand (revised and expanded in 1990), in which a contagion developed as a result of government experiments virtually wipes out the world population, while the survivors struggle to rebuild a viable society. King’s most sustained effort, the “Dark Tower” series, is primarily fantasy, but also includes a number of tropes derived from postapocalyptic sf. King has also written a number of texts (often as Richard Bachman) that are more properly science fiction than horror, such as the near-future dystopian narratives The Long Walk (1979) and The Running Man (1982). In addition, many of his early stories (some of which appear in the 1978 collection Night Shift) are sf, while in some of his horror stories, the horror arises from technological sources, whether it be the eponymous automobile of Christine (1983), the long-buried alien artifact of The Tommyknockers (1987), or the sinister cellphones of Cell (2006). Dreamcatcher (2001) is probably the most prominent of several King novels to feature alien invaders as sources of horror. Most recently, 11/22/63 (2011) is a time-travel narrative featuring a protagonist who travels back in time to try to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. KNIGHT, DAMON (1922–2002). The American author and editor Damon Knight first entered the science fiction world as an active fan at the age of 11. His early participation in fandom as a child in Oregon propelled him into writing at an early age; his first story appeared when he was 18, by which time he had already moved to New York and become a member of the Futurians. His 1977 account, The Futurians, provides much of what we know about the inner workings of that group. Knight’s early work as a reviewer is considered a landmark in genre criticism; his 1945 critical assault on A. E. Van Vogt is near legendary. Many of his early (often acerbic) reviews are collected in In Search of Wonder (1956, revised in 1967). As an editor and critic, Knight was known for his insistence that sf writers should seek both logical consistency and literary quality in their work, toward which he was a cofounder of the Milford Conference in 1956, the same year he won the Hugo Award for best reviewer.

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Knight’s most lasting contribution to sf might have been his editorship of the anthology series Orbit, which ran to 21 volumes between 1966 and 1980 and provided a venue for a number of emerging sf writers. However, he did find time to do considerable writing of his own. Some of his (often humorous) stories are quite well known, including the 1950 story “To Serve Man,” which became the basis for a classic Twilight Zone episode (later spoofed on The Simpsons) of the same title in 1962. That story won a Retro Hugo Award in 2000. Many of his stories are collected in the volumes Far Out (1961), In Deep (1963), Off Center (1965), Turning On (1966), and Rule Golden (1979). Knight moved into writing novels with the dystopian narrative Hell’s Pavement, assembled from earlier writings (1955), though he was never much at home in the longer form. Of his novels, The People Maker (1959), which examines the implications of matter-replication technology, and the lively The World and Thorinn (1981) are probably the most successful, though the late “Sea Venture” trilogy, comprising CV (1985), The Observers (1988), and A Reasonable World (1991) is interesting. KRESS, NANCY (1948– ). The American writer Nancy Kress, born in Buffalo, New York, began publishing science fiction stories in 1976. Numerous other publications followed, including several fantasy novels. Her story “Out of All Them Bright Stars” won a Nebula Award, while her first sf novel was An Alien Light (1988), which explores tensions between two groups of humans descended from the original colonizers of an alien planet. Brain Rose (1990), which envisions a near-future earth haunted by an AIDS-like contagion, is also sf, but Kress made her best-known contribution to the genre with the Hugo and Nebula award–winning novella Beggars in Spain (1991), expanded into a full-length novel the next year. Here, the attempts of a group of superhuman children to defend themselves from the hostility of “normal” humans raise a number of crucial questions about genetic engineering as well as about the simple fact that some humans are inherently more gifted than others. This premise was then extended in two sequels, Beggars & Choosers (1994) and Beggars Ride (1996). This series was followed by the “Oaths and Miracles” sequence—comprising Oaths and Miracles (1996) and Stinger (1998)—which also involves genetic engineering. Meanwhile, the 1996 story “The Flowers of Aulit Prison” was also extended into a sequence via the novels Probability Moon (2000), Probability Sun (2001), and Probability Space (2003), the latter of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This “Probability” sequence engages a number of subgenres, perhaps most effectively the planetary romance. Meanwhile, in the interesting Steal against the Sky (2009), human settlements on planets around the galaxy turn out to be engineered as part of an alien experiment.

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Many of Kress’s stories are collected in The Aliens of Earth (1993), Beaker’s Dozen (1998), and Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (2008). Her novella “After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall” (2012) won her another Nebula Award. KUTTNER, HENRY (1915–1958). Born in Los Angeles, the American writer Henry Kuttner worked in horror and fantasy, as well as science fiction. A fan of H. P. Lovecraft and of the magazine Weird Tales, Kuttner published his first story, “The Graveyard Rats,” in that magazine in 1936. He also wrote early space operas, but much of his early work was influenced by Lovecraft, and it was through his participation in the “Lovecraft Circle” (a group of fans and writers who corresponded with Lovecraft and with each other) that he met the writer C. L. Moore, whom he married in 1940. From that point forward, he and Moore often worked closely together, producing significant numbers of stories for venues such as Astounding Science-Fiction. They sometimes published jointly written works under single pseudonyms, such as “Lawrence O’Donnell” and “Lewis Padgett”; many of the stories published under Kuttner’s name, on the other hand, were also jointly written. Thus, while a total of more than 300 stories are credited to Kuttner, it is often impossible to disentangle the actual authorship of individual stories. For example, some stories credited to Kuttner were apparently written by Moore, while it appears that some of the stories credited to Padgett (including the “Galloway Gallegher” stories, about a brilliant inventor who can only invent when inebriated) were written by Kuttner alone. The humorous Gallegher stories are featured in the collection Robots Have No Tails (1952). Well-known jointly written Padgett stories, from Astounding, include “The Twonky” (1942) and “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” (1943). Among the more prominent collaborative works by Kuttner and Moore were a series of novels combining sf and fantasy that were published in the magazine Startling Stories in the second half of the 1940s, most of which were later republished in book form, including The Dark World (1946); Valley of the Flame (1946, as by Keith Hammond); Lands of the Earthquake (1947); The Mask of Circe (1948); The Time Axis (1949); and The Portal in the Picture (1949, as by Padgett and Moore). One of Kuttner’s more unusual individual products was a series of humorous stories for Thrilling Wonder magazine about the Hogbens, a family of mutant hillbillies, including “Exit the Professor” (1947), “Pile of Trouble” (1948), “See You Later” (1949), and “Cold War” (October 1949). Many of the more purely science fictional stories of this period were clearly influenced by A. E. Van Vogt, including the “Baldy” series of stories about a group of telepathic superhuman mutants, published in Astounding between 1945 and 1953 and collected in 1953 as Mutants, as by Padgett in the United States, but in 1954 as by Kuttner in Great Britain.

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In 1950, Kuttner returned to Los Angeles with Moore as both entered the University of Southern California. They subsequently wrote some detective fiction together, but he wrote little sf after 1950. Kuttner’s various stories have been collected in volumes such as A Gnome There Was (1950, as by Padgett), Ahead of Time (1953), Line to Tomorrow (1954, as by Padgett), No Boundaries (1955, as by Kuttner and Moore), Bypass to Otherness (1961), Return to Otherness (1962), The Best of Kuttner (volume 1, 1965; volume 2, 1966), The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975, introduction by Ray Bradbury), Clash by Night and Other Stories (1980, as by Kuttner and Moore), Chessboard Planet and Other Stories (1983, as by Kuttner and Moore), and Secret of the Earth Star and Others (1991). More recently, an effort at a more systematic collection of Kuttner’s stories has begun with The Early Kuttner, Volume One: Terror in the House (2010). Kuttner was a competent professional writer of science fiction who influenced many others, including Bradbury and Richard Matheson, who dedicated I Am Legend (1954) to Kuttner.

L LAFFERTY, R. A. (1914–2002). The American writer Raphael Aloysius Lafferty produced a number of wittily satirical science fiction works, though he began writing only in his forties, beginning with the story “Day of the Glacier” in 1960. Indeed, Lafferty only began to write full-time after retiring from the electrical business in 1970, in the wake of the publication, at the end of the 1960s, of several novels in quick succession, including the satirical utopian narrative Past Master (1968), still his best-known work. Other novels from this period include Space Chantey (1968), a rewriting of The Odyssey; the unusual alien- invasion narrative The Reefs of Earth (1968); and the conspiracy tale Fourth Mansions (1969). Despite his late start, Lafferty published about 200 stories (in addition to a number of others that were not published), which have been variously collected in such volumes as Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970), Strange Doings (1972), and Does Anyone Have Something Further to Add? (1974). He won a Hugo Award for the 1972 short story “Eurema’s Dam.” His later novels included Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Kritsec Machine (1971), Apocalypses (1977), and The Annals of Klepsis (1983). His work as a whole was complex and enigmatic; critics and readers have disagreed as to his overall message, and even about his basic tone, which has struck some as fundamentally humorous and others as basically dark. See also SATIRE. LANGUAGE. Language itself often features as a major motif in science fiction. Science fiction achieves some of its effects by creating a sense in readers that they are encountering a world different from their own, and one of the most effective ways of producing this sense of strangeness is to present readers with a language that is itself strange to them. Sometimes entire texts are narrated in an unfamiliar language, as in the case of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980), a postapocalyptic narrative set in a world after the destruction of civilization by nuclear war; here this destruction extends to language itself, and readers, who must decode the postapocalyptic language of the text, thus achieve a special sense of the difference of this world from 155

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their own. In Jack Womack’s Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1995), on the other hand, civilization is in the process of a less gradual and more violent destruction, and the text captures this transformation partly through the gradual evolution of the language of the narrator, a teenage girl who grows both older and more worldly as the story proceeds. But the changes in her language mainly reflect the fact that her initially comfortable middleclass world dissolves in the course of the narrative. The more violent and less proper language employed by the narrator by the end of the text relative to the beginning thus mirrors and makes more palpable changes in the world in which the action is set. Perhaps the most famous case of the thematic use of nonstandard language in science fiction occurs in Anthony Burgess’s near-future dystopian narrative A Clockwork Orange (1962), in which the basic language of the text is a relatively standard English, but in which the delinquent characters whose behavior signals a decay in the functioning of society speak their own Russian-inflected “Nadsat,” which effectively and memorably indicates their alienation from a mainstream society that has failed them so miserably. In fact, dystopian fiction in general has probably made better use of language as a motif than any other subgenre of science fiction, which has often (even in works set in the far future or on distant alien worlds) failed to capture changes in language that would surely occur in reality. Quite frequently, the oppressive regimes depicted in dystopian fiction employ language as a tool for controlling their populations, most famously in the case of the “Newspeak” of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which is designed to make it literally impossible to express, or even conceive thoughts that are inimical to the policies of the ruling Party. This motif, then, clearly reflects the insight that philosophers of langauge refer to as the “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,” which suggests that the language available to describe reality affects our perception of reality. At the same time, this same sort of language manipulation can occur for positive, utopian purposes as well. Thus, in the egalitarian utopian society of Anarres in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), the very language (“Pravic”) has been structured to reflect complete equality, especially in terms of gender. Thus, the langauge contains no words for sexual intercourse that indicate possession of one person by another or something being done by one person to another, except for one indicating rape. Instead, sexual verbs in the language are all plural, indicating mutual activity that partners perform together. Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 (1966) makes language itself a central theme of the text. In particular, Delany also begins with the Sapir-Whorf to envision the language of the title, which can be used as a weapon because it alters the perceptions of those who are exposed to it. The language can thus be used to win over enemies, turning them into traitors against their own side. Perhaps the most sophisticated exploration of language as a motif in

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science fiction occurs in China Miéville’s Embassytown (2011), which explores the culture of the genuinely alien Ariekei, whose home planet also serves as a remote outpost of a human-dominated galactic empire. Much of this exploration involves a description of the language of the Areikei, whose radical difference from any human language helps to produce a sense of strangeness that makes them genuinely alien, while at the same time expanding the perceptions of readers concerning how language operates in general. LATIN AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION. See POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. LE GUIN, URSULA K. (1929– ). Ursula K. Le Guin (born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California) is one of the most important women writers of science fiction history, known both for the elegance of her style and the richness of her imaginative use of materials from disciplines such as political science, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy, both Eastern and Western. After writing numerous short stories, Le Guin published her first novel, Rocannon’s World (1966), the first of her “Hainish” sf novels, but also a work containing numerous elements of heroic fantasy, to which she would often return later. Two other novels in the Hainish Cycle followed, but it was the fourth Hainish novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), that drew her first major recognition, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This cycle deals with the Ekumen, a far-flung galactic empire (most of whose inhabitants are descended from the planet Hain) and would eventually include such notable works as The Word for World Is Forest (1972, expanded version 1976) and The Dispossessed (1974), both of which won Hugo awards. Le Guin returned to the Ekumen universe with The Telling in 2000. Le Guin is also an important fantasy writer. Her “Earthsea” sequence of fantasy novels begins with The Wizard of Earthsea in 1968 and also includes The Farthest Shore (1972, winner of the National Book Award) and Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990, winner of the Nebula Award). Despite the latter title, Le Guin returned to the “Earthsea” sequence in 2002 with the publication of The Other Wind, which won a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Other novels outside her main cycles include The Lathe of Heaven (1971), which explores the nature of reality; The Eye of the Heron (1978, expanded 1982), a political fable set on a colonized planet; Always Coming Home (1986), about a post-technological future California; and Changing Planes (2003), a parallel-worlds novel. Le Guin’s short stories are among the most often anthologized in all of sf, with stories such as “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973) appearing particularly often in sf story collections. She has also written important critical commentaries. See also LANGUAGE.

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THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (1969). The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is part of Ursula K. Le Guin’s cycle of “Hainish” novels and stories, which deal with the Ekumen, a far-flung galactic empire (most of whose inhabitants are descended from the planet Hain). The administration of this empire (where travel between inhabited planets is difficult because of the lack of faster-than-light travel) is furthered by the development of the “ansible,” a communication device that allows instantaneous communication even across interstellar distances. The Left Hand of Darkness focuses on the planet Gethen (which means “Winter” in their language), a world whose human inhabitants have evolved (apparently as the result of a long-forgotten Hainish experiment) in special ways so that they are neither male nor female, except during “kemmer,” a phase during a monthly cycle in which, triggered by the hormonal secretions of their partners, they temporarily take on gender roles, but any individual can be either male or female. In effect, sexism does not exist in this world, since sex itself is not a fixed category. The remote Gethen has essentially lost touch with the rest of the galaxy, and The Left Hand of Darkness is essentially a planetary romance, in which the experiences of Ekumen envoy Genly Ai, who travels to Gethen, give us a picture of the planet, its people, and its culture. As such, the narrative touches on a number of issues, but the most striking is its treatment of the gendering of the inhabitants of Gethen, which has been seen as an important landmark in the growth of more sophisticated treatments of sexuality and gender in science fiction. LEIBER, FRITZ (1910–1992). The American writer Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was born and raised in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, but eventually moved to Southern California to pursue his writing career. He is perhaps best known as a pioneer of sword-and-sorcery fantasy fiction, especially through his characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, introduced in Unknown magazine in 1939 and featured in an extensive series of subsequent stories. Influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, he also produced a number of horror stories. Even his science fiction was frequently influenced by motifs from fantasy and horror, beginning with Gather, Darkness!, serialized in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1943 and published in book form in 1950); this, his first major sf story, is a dystopian narrative about the overthrow of a religious dictatorship by rebels who employ advanced technologies that they disguise as magic. He followed with the parallel-worlds narrative Destiny Times Three (1945, book form 1957). The story “Coming Attraction” (1950) depicts the decadence of a future United States in a manner that satirizes the current U.S., marking the beginning of the production of a number of successful sf satires by Leiber in the early 1950s. The Green Millennium (1953) was somewhat in the same mode. A silent period in the mid-1950s ended with The Big Time, serialized in 1958

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and published in book form. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, this story initiated the “Change Wars” sequence in which two factions, the “Spiders” and the “Snakes,” battle for supremacy through space and time in a narrative that features a number of time-travel and alternate-history motifs. Other stories in this sequence were assembled in The Mind Spider and Other Stories (1961), the whole sequence then reassembled in The Change War (1978). Another sf novel, The Wanderer (1964), won another Hugo, detailing a disaster scenario resulting from the entrance of a strange planet (which turns out to be a giant spaceship) in earth’s solar system. A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1968, book form 1969) is a satirical postapocalyptic narrative in which a Martian visitor finds that a postnuclear holocaust United States has been swallowed up by Texas and its oversize good-ole-boy white ruling class. His novella Ship of Shadows (1969, book form 1989) won another Hugo, while the alternate-history story “Catch That Zeppelin” (1975) won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award. Leiber received the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 1976 and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1981. He was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2001. LEINSTER, MURRAY (1896–1975). “Murray Leinster” was the pen name generally employed by the American writer William Fitzgerald Jenkins, though he also published under variations of his own name. Leinster wrote widely in a variety of science fiction subgenres, though he may be most important to sf for his pioneering work in the alternate-history subgenre. He also wrote in the mystery, Western, and romance genres. He began publishing sf as early as 1919, with the time-travel narrative “The Runaway Skyscraper.” Leinster’s first book, Murder Madness (1930, book form 1931), is a mad-scientist tale that is largely sf despite the title (clearly pitched at the mystery market), which reflects the fact that sf was not yet at that time recognized as a genre in book publishing. He published numerous early stories in sf pulp magazines, including the story “Sidewise in Time” in Astounding Stories in 1934, which introduced the alternate history to the world of sf pulps. That story and some other early works are assembled in Sidewise in Time, and Other Scientific Adventures (1950). Meanwhile, much of Leinster’s early work went uncollected at the time, though much of it would eventually appear in the posthumous collections The Silver Menace and a Thousand Degrees Below Zero (2007) and The Runaway Skyscraper and Other Tales from the Pulps (2007). Always more at home in the short story than in longer fiction, Leinster was particularly prolific as a writer of sf in the years after World War II, regularly contributing stories to Astounding and other sf magazines. His novel The

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Murder of the U.S.A. (1946 as by Will F. Jenkins, republished in 1950 as Destroy the U.S.A.) again contained mystery elements but was primarily sf in its story of the dropping of hundreds of atomic bombs on American cities. Key stories written early in Leinster’s richest period include the alien-encounter narrative “First Contact” (1945), which featured one of the first universal translation devices to appear in sf; it won a Retro Hugo Award in 1996. In the story “A Logic Named Joe” (1946), also as by Jenkins, Leinster anticipated later developments in personal computing and the Internet. The collections Monsters and Such (1959), The Best of Murray Leinster (1978), First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster (1998), and Planets of Adventure (2003) consist primarily of stories published between 1945 and the mid1950s. Leinster’s story “Exploration Team” (1956) won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette and later became part of the lively Colonial Survey (1956, republished as Planet Explorer in 1957), capping off his most fertile period as a writer of sf. Between 1957 and 1966, Leinster wrote a number of stories in the “Med Service” sequence about a doctor who travels about the galaxy, published in a number of volumes—including the novels The Mutant Weapon (1959) and This World Is Taboo (1961)—and all assembled in the omnibus Med Ship (2002). Much of his later work consisted of novelizations based on various television series, including the sf series Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants. LEM, STANISŁAW (1921–2006). The Polish writer and philosopher Stanisław Lem produced some of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking science fiction of the 20th century. He is best known for his 1961 novel Solaris (translated into English in 1970 via the French), in which explorers from earth encounter a planet with a sentient ocean, one of the most compelling accounts of a human encounter with a genuinely alien intelligence in all of sf. Solaris has been translated into numerous languages and adapted to feature film three times, including the classic 1972 version by Andrei Tarkovsky. However, numerous other works by Lem are of note, beginning with his first novel, Człowiek z Marsa (The Man from Mars), serialized in 1946 but not formally published in book form in Polish until 1994. Here, a cyborg-like Martian crashes on earth and is subsequently treated rather abusively by American scientists, whose difficulty in communication with the Martian foreshadows the themes of Solaris. One of his better-known works, His Master’s Voice (Głos Pana) deals with such themes as well, as human scientists struggle to decode a message from outer space. The Cyberiad (1965, English translation 1974), meanwhile, is an effective satirical collection of interrelated humorous short stories set in a pseudo-medieval world of robots. The Mortal Engines collection (1977) contains related stories.

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A number of Lem’s stories from the 1950s have been published in English-translation, in collections such as the interrelated The Star Diaries (1976) and Memoirs of a Space Traveler (1982), featuring the space explorer Ijon Tichy, who is also the protagonist of the novel The Futurological Congress (1971, English 1974). Other collections of stories translated into English include the interrelated Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1979) and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1982). Other novels translated into English include the planetary romance Eden (1959, English 1989) and Return from the Stars (1961, English 1980), in which time dilation allows a space traveler to age only 10 years while on a 127-year space journey, subsequently returning to a muchchanged earth. Lem also wrote critical commentaries on science fiction in which he expressed his belief that sf should be a mode of serious philosophical exploration, a belief that caused him to be famously dismissive of most American sf, though he was an admirer of the work of Philip K. Dick. In 1996, Lem received the Order of the White Eagle, a prestigious Polish national award. L’ENGLE, MADELEINE (1918–2007). The American writer and actress Madeleine L’Engle (born Madeleine L’Engle Camp) began writing plays in the mid-1940s and published a science fiction short story in the mid-1950s. In the world of sf, however, she is primarily known as the author of the much-beloved young adult tale A Wrinkle in Time (1962), winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, among other awards. Here, young Meg Murray must rescue her scientist father after the latter is abducted via the fifth dimension to a distant planet where he is held captive by an alien artificial intelligence. This volume became the anchor of L’Engle’s “Murry-O’Keefe” sequence, which also includes A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989). These novels involve a great deal of adventuring through time. Most of L’Engle’s other later work is in the fantasy genre, though often with sf motifs added in. In 1997, she won the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. LESSING, DORIS (1919–2013). Born in what is now Iran and spending much of her younger life in what is now Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing relocated to Great Britain in 1949 and lived and worked there until her death. Known primarily for the serious literary fiction (dealing with topics such as gender and postcolonialism) that would eventually be the key to her winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, Lessing has also written a considerable amount of science fiction. For example, The Four-Gated City (1969), the fifth volume of her largely realistic “Children of Violence” sequence, extends that sequence into the near-future. Several subsequent novels have also bordered on sf, including Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), in which a

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schizophrenic may be an aspect of the consciousness of an extraterrestrial from Venus; The Summer before the Dark (1973), which submits to a similar voyage of external/internal discovery of a woman at a point of crisis in her life; and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), in which a woman observes the end of modern civilization from the enclosure of her room, accompanied by a young girl who grows up beside her, suggesting some hope for the future. The sequence The Fifth Child (1988) and Ben, in the World (2000) touches on both horror and sf. Lessing has written a number of works of sf, including the far-future postapocalyptic narrative comprising Mara and Dann: An Adventure (1999) and The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (2005); The Cleft (2007) is a sort of alternate prehistory in which an all-female prehuman race starts to give birth to male children, who aggressively change the world; and Alfred and Emily (2008) presents parallel narratives, one involving characters whose lives were maimed by the experience of World War I, and one involving an alternate history in which that war never occurred. Lessing’s major work in sf, however, is the interstellar narrative of the “Canopus in Argos: Archive” sequence. In the various novels of the sequence—including Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (1979), The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), The Sirian Experiments (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982), and Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983)— various protagonists face parable-like adventures on a series of planets (including Shikasta, which is earth) that are part of an interstellar empire. LETHEM, JONATHAN (1964– ). Jonathan Lethem is one of the most respected American fiction writers of his generation. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music (1994), mixes a science fictional near-future setting with hardboiled detective fiction, beginning an engagement with sf that has marked much of the rest of his literary output. It won a Locus Award for Best First Novel. Amnesia Moon (1995) is largely a postapocalyptic narrative, but also contains elements of the ordinary road novel, while echoing The Wizard of Oz, though its most important predecessor may be Philip K. Dick’s Eye in the Sky (1957) in its involvement of “FSRs,” or “Finite Subjective Realities,” in which the very nature of reality in the wake of some sort of apocalyptic “break” is largely determined by the projections of strong individual minds. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (1996) collects many of Lethem’s early short stories. Lethem’s next novel, As She Climbed across the Table (1997), takes a more science fictional turn in its premise, though it becomes a sort of romantic comedy as a physicist falls in love with an artificially generated spatial anomaly called “Lack,” for whom she spurns her previous (human) partner. That partner must then deal with this rejection and with the anomaly (with

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often comic results), as the book along the way addresses the philosophical implications of quantum theory. Girl in Landscape (1998) features a tale of interplanetary colonization, supplemented by a psi-powers motif. Motherless Brooklyn (1999) is a detective novel without sf elements. Similarly, Lethem’s best-known novel, Fortress of Solitude (2003), is not science fiction, but includes characters who are fans of sf and one who is a prominent artist of covers for sf paperbacks. The novel Chronic City (2009) is largely realistic, but contains a number of fantastic and science fictional elements, suggesting that it is set in an alternative version of New York. Lethem, who has cited Philip K. Dick as a major influence on his work, actually began his career in sf with a series of critical articles on Dick’s work. More recently, Lethem edited three volumes from the Library of America that together compile more than a dozen of Dick’s novels. In 2011, Lethem coedited the volume The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a massive, visionary exploration of the nature of reality on which Dick had worked for the last eight years of his life. LOCUS AWARDS. The Locus Awards are given annually by Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California, for achievement in the fields of fantasy and science fiction during the previous publishing year. The awards have been given annually since 1971, with the award for Best Novel being the most coveted. However, due to the increasing interest in fantasy fiction, that award was split in 1980 to include an award for Best Science Fiction Novel and a separate award for Best Fantasy Novel. Other categories include Best First Novel, Best Young Adult Book, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. Awards are also given for Best Magazine, Best Publisher, Best Anthology, Best Collection, Best Editor, Best Artist, and Best Nonfiction/Art Book. LOVECRAFT, H. P. (1890–1937). The American horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft was one of the most important writers in that genre, exerting an influence on other writers that has only grown stronger over time. Meanwhile, the perspective of his work, which he sometimes referred to as “cosmic horror” and which is based on a vision of humans living in a universe that is fundamentally inimical to them, often caused that work to spill over into the realm of science fiction. Lovecraft developed an extensive mythology in which the universe is populated by powerful beings—such as the malevolent cosmic being Cthulhu—who are little concerned with the desires or welfare of human beings.

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Lovecraft’s career as a writer began with the publication of the story “The Call of Cthulhu” in Weird Tales in 1928, laying out a vision in which the monstrous Cthulhu lies sleeping beneath the South Pacific, but nevertheless exerts a disturbing influence on human psyches. The giant Cthulhu, looking something like a combination of a human, an octopus, and a dragon, with tentacles surrounding its fearsome mouth, would then go on to become a centerpiece of the mythology that would inform most of the remainder of Lovecraft’s work. During the 1930s, Lovecraft acquired a circle of admirers with whom he corresponded; many of these admirers—such as C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner—were writers themselves, and went on to produce work that often showed Lovecraft’s influence. LOWNDES, ROBERT A. W. (1916–1998). Robert A. W. “Doc” Lowndes was an American science fiction and horror writer, though he was probably best known for his work as an editor of a variety of pulp magazines for Columbia Publications. His most important editorial work was done as the editor of Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Quarterly. Early in his career, Lowndes was active in the early formation of science fiction fandom, perhaps most importantly as a key member of the Futurians. Much of his work as a writer was done in conjunction with other members of that group, with whom he combined to publish stories under such names as Arthur Cooke, S. D. Gottesman, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Lawrence Woods. While he was most influential as a science fiction editor in the 1940s and 1950s, he continued to work widely as an editor in the 1960s, when he edited a number of mystery and horror titles, as well as science fiction. While Lowndes’s best solo stories are generally felt to have been those he wrote in the horror genre, he did produce three sf novels as a solo author, including the juvenile The Mystery of the Third Mine (1953), The Puzzle Planet (1961), and Believers’ World (1961, based on stories published in 1952).

M MacLEAN, KATHERINE (1925– ). The American writer Katherine Anne MacLean was an important presence in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, producing a number of cutting-edge stories that combined credible scientific concepts of a kind typically associated with hard science fiction with the kind of social commentary typically associated with soft science fiction. Her stories also often featured psi powers, though she generally took the trouble to situate such powers in a more believable context than was often the case with stories featuring such powers. MacLean’s first published story, “Defense Mechanism,” appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1949. Her stories often feature clever twists, as in the case of “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951), in which an approaching alien spaceship that seems of normal size when first detected turns out to be microscopic once it actually arrives at earth, which tells of the arrival of an alien, or in the relatively humorous “The Snowball Effect” (1952), in which a ladies’ knitting circle becomes a powerful political organization. One important series of interrelated stories was the “Hills of Space” seqeuence, dealing with the colonization of the asteroids by outcasts from earth. This series began with “Incommunicado” (1950) and extended through several stories to “The Gambling Hell and the Sinful Girl” (1975). Many of her stories appeared in the collections The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy (1962) and The Trouble with You Earth People (1980). A planned “Hills of Space” novel has never appeared, but MacLean has published several novels, beginning with Cosmic Checkmate, coauthored with Charles de Vet (serialized in 1959, book form 1962). Her psi-power novel Missing Man (1975) includes the earlier novella of the same title that won the 1971 Nebula Award for Best Novella. MacLean was named an Author Emeritus in 2003 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. MacLEOD, KEN (1954– ). The Scottish science fiction novelist Ken MacLeod is a key member of the British Boom whose work is particularly noted for its combination of deftly employed hard science fiction concepts with 165

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sophisticated meditations on the potential social and political implications of those concepts. Much of his work deals with the notion of the Singularity (to describe which he coined the term “the Rapture for nerds”) and of the possible impact on humanity of the development of ultra-advanced artificial intelligence. MacLeod’s work shows a strong knowledge of (and affection for) the history of science fiction as a genre, even as he challenges some of its central tendencies, particularly in the way his emphasis on the dynamics of social groups runs counter to the individualist orientation that has dominated the genre since its inception. MacLeod began his major publishing career with a four-volume sequence of novels known as the “Fall Revolution” series, comprising The Star Fraction (1995), The Stone Canal (1996), The Cassini Division (1998), and The Sky Road (1999). This sequence explores a number of political ideas in a futuristic setting, with MacLeod’s own socialist convictions underlying it all. Though the first volume is set on earth (and involves the revolution that gives the sequence its title), the rest shift into outer space, beginning the contribution to reenergizing the space opera that has marked many of MacLeod’s subsequent efforts as well. However, the narrative world of these volumes centrally involves the rise of “fast-folk,” or artificial intelligences far more advanced than humans. MacLeod followed with a second sequence of novels, the “Engines of Light” trilogy. This lively and often humorous sequence, comprising Cosmonaut Keep (2000), Dark Light (2001), and Engine City (2002), again begins on earth (centering on a resurrected Soviet Union), but again moves into space opera, in this case in a narrative that involves alien contact. MacLeod’s individual novels have typically shown a similar exuberance and have similarly explored far-flung settings and technologies. Newton’s Wake (2004) ranges across various planets and through virtual reality, in a mode that has often been compared to the work of Iain M. Banks. As indicated by its subtitle, Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact (2005) involves first contact with an alien species, with the important addition that it presents this contact from both the human and the alien points of view, including an impressive elaboration of the operations of the alien society. The Execution Channel (2007) stays much closer to contemporary reality, returning to earth to explore (and satirize) the 9/11-inspired “war on terror.” The Night Sessions (2008) is also focused on a critique of specific real-world events and practices, in this case the apocalyptic rhetoric of various religious movements; Intrusion (2012) also stays close to home, presenting a near-future dystopia whose focus on the promulgation of official power through official torture and constant surveillance through data-mining.

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THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. Founded in 1949 as the Magazine of Fantasy and initially edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction quickly changed to its full title by the second issue. The magazine quickly rose to prominence in the 1950s, just as John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction was beginning to lose a bit of its dominance in the field. It was notable not only for its fiction, but also for nonfiction and reviews, such as the science column written by Isaac Asimov that appeared for 399 consecutive monthly issues from 1958 to 1992. The magazine, widely known by the abbbreviation F&SF, won the Hugo Award for Best Magazine in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972, after which that category was discontinued. MALZBERG, BARRY N. (1939– ). Barry N. Malzberg is an American writer who has worked in a number of genres, but is best known for his science fiction. He was particularly prolific in the genre in the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, producing numerous stories and novels in that period. Much of Malzberg’s early writing was originally published under the pseudonym “K. M. O’Donnell,” including the stories collected in Final War and Other Fantasies (1969) and In the Pocket and Other Science Fiction Stories (1971), as well as the novels The Empty People (1969) and Universe Day (1971). Also published as by O’Donnell were two satires involving sf fandom: Dwellers of the Deep (1970) and Gather in the Hall of the Planets (1971). At the beginning of the 1970s, Malzberg began publishing novels under his own name, including a trilogy of novels that critiqued the American Apollo space exploration program: The Falling Astronauts (1971), Revelations (1972), and Beyond Apollo (1972). Given the skepticism of these novels toward the value of space exploration in general, there was considerable controversy in the science fiction community when the third of these won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. In response, the later novels of Malzberg were sometimes critical of the culture of science fiction in general, as when novels such as Galaxies (1975) and Scop (1976) employ the techniques of postmodernist metafiction (then popular in literary fiction) to interrogate and criticize the conventions of science fiction, and especially of the space opera. Herovit’s World (1973), which employs the science fiction writer as a sort of prototype of the alienated individual in modern society, is particularly effective, though alienation is the master trope of Malzberg’s fiction and is a condition suffered by virtually all of his protagonists. By the end of the 1970s, Malzberg had moved away from writing science fiction, a decision that is outlined in his collection of essays The Engines of the Night: Science Fiction in the Eighties (1982, republished in an expanded edition as Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium in 2007).

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THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (1962). The Man in the High Castle is an alternate-history novel by Philip K. Dick that won for Dick his only Hugo Award. The novel takes place in a post–World War II United States that is largely occupied, or at least dominated, in the East by Germany and in the West by Japan, the Axis powers having won the war. Much of the novel involves plots and counterplots between the Germans and the Japanese, as they jockey for power in the new world order. Meanwhile, much of the action in the novel revolves around the appearance within this reality of an alternate-history novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by one Hawthorne Abendsen, whose rumored residence in a mountain fortress gives Dick’s book its title. Abendsen’s novel envisions an alternate reality in which the Allied powers won the war, that is, a reality that is similar to our own, and indeed much of the philosophical impact of Dick’s novel is to blur the boundary between fiction and reality and to challenge any easy assumptions concerning which alternate history is “real” and which is “fictional.” The Man in the High Castle is probably less off-beat than most Dick novels, but it does include some classic Dick motifs, one of the most prominent of which involves a lucrative trade, especially among Japanese collectors, in prewar American artifacts, most of which are actually forgeries, though the collectors themselves don’t seem very confused about this fact, as long as the forgeries are good ones and seem authentic. The Germans (depicted throughout as more sinister than the Japanese), meanwhile, become concerned that Abendsen’s novel will inspire its readers to realize that a different world is possible (much in the way that scholars such as Darko Suvin have argued the best science fiction typically does for its readers), so they send an assassin to eliminate the author. Judo instructor Juliana Frink, who becomes fascinated by the novel, uses her martial arts skills to dispatch the assassin, then goes to warn Abendsen, who by this time has moved from his high castle to a normal suburban life, figuring that if the Nazis really want to kill him, they can do it no matter where he lives. He and Juliana then have an odd, inconclusive conversation that brings to a focus many of the novel’s philosophical issues. She then goes away, leaving him to his fate. “MARS” TRILOGY (1993–1996). Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy—comprising the volumes Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996)—was one of the most important works of science fiction in the 1990s and still stands as one of the most effective explorations of politics and environmentalism in all of science fiction. The three volumes present a sweeping and magisterial narrative of the terraforming of Mars so that it can support human colonization, a process that is particularly important due to the decaying economic, political, and environmental conditions that prevail on earth. As is typical of Robinson’s fiction, the trilogy describes in extensive and convincing detail a variety of science fictional technologies

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that are involved in this process, while the basic scenario of building a new human world also involves the building of new social, political, and economic systems, thus offering numerous opportunities for the exploration of the various issues involved in this process, making the “Mars” trilogy a series of legitimate political novels and genuine novels of ideas. Understanding that this new planet represents a second chance for human civilization to develop in better and more sustainable ways, the colonists seek to avoid the mistakes of the past on earth. In this process of attempting to imagine a genuinely better future, the trilogy becomes one of the most important utopian narratives of recent decades, while also providing a great deal of commentary on recent and current political conditions and events on earth at the time. Meanwhile, one of the most important technological breakthroughs described in the trilogy is a “gerontological” treatment that allows many of the central characters to live for hundreds of years, thus providing narrative continuity as well as giving them the opportunity to live on Mars long enough to begin to think of themselves as genuine Martians and to begin to think of the planet as a home whose environment they need to respect even as they modify it to make it more liveable. On the other hand, different major characters come to the fore at different times, then recede or even die, undermining the individualist emphasis of most traditional science fiction. As a whole, the trilogy rejects the Enlightenment vision of science and technology as tools simply for the control and domination of nature. At the same time it shows a great deal of faith in the power and flexibility of science and in its ability to provide useful solutions to a wide variety of problems if not overwhelmed by political and ideological limitations. In the process, Robinson develops an alternative (individualist) vision of science as something that can help humans to live more in harmony with nature. Thus, despite its critique of the domination-based science of the past, the trilogy shows a faith in the power of science and in the likelihood of the continuing development of more and more advanced technologies that seems almost like a throwback to earlier days. At the same time, its sophisticated narrative of political drama (which goes well beyond anything in the work of, say, Robert A. Heinlein) represents a genuine step forward in the evolution of the ability of science fiction to provide useful lessons for the real world, looking forward to such political dramas as Robinson’s later (though less successful) “Science in the Capital” series (2004–2007). Finally, the actual terms of this drama, which involves not only competition among various viewpoints on Mars but also attempts (including all-out revolution) to escape the domination of the repressive/regressive corporate capitalist powers back on earth, deliver powerful specific (pro-socialist) political messages as well.

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MARUSEK, DAVID (1951– ). The American writer David Marusek began publishing science fiction stories in 1993, though his work as a graphic designer limited the time he initially devoted to writing. He has subsequently made a specialty of stories featuring unusually complex and believable nearfuture visions, typically informed by a sense that, while the problems of the future might be difficult, attempting to solve them will be exciting, whether or not these attempts are successful. A 1992 attendee of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, Marusek began to get serious attention in 1999 with the Nebula Award–nominated novella “The Wedding Album,” in which a loving couple repeatedly (and poignantly) discover that they are actually computer simulations that recreate another original flesh-and-blood couple, only to forget and begin the cycle again. Marusek then established himself further with the much-praised 2005 novel Counting Heads (the first chapter of which is derived from his 1995 story “We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy”), in which he creates an intricately detailed 22nd-century world in which nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and other fields have produced tremendous advances that make many aspects of human life much easier, but often with a sinister price. Mind over Ship (2009) is a sequel. MATHESON, RICHARD (1926–2013). The American novelist, screenwriter, and television script writer Richard Matheson is perhaps one of the most underappreciated figures in the recent history of American popular culture. Matheson was a prolific writer who published more than two dozen novels between 1953 and 2012, including several highly influential horror novels, as well as several well-known novels usually considered to be science fiction. Of the latter, The Shrinking Man (1956, adapted to film as The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957, with a script written by Matheson) is particularly effective as an expression of various anxieties that plagued (especially male) Americans in the 1950s. Matheson’s most important individual work may well be the novel I Am Legend (1954), a postapocalyptic narrative in which a single individual is the last remaining “normal” human in a world in which most of the population have been killed by nuclear war and a subsequent epidemic, the rest turned by the results of that epidemic into vampires. Neville spends his time struggling to survive and to kill as many of the vampires as possible, until suddenly coming to the realization that it is now the vampires who are normal and he who is the monster. This novel, which addresses so many key issues in American culture in the 1950s, has also proven to have continuing appeal. It has seen three major film adaptations, as The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). In addition, George Romero has cited Matheson’s vampires as a major inspiration for his creation of the zombies in Night of the

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Living Dead (1968) and subsequent works, which have themselves been among the most compelling works of American popular culture in the past half century. In addition to his novels, Matheson wrote numerous short stories, many of which have been adapted to television or film. Meanwhile, he himself wrote extensively for the latter media, in which his best-known work was probably done for the Twilight Zone television series, for which he wrote more than a dozen episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (1963), one of the most widely remembered episodes of that iconic series. He also wrote for the original Star Trek, as well as several other television series. During the 1960s, Matheson also scripted five of Roger Corman’s near-legendary adaptations to film of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His numerous screenplays extended to Westerns and war movies, as well as horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He also adapted some of his own stories to film, including Duel (1971), which became the first theatrical film of director Steven Spielberg. Matheson’s influence has also been felt in numerous other works of film and television, as well as in the works of other writers, such as Stephen King. Matheson was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2010. McAULEY, PAUL (1955– ). The British author Paul McAuley has written a number of important works of science fiction, typically drawing on his training as a botanist to produce credible scenarios based in biological science. McAuley began publishing sf short stories in 1984, writing a number of stories through the decade, many of which were eventually collected as The King of the Hill and Other Stories (1991). He has continued to write stories throughout his career, most of which can be found in the recent collection A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction of Paul McAuley (2013). However, his better-known work has been in the novel form, where he has produced a number of far-reaching and ambitious works, beginning with Four Hundred Billion Stars in 1988, winning the Philip K. Dick Award. Four Hundred Billion Stars was followed by Of the Fall (1989) and Eternal Light (1991), the three volumes together constituting the “Re-United Nations” sequence of far-future space operas. McAuley then further established his range with Red Dust (1993), a sweeping planetary romance set on a Mars transformed by terraforming. Pasquale’s Angel (1994) is an alternate history set in a dystopian Renaissance Italy dominated by a powerhungry Leonardo da Vinci, while Fairyland (1995) is a tale involving tropes from cyberpunk and genetic engineering that puts McAuley’s background in biology to good use. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

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McAuley’s most sustained work to date has been the carefully integrated “Confluence” trilogy, comprising Child of the River: The First Book of Confluence (1997), Ancients of Days: The Second Book of Confluence (1998), and Shrine of Stars: The Third Book of Confluence (1999). All three were published together in 2000 as Confluence, and appropriately so, given the unusually smooth continuity of this sequence, involving a world ship traveling through space in the far future. The ship functions as a sort of ark where new species can develop after they have been created from the blood of the protagonist Yamamanama, who thus functions as a sort of secular Messiah figure. After the grand scale sf of Confluence, McAuley scaled things back in a series of near-future techno-thrillers, typically centered on biotech disasters. In The Secret of Life (2001) microbes brought back from Mars threaten the earth, while Whole Wide World (2001) is a dystopian narrative that explores potential consequences of the 9/11 bombings, or at least of reactions to those bombings. White Devils (2004) looks back to John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar in that it also deals with Western corporate exploitation of Africa, though it shows a more sophisticated understanding of the postcolonial history of the continent. Nevertheless, the book is essentially a thriller, somewhat in the mode of the works of Michael Crichton—including Jurassic Park (1990) and Congo (1980). Crichton is, in fact, indirectly alluded to at several points. However, McAuley’s novel is also a thoughtful work of science fiction that tells its story within the setting of a detailed future world that derives in a believable way from our own present, once again centrally involving a critique of the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror as they misinterpret an entirely natural disease as an act of bioterrorism and retaliate accordingly, with baleful results. Cowboy Angels (2007) is a noir thriller involving time travel and parallel worlds; the interrelated sequence The Quiet War (2008), Gardens of the Sun (2009), and In the Mouth of the Whale (2012) is essentially a return to space opera, as is Evening’s Empires (2013), though all of these except In the Mouth of the Whale are confined to earth’s solar system. McCAFFREY, ANNE (1926–2011). The Irish-based, American-born writer Anne McCaffrey was prominent as a writer of both fantasy and science fiction. She was also something of a pioneer, having been the first woman to win a Hugo Award in 1968, which her 1967 story “Weyr Search” won for Best Novella. A follow-up story, “Dragonrider,” won the 1969 Nebula Award in the same category, making her the first woman to win a Nebula as well. Both of these stories, meanwhile, were part of the “Dragonriders of Pern” sequence, both later becoming part of Dragonflight (1968), the first novel in that sequence, followed immediately by Dragonquest (1970). Both of the latter two volumes were finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel;

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they constitute a coherent sequence, which overlaps with another Pern trilogy, the “Harper Hall” trilogy, comprising Dragonsong (1976), Dragonsinger (1978), and Dragondrums (1979). Other works (initially by McCaffrey and later by her son Todd McCaffrey) have also extended the sequence to a total of approximately two dozen books; the sequence is set in an essentially preindustrial society in which Dragons play a crucial (and mostly positive) role, as opposed to their traditional figuration as enemies of humanity. McCaffrey’s “Pern” novels are set in a universe governed by the “Federated Sentient Planets,” which she also uses as a setting for numerous other works, creating a certain continuity across these works. These works include a seven-novel sequence of “Brain & Brawn Ship” books. These stories feature individuals who as infants had to be connected to machines for life support because their own bodies were not viable. These “Brains” are interfaced with computers that increase their mental capacities, as well as allowing them to perform certain specialized jobs such as being starship pilots; they are partnered with “Brawns,” who have unusual physical abilities, thus making for a formidable partnership. Another fictional universe created by McCaffrey, the “Talents” universe, is the setting for the “Talent” and the “Tower and Hive” sequences. In 2005, McCaffrey was named a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; in 2006 she was elected to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. McDONALD, IAN (1960– ). Born in Manchester, England, Ian McDonald moved as a child with his family to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he still resides. Growing up in Ireland gave McDonald a keen awareness of issues related to colonization and its aftermath, and this awareness is a hallmark of his science fiction, which often explores the impact of technology or events such as alien encounters on postcolonial cultures. Desolation Road (1988), McDonald’s first novel, is a narrative of Martian colonization that also includes numerous elements of magical realism. It won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was eventually followed by a sequel, Ares Express (2001), in somewhat the same vein. More immediately, it was followed by Out on Blue Six (1989), set in a future dystopian city that insists on universal contentment, or else. King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991) and The Broken Land (1992) draw on Irish culture, as does Sacrifice of Fools (1996), which is set in Northern Ireland and features an alien invasion of the earth by the Shian, a species who agree to share their advanced technology with humans in exchange for permission to settle in certain designated areas. McDonald’s “Chaga” saga, which includes Chaga (1995, U.S. title Evolution’s Shore) and Kirinya (1998), features an alien incursion in Africa by the Chaga, an extraterrestrial ecosystem that seeds the southern hemisphere. Pos-

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sibly through the use of a form of nanotechnology, the Chaga spreads dramatically and transforms the African landscape, seemingly for the better, but the United Nations responds with an intervention that is essentially a neocolonial exertion of power. River of Gods (2004) was shortlisted for both the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke awards in 2005 and won the award for best novel of 2004 from the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA). Here, McDonald turns his attention to India in 2047, the centennial of India’s independence from British colonial rule. A sweeping novel that involves a wide array of characters and technologies, the novel illustrates the ways in which Indian culture is transformed by technology (much of it involving artificial intelligence and virtual reality) at the same time that it retains much of its cultural tradition. River of Gods was followed in 2009 by Cyberabad Days, a related story collection. McDonald’s most recent novel, Brasyl (2007, shortlisted for the Hugo Award in 2008 and winner of Best Novel of 2007 from the BSFA), is a stylistic tour-de-force that weaves together three different tales set in parallel worlds, all of which take place in a vividly evoked Brazil. Dervish House (2010) moves to 2027 Istanbul amid power struggles that center on attempts to control carbon emissions; it won the BSFA and John W. Campbell Memorial awards and was nominated for the Hugo and shortlisted for the Clarke. McDonald moved into young adult fiction with Planesrunner (2011) and its sequel Be My Enemy (2012). See also POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. McINTYRE, VONDA (1948– ). The American science fiction writer Vonda McIntyre earned a degree in biology from the University of Washington and later did graduate work in genetics. She attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in 1970 and began publishing science fiction stories that same year. Her story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” (published in Analog in 1973) won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, marking her as a writer of considerable promise. That promise was fully realized when this story formed the first section of the novel Dreamsnake (1978), which won another Nebula, as well as the Hugo Award and Locus Award for best novel. This novel recounts the fantasy-like adventure of a female protagonist who seeks a snake whose venom has special properties than can aid her in her own work as a healer, though her travels take her through an environment that has much in common with those of postapocalyptic narratives. McIntyre’s first novel, The Exile Waiting, was published in 1975. She has published numerous others, including the single novels Superluminary (1983) and Barbary (1986), the latter a young adult novel. Her fantasy novel The Moon and the Sun (1997) won the Nebula Award for best novel. Much of her work has been related to franchised series, such as The Crystal Star (1994), based on the “Star Wars” sequence. She has been particularly active

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as an author of Star Trek novels, including The Entropy Effect (1981) and Enterprise: The First Adventure (1986); she also wrote the novelizations of the second through fourth Star Trek films: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). Her novels Starfarers (1989), Transition (1991), Metaphase (1992), and Nautilus (1994) constitute a sequence based on a nonexistent sf television series that McIntyre herself envisioned. Her numerous short stories have been widely collected and anthologized. MERRIL, JUDITH (1923–1997). Judith Merril (pen name of Judith Josephine Grossman) was an American science fiction writer who moved to Canada in the late 1960s for personal reasons and to protest repressive political conditions in the U.S. She remained a resident of Canada for the rest of her life, becoming a citizen in 1976. There, she remained involved in the peace movement and in other progressive causes of the kind that had informed her work from its very beginnings, which included early membership in the Futurians, along with future collaborations with C. M. Kornbluth and future husband Frederik Pohl. Though Merril began writing professionally in 1945, her first published sf story was “That Only a Mother,” in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1948. Merril’s most important work of science fiction is probably her novel Shadow on the Hearth (1950), a Cold War–inspired postapocalyptic narrative that presents an apocalypse that arises from a surprise nuclear attack on the United States, though it does not specifically identify the attackers as Soviets. Like most of Merril’s science fiction, this novel features ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. But Merril’s book is highly unusual among postapocalyptic works of the 1950s in its focus on a female protagonist, housewife Gladys Mitchell, and in its concentration on the domestic sphere, as Gladys struggles to keep hearth and home together in the aftermath of the nuclear attack, keeping her household running and taking care of her two daughters, Barbara and Ginny. Writing as Cyril Judd, Merril collaborated with Kornbluth to write the Mars colonization novel Outpost Mars (1952) and Gunner Cade (1952), a military science fiction novel in which warfare has become a sport. Merril published a number of science fiction stories through the 1950s; most of her short fiction appears in various collections, including Out of Bounds (1960), Survival Ship and Other Stories (1974), and The Best of Judith Merril (1976). The most comprehensive collection is the posthumous Homecalling and Other Stories: The Complete Solo Fiction of Judith Merril (2005). In addition to her own work as a writer, Merril worked extensively as an editor, especially of anthologies of science fiction stories. The most important of these were the series of 12 collections of the “year’s best” science fiction stories, beginning with SF: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and

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Fantasy (1956) and extending through SF12 (1967), though the titles of the volumes varied somewhat over the years. Merril was also one of the first American champions of science fiction’s New Wave, which she promoted through her work as an editor, especially in the anthology England Swings SF: Stories of Speculative Fiction (1968). Merril’s memoir, Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (2002, edited after Merril’s death by Emily Pohl-Weary, her granddaughter) won a 2003 Hugo Award for Best Related Book. Merril’s book collection, which she donated to the Toronto Public Libraries formed the core of a growing collection that became the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy. Merril was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. See also CANADIAN SCIENCE FICTION. MERRITT, ABRAHAM (1884–1943). Publishing primarily as “A. Merritt,” the American journalist and editor Abraham Grace Merritt was a pioneer in the writing of speculative fiction in the United States. Merritt served as the assistant editor of The American Weekly from 1912 to 1937. During that time he also embarked on an extensive writing career, specializing in adventure stories that often veered into the realm of fantasy. Of his eight novels, The Metal Monster (serialized in 1920 and again, in revised form, in 1927) is the most science fictional, though its alien shapeshifter, composed of millions of metal components, also recalls the horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft (whom Merritt influenced)—as well as anticipating the Construct Council of China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000). Merritt’s later work veered more toward a combination of horror with fantasy and derived its nonrealist elements more from the supernatural than from the scientific. These included the parallel-world novel The Ship of Ishtar (1924) and the supernatural detective novel Seven Footprints to Satan (1927). MIÉVILLE, CHINA (1972– ). China Miéville is perhaps the leading figure in the phenomenon known as the British Boom, writing innovative, genrebending works that epitomize the movement. On the other hand, his baroque linguistic energy and highly sophisticated understanding of political theory are unusual for any writer. Miéville received his BA in social anthropology from Cambridge and an MA and PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics. His doctoral dissertation, written from a committed Marxist perspective, was published in book form as Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law (2006). Miéville has tended to classify his work as “weird fiction,” though he selfconsciously explores a number of existing genres. Miéville’s first novel, King Rat, is a work of urban fantasy/horror that drew considerable attention

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and was nominated for several awards. With the publication of Perdido Street Station (2000, winner of the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award and British Fantasy Award), Miéville became a truly major figure in contemporary British literature. In his stunningly detailed creation of the city of New Crobuzon (and the world of Bas-Lag that surrounds it), Miéville succeeds as well as anyone ever has in creating political commentary through imaginative fiction, combining fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other genres. Perdido Street Station was followed by two other entries in the “Bas-Lag” trilogy, The Scar (shortlisted for the 2003 Clarke Award) and Iron Council (2004, winner of the 2005 Clarke Award and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel). Miéville’s first collection of short fiction, Looking for Jake (2005), includes “The Tain,” a novella (originally published in 2002) that is both a truly original vampire tale and an allegorical tale of revolutionary liberation from political oppression. Finally, in Un Lun Dun (2007), Miéville entered the realm of children’s fantasy fiction, winning the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book. Continuing his high level of productivity, Miéville published the Kafkaesque parallel-worlds detective novel The City & the City in 2009, winning the Clarke Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel—the latter in a tie with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. The darkly comic fantasy novel Kraken (2010) was followed by the more purely science fictional Embassytown in 2011, winning a Hugo nomination and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for a novel of interplanetary colonization that also explores fundamental philosophical issues related to language. Miéville returned to young adult fiction with Railsea (2012), a postapocalyptic narrative that also functions as a planetary romance and includes important elements of steampunk; it has been labeled a key work of salvagepunk. Miéville has also written criticism and short stories and has been the writer for the comic book series Dial H from DC Comics since its inception as part of the “New 52” event in 2012. MILFORD CONFERENCE. The Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference is an annual sf workshop for sf writers, founded in Milford, Pennsylvania, in 1956, with Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm as its most important hosts and founders. The workshop methodology of the conference, derived from that of the University of Iowa’s graduate program in creative writing, later served as a model for several other projects, including the now betterknown Clarion Workshop, where Knight and Wilhelm were among the first teachers. After moving to England, James Blish founded an English version of the Milford Conference, located, appropriately enough, at Milford-in-Sea, Hampshire.

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MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION. From its beginnings in the pulps, science fiction has frequently drawn energy from tales of combat, with the prototypical example being spectacular battles between heavily armed spacecraft in deep space, though these battles (typically between humans and aliens) sometimes moved onto planetary surfaces as well. The motif of “future war,” however, is extremely flexible and can encompass a variety of motifs, including high-tech wars set entirely on earth and fought entirely between humans—or between humans and the technologies they have created. Most of the early examples of military science fiction tend to celebrate warfare as heroic and glorious, or at least to show a fascination with advanced military hardware without much consideration of the possible human consequences. However, there were early examples of antiwar satire in military science fiction, such as the novel Gunner Cade (1952), by Judith Merril and C. M. Kornbluth, writing together as Cyril Judd; here, the contemporary enthusiasm for war is lampooned via a motif in which warfare has become a sport. One of the most notorious examples of pro-war military science fiction from the 1950s is Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), which not only presents some stirring scenes of outer-space combat between humans and their alien foes, the Bugs, but also contains an extensive description (and glorification) of military culture in general. Clearly intended to urge military readiness in the face of what the author perceived as the Soviet threat during the Cold War, Starship Troopers was seen by many as so extreme in its promotion of militarism (and its rather bloodthirsty celebration of the idea of exterminating one’s enemies) as to be virtually fascist in its politics. Then again, Heinlein had also endorsed the genocidal extermination of invading alien enemies as early as The Puppet Masters (1951), an alieninvasion narrative that features the relatively unusual expedient of germ warfare as the humans defeat alien invaders, then prepare to head for the alien home planet to wipe the aliens out altogether. Gordon R. Dickson’s “Dorsai” series, beginning with The Genetic General (1960), also took a pro-military stance, though with a somewhat more measured examination of the ethos of militarism. Even this approach, though, seemed increasingly extreme and out of touch in the 1960s and 1970s, as the growing power of the antiwar movement took militaristic jingoism more and more out of favor. During this period, Heinlein’s novel triggered responses such as Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), which lampoons the very ideas that are championed in Heinlein’s novel. Starship Troopers was also a key referent of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974), one of the finest examples of antiwar military science fiction, and a novel that also provides considerable commentary on the war in Vietnam and on the social impact of war in general. Haldeman’s novel was very much in keeping with

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the spirit of its time, while its engagement with the war in Vietnam highlighted the way in which military science fiction, since the late 1960s, had largely been split between Vietnam-inspired critiques of war and ongoing expressions of pro-war sentiments. The former of these two sides clearly had the upper hand in producing interesting science fiction in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, including such antimilitary works as Thomas Disch’s dystopian narrative Camp Concentration (1968), which involves a grim near-future regime in which individuals can be subjected to sinister medical experiments without their permission, especially if they refuse induction into the military—a motif that makes the novel a clear commentary on the military draft that supported the Vietnam War. Such critiques extended beyond Vietnam itself to such works as Lucius Shepard’s, whose Life during Wartime (1987) examines American military adventurism in a Latin American setting that is clearly inspired both by recent Latin American history and by the memory of Vietnam. Haldeman’s later Forever Peace (1997) also employs Latin American conflict amid a declaredly antimilitary narrative. Here, U.S. soldiers fight against Latin American and other Third World guerrillas via remote-controlled “soldierboys,” which are advanced combat robots. However, it turns out that some of the technology involved can also be used to stimulate empathy for others, thus advancing the cause of perpetual peace—once they prevent a cult of Christian fanatics from intentionally causing the end of the universe. In the Ronald Reagan decade of the 1980s, however, pro-military science fiction made something of a comeback. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are among the most important sf writers who have kept the pro-military spirit of Starship Troopers alive during this period, and their 1985 alien-invasion novel Footfall, for example, was very much in tune with the “Star Wars” fantasies of the Reagan administration in its vision of the development of a super-weapon that allows earth to defeat and destroy alien attackers who have seemingly superior technology. Pournelle himself, showing the influence of both Heinlein and Dickson, had already begun the “CoDominium” sequence, the early volumes of which feature—beginning with West of Honor (1976) and The Mercenary (1977)—a military genius, Falkenberg, who founds a futuristic mercenary force known as “Falkenberg’s Legion” that helps to overcome the stupidity and short-sightedness of civilians, who tend to be less competent and effective than the military in Pournelle’s work, in this case threatening the human expansion into space. Also, from 1983 to 1990, Pournelle edited, with John F. Carr, a series of 10 “There Will Be War” anthologies of military science fiction. Meanwhile, Niven’s “Known Space” series featured images of space warfare that were extended in a series of works by various authors set in the same universe focusing on a series of conflicts between humanity and the

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warlike (and catlike) Kzin, known as the “Man-Kzin Wars.” Here, the fierce Kzin are continually defeated by humans thanks to the secret machinations of the Pierson’s Puppeteers, a vastly advanced alien race that manipulates events to ensure that humans acquire the superior technology (in particular a hyperspace drive) that is necessary for their victory. This series consists of more than a dozen anthologies of stories (the first of which was published in 1988), only a few of which were written by Niven himself; it also consists of half a dozen novels written by Niven in collaboration with others. Also reminiscent of Starship Troopers in many ways is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985); while focusing more on the military training of its young protagonist than on war itself, this novel ends with a cataclysmic battle in which a race of alien “buggers” is essentially exterminated. It should be noted, however, that protagonist Ender Wiggin experiences considerable guilt over this extermination and works to make amends in future volumes in the series; the tendency toward militarism of the first volume is thus diminished considerably. The mid-1980s also saw the launch of Louis McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosigan Saga” (1986– ), much of which can be classified as military science fiction, though the series intermixes a number of different genres (such as adventure, detective fiction, political thriller, and romance) in constructing a far-ranging narrative that addresses a number of issues set in a richly detailed universe. Meanwhile, the resurrection of the space opera in the works of any number of writers of the British Boom in recent years has frequently involved elements of military conflict. For example, in the world of Richard K. Morgan’s “Takeshi Kovacs” sequence, individuals can have their consciousnesses stored in devices that can be implanted in different bodies (including those of super-soldiers), giving them specialized physical capabilities for specific applications (including combat). One of the most popular recent sequences of military science fiction begins with John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (2005) and extends through The Ghost Brigades (2006), The Last Colony (2007), Zoe’s Tale (2008), and The Human Division (2013). Somewhat of a throwback to the militarism of Starship Troopers, but with a somewhat lighter touch, this sequence centers on a technology that allows aging individuals, nearing the ends of their natural lives, to be resurrected in new, enhanced bodies, in which they can serve as super-soldiers in an interstellar conflict. These soldiers, members of the Colonial Defense Forces, do battle both in space and on planetary surfaces, against a variety of alien foes in support of the human colonization of the galaxy in competition with those other species. When set on earth, military science fiction often takes on an apocalyptic dimension in which global conflicts threaten to (or actually do) destroy the fabric of human civilization. Increasingly popular in recent years—perhaps spurred by the success of the Terminator and Matrix films—are stories in

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which humans battle against their own technological creations, typically in a mode in which the latter develops artificial intelligence and begins to regard humans as a threat (or simply as a nuisance). A typical recent example is Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse (2011), which details a revolt of the machines, led by an artificial intelligence called Archos, which strikes back against humans after they erase several earlier experimental versions of it. After extensive global conflict, the humans ultimately prevail, but only after large-scale destruction. MOFFITT, DONALD (1931– ). The American writer Donald Moffitt began publishing science fiction in 1960 but did not publish his first sf novel until 1977, with the appearance of The Jupiter Theft (1977). This novel and subsequent ones—especially the sequence The Genesis Quest (1986) and Second Genesis (1988)—established him as a writer of a distinctive version of space opera that combines scientific and mathematical veracity with large-scale adventure. Slightly less sweeping, but perhaps even more interesting, is the “Mechanical Sky” sequence, comprising Crescent in the Sky (1990) and A Gathering of Stars (1990), in which the human colonization of space is dominated by Arab Muslims, introducing some interesting cultural elements into American sf; Moffitt does occasionally slip into Orientalist stereotypes in his delineation of Arab culture, but his physics remains sound and he seems at least to intend to represent this culture fairly. Jovian (2003) is another space opera, this one confined to earth’s solar system. Moffitt has also written under the pseudonym Paul Kenyon. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (1966). Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which details the revolt of a lunar colony against its rulers on earth, may be the clearest elaboration of Heinlein’s libertarian political philosophy in all of his writing. Winner of the Hugo Award and nominated for the Nebula Award, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress provides a detailed account of the social structure of a lunar colony that is only slightly exaggerated for satirical purposes and serves in general as a fairly credible vision of a possible future society, built from a variety of influences and past political cultures on earth. Of course, the forces back on earth that originally colonized the moon seek to maintain control of the colony and to manipulate it for their own profit (the moon is a particularly rich source of mineral ores and energy), but the denizens of the colony have come to think of themselves as citizens of the moon and to see this interference from earth as intrusive and inappropriate. The “Loonies” who inhabit the moon are largely a collection of multicultural outcasts from earth society, and they find the very loose social organization there very much to their liking. Heinlein privileges it as well, depicting it as a sort of frontier community where individuals have

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much more liberty to be themselves than within the much more routinized and oppressive systems on earth. Ultimately, then, it perhaps should come as no surprise that the rebellion, thanks to the high-tech savvy of the Loonies (and to the help of an artificial intelligence), is able to succeed. MOORCOCK, MICHAEL (1939– ). The British writer Michael Moorcock has produced numerous important works of science fiction and fantasy, though he is perhaps best known as a leading driving force behind science fiction’s New Wave, especially through his editorship of New Worlds magazine from 1964 to 1970, though he resumed that editorship from 1976 to 1996 (when the magazine was published intermittently) as well. He had started publishing stories in New Worlds as early as 1958, at a time when he was also extensively writing in the genre of heroic fantasy, with which he was fascinated in his youth, though his own writing would ultimately challenge many of the inherited premises of the genre. Moorcock, for example, achieved considerable commercial success with his stories featuring the antihero Elric of Melniboné, which are constructed as an overt challenge to what Moorcock saw as the banal clichés of fantasy in the tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien, while the character of Elric himself functions as a sort of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. By 1965, Moorcock, having already published a number of science fiction stories, produced his first novel, the space opera The Sundered Worlds. In 1967, he won the Nebula Award for Best Novella for “Behold the Man,” an unusual time-travel narrative in which a time traveler takes on the role of Jesus Christ. Much of Moorcock’s own writing during this period epitomizes the move toward more literary style and more adult themes that he championed as the editor of New Worlds. Exemplary in this sense are his stories involving the sexually ambiguous anti-hero Jerry Cornelius, a secret-agent character who grows out of the 1960s fascination with espionage stories and is featured in the quartet of novels The Final Programme (1969), A Cure for Cancer (1971), The English Assassin (1972), and The Condition of Muzak (1977), though the last of these (which won the Guardian Prize) is essentially devoid of science fictional or other nonrealist elements, indicating the New Wave blurring of the boundary between sf and literary fiction. Cornelius has also appeared, either as the protagonist or as a supporting character, in several other works by Moorcock over the years, as well as in a number of works by other writers, with the blessing of Moorcock, who has shared other characters as well. In addition, transformed versions of the same character have appeared with different names, usually with the same initials, “J. C.,” the initials of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Moorock himself sometimes wrote under the pseudonym “James Colvin,” in addition to other pen names, such as “William Barclay.”

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Also extremely successful was Moorcock’s sequence “The Dancers at the End of Time,” initially comprising the trilogy An Alien Heat (1972), The Hollow Lands (1974), and The End of All Songs (1976), but including other stories as well. This sequence, featuring another “J. C.” character, Jherek Carnelian, makes use of motifs such as time travel and space travel, but it is really more fantasy than science fiction in its somewhat-whimsical depiction of the decadent inhabitants of the “End of Time,” who spend most of their time in escapist fantasies. Moorcock has also written successful literary fictions, including the Jerry Cornelius novel, and Mother London (1988), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize (but which deals marginally with telepathy). In 2008, The Times included Moorcock in its list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945.” MOORE, C. L. (1911–1987). Catherine Lucille Moore, generally publishing as “C. L. Moore” was one of the pioneering women writers of American science fiction, using the initials of her name to mask her gender and facilitate her access to publishing in the genre. She often wrote in collaboration with her first husband Henry Kuttner, whom she married in 1940. Publishing prolifically in venues such as Astounding Science-Fiction, Moore and Kuttner often sometimes produced jointly written works under single pseudonyms, such as “Lawrence O’Donnell” and “Lewis Padgett”; in addition, many of the stories published under Kuttner’s name, on the other hand, were also jointly written. Thus, while Kuttner’s output seems particularly prolific (with a total of more than 300 stories credited), it is often impossible to disentangle the actual authorship of individual stories. Moore began publishing sf stories in 1933 with a vampire story set on Mars. That story introduced the character “Northwest Smith,” who would go on to become the hero of many of her stories. Many of these were collected in the volumes Shambleau and Other Stories (1953, revised 1958 and 1961) and Northwest of Earth (1955), and eventually in Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith (2007). Moore also wrote a number of stories in the 1950s featuring “Jirel of Joiry,” the first female protagonist of sword-and-sorcery stories. Most of Moore’s other published fiction was in collaboration with Kuttner, though some of the standout examples—such as the novel (originally published in 1943) and four O’Donnell stories that constitute Judgment Night: A Selection of Science Fiction (1952)—seem to have been mostly the work of Moore, whose writing tends to have a personal quality and emotional intensity that Kuttner’s lacked. The title novel of this collection, which involves political machinations in a galactic empire, is a sweeping space opera that also challenges the conventions of that subgenre, while introducing sexuality as a motif in ways unusual for the time. Also particularly well known (and apparently mostly by Moore) is the story “The Children’s Hour” (1944) and

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the novella “Vintage Season” (1946), a story about tourists who employ time travel to reach interesting situations. These and much of Moore’s other fiction are collected in The Best of C. L. Moore (1975). In 1981, Moore, who wrote no fiction after Kuttner’s death in 1958, received the World Fantasy Award for life achievement; she was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998. MOORE, WARD (1903–1978). In the realm of science fiction, the American writer Ward Moore (who actually worked in a number of genres) is best known for the alternate-history novel (with time-travel elements, as well) Bring the Jubilee (1953). Here, Moore envisions a United States in which the Confederacy won the Civil War, crippling the development of the nation and leaving it, by the 20th century, in a technologically backward state. But even Moore’s first sf novel, Greener Than You Think (1947), is still read and still remembered, a classic comic satire in which a mutant form of grass overruns Los Angeles and then the world, while the authorities fail to react, caught up in their own indecisive dickering. Also of significance are the dystopian narrative Caduceus Wild (serialized in 1959, book form 1978) and the postapocalyptic narrative Lot & Lot’s Daughter, a 1996 volume that combines the earlier stories “Lot” (1953) and “Lot’s Daughter” (1954), which were apparently a basis for the 1962 film Panic in Year Zero!, though uncredited. MORGAN, RICHARD K. (1965– ). After more than a decade of work as an English teacher, the British writer Richard K. Morgan burst on the science fiction scene in 2002 with the publication of his first novel, Altered Carbon, which won the 2003 Philip K. Dick Award. The central science fictional conceit of the novel involves the digital storage of human consciousnesses for implantation (via “cortical stacks”) in artificially cloned bodies or “sleeves” (which can be used either to replace failed or damaged originals or to give the individual specialized or enhanced capabilities), thus placing the novel clearly within the realm of cyberpunk. These stacks, moreover, have a strong social dimension: the rich can afford customized, enhanced sleeves, while the poor can afford only standard, off-the-rack models, if any at all. Moreover, as is often the case with cyberpunk (especially the works of William Gibson), the novel is written in a style reminiscent of that of hardboiled detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler, though the style is especially appropriate in this case, because the narrative is basically a murder mystery, with protagonist Takeshi Kovacs serving as the detective.

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Though Altered Carbon is set almost entirely on earth, it was followed by subsequent volumes (again with Kovacs as the protagonist, though in different sleeves at different times) that are set in outer space. These volumes— including Broken Angels (2003) and Woken Furies (2005)—take the sequence into the realm of space opera and military science fiction and involve, among other things, a search for lost technologies left behind by a now-defunct Martian super civilization. They also involve technologies for beaming digitized consciousnesses through space at high speed for implantation in new sleeves at the target locations, thus further enabling a sort of travel through space. In the midst of this sequence, Morgan published the anticapitalist satire Market Forces (2004), in which capitalist competition has become a murderous game, and in which First World corporations invest in (and manipulate) events in Third World countries as part of the competition. Black Man (2007, published as Thirteen in the U.S.) involves genetically engineered super soldiers who have been exiled to Mars, with a protagonist who is one of many mutants charged with tracking down renegades who have escaped from their exile. Black Man won the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award. In addition to work on graphic novels and video games, Morgan has also written a sequence of fantasy novels with a gay protagonist, though many of the seemingly “magical” motifs in these novels turn out to have scientific explanations, blurring the boundary between fantasy and science fiction. These novels, which have the Brechtian collective title of “A Land Fit for Heroes,” include The Steel Remains (2008), The Cold Commands (2011), and The Dark Defiles (2014). See also GENETIC ENGINEERING. MOSKOWITZ, SAM (1920–1997). The American author and historian Sam Moskowitz was extremely active in the early days of science fiction fandom, continuing as an important collector of sf books and memorabilia through his lifetime. He also provided an extensive body of commentary on the genre as a whole and on fandom itself. His book The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom was published in 1954, including essays published in the Fantasy Commentator between 1945 and 1953, providing sf fandom with something like its first official history. It won a Hugo Award in 1955. Moskowitz also wrote extensive commentaries on individual authors, works, and themes, and his research into the formative years of the genre remains valuable to this day. Many of his commentaries are collected in the volumes Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (1963), which covers authors in the early period up to 1940; Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters

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of Modern Science Fiction (1966), which extends its coverage to 1965; and Strange Horizons (1976), which looks at some major themes in sf, including gender, race and ethnicity, and religion. While Moskowitz’s work as a writer of sf and as an editor of sf magazines was very limited, he did edit a number of important anthologies of science fiction stories (sometimes under other names), many of which include extensive introductions based on his own detailed research and sweeping historical knowledge. MOSLEY, WALTER (1952– ). Though perhaps better known as a writer of crime and detective fiction (and especially as the creator of the African American private detective Easy Rawlins), the African American writer Walter Mosley has also made significant contributions to science fiction. His work, in fact, has often veered into the fantastic, beginning with Blue Light (1998), an odd, almost surrealistic tale in which rays from space transform individuals on earth in anticipation of the end of the world. Mosley moved more into science fiction proper with Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent Future (2001), a collection of largely dystopian narratives written in a mode reminiscent of cyberpunk, but with the additional ingredient of heavy attention to issues related to race and ethnicity. Mosley’s young adult novel 47 (2005) combines elements of spectulative fiction with elements derived from the history of slavery. The Wave (2005) is somewhat of a followup to Blue Light, with strong mystical elements, though it ultimately appeals to scientific explanations (especially evolution) in its elaboration of a complex plot involving zombies. Mosley’s combination of sf and fantasy elements continues in Crosstown to Oblivion: On the Head of a Pin (2012), which is clearly conceived as the first volume in a series. Here a relatively realistic Los Angeles suddenly finds itself inhabited by mythical figures from the past, including the indigenous mythical past of classic Hollywood film. MUNDANE SCIENCE FICTION. Mundane science fiction, founded as a conscious movement at the 2002 Clarion Writers’ Workshop under the impetus of writer Geoff Ryman and others, seeks to situate science fiction stories in believable settings, with scenarios driven by technologies that are either already available or near-available at the time the story is written. Believing that much science fiction, employing far-fetched concepts and unlikely technologies, is simply escapist, Ryman felt that this new focus on the here and now would give science fiction more relevance and greater social and political power. While science fiction has typically been distinguished by flights of imagination that take readers outside their own reality and into new worlds of wonder, even the most exotic science fictional worlds

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have often provided important social and political commentary on the real worlds inhabited by readers and writers. Some writers, however, have argued that this commentary is most effective when the gap between the imaginary world of the text and the real world of the reader or writer is relatively small. Especially beginning with the prominence of cyberpunk in the 1980s, “nearfuture” science fiction set in worlds that are only slightly projected from contemporary reality has become increasingly popular within the genre. The mundane science fiction movement is an attempt to provide a coherent basis for this new focus. While Ryman has remained perhaps the leading proponent of mundane science fiction in recent years, the movement has spread sufficiently that Interzone magazine devoted an entire issue to the phenomenon in 2007. MUTANTS. Images of mutants, or individuals who are genetically outside the human norm (typically either because of the inadvertent effects of forces such as radiation or the intentional effects of genetic engineering), are common in science fiction, dating back to the 1920s as a crucial motif of the genre, with stories such as Jack Williamson’s “The Metal Man” (1928). Indeed, even the modified animals of H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) essentially represent forced mutations, though without a real understanding of genetics. Most mutants in sf, though, have moved away from the human norm, rather than toward it. In many cases, science fiction stories have simply focused on naturally occurring mutants. One of the most prominent early examples of the motif is Isaac Asimov’s “Mule,” a mutant in the “Foundation” trilogy whose psi powers allow him to influence people and gain political advantage across the galaxy. Because he is the result of a random, unpredictable mutation, the Mule was not accounted for in Hari Seldon’s long-term vision for the galaxy, thus causing considerable disruption in galactic history—and largely driving the plot of the trilogy. By definition, mutation broadens the possible range of the human; mutants cover a broad variety of territories in sf as well, as when Henry Kuttner’s Hogben stories, about a family of mutant hillbillies (1947–1949), explore the comic possibilities of the motif. Kuttner, often in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore, in fact produced a range of mutant narratives, as in the collection Mutant (1953). Sometimes mutants emerge as heroic, even messianic figures in sf, though perhaps the most famous such figure in sf is Paul Atreides of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), whose genetic peculiarities are the product of a long-term selective-breeding program and not of mutation in the usual sense. By the 1950s, the mutant motif was growing increasingly prominent, though it was now dominated by the nuclear fears of the era and by anxieties over the possible genetic consequences of radiation, due either to nuclear warfare or to nuclear accidents of various kinds. Wilmar H. Shiras’s stories

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of mutant children, who gain special powers from radiation-induced mutations, began in 1948 and culminated in the collection Children of the Atom (1953); they are a central earlier example of this trend, which later would become particularly prominent in postapocalyptic narratives involving nuclear wars that leave survivors who have undergone genetic modification due to radiation. Philip K. Dick was perhaps the most interesting practitioner of this phenomenon, in such works as Dr. Bloodmoney (1965). In some cases, of course, this radiation actually improves its “victims,” or at least gives them special powers, thus leading to new stages in the evolutionary development of the human race, or at least to new kinds of human experience. This latter trend culminates in Samuel R. Delany’s Einstein Intersection (1967), in which mutations of various kinds have transformed the entire world. Mutants are often perceived as a threat by “normal” humans, as in James Gunn’s The Immortals (1964), whose eponymous mutants must hide out from the rest of humanity, who wish to use the mutants’ blood to attain immortality for themselves. Mutants with psi powers have often seemed particularly frightening to nonpowered humans, though psychic abilities often promote better communication among the mutants themselves. Thus, in Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human (1953), three individuals with special powers ultimately escape persecution to find solace in each other, bonding together to form a single, powerful consciousness. Nancy Kress’s Nebula Award–winning novella Beggars in Spain (1991, expanded into a full-length novel the next year) makes particularly good use of the motif of psi powers in its vision of a group of superhuman children who are genetically engineered not to need sleep, but then find that this modification gives them other abilities. They then must defend themselves from the hostility of “normal” humans in a narrative that raises a number of crucial questions about genetic engineering as well as about the simple fact that some humans are inherently more gifted than others. In a number of such works (the XMen of Marvel Comics are probably the best-known example) persecuted mutants serve rather transparently as metaphors for persecuted racial minorities, as when Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972) employs the postapocalyptic persecution of mutants as an analog to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. Often the mutant motif is combined with other sf motifs, as in Dick’s The World Jones Made (1956), in which a group of genetically engineered mutants are designed to live on Venus. Also in the 1950s, James Blish’s “Pantropy” stories featured humans engineered to be able to live on other planets, making them easier to colonize. These stories were collected in The Seedling Stars (1957). Meanwhile, Poul Anderson’s Hugo-nominated There Will Be Time (1972) features a mutant who is able to travel through time due to his mutation. Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy (1987–1989) brings the mutant motif to the alien-invasion narrative. Here, the Oankali, a race of

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alien “gene traders” with highly advanced capabilities for genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, arrive on earth in the wake of a nuclear war that has virtually destroyed the human race. The aliens then create humanOankali hybrids that they see as the key to the ongoing survival of human genes. In more recent years, the earlier focus on radiation-induced mutations has largely been supplanted by such stories involving mutations intentionally induced by genetic engineering, those these mutations often involve unforeseen consequences. Greg Bear’s Blood Music (1985) posed a radical transformation of the very definition of the human through genetic engineering. Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden (1989), meanwhile, features a world where genetically engineered viruses can be added to human brains to educate the populace; other technologies are featured as well, including one for the eradication of cancer that has the unexpected side effect of radically shortening human lifespans. Genetic engineering is central to Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009), which deal with a catastrophic event of bioterrorism that has wiped out most of humanity, while the perpetrator of this event has also produced a new genetically engineered variant of humanity that survives, immune to the contagion. Particularly imaginative is Justina Robson’s Natural History (2003) and Living Next-Door to the God of Love (2005), in which advanced techniques of genetic engineering allow humans to be modified in numerous ways, including becoming a variety of technological devices (such as space ships), radically altering the definition of what it means to be human and causing a rift between the modified (the “Evolved”) and the unmodified (the “Unevolved”).

N NAGATA, LINDA (1960– ). The Hawaiian America science fiction and fantasy writer Linda Nagata began publishing science fiction stories in 1987. Since that time she has published both science fiction (mostly hard science fiction, featuring nanotechnology and other advanced technological concepts) and fantasy, with the Nebula Award–winning (for Best First Novel) The Bohr Maker (1995) marking her as a writer of some importance. That novel, set in a world in which nanotechnology has become ubiquitous, allowing some who wield it to appear to have godlike powers, became the first volume in the “Nanotech Succession” sequence, which also features such technologies as space elevators and advanced androids. The second entry, Tech-Heaven (1995), is a prequel to The Bohr Maker, while subsequent entries in the sequence—including Deception Well (1997) and Vast (1998)— also include increasing elements of space opera. This sequence was followed by the stand-alone novels Limits of Vision (2001) and Memory (2003), then by a second sequence, “Stories of the Puzzle Island,” which began with The Dread Hammer (2011) and Hepen the Watcher (2012); this sequence, informed by strong feminist sensibilities, also represents a strong turn toward fantasy. Two Stories: “Nahiku West” & “Nightside on Callisto” (2013) assembles the novellas indicated in the title, while The Red: First Light (2013) is military science fiction with an antiwar stance, featuring First World soldiers operating in the Third World—until they realize that they are serving corporate masters whose interests are not their own. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER. NANOTECHNOLOGY. In its most general sense, nanotechnology involves the manipulation, for specific practical purposes, of matter on the scale of individual atoms or molecules. The basic idea involves the construction of atomic-scale machines that can then manipulate other matter, including replicating themselves or building other machines that can then perform additional functions. The real-world possibilities of such technologies have triggered considerable speculation and research in recent years, while nano191

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technology has, understandably, also played a role in a number of recent science fictional explorations. The term “nanotechnology” was coined by Eric Drexler in 1976, though there are precursors in science fiction that make use of similar ideas without the terminology. For example, Philip E. High’s These Savage Futurians (1967) imagines a machine-constructed mini-factory that makes microscopic robots that can then be injected into humans for medical pruposes. The famed “replicators” of the original Star Trek (1966–1969) are also clearly nanotechnological devices. Since 1976, the term “nanotechnology” has come into broader and broader use, while the concept of nanotechnology has become more and more widely known, partly due to its popularization via science fiction. Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels (1990) was one of the earliest science fiction novels to make central use of nanotechnology as a motif, and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (1995) projects a future society saturated with nanotechnology. In Evolution’s Shore (1995) and Kirinya (1998), Ian McDonald takes the alien-invasion narrative into new territory with his vision of strange alien “biological packages” that land on earth and then proceed to move across the landscape, transforming everything in their path through a sort of nanotechnology. This transformation even extends to human beings, who appear on the verge of a new evolutionary leap thanks to the effects of the alien technology. The work of Linda Nagata has made particularly extensive use of nanotechnology as a science fictional motif, as in The Bohr Maker (1995), which is set in a world that has been transformed by nanotechnology so powerful and ubiquitous as to make the effects of the technology seem almost magical. Peter Hamilton also uses the motif (in a form referred to there as “nanonics”) in the “Night’s Dawn” sequence, while a variety of nanotechnology devices, referred to variously as “replicators,” “nanobots,” and “nanites” have proliferated through recent science fiction in various media. NEBULA AWARDS. The annual Nebula Awards, administered by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), are one of the most prestigious awards given for achievement in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. Given annually since 1965, the award’s winners are determined by a vote of the professional science fiction and fantasy writers who make up the membership of the SFWA. The award itself carries no cash prize, but does include a trophy and considerable prestige. The awards have traditionally been given in four categories, based on length of the work involved, including Best Short Story (7,500 words or less), Best Novelette (7,500–17,500 words), Best Novella (17,500–40,000 words), and Best Novel (over 40,000 words) published during the previous year. In the years 1974–1978 and 2000–2009 an award was also given for Best Script (for film or television), though that award was replaced in 2010 by the Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

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Also now given out as part of the Nebula Award ceremonies is the Andre Norton Award, given for the Best Young Adult Novel annually since 2005. Another related award (not necessarily given every year) is the Grand Master Award (renamed the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2002), given for lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy, beginning with Robert A. Heinlein in 1975. The latest winner of that award (in 2013) was Samuel R. Delany. Also given out in conjunction with the Nebula Awards is the Author Emeritus designation, given since 1995 to a senior writer who has not previously received the recognition he or she deserves. Since 2009 the Solstice Award has been given for lifetime achievement, differing from the Grand Master Award in that it can be given posthumously for contributions to the science fiction and fantasy field. NEUROMANCER (1984). Neuromancer is a novel by William Gibson that is widely regarded as the signature work of cyberpunk science fiction. Neuromancer already contains most of the central characteristics of the subgenre, including such science fictional conceits as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, while also employing both a plot and a style that are at least partly derived from hard-boiled detective fiction. Neuromancer is also typical of cyberpunk in its skepticism toward the technological utopianism that often drove earlier science fiction. For example, one of the key features of the near-future world of the text is a vast dystopian urban “Sprawl,” in which spectacular advances in computer technology have done little or nothing to solve social and economic problems, which, if anything, have gotten worse since the Reaganite 1980s in which the book was written. Gibson quickly extended Neuromancer into the “Sprawl” trilogy with Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), as well as a collection of short stories titled Burning Chrome (1986), and these volumes soon came to be regarded as the most central works of cyberpunk fiction. NEW WAVE. While there remains some disagreement over its significance (or even existence), the phenomenon known as the “New Wave” is widely regarded as one of the most important factors in determining the direction taken by science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. Part of the production associated with the New Wave can be associated with a simple desire to come to terms with the fact that, after decades of development from its origins in the pulps of the 1930s, modern science fiction was becoming a mature literary genre that was ready to move in new and more serious directions. But much of the New Wave can also be seen as a reaction to historical events occurring entirely outside of science fiction itself.

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It is no accident, for example, that the increased political engagement of New Wave science fiction occurred just as Western culture as a whole was becoming more overtly politicized as a result of phenomena such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Anti-War Movement. But it should also be recognized that the New Wave occurred after a decade or so in which the publishing environment of science fiction had changed dramatically, shifting from the complete domination of the pulps to include more and more emphasis on book publishing, with the consequent need for broader (and generally more mature) audiences in order to sustain the trend. Then again, numerous other phenomena within popular culture were occurring at this same time, and the very fact that science fiction’s New Wave takes its name from the French nouvelle vague movement in film suggests a sense that the science fiction movement participated in a broader attempt to make popular culture a more effective part of a changing world. New Wave science fiction is characterized by an attempt both to explore more complex and mature subject matter and to convey that subject matter in a more sophisticated literary style. Among other things, this dual quest led to a shift in emphasis from the hard science fiction of the Golden Age (in which the emphasis is on particular technologies and on scientific accuracy) toward soft science fiction, which is more character driven and more concerned with the social and political ramifications of technological developments than with the technologies themselves. This shift, among other things, allowed science fiction to become more directly engaged with specific political issues of the day, as well as to explore more “personal” issues, such as sexuality and drug use, that were themselves becoming more and more politicized. Despite its involvement with the evolution of science fiction book publishing, the New Wave in sf was still spearheaded by innovative magazines, including those edited by Great Britain’s Michael Moorcock (New Worlds magazine) and America’s Judith Merril (in the anthology England Swings, which acknowledged a British influence, much as American rock music was being influenced by the “British invasion” of the time). Such editors offered venues for the publication of new kinds of sf stories that would never have been welcomed in the earlier pulps. New Worlds was particularly important in this regard, offering a venue for such writers as Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, M. John Harrison, John Brunner, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, and Norman Spinrad. Because of the leading role played by such magazines, the New Wave was dominated to some extent by short stories, but New Wave writers also produced important novels, and one of the most important (and controversial) items to appear in New Worlds was a serialized novel, Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron (1969). Spinrad’s novel, which caused a wide range of reactions from readers and critics, even triggered a rebellion of the maga-

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zine’s own typesetters, who felt that the book was too sexist to be published in New Worlds. The cut-up literary style of the novel influenced by figures such as William S. Burroughs also drew both praise and derision. Nevertheless, after separate publication in hardcover, the book garnered a Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel. The distinctive novels of Samuel R. Delany, such as Triton (1976), can also be seen as outcroppings of the New Wave (though Delany himself was skeptical of the designation), with Delany’s understanding of phenomena such as postmodernism and poststructuralism being indicative of the greater sophistication of much New Wave science fiction as opposed to its Golden Age forebears. Television’s Star Trek (original broadcast run 1966–1969) may be the best-known single example of sf that was at least influenced by the New Wave, echoing many of the political concerns of the movement, though in a somewhat diluted way due to the constraints of broadcast television. The New Wave’s interest in political fiction helped, among other things, to encourage more women to write sf, and one of the most important phenomena related to the New Wave was a surge in the production of utopian fiction, especially that by women writers such as Le Guin and Joanna Russ in the 1970s, though Ernest Callenbach’s environmentalist utopia Ecotopia (1975) can be placed within this phenomenon as well. Then again, John Brunner’s impressive string of dystopian fictions, which combine a sophisticated political vision with complex modernist literary techniques, was also part of the New Wave. Indeed, all in all, the New Wave probably represented something of a pessimistic turn in science fiction, with many authors expressing deep concern over the possible negative consequences of technological progress, as opposed to earlier notions that such progress would surely bring about a better world for all. NEW WORLDS. New Worlds is a British science fiction magazine best known as a central venue for the works of the writers of science fiction’s New Wave under the editorship of Michael Moorcock in the 1960s and 1970s. But the magazine’s roots go back to 1936, when it began as a fanzine titled Novae Terrae. By 1939 it had adopted its current title, under the editorship of John Carnell, who attempted to move the magazine in more professional directions, though the onset of World War II impeded this project. By 1946, New Worlds was a fully professional commercial publication, produced by Pendulum Publications; Pendulum’s 1947 bankruptcy again impacted the development of the magazine, though it became a leading force in British sf in the early 1950s, despite the fact that it was not placed back on a firm professional publishing foundation until 1954, when it was acquired by McLaren & Sons.

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New Worlds was again acquired by a new publisher, Roberts & Vinter, and the appointment of Moorcock as the editor announced the beginning of the magazine’s most important period as a force in the history of science fiction, though financial problems continued. The new publishers dropped the magazine in 1966, but Moorcock was able to continue to publish the magazine independently, exerting a crucial influence on the development of the New Wave in the late 1960s, though financial problems caused Moorcock to cease publication of New Worlds in 1970. It has, since that time, been periodically revived, but never with continuing success. NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949). George Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour is not only a defining text of the modern dystopian narrative but also one of the best-known and widely influential novels of the 20th century. Its vision of the crushingly repressive dystopian regime in the nation of Oceania was made, during the Cold War, into a commentary on the horrors of Stalinism, but the book has remained relevant after the Cold War, returning to Orwell’s original intention of a much broader critique of the tendencies of modern societies. Indeed, Orwell’s vision of a populace kept under constant surveillance at home, while perpetual war is waged abroad, seems in many ways more relevant in the 21st century than when it was first published. The party that rules Oceania has no real goal but to perpetuate its own power as soul-crushingly as possible. It does this in a variety of ways, though perhaps most strikingly via constant surveillance (made two-way by a constant stream of propaganda); through the revisionist manipulation of history in order to provide support for the programs of the ruling party; and through the attempt to institute a new language, “Newspeak,” that will allow expression only of ideas that are consistent with the party’s policies. Meanwhile, though the party employs a number of technologies in pursuit of its aims, the society it rules is, as a whole, grim and backward. Science as we know it has virtually ceased to exist in Oceania, being replaced by a purely instrumental technology, focused on weaponry and surveillance. The party is not interested in truth or understanding; indeed, its power is most clearly manifested in its ability to make people believe even blatant absurdities, and the coldly calculated rational procedures through which the party does its work turn out to be the ultimate form of irrationality. Indeed, the party’s methods are largely religious, echoing those of a number of religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church. NIVEN, LARRY (1938– ). Larry Niven is an American writer of hard science fiction stories and novels whose works often explore advanced scientific concepts on a large canvas, including the construction of elaborate high-tech future worlds, especially in his elaboration of interstellar adven-

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tures occurring in “Known Space.” This series began with World of Ptavvs (1966). Its best-known entry is Ringworld (1970), in which a multispecies group of space explorers travels to a vast, artificial world (its habitable inner surface has about 3 million times the area of earth) that has been constructed on a ring of super-strong metal built around a central star. This ringworld concept would become a science fiction staple and has been used in modified form by numerous other sf writers since that time (perhaps most notably in the orbitals of Iain M. Banks’s “Culture” novels). Ringworld also triggered a series of sequels and prequels that together formed one of the central sequences in Niven’s “Known Space” future history. Most of the “Known Space” novels are space operas, though much of the Ringworld series can be considered planetary romance, due to the focus on the description of conditions on a single world. Ringworld won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel. It also thrust Niven into a position of prominence that led him, among other things, to be employed as an advisor to President Ronald Reagan on the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. Meanwhile, the “Known Space” series was extended with a second series set in the same universe focusing on a series of conflicts between humanity and the warlike (and catlike) Kzin, known as the “Man-Kzin Wars.” This “Man-Kzin” series consists of more than a dozen anthologies of stories (the first of which was published in 1988), only a few of which were written by Niven himself; it also consists of half a dozen novels written by Niven in collaboration with others. Among these collaborators was Jerry Pournelle, with whom some of Niven’s best-known work has been written. The two have coauthored numerous novels, beginning with the alien-contact epic The Mote in God’s Eye (1974), part of Pournelle’s extensive “CoDominium” series. This novel was nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards; it clearly displayed the libertarian politics that have caused many to see Pournelle and (especially) Niven as the heirs to the sf tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, who famously praised the novel. A Hugo nomination also went to the Niven/Pournelle postapocalyptic narrative Lucifer’s Hammer (1977), while the Niven/Pournelle alien-invasion saga Footfall (1986) also garnered Hugo and Locus nominations. Niven also collaborated with Pournelle on the fantasy series The Magic Goes Away, which attempts to add reason to the fantasy genre by treating magic as a sort of technology. The “Golden Road” fantasy series, set in that same universe, so far consists of two novels, The Burning City (2000) and Burning Tower (2005), both coauthored with Pournelle. Niven has also collaborated extensively with Steven Barnes, and sometimes with both Barnes and Pournelle on the same project.

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Finally, as a change of pace, Niven has written time-travel comedies featuring Hanville Svetz, including the story collection The Flight of the Horse (1973) and the novel Rainbow Mars (1999). Here, Svetz seemingly travels to the past to retrieve now-extinct animals, but actually goes into alternate pasts and retrieves animals (such as unicorns) that never existed in our timeline. NORTON, ANDRE (1912–2005). “Andre Norton” was the most important of several pen names used by the American writer Alice Mary Norton, helping her to break into the heavily male-dominated world of fantasy and science fiction writing. She became an important and prolific author in both genres, mostly aiming at young adult audiences. Her first novel was the fantasy romance The Prince Commands (1934), but she worked primarily as a librarian from 1932 to 1950, when she was finally able to turn to writing full time. Her first science fiction did not appear until 1947, with the story “The People of the Crater,” published as by “Andrew North.” That and other early stories were collected in Garan the Eternal (1972), one of several collections of her short fiction, along with High Sorcery (1970), The Many Worlds of Andre Norton (1974), Perilous Dreams (1976), Moon Mirror (1988), and Wizards’ Worlds (1989). Norton’s most important work, though, was in the novel form, with the 1950s and the 1960s constituting the peak of her output as a science fiction novelist. She was particularly prolific as an author of space operas, typically dealing with the building of a galactic empire or the discovery of the remnants of such an empire that once was. One of the best known of these is the early Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. (1952), which combines a postapocalyptic narrative with the presence of a number of high-tech devices, though Norton’s sf novels were always long on adventure and short on scientific and technological details, generally in a way that provided rites of passage for her young protagonists. A number of Norton’s novels constituted sequences, some of which were related to other sequences, providing something of a future history. One of the sequences, the “Free Traders: Solar Queen” sequence, was published as by Andrew North, comprising Sargasso of Space (1955), Plague Ship (1956), and Voodoo Planet (1959), though later related volumes, as by Andre Norton, would be added to this sequence involving the adventures of a mercantile starship. Key sequences as by Norton include the far-future “Central Control” sequence, comprising Star Rangers (1953) and Star Guard (1955), set in the declining years of the Galactic Empire. In the “Astra” sequence— The Stars Are Ours! (1954) and Star Born (1957)—a young protagonist must escape into space from a repressive earth. The “Crosstime” sequence of parallel-worlds narratives includes The Crossroads of Time (1956) and Quest Crosstime (1965). The “Time Traders” sequence, involving both time

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travel and interstellar travel, includes The Time Traders (1958), Galactic Derelict (1959), The Defiant Agents (1962), and Key Out of Time (1963). The “Beast Master” sequence—The Beast Master (1959) and Lord of Thunder (1962)—involves a protagonist of Native American descent who becomes a leader in a complex political battle on a distant planet. The “Dipple” sequence—comprising Cat’s Eye (1961) and Night of Masks (1964)—is related to the sequence Judgment on Janus (1963) and Victory on Janus (1966) in that both sequences involve the “Dipple,” a sort of space slum from which characters go to great extents to escape. The “Forerunner” sequence began with Storm over Warlock (1960), Ordeal in Otherwhere (1964), and Forerunner Foray (1973), then was later supplemented by Forerunner (1981) and Forerunner: The Second Venture (1985). Indeed, Norton’s extensive corpus was complicated later in her career by a number of extensions of earlier sequences, typically coauthored with others. In the meantime, the interrelated nature of many of her books has facilitated the publication of a number of combined and omnibus volumes over the years. Norton began to be plagued by health problems by the end of the 1960s. Her subsequent work was more in fantasy than sf, though often including sf elements, and a great deal of it was in collaboration with others. Those combined and omnibus volumes continued to appear, keeping her work available to new generations of readers. She was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1984 and inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1997. In 1998, she was given the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

O ORWELL, GEORGE (1903–1950). “George Orwell” was the pen name of the British journalist, essayist, and novelist born Eric Arthur Blair. Born in British colonial India, Blair grew up in England, though he spent time as a colonial policeman in Burma from 1922 to 1927, an experience that made him a bitter opponent of colonialism. He returned to England in 1927 determined to pursue a career as a writer. He adopted his pen name, under which he would become so well known for the publication of his memoir Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), derived from his years of poverty and of working at menial jobs before success as a writer. Other important nonfiction works include The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which documents living conditions in the impoverished areas of northern England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), describing his experience in the Spanish Civil War, in which Orwell fought with the Spanish Republicans against the German- and Italian-supported fascist insurgents. Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days (1934), is an indictment of British colonialism based on his own experiences in Burma. His first foray into nonrealist fiction came with the fable-like Animal Farm (1945), which expresses the opposition to Stalinism that he developed after being disillusioned when the socialist-anarchist faction he supported in Spain was ultimately suppressed by the Soviet-backed communists. Animal Farm satirizes the Stalinist Soviet Union in its bitter vision of a group of animal revolutionaries who overthrow their human rulers, only to descend into their own form of animal tyranny. Animal Farm was a huge success that propelled Orwell into the limelight in a Cold War climate in which anti-Stalinist visions were highly marketable. This climate helped to make Nineteen Eighteen-Four (1949) Orwell’s best-known “anti-Stalinist” work, even though he himself described that book at least partly as a corrective to the overt anti-Stalinism of Animal Farm. The repressive regime of Orwell’s dystopian narrative was in fact meant largely as a warning against the possible negative consequences of excessive anticommunist measures in the West, as the longtime-socialist Orwell sought to distance himself from the anticommunist movement that 201

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had so endorsed Animal Farm. Nineteen Eighty-Four would become one of the most important books of the 20th century, making major contributions to the political vision (and vocabulary) of the decades after its publication.

P PADGETT, LEWIS. Pseudonym frequently employed by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, mostly for collaborative works. PALMER, RAY (1910–1977). Raymond A. Palmer was one of the most colorful figures of science fiction’s Golden Age, known primarily as an editor who was open to some of the most far-out ideas ever to appear in the early sf pulp magazines. Small and hunchbacked from a childhood accident, Palmer was a dynamic figure, active in the rise of sf fandom in the late 1920s and credited as the publisher of the first fanzine, the Comet (beginning in May 1930), the official magazine of the Science Correspondence Club. Palmer himself wrote a number of sf short stories and even novels in the 1930s and 1940s, but his importance lies primarily in his work as an editor, in which he often broke new ground. In 1936, for example, he edited Dawn of Flame and Other Stories, a memorial collection of the stories of the recently deceased Stanley G. Weinbaum, pioneering in the publication of book-length works of science fiction. In addition to becoming somewhat notorious as an advocate of UFO conspiracy theories, Palmer became prominent in subsequent years as a pulp magazine editor. Taking over as the editor of Amazing Stories in 1938, Palmer enlivened the flagging publication, though taking it in a juvenile direction that was somewhat the opposite of the more famous one being taken by John W. Campbell Jr. at Astounding Science-Fiction at the same time. There, he published Isaac Asimov’s first professional short story, but became notorious for his promotion of the stories of Richard Shaver, beginning in 1943, marking a turn toward an increasing interest in pseudoscience. The “Shaver Mystery” stories, a hoax that appeared primarily in Amazing Stories between 1945 and 1947, were promoted as factual, based on Shaver’s supposed communications with an ancient subterranean civilization still thriving beneath the earth’s surface. Spurred by the success of the Shaver stories, Palmer founded his own magazine of the occult, Fate, in 1948, and again achieved considerable success. He followed with his own sf magazine, Other Worlds, in 1949. By the 203

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late 1950s, Palmer was putting increasing energies into his fascination with UFO theories, and by 1957 Other Worlds had morphed into Flying Saucers from Other Worlds. He continued to produce a variety of publications, mostly on UFO- and occult-related topics, until his death, though none achieved the success he had reached with Amazing Stories in the late 1940s. PARALLEL WORLDS. The parallel-worlds motif is one of the central tropes of modern science fiction. The use of parallel worlds in so many timetravel narratives indicates a kinship between the time-travel subgenre and the alternate-history subgenre, different parallel worlds often being essentially different alternate realities. The motif may be executed in a number of different ways, but it typically involves other world or worlds (or entire universes) similar to our own and existing simultaneously with our own and usually in the same spatial location as our own but displaced in another dimension or dimensions. A popular version of the technique, related to the parallel-worlds model of quantum mechanics, envisions an infinite number of constantly splitting new universes: as soon as one possible event occurs in one world it sends that world along one timeline, while other versions of the world, driven by different events, move onto different timelines. The classic version of this kind of parallel-worlds narrative is the 1941 story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. This brief story suggests the mind-boggling ethical and philosophical implications of the infinite splitting-worlds model in ways that numerous subsequent narratives have elaborated upon. For example, parallel-worlds narratives have also sometimes been used to “solve” time-travel paradoxes by positing that interference in events by time travelers creates new timelines while leaving their initial timelines in place. In John Kessel’s Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), for example, time travelers cause changes in the past, but in so doing merely create a new parallel universe with no consequences for the original timeline. As a result, time travel is practiced extensively, and the past is used both as a source of oil and other resources and simply as a tourist destination. In other versions the parallel worlds may have all come into existence at the same time but are slightly different because certain historical events have had different outcomes, without any implication that these events lead to the creation of new timelines. This version of the parallel-worlds narrative is closely aligned with the alternate-history narrative, providing opportunities to explore an essentially unlimited number of such narratives, even within a single work. In this type of narrative, stories involving travel between dimensions, or between one world and another, are particularly popular. In Jack Womack’s Elvissey (1993), for example, travelers from our world go to a parallel world where Elvis Presley is still alive and bring him back so they can use his charisma and popularity for their own purposes.

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Of course, such travel between parallel worlds has been particularly popular in the realm of fantasy, as in the case of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia. Other such fantasy narratives border much more on science fiction, rather than relying on religious magic. One of the most interesting examples of this kind of narrative is Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, comprising Northern Lights (1995, published in the United States as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). Here, in a sort of fantasy version of steampunk science fiction, Pullman imagines an alternative Victorian world saturated with magic and inhabited by a number of supernatural creatures. This world then becomes, as the trilogy proceeds, only one in a series of parallel worlds, introducing a number of science fiction tropes into the fantasy narrative. PHILIP K. DICK AWARD. The Philip K. Dick Award, given annually for the “best original science fiction paperback” published in the previous year, was established in 1983 by Thomas Disch and others to honor the writer for whom it is named, who published so many of his novels as paperback originals. It is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, with support from the Philip K. Dick Trust. The first winner of the Dick award was Rudy Rucker, for the novel Software (1982). The most recent winner (awarded in 2013) was Brian Francis Slattery, for Lost Everything (2012). The award has been plagued in recent years by the decreasing number of sf novels being published as paperback originals, though a number of very distinguished novels have won the award, including Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002) and M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing (2006). PIERCY, MARGE (1936– ). Active in the women’s movement and in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s, Marge Piercy has maintained her political commitment as a writer. Piercy imagines utopian alternatives to patriarchal structures in her early novel Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1971), in which young 1960s political activists organize an alternative community based on Native American culture, and again in Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), now considered a classic of feminism in science fiction. In the latter novel, the future community of Mattapoisett, which relies on Native American customs and eliminates divisions between class, race, and gender, is presented as a counterpoint to the dystopian present of 1970s America. Woman on the Edge of Time is Piercy’s best-known work of science fiction, participating in the tradition of feminist utopians that revitalized the genre in the 1970s; most of her novels, however, are written in the realist vein. She returned to science fiction in 1991 with He, She, and It (published as Body of Glass in Great Britain), a novel that borrows from the cyberpunk

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novels of William Gibson but serves as something of a rejoinder to the masculinist emphasis of those novels, while also dealing with environmentalist themes. PILGRIM AWARD. The Pilgrim Award is given annually by the Science Fiction Research Association to recognize the achievements in the scholarly study of science fiction. Initiated in 1970, the award is for a cumulative body of work rather than a single book or single year of work. The first award was given to J. O. Bailey, whose early study Pilgrims through Space and Time (1947) gave the award its name. Several well-known fiction writers have won the award, indicating the way in which the creators of science fiction are often some of its most astute scholars and critics. Winners of this sort include Jack Williamson (1973), Damon Knight (1975), James Gunn (1976), Brian W. Aldiss (1978), Samuel R. Delany (1985), Joanna Russ (1988), and Ursula K. Le Guin (1989). However, beginning with the pioneering work of Darko Suvin (1979), the award has also been won by some of the world’s leading academic critics and theorists of literature and culture, including such figures as H. Bruce Franklin (1983), Fredric Jameson (2006), and Donna Haraway (2011). Among winners whose reputations as scholars and critics rests primarily on their work within the genre are such individuals as Peter Nicholls (1980), Gary K. Wolfe (1987), John Clute (1994), Gary Westfahl (2003), Edward James (2004), and Eric S. Rabkin (2010). PIPER, H. BEAM (1904–1964). The American writer H. Beam Piper had worked as a laborer and night watchman before breaking into print in 1947 with the story “Time and Time Again” in Astounding Science-Fiction. Subsequently, he published a number of magazine stories, as well as an early serialized sf novel, Crisis in 2140 (serialized in 1953 as “Null-ABC”; book form 1957), and another novel, A Planet for Texans (1958), both coauthored with John J. McGuire. Much of his later work is essentially part of a future history that would later become known as the Terro-Human Future History. Clearly influenced by Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, but informed by a libertarian impulse that is far different from the liberalism of Asimov’s work, this future history projects a highly destructive World War III on earth, followed by a move into space and the formation of a Terran Federation that itself subsequently collapses to be succeeded by a series of Galactic Empires. Distinct sequences within this broad framework include the “Federation” sequence, set mostly during the period of the Terran Federation and the Interregnum that follows its demise. This sequence includes a number of scattered stories, as well as Uller Uprising (originally in The Petrified Planet, 1953; book form 1983), Four-Day Planet (1961), Junkyard Planet (serial-

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ized in 1958; book form 1963), Space Viking (1963), and two posthumous collections of stories, Federation (1981) and Empire (1981). Another sustained sequence within the Terro-Human framework was the “Fuzzy” sequence, in which the “Fuzzies” in question are a sapient race of creatures from the planet Zarathustra. It includes Little Fuzzy (1962) and The Other Human Race (1964), as well as the posthumously discovered Fuzzies and Other People (1984). Piper’s suicide ended his career while he was still quite productive, though suffering from considerable financial difficulties. PLAGUE. Beginning with Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), which envisioned the virtual destruction of the human race by a rapidly spreading disease, plagues have been a frequent cause of the disasters that are key to the entire genre of postapocalyptic narratives. Meanwhile, the modern prominence of the postapocalyptic narrative in science fiction, which arose in the peak Cold War years after World War II, centered on stories of nuclear apocalypse. However, one of the most important early examples of this cycle was George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949), which deals with a mysterious plague that sweeps across America, killing virtually everyone within a matter of days and forcing a reboot of American society based on radically different (nature-friendly) principles. Indeed, one of the key uses of the plague motif has been to wipe away existing systems and practices, sometimes clearing the way for better alternatives. In Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed” (1972), for example, women are empowered to build a new communal society without the built-in structures of patriarchy when a plague wipes out the male population of the planet Whileaway, leaving the survivors, over hundreds of years, to develop a nonhierarchical, cooperative, and stable society, while also developing the ability to reproduce without men. One might compare here the centeral motif of Brian K. Vaughan’s recent graphic novel sequence Y: The Last Man (which appeared sequentially from 2002 to 2008), which deals with the aftermath of a mysterious plague that suddenly kills off virtually all males on earth, except, of course, for the “last man” of the title—and his pet monkey. Meanwhile, such uses of the plague motif to address gender issues resemble the same use to address gender issues in Walter Mosley’s Futureland (2001), which includes the story “The Nig in Me,” in which a global plague strikes down everyone who does not have at least a certain amount of black African blood. Some plagues are more science fictional than others, mixing in other motifs from the genre, as in Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (1969), which involves crystalline microbes picked up in orbit by an American spacecraft that subsequently crashes, threatening to unleash an alien plague. In Margaret Atwood’s highly literary Oryx and Crake (2003), experiments with genetic engineering lead to the spread of a deadly plague that wipes out

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most of humanity, leaving the protagonist, Snowman, to live as the last man on earth among a variety of strange, genetically engineered hybrid creatures. Two sequels, The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), give more details of the corporate-dominated dystopia that leads to the apocalypse. The plague motif has proven quite versatile and has been used as a device to explore a number of issues beyond those related to the plagues themselves. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), for example, is an alternate-history narrative that explores the planet-wide consequences of the removal of European civilization as a global force by its virtual extermination by the Black Death of the 14th century. In fact the Black Death (also known as the Black Plague) has been used as a point of divergence in several alternate-history novels, including Robert Silverberg’s The Gate of Worlds (1967), which focuses on the impact on American history of the destruction of European civilization by the plague. Paul McAuley’s White Devils (2004) is essentially a thriller, somewhat in the mode of the works of Crichton (to whom it alludes at several points). However, McAuley’s novel is also a thoughtful work of science fiction that tells its story within the setting of a detailed future world that derives in a believable way from our own present, once again centrally involving a critique of the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror as they misinterpret an entirely natural disease as an act of bioterrorism and retaliate accordingly, with baleful results. PLANET OF THE APES (LA PLANÈTE DES SINGES, 1963). Pierre Boulle’s La planète des singes is better known by its English title, partly because the 1968 English-language film adaptation of that title is far better known than is the novel itself. Indeed, that film is one of the best-known works of 1960s popular culture, as well as one of the central works of science fiction cinema, its iconic ending scene being one of the most recognizable scenes in all of film. The novel, like the film, deals with a spacecraft from earth that goes off course and lands on a strange planet where apes are the dominant species and humans are an animal-like subservient species. In the novel, however, the formerly dominant humans lost their position simply by becoming increasingly lazy and decadent, more and more dependent on the apes to do all their work. Moreover, in the novel the planet in question really is a distant planet, so that the novel lacks the film’s famous twist ending, when the planet simply turns out to be a far-future earth, greatly changed by an apocalyptic nuclear war. The book, though, does include a (double) twist ending of its own. When the astronauts return to earth they find that apes have now taken power there as well; meanwhile, we learn that a couple who are reading the story within a frame narrative are actually

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chimpanzees. In addition, the book contains more overt topical satire than the film, using the defamiliarizing setting of the ape planet to comment on human society. PLANETARY ROMANCE. Planetary romance is a subgenre of science fiction dealing with large-scale adventures on various planets, the scope of which typically entails the elaboration of culture, climate, biology, and geography on a planet-wide scale, all of which become a crucial part of the narrative. Because such tales bring to bear so many elements of planetwide characteristics, the subgenre has typically functioned better in the novel form than in short stories, with something like Brian Aldiss’s “Helliconia” trilogy—in which the climate of the planet Helliconia, with its centuries-long seasons, is in a sense the main character—perhaps epitomizing the form. Though a number of purely science fictional stories set on other planets are generally considered to be planetary romances, the second part of that designation comes partly from a tendency of such stories to use their settings on alien planets as the occasions for action-adventure stories, including those of the sword-and-sorcery variety. The early stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs about the adventures of John Carter on Mars (or Barsoom) can be considered to be important precursors of the subgenre of the planetary romance, though there the exploration of the characteristics of the planet may be too unsophisticated and undetailed to qualify as an actual example of the form. Meanwhile science fictional explorations of adventures on other planets naturally began to arise in conjunction with the rise of the space opera in the 1930s and 1940s. By the mid-1940s, Leigh Brackett was producing some fairly developed examples of the planetary romance, beginning with the novella “Lorelei of the Red Mist,” which she abandoned to work on the film script for The Big Sleep, leaving it to be finished by Ray Bradbury prior to its 1946 publication in Planet Stories, where Brackett frequently published similar stories in the coming years. Several of these eventually appeared in expanded or collected form, apparently with the (uncredited) collaboration of her husband, Edmond Hamilton. These volumes include The Starmen (1952), The Sword Rhiannon (1953), The Big Jump (1955), Alpha Centauri—Or Die! (1962), The Secret of Sinharat (1964), and The People of the Talisman (1964). The planetary romance as a subgenre became fully developed in the works of Jack Vance, who remains perhaps the single author most often associated with the form. Vance’s collection of interlinked stories, The Dying Earth (1950), is set on an earth so far in the future that it seems like a different planet from our own. However, it was with Big Planet (serialized in 1952, abridged book form 1957, full book form 1978) that Vance moved into the full-blown style of planetary romance that would make him such an influential figure in the evolution of the subgenre. Big Planet is set, as its title

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indicates, on a huge planet, the size of which, among other things, creates vast distances that allow for the simultaneous coexistence of greatly varying social systems, including a number of technologically undeveloped societies. This diverse environment is then further enriched by the arrival of visitors from space—who are, in fact, the central protagonists of the novel. A 1975 sequel, Showboat World, is set on the same planet. Hal Clement made important contributions to the evolution of the planetary romance with such works as Mission of Gravity (1954), while Philip José Farmer’s The Green Odyssey (1957) presents a planet marked by the coexistence of widely differing societies, and especially ones with very different levels of technological development. It is therefore an exemplary planetary romance: indeed, the very term “planetary romance” seems to have been coined in Russell Letson’s introduction to a 1978 reprint of that novel. Marion Zimmer Bradley followed a year later with The Planet Savers, which features the planet Darkover, a lost earth colony whose inhabitants have developed unusual psychic powers. This planet would become the setting for a series of novels by Bradley that would extend over the next 30 years, ending with The Heirs of Hammerfell (1989). The planetary romance reached a new level of sophistication with Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), whose elaboration of the ecology of the spice-rich desert planet of Arrakis (along with the culture of the desert-dwelling Fremen, who live in such harmony with this ecology) is perhaps its most memorable feature. This setting (and the cultures it spawns) proved rich enough to support an entire sequence of novels by Herbert, including Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984), and Charter House of Dune (1985), though the action sometimes moved off-planet. Poul Anderson’s Fire Time (1974) and The Winter of the World (1975) are good examples of the planetary romance, while several of the novels in C. J. Cherryh’s “Alliance-Union” future history, initiated in 1976, can be regarded as examples of the subgenre, though the sequence is principally space opera. Women sf authors have made particularly good use of the planetary romance, often through the elaboration of planets on which gender is configured quite differently than on earth. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is exemplary in this respect, both because of its treatment of gender and because the climate of the planet Gethen (which, tellingly, means “Winter” in the indigenous language) is so crucial to the story. Other good examples of planetary romances by women include Eleanor Arnason’s A Woman of the Iron People (1991) and Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite (1994). Le Guin’s “Earthsea” sequence is also exemplary of the planetary world-building that often occurs in fantasy works—including A

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Wizard of Earthseas (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990), and The Other Wind (2001). No planet has been described more realistically or in more detail than the Mars of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy (1993–1996), though there the characteristics of the planet Mars, while absolutely central to the narrative, are so scientifically accurate in their detail that the term “romance” hardly seems to apply. Finally, while planetary romances are almost invariably set on alien planets, one might consider Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) to be a planetary romance for the way in which its alternatehistory narrative explores the planetwide consequences of the removal of European civilization as a global force by its virtual extermination by the Black Death of the 14th century. More recently, the “Bas-Lag” trilogy (2000–2004) of China Miéville adds up to a particularly complex and interesting example of the planetary romance, while Miéville’s exploration of the planet Arieka (and especially the functioning of language among the native inhabitants there) in Embassytown (2011) is something of a planetary romance as well. POHL, FREDERIK (1919–2013). Frederik Pohl has written numerous science fiction short stories and novels and has also been a highly influential editor, including an early turn as the editor of the pulp magazines Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories from 1939 to 1943 and a stint as an editor for Bantam Books in the 1970s. A member of the Futurians group, Pohl has also maintained a political consciousness throughout his work, which is all informed by his commitment to social justice in the face of the inequities produced by modern capitalism. Some of Pohl’s best-known and most successful works are overtly political, including the classic The Space Merchants (1953), a satirical portrayal of the advertising industry coauthored with Cyril M. Kornbluth that also includes some early environmentalist critique. Pohl also authored a sequel to this work, The Merchants’ War (1984), as well as a number of related satirical short stories written in the 1950s and 1960s, many of which are collected in the volume Alternating Currents (1956). Preferred Risk (1955) (with Lester Del Rey, under the joint pseudonym Edson McCann) is a satire of the insurance industry, while Gladiator-at-Law (1955, with Kornbluth) satirizes corporate lawyers. Pohl’s short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and collections, the most recent of which is Platinum Pohl (2005). Pohl’s novels have ranged from Man Plus (1975), a Nebula Award–winning early example of posthuman science fiction in which the protagonist receives a new, artificial body in order to be able to survive on Mars, to The Coming of the Quantum Cats (1986), a lighthearted satire involving alternate universes. Several of

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Pohl’s works have specifically dealt with the Cold War, including the satire The Cool War (1981), and Jem: The Making of a Utopia (1979) is an attempt to imagine the course of post–Cold War global politics after the end of the Cold War, focusing on the colonization of an alien planet. Many of Pohl’s novels have been part of series. The “Heechee” saga is a sequence of six novels dealing with the human discovery in outer space of advanced (but mysterious) technologies left by an earlier advanced alien species known as the Heechee. It began with Gateway (1977), a Nebula and Hugo award–winning space opera that is one of Pohl’s best-known works. The “Eschaton” trilogy, a darkly comic alien contact story comprising The Other End of Time (1996), The Siege of Eternity (1997), and The Far Shore of Time (1998), manages to incorporate a wide variety of science fiction motifs as a dystopian Earth comes into contact with two (warring) species of advanced aliens and has to struggle for its own survival. Pohl often collaborated with others, including Jack Williamson, with whom he authored the two-volume “Saga of Cuckoo” sequence—Farthest Star (1975) and Wall around a Star (1983)—and the “Starchild” trilogy— including The Reefs of Space (1964), Starchild (1965), and Rogue Star (1969). Kornbluth, however, was probably Pohl’s most important collaborator; together, they coauthored a total of four novels and a collection of short stories, The Wonder Effect (1962). POLITICS. Despite its early reputation for the telling of superficial, even puerile, adventure stories, science fiction has, from its beginnings, been a highly political genre. The scientific romances of H. G. Wells, for example, were largely political satires written from a socialist perspective. And, while the politial visions of many pulp writers of sf were regressive, or at least unsophisticated, a strong left-wing presence (exemplified by the Futurians) ensured that science fiction would engage political issues in sophisticated ways even in the days of the pulps. Writers such as Frederik Pohl, meanwhile, used science fiction to conduct thoroughgoing critiques of contemporary capitalism even through the anticommunist crusades of the 1950s, as satires such as The Space Merchants (1953), coauthored with C. M. Kornbluth, conducted systemic critiques of capitalism (aimed at the growing power of the advertising industry) that would have been almost impossible in mainstream culture. Pohl continued to work in this anticapitalist satirical vein in his stories and with such novels as Preferred Risk (1955, with Lester Del Rey, under the joint pseudonym Edson McCann), a satire of the insurance industry, while Gladiator-at-Law (1955, with Kornbluth) satirizes corporate lawyers. Clearly lowly pop cultural genres such as science fiction were able to fly under the McCarthyite radar. This phenomenon perhaps reached its zenith in 1960 with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (1960), by blacklisted screenwriter Ben Barz-

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man; Barzman’s parallel-worlds narrative (in which a second earth turns out to be much more advanced than our own thanks to having averted the rise of fascism) got relatively little attention, but this very lack of attention allowed it to get away with an overtly leftist treatment of such issues as racism, economic injustice, McCarthyism, and the Cold War. Moving into the 1960s, the rise of science fiction’s New Wave helped the genre to gain in sophistication and to participate in the countercultural politics for which that decade is so well known, though perhaps the most successful author of political science fiction of the decade, Philip K. Dick, satirized capitalism in ways that were only marginally related to the New Wave. In any case, the growth in sophistication of sf in the 1960s eventually helped to make it one of the major forms for the cultural exploration of issues related to feminism and gender, as well as race and ethnicity, reflecting the concerns of both the Women’s Movement and the Civil Rights Movement of the era. The third major political movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, the protest against the American involvement in Vietnam, was also strongly reflected in science fiction, in works such as Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974)—which also satirizes militarism (and military science fiction) in general—and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972)—which also engages issues related to colonialism, feminism and gender, and environmentalism. Among other things, this trend led, in the 1970s, to the production of a number of important works that displayed a resurgence of utopian narratives, which had often driven early sf but had largely disappeared in the peak Cold War years. On the other hand, these new utopias were not merely technological, as the early pulp utopias had been, but were largely sociological. They also contained strong critical dimensions and often presented both utopian and dystopian narratives. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), perhaps the most important of the women’s utopian novels of the decade, contrasted its anarchist utopia with a capitalist dystopia within the same text. Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975) also presented both utopian and dystopian visions, as did Marge Piercy’s Woman at the Edge of Time (1976). In the meantime, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) presented a utopian narrative based on an environmentalist vision, further extending the range of the decade’s utopian narratives. In the meantime, the academic study of science fiction received a major boost in the late 1970s with the work of theorist Darko Suvin, who promulgated a vision of science fiction as the “literature of cognitive estrangement” and whose narratives forced readers to confront worlds that were different from their own and thus to reevaluate many of their assumptions about their own world in ways that

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could be intensely political. For Suvin, this reevaluation had a strong political potential, making science fiction one of the most politically powerful of all literary genres. Since Suvin’s work, science fiction has been a privileged genre for academic literary critics and theorists, who have seen in it the same utopian potential that he describes. Meanwhile, the most sophisticated political science fiction since the 1970s has tended to be leftist in its orientation, though it should also be acknowledged that older writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, whose mostly libertarian vision could sometimes seem almost fascist to some readers of works such as Starship Troopers, were still working at this time. Writers such as Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, also well known for their conservative political visions, saw to it that more conventional rightwing views continued to be represented in political science fiction as well. The dominant movement of science fiction in the 1980s was cyberpunk, which has often been seen as a retreat from the strongly utopian, intensely political science fiction of the 1970s. On the other hand, in the United States, the 1980s also saw the rise of Kim Stanley Robinson, whose “Three Californias” trilogy (1984–1990) presented both a strong critique of capitalism and a vision of a possible socialist utopian alternative to capitalism. Robinson presented an even more impressive exploration of utopian visions in another sequence, the “Mars” trilogy, possibly the most important work of science fiction in the 1990s. The novels Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996) follow in elaborate detail the colonization and terraforming of Mars and the building of a new social and political system there that respects, to the extent possible, the native environment of the planet, while also respecting the new human inhabitants by building a socialist-oriented society based on sharing and cooperation rather than competition and antagonism of each against all. By the end of the 1990s, one of the most important emergent phenomena in science fiction was the so-called British Boom, many of whose authors have produced intensely political fictions. Iain M. Banks, for example, pursued one of the most ambitious attempts to imagine a genuinely utopian society in his series of “Culture” novels, in which advanced artificial intelligences provide the resources and management skills to produce a socialistoriented society of plenty in which individuals need not compete for resources because there are more than enough for everyone to have whatever they want or need. Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross have also explored the implications of the existence of advanced artificial intelligences for future society, imagining future worlds where anarchist, socialist, and even certain capitalist tendencies combine to produce a better world for all. Most of the work of Richard K. Morgan is less overtly political than these, with the exception of the anticapitalist satire Market Forces (2004), in which multinational corporations treat the globe as a playground on which they can act out

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their competitive impulses, while seeking to maximize their profits from the suffering of the populations in less wealthy parts of the world. Perhaps the most politically sophisticated of all the British Boom writers, meanwhile, is China Miéville, whose work all arises from a consistent socialist vision as well as a broad multigeneric literary background. POSTAPOCALYPTIC NARRATIVES. Postapocalyptic narratives tell stories of the aftermath of society-shattering disasters, manmade or otherwise. Though narratives of the coming of some sort of world-wrecking cataclysm are essentially as old as narrative itself, the modern postapocalyptic narrative can trace its origins to Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), in which humanity is virtually wiped out by a deadly plague while the immune protagonist looks on. Other tales of apocalypse and postapocalypse, such as Richard Jefferies’s After London (1885), appeared in the ensuing decades, while the protagonist of H. G. Wells’s time-travel novel The Time Machine (1895) travels into a postapocalyptic far future as well. But the genre gained its most important energies after 1945, when the atomic bombing of Hiroshima brought the human race face-to-face with the genuine possibility of armageddon. During the Cold War years, postapocalyptic narratives, especially those involving a nuclear holocaust, were thrust to the forefront of science fiction literature. However, one of the first important postwar disaster narratives was George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949), which deals not with the impact of nuclear war, but with a mysterious plague that sweeps across America, killing virtually everyone within a matter of days. Stewart’s vision is entirely centered on North America, and there is no mention of the rest of the world at all other than vague hints that the plague has probably struck there as well. Meanwhile, the survivors in Stewart’s novel struggle to build a new society that will allow them to live more in harmony with nature, much along the lines of Native American cultures. In this sense, Stewart’s book anticipates many later postapocalyptic narratives, such as Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow (1955), which describes an agrarian, deeply technophobic society that develops after a nuclear war. Judith Merril’s Shadow on the Hearth (1950) describes an apocalypse that arises precisely from a surprise nuclear attack on the United States, though it does not specifically identify the attackers as Soviets. Meanwhile, Merril’s protagonist, housewife Gladys Mitchell, struggles to deal with the aftermath of the nuclear attack as best she can, mostly by trying to keep her household running and taking care of her two daughters. Meanwhile, she faces dangers when flag-waving patriots attempt to act out their fantasies of power amid the chaos of the nuclear bombing. Shadow on the Hearth thus warns that there may be some among us who are anxious to use such an attack (or, by extension, even the threat of such an attack) as an excuse for

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establishing their own repressive measures. Merril’s novel thus serves as a counter to works such as Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959), which almost revels in its description of the aftermath of a sneak Soviet nuclear attack on the United States, which creates conditions that enable the growth of an individualist utopia, where strong individuals can work out the solutions to their problems without the interference of government regulations and beancounting bureaucrats. John Wyndham’s British novel The Day of the Triffids (1951) does not involve a nuclear war, but it does suggest that the deadly, ambulatory, meateating plants that sweep across the globe in its narrative may have originally been engineered in the Soviet Union, which hovers in the text as an inscrutable and indefinite menace. One of the most unusual postapocalyptic fictions of the peak Cold War years was Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo (1952), a satirical text that exposes the absurdity of the Cold War nuclear arms race. In particular, it explores the steps taken by both American and Soviet societies in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has nearly destroyed them both to ensure that such a war will not recur. Central to this effort is a program of voluntary amputeeism, a sort of literalization of the notion of disarmament, which they seem to believe will reduce natural human aggression. But this measure is both extreme and ineffective: both sides have been stockpiling nuclear weapons for years, mouthing détente, while secretly preparing for another war, which does in fact occur. Like many postapocalyptic narratives, Limbo describes a post-disaster society that also makes it a dystopian narrative as well. The same might be said for Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), set in a huge underground bomb shelter, the inhabitants of which are attempting to survive the effects of a massive nuclear war, but have to do so by living in highly regulated conditions. Meanwhile, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes (1963) is best known through its classic 1968 film adaptation, which famously details a post–nuclear holocaust dystopia in which human civilization has collapsed, to be replaced by a repressive civilization ruled by intelligent apes, with humans as subjugated slaves. In the novel, however, the formerly dominant humans have lost their position simply by becoming increasingly lazy and decadent, more and more dependent on the apes to do all their work. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954) combines bio-catastrophe with nuclear holocaust as nuclear war somehow spurs the growth of bacteria that turn everyone on earth (except protagonist Robert Neville) into vampires. He battles the vampires as the last representative of the human race, until realizing in the end that it is now he who is the monster and vampires who represent the norm. Matheson’s novel has gained an increasingly critical reputation over the years, as has Walter Miller’s highly respected A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), which, despite including a certain amount of dark humor, presents a highly pessimistic historical vision in which human civil-

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ization is periodically destroyed by nuclear holocaust, only to rise from the ashes and rebuild itself until it reaches a level of technology that allows it to destroy itself once again. Also well known is Nevil Shute’s poignant 1957 Australian novel On the Beach, in which a global nuclear war has apparently destroyed all human life everywhere on earth, except Australia, which has been spared because of its remote location. But clouds of deadly radiation are also headed for Australia, where the inhabitants await what seems to be inevitable death. Even science fiction master Robert A. Heinlein got in on the act with Farnham’s Freehold (1964), in which a nuclear attack not only destroys American society, but also propels the protagonists into a technologically primitive far future that is dominated by blacks, with whites treated as slaves. Though none of his individual texts are as well known as Planet of the Apes or A Canticle for Leibowitz, perhaps the most important writer of Cold War postapocalyptic narratives is Philip K. Dick, who wrote a whole series of such novels, including The World Jones Made (1956), The Man Who Japed (1956), Vulcan’s Hammer (1960), The Penultimate Truth (1964), and Dr. Bloodmoney (1965). Of these, the last gestures toward a believable depiction of conditions after a nuclear war, but all of them are satires that use their estranged settings to provide a fresh perspective from which to suggest that contemporary American capitalist society was already dystopian. While post–nuclear holocaust narratives declined in prominence after the mid-1960s, interesting works in the category continued to appear. A particularly effective take on the post–nuclear holocaust narrative is Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980), which is important primarily for its innovative use of language, as Hoban attempts to portray a post-apocalypse England in which language itself (along with other elements of civilizations) has dramatically decayed. Riddley Walker has influenced a number of subsequent works, one of the most notable of which is Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006), which similarly attempts to imagine the devolved language of a postapocalyptic England—now largely ruled by a “sacred” text that is actually the ramblings of a deranged 20th-century London cabbie. Meanwhile, David Brin’s The Postman (1985) is distinguished by the fact that its nuclear war does not destroy civilization, but merely weakens it. Then, civilization (at least in the United States) is subsequently destroyed by the growing power of right-wing survivalists and gun enthusiasts. The Wild Shore (1984), the first published novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, was also the first volume of his “Three Californias” trilogy. It details life in a California that has been plunged into primitive conditions in the aftermath of widespread nuclear attacks on the U.S. The Wild Shore is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent postapocalyptic narratives of the Cold War years. The same cannot be said for Robert R. McCammon’s Swan Song

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(1987), in which a devastating nuclear assault on the U.S. leads not only to widespread destruction but also to the production of individuals with all sorts of weird supernatural powers. In this, of course, Swan Song combines postapocalyptic sf with the horror genre, looking back to the leading work in that category, Stephen King’s massive The Stand (1978, expanded edition 1990), though here it is a virus accidentally released from government experiments that leads to an apocalypse that triggers strange supernatural powers in some of the survivors. More recently, Justin Cronin’s The Passage (2010) also depicts the prelude and aftermath of an apocalypse caused by government-sponsored research with viruses, though this time an attempt to create super soldiers leads to an outbreak of vampirism. Zombies have featured particularly prominently in recent postapocalyptic narratives, though perhaps more obviously in films than in fiction, with George Romero’s zombie films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead (1968), leading the way. But the vampires of Matheson’s early I Am Legend function much like modern zombies (and were a major influence on Romero). And zombie-apocalypse novels have become more and more common in recent years, including such entries as Max Brooks’s World War Z (2007), Colson Whitehead’s Zone One (2011), and Mira Grant’s Feed (2010), the latter of which was the first entry in a trilogy. Indeed, beginning as early as the 1960s, postapocalyptic narratives started to center less on nuclear holocaust and more on the possible disastrous consequences of environmental and biological phenomena, including overpopulation. For example, Anthony Burgess’s The Wanting Seed (1962), Harry Harrison’s Make Room Make Room! (1966, adapted to film as Soylent Green in 1973), and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) all deal with the consequences of overpopulation. Ecological catastrophe is at the heart of such works as Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972), which explores ecological concerns in its projection of future environmental pollution and its social and political consequences, while J. G. Ballard, in a sequence that includes The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966), had already envisioned various forms of ecological apocalypse. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang (1976) also deals with the aftermath of environmental collapse on earth caused by pollution, though most of its focus is on the dystopian potential of the cloning programs that are initiated to try to keep the human race alive. David Brin’s Earth (1990) provides an effective panoramic look at global environmental degradation, nearly leading to the death of the planet (though featuring a deus ex machina rescue in the end). By the early 21st century, environmental catastrophes in science fiction tended to be related less specifically to pollution and more to global warming and climate change. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005),

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and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) constitute a near-future trilogy (the “Science in the Capital” trilogy) that gains urgency from its relatively realistic depiction of the potentially disastrous effects of global warming—and the need for more effective official responses to this looming disaster. Also related to these narratives of environmental collapse are those that deal largely with the exhaustion of natural resources, as in futurist James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand (2008), in which a global collapse is largely caused by the end of the world’s supply of oil. Climate change and exhaustion of resources are both key to the recent work of Paolo Bacigalupi, who has been particularly effective at presenting a believable post-disaster world. In his Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award–winning The Windup Girl (2009), for example, global warming has caused the flooding of coastal cities, which, combined with an extreme shortage of fossil fuels and the spread of contagions, has caused a global economic collapse. In Ship Breaker (2010) and The Drowned Cities (2012), Bacigalupi presents a somewhatsimilar post–climate change scenario for young adult readers. Indeed, young adult fiction has definitely taken a postapocalyptic tone in recent years, with works such as Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy (2008–2010) gaining particular prominence. Other recent fictions have posited a variety of other possible future disasters. For example, in David Brin’s The Postman (1985, not very successfully adapted to film in 1997), a series of catastrophes occurs, but the real collapse of civilization is brought about not by the catastrophes themselves, but by the response of right-wing survivalist groups to these catastrophes. Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia (1998) features the sudden and seemingly miraculous disappearance of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, to be replaced by alien lands inhabited by strange, extraterrestrial flora and fauna. In Margaret Atwood’s highly literary Oryx and Crake (2003), experiments with genetic engineering lead to the spread of a deadly plague that wipes out most of humanity, leaving the protagonist, Snowman, to live as the last man on earth among a variety of strange, genetically engineered hybrid creatures. Two sequels, The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), give more details of the corporate-dominated dystopia that leads to the apocalypse. Postapocalyptic narratives have also emerged as an important genre in comic books in the last few decades as well. Of these, Robert Kirkman’s zombie narrative The Walking Dead (sequential publication 2003– ) has become particularly prominent due to its popular television adaptation; both versions of The Walking Dead, while participating in a contemporary fascination with the “zombie apocalypse,” are clearly more interested in exploring postapocalyptic conditions than in zombies per se. Also deserving of special mention is Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man (which appeared sequentially from 2002 to 2008), which deals with the aftermath of a mysterious plague

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that suddenly kills off virtually all males on earth, except, of course, for the “last man” of the title—and his pet monkey. Such efforts indicate the ongoing popularity of the subgenre, even two decades after the Cold War that originally propelled it into prominence. POSTCOLONIAL SCIENCE FICTION. Science fiction is often about encounters between different civilizations, and the conquest (or attempted conquest) of a less technologically advanced civilization by a more advanced one is a frequent motif. Science fiction is thus an ideal literary venue for the exploration of issues related to colonization and colonialism. Science fiction is also an ideal venue for the exploration of the postcolonial situation, and many writers have used it in this way. For example, Ian McDonald, though a native of England and writing within Great Britain, has made something of a specialty out of science fiction novels set in various former colonial sites around the world, from Africa, to Ireland, to India, to Brazil. In recent years, though, an important emergent phenomenon has involved the production of science fiction by writers from the postcolonial world itself. Important attention has been drawn to postcolonial science fiction by Sheree R. Thomas’s two groundbreaking Dark Matter anthologies (published in 2000 and 2004), which include selections from a wide variety of prominent and lesser-known writers of the African diaspora, including such well-known figures as Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler, as well as newer writers such as Nalo Hopkinson, who has herself, along with Uppinder Mehan, edited another important anthology, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004). Among other things, such anthologies indicate that science fiction and fantasy by writers from the postcolonial world now exist as recognizable literary phenomena. The Jamaican-born Hopkinson has herself contributed significantly to this phenomenon. Her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), features characters of Caribbean descent in the decaying urban dystopia of Toronto, in which the deterioration of the inner city has caused it to be abandoned by both the government and corporate capital, leaving an impoverished and anarchic environment menaced by gangs but enriched by a sense of community usually lacking in the alienated urban environments of our own contemporary cities. Midnight Robber (2000), Hopkinson’s second novel, addresses postcolonial issues even more directly in its elaboration of the planet Touissant, which has been colonized by settlers from the Caribbean. The text again suggests that these settlers have shared cultural traditions that can help hold people together as a community even in new and very different surroundings, though technology certainly aids in the process as well. Also in Canada, radio host Minister Faust (the pseudonym of Malcolm Azania) drew considerable attention with his first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), which combined sf commentary on fandom with ele-

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ments from horror and fantasy. From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007) similarly combines comic elements with some serious points about sf and its role in contemporary culture. Another Caribbean writer of increasing importance is Tobias Buckell, born in Grenada and raised in various locales in the Caribbean. Somewhat in the mode of Hopkinson’s Touissant, Buckell’s debut novel Crystal Rain (2006) is set on the planet Nanagada, settled by culturally and ethnically diverse human colonists who have developed a culture reminiscent of certain Caribbean cultures. Like Hopkinson, Buckell incorporates Caribbean dialect into the novel, and his characters are also far removed—in terms of time and space—from their origins. Indeed, they have been cut off from the rest of the universe for centuries as the result of an alien war, giving their culture a special flavor. Buckell followed Crystal Rain with the space operas Ragamuffin (2007) and Sly Mongoose (2008), which take place in the same universe but whose heroes are no longer planet bound. Many of Buckell’s numerous short stories have been collected in Tides from the New Worlds (2009) and Nascence: 17 Failed Stories and What They Taught Me (2012). A writer of the African diaspora, the Nigerian American Nnedi Okorafor, has also gained considerable attention in recent years, winning the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Who Fears Death (2010). Africa itself has produced relatively little science fiction by volume. However, African writers have injected important new energies into sf, and Okorafor’s work is reminiscent of African works such as Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1985), B. Kojo Laing’s Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988), and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) with its distinctive combination of science fiction with fantasy and magical realism. Africa also has a strong dystopian tradition, with South Africa as the source for many of these works, both in print and on radio programs. In addition, South Africa’s Lauren Beukes has become one of global science fiction’s brightest new voices in recent years. Novels such as Moxyland (2010), Zoo City (2011, first African winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award), and The Shining Girls (2013) have reenergized the motifs of cyberpunk, adding elements of magic realism and hip critique of media culture. India has a fairly long and diverse tradition of science fiction, though most of it has not been written in or translated into English, limiting its availability in the West. Globally, Salman Rushdie is certainly the best-known novelist from India who employs science fiction conventions in his works. He began his career, in fact, with the sf novel Grimus (1975), which features the adventures of a Native American protagonist in a parallel universe. The novel mixes its numerous echoes of Western literary and mythological sources with a rich hodgepodge of materials from non-Western culture. The parallel-universe motif is also central to Rushdie’s The Ground beneath Her Feet (1999), a rock-music retelling of the Orpheus myth.

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Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) is, like Grimus, another potent combination of East and West that suggests there are more kinds of knowledge and more kinds of power than can be encompassed by Western Enlightenment models. Ghosh combines a science fiction framework with a sort of historical detective story, the solution to which suggests that the Nobel Prize–winning discovery by British scientist Ronald Ross that malaria is transmitted through the bite of the anopheles mosquito was achieved not merely through Western-style scientific inquiry but through the intervention of Eastern-style mysticism. The novel’s intricate interweaving of Western science and Eastern mysticism undermines the privileging of the former in colonialist discourse, but also retains a strong connection between the two. There are signs that science fiction in a more conventional sense may be on the verge of a boom among postcolonial writers, however, as the rise of authors such as Hopkinson, Okorafor, and Beukes attest. Another sign of this potential boom is the increased critical attention that has recently been shown to science fiction traditions (especially in Latin America) that have existed outside the Western mainstream for some time now. The anthology Cosmos Latinos (2003), for example, collects more than two dozen sf stories (written in either Spanish or Portuguese) from Spain and Latin America, published from 1862 to 2001. The Portuguese-language stories indicate the particularly rich tradition of science fiction writing from Brazil. Although Mexico is more generally known for its incorporation of sf conventions in its cinema than in its fiction, its literary output is growing. The success of a book such as The Law of Love (1996, translated from Ley del amor), a 23rd-century romance set in Mexico City written by popular novelist Laura Esquivel, suggests that the profile of sf is rising in Mexico as well. POSTHUMANIST SCIENCE FICTION. Dating back at least as far as the far-future projections of Olaf Stapledon, science fiction has often concerned itself with narratives set in a world in which humans have either been replaced by a new dominant species on earth or have evolved in such dramatic ways as to be effectively a different species than the original human one. This kind of posthumanist science fiction, however, took a particular step forward in the 1980s with the rise of cyberpunk, in which evolving artificial intelligence raises the possibility of new electromechanical species that can function independently of humans, while a gradual merging of humans with their technology (especially computer technologies) raises the possibility of new hybrid species that go beyond either the human or the artificial. One interesting early example of posthuman science fiction was James Blish’s “Pantropy” stories of the 1950s, in which humans attempt to colonize other planets not by engineering their environments to be hospitable to humans by terraforming, but by the opposite strategy of modifying human

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beings by genetic engineering to be able better to live in the environments. These stories were collected in The Seedling Stars (1957). George Zebrowski’s Macrolife (1979), meanwhile, is an even more ambitious vision of humans evolving to live in space. Zebrowski imagines the development of high-tech space habitats that travel about the galaxy while various kinds of intelligent inhabitants (human, alien, artificial, or hybrid) have the leisure to develop their individual potentials thanks to a post-scarcity economy that has solved all social ills and a high technology environment that has, among other things, made it possible for individuals not only to devote their time to personal enrichment but also to live practically forever, thus having almost unlimited time for this enrichment. On the other hand, individualism as we know it virtually ceases to exist as the individuals in these habitats become increasingly networked into one organic system, while those who do not wish to participate in the system of each “macroworld” can simply make their own new habitat and start a new system of their own. During the period when cyberpunk turned most attention in posthuman sf toward the ways in which emerging computer capabilities might modify (or even replace) humans, Greg Bear’s Blood Music (1985) posed a radical transformation of the human through genetic engineering, featuring still another way in which the human species might be modified through technological intervention. Here, scientist Vergil Ulam injects biochips, a form of nanotechnology, into his bloodstream, setting off a chain reaction that ends with the evolved microorganisms infecting most of North America and literally dissolving the boundaries of the human body, while incorporating the “essence” of individual humans into a greater whole. The same year, Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix pivoted on a competition between different modes of human enhancement, as genetically modified “Shapers” square off against the computer-enhanced “Mechanists.” Various other narratives have involved forms of human mental and physical enhancement, often with sinister results, as when enhanced super soldiers find, in David Brin’s postapocalyptic narrative The Postman (also in 1985), that they are ill-suited to civilian life, and then play a key role in the collapse of civilization following a destructive nuclear war. Greg Egan, in works such as Diaspora (1997), has returned to the fullblown posthumanism of Stapledon, envisioning a far future in which most humans have chosen to leave their physical bodies behind in order to have their consciousnesses uploaded in digital form. The most interesting posthuman science fiction of recent years, however, has probably been that produced by the members of the British Boom, in which a favorite motif is the technological singularity that leads to the rapid evolution of artificial intelligences that far outstrip the mental capacities of humans. Motifs such as genetic engineering sometimes feature in the work of the British Boom as well, as when individuals in the world of Justina Robson’s Natural History

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(2003) have virtually unlimited choices for customizing their genetics to meet their particular life choices. And the cortical stacks of Richard K. Morgan’s “Takeshi Kovacs” sequence allow the consciousnesses of individuals to be digitally uploaded into devices that can then be transplanted into new, often customized bodies. This particular generic combination is also crucial to the work of Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod, whose fiction typically revolves around technological singularities that produce runaway advances in artificial intelligence. The “Minds” of the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks (which can be seen as an update of the “Machines” of I, Robot) are also examples of postsingularity artificial intelligences that go well beyond the intellectual capabilities of humans. The work of writers such as Stross, MacLeod, and Banks thus adds a new dimension to posthuman science fiction by focusing on artificially created entities that move beyond human intelligence but do not evolve through modification of humans. When British Boom writers have focused on modifications of human beings, they have typically taken the “Shaper” route, rather than the “Mechanist” one, taking a particular interest in the possibilities offered by genetic engineering. MacLeod’s Learning the World (2005), for example, features explorers who roam the galaxy seeding posthuman colonies, but who in this case encounter a civilization of intelligent aliens who are, we come to realize, more like humans of earth’s early 21st century than are our own descendants, who have evolved so far into the posthuman as to be more alien than the aliens. One of the more interesting examples of genetic manipulation into the posthuman is Justina Robson’s Natural History (2003), which envisions a future world in which genetic engineering has advanced to the point where human beings can be custom designed to perform virtually any task, including serving functions formerly reserved for machines. They can, for example, be starships, a fact that is crucial to the basic space-opera plot of the novel. The availability of this advanced technology leads to the development of such fanciful creatures that the book almost takes on the feel of fantasy, though it retains a virtual catalog of science fiction motifs, meanwhile also providing a serious explanation of the tensions between these modified (or “Forged”) posthumans and “Unevolved” humans who maintain their natural genetic structures. Of course, this motif of imagining the ramped-up evolution of human beings into what is effectively a new species goes back in British science fiction at least to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953), in which alien intervention facilitates the process. Such intervention, meanwhile, is explored in much more detail (and with a much better understanding of the possibilities of genetic engineering) in the “Xenogenesis” trilogy (1987–1989) of the American sf writer Octavia Butler. Meanwhile, what is

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effectively a form of genetic engineering goes all the way back to H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), in which genetic modifications lead not to advances, but to horror, in a mode that anticipates the sometimes-gruesome “Remaking” of humans in the “Bas-Lag” trilogy of key British Boomer China Miéville. One of the most important forerunners of the more recent British Boom explorations of the possibilities of genetic engineering can be found in The Child Garden (1989), by Geoff Ryman, who was born in Canada and reared partly in the United States, but who has lived his adult life in Great Britain and is usually associated with the British Boom. Ryman’s stylish rendition of a future London is set in a post-Revolution future world in which vaguely socialist principles reign supreme and in which Chinese culture is central to a world society. Mechanical technology has become almost nonexistent, replaced by a variety of biotechnologies. Perhaps most striking of these is the extensive use of viruses with which individuals are treated, endowing them with specific knowledge or capabilities. Buildings, even spacecraft, are grown rather than built, and the world is ruled by a giant biocomputer collective consciousness known as the Consensus, into which the complete mental pattern of each individual is added after being “Read” at the age of 10. Finally, no discussion of posthuman sf would be complete without a mention of the work of the Australian sf writer Greg Egan, whose striking vision of a future human race vastly changed by technological advances looks back both to cyberpunk and to such farflung philosophical visions as the novels of Olaf Stapledon in the 1930s. Thus, Egan’s Permutation City (1994) deals primarily with the cyberpunk trope of the computer simulation of human consciousness, while Diaspora (1994) presents a more adventurous exploration of the multiple possibilities of posthuman evolution. Here, some humans maintain their biological bodies, though generally with substantial enhancements, while others inhabit advanced robot bodies or even exist as disembodied intelligences with no bodies whatsoever. Egan’s work is particularly noted for its sophisticated use of hard science fiction concepts derived from quantum physics and mathematics, but what is perhaps more important is its willingness to imagine a future world in which technological advances have made fundamental changes not only to the nature of humanity but also to the nature of reality itself. In this, his work is indicative of the way in which contemporary science fictional explorations of the posthuman move beyond the limited near-future imagination of cyberpunk to explore future possibilities rendered all the more startling by the fact that they are made plausible by contemporary real-world advances in computer technology and genetic engineering. There are, indeed, good reasons to believe that we are on the verge of staggering technological advances that

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will lead to unprecedented changes in the basic texture of our lives, changes for which posthuman science fiction, perhaps more than any other cultural form, might help us to prepare. POURNELLE, JERRY (1933– ). Known to many readers primarily as a contributor to Byte magazine for a number of years, the American writer Jerry Pournelle has also produced a large body of science fiction, much of it espousing conservative/libertarian or militaristic political philosophies. After some early work as a mystery writer, Pournelle moved into science fiction in the early 1970s, becoming the first recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer in 1973. His first sf story, “Peace with Honor” (1971), also initiated his “CoDominium” sequence, which would go on to become a centerpiece of his career as a writer of sf. The early book-length volumes of this sequence feature—beginning with West of Honor (1976) and The Mercenary (1977)—a military genius, Falkenberg, who founds a futuristic mercenary force known as “Falkenberg’s Legion” that helps to overcome the stupidity and short-sightedness of civilians, who tend to be less competent and effective than the military in Pournelle’s work, in this case threatening the human expansion into space. A similar vision is maintained in later entries in the extensive “CoDominium” sequence, involving an elaborate future history of galactic empires that ultimately touts the advantages of a military-ruled hierarchical society, somewhat uneasily in tension with the sequencee’s libertarian tendencies. This support for the military (and contempt for ordinary civilians) has continued through much of Pournelle’s career, which has included the editing (with John F. Carr), between 1983 and 1990, of a series of 10 “There Will Be War” anthologies of military science fiction. Much of Pournelle’s other work is military science fiction, including “The Janissaries” sequence, comprising Janissaries (1979), Janissaries: Clan and Crown (1982, with Roland J. Green), and Janissaries 3: Storms of Victory (1987, also with Green), which returns to explicit warfare, describing a mercenary leader’s efforts to unify the planet to which he and his soldiers have been transplanted. The “Jupiter” sequence—comprising Higher Education (1996, with Charles Sheffield) and Starswarm (1998)—involves settlers struggling with the harsh environment of Jupiter. In general, however, Pournelle’s engagement with environmental issues has involved a rather simplistic lumping of environmentalists in with other liberal activists as villains and numbskulls. In Inferno (1976), for example, Pournelle collaborates with Larry Niven to riff on Dante’s Inferno, revealing that antinuclear energy activists have been condemned to hell. Pournelle is particularly well known for the work he has done in collaboration with Niven, with whom he wrote one of the best-known CoDominium books, the series’ climactic alien-contact epic The Mote in God’s Eye (1974),

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which was nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards; this novel clearly displays the libertarian politics that have caused many to see Pournelle and (especially) Niven as the heirs to the sf tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, who famously praised the novel. A Hugo nomination also went to Niven and Pournelle for the postapocalyptic narrative Lucifer’s Hammer (1977), which deals with the cataclysmic impact of a comet on the earth, while the Niven/Pournelle alien-invasion saga Footfall (1986) also garnered Hugo and Locus nominations. Niven also collaborated with Pournelle on the fantasy series The Magic Goes Away, which attempts to add reason to the fantasy genre by treating magic as a sort of technology. The Golden Road fantasy series, set in that same universe, so far consists of two novels, The Burning City (2000) and Burning Tower (2005), both coauthored with Pournelle. Niven has also collaborated extensively with Steven Barnes, and sometimes with both Barnes and Pournelle on the same project. PRATCHETT, TERRY (1948– ). The prolific British author Terry Pratchett has written a number of works of fantasy (typically comic in tone), as well as science fictional satires, but he is best known for his vast series of approximately 40 “Discworld” novels, supplemented by stories, reference guides, and nonfiction science companion books. These highly popular comic fantasies, set in a world that is a vast disc set on the backs of four elephants that themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle, engage the whole Tolkiendominated tradition of British fantasy, often in parodic or satirical ways. But they also engage a broader range of literary precedents, including classical mythology, Shakespeare, and the horror-fantasy of H. P. Lovecraft. Pratchett himself began publishing science fiction stories as early as 1963, though his career proceeded slowly due to his employment first as a journalist, then as a publicity officer, until 1987. His first novel, The Carpet People (1971), is a fantasy for children, while he began to display the distinctive humor of his later work with The Dark Side of the Sun (1976), which pokes fun at the “Known Space” novels of Larry Niven. Strata (1981) again has some fun with Niven (and others), while employing a flat-world concept that prefigures the main conceit of the Discworld series. That series itself began with The Colour of Magic (1983) and quickly became a major hit, with Pratchett producing an average of more than one new novel per year through 2011, with the publication of Snuff, by some counts the 39th novel in the series, though an exact count is difficult because there are also several related and intersecting works that might or might not be considered part of this series. Volumes in the series up to Eric (1990) include cover illustrations by Josh Kirby in the British editions, while the hardback versions of these, extensively illustrated, list Kirby as co-creator, emphasizing the importance of the art, though the paperback versions

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dropped the internal illustrations, while the U.S. versions had different covers. While many of the books contain (in satirized form) motifs familiar from Tolkienian fantasy, the most successful elements may involve the noir-inflected urban fantasies set in the central city of Ankh-Morpork, the elaboration of which allows Pratchett to take on a number of contemporary social and political issues. Pratchett’s novels outside the Discworld series include “The Book of the Nomes,” a trilogy of children’s science fiction novels, comprising Truckers (1989), Diggers (1990), and Wings (1991). Indeed, much of his work outside the Discworld series is for children and young adults, as in the comic apocalyptic fantasy Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990), co-written with Neil Gaiman. Nation (2008), on the other hand, is a more adult-oriented stand-alone novel set in an alternate version of Victorian London. The winner of numerous awards for his fiction, Pratchett was knighted in 2009. He received the World Fantasy Award for life achievement in 2010. See also COMEDY/HUMOR. PRATT, FLETCHER (1897–1956). The American science fiction and fantasy writer Fletcher Pratt also wrote a number of important historical works of nonfiction, especially those dealing with naval history and with the American Civil War. Pratt often wrote in collaboration with others, especially L. Sprague de Camp, with whom he coauthored the “Harold Shea” series of humorous fantasy stories, later continued by others. Pratt’s coauthored stories, originally published between 1940 and 1954, can all be found in The Compleat Enchanter (1989). On his own, Pratt also authored the fantasy novels The Well of the Unicorn (1948) and The Blue Star (1952). A particularly successful collaborative effort was his early story, written with Laurence Manning, “The City of the Living Dead” (1930). In 1952, Pratt edited, for Twayne Publishers, two shared-world anthologies of three novellas each, including The Petrified World, which featured his own sf novella “The Long View.” Among Pratt’s other science fiction writings, one of the most successful is the novel Alien Planet (1962), expanded from a 1937 story and featuring two friends who are accidentally transported to another planet after discovering and helping to repair an alien spacecraft. PRIEST, CHRISTOPHER (1943– ). The British author Christopher Priest is difficult to classify within the bounds of any particular genre, but he became clearly recognizable as a major figure in sf with the publication of his third novel, Inverted World (1974), which envisions a strange reality in which City Earth moves on rollers across a strange larger world, while the inhabitants of the city experience time distortions that make their predica-

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ment even stranger. While this novel involves the exploration of a number of serious philosophical issues, Priest himself continued it in a lighthearted spoof, The Making of the Lesbian Horse (1979). In The Space Machine: A Scientific Romance (1976), Priest both pastiches and extends H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898). With A Dream of Wessex (1977), Priest turns to an exploration of the human mind, which would remain an important concern of the rest of his work. This trend continued in the exploration of dream states in the “Dream Archipelago” series, comprising several stories, plus the novels The Affirmation (1981) and The Islanders (2011), the latter of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Novels such as The Glamour (1984), The Prestige (1995), and The Extremes (1998) moved even further from conventional science fiction, though maintaining contact with the genre— while winning Priest recognition outside the bounds of the sf world. Some of Priest’s later novels are more clearly science fiction, however, including The Quiet Woman (1990), which combines motifs from the postapocalyptic narrative and the dystopian narrative in its vision of a near future England reacting to radioactive contamination with political oppression. The Separation (2002), winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is an alternate history that envisions different versions of Great Britain, based on varying events related to World War II. The Adjacent (2013) also deals with alternate-history motifs. PSI POWERS. The term “psi powers” encompasses a number of psychic powers that go beyond the natural powers that are generally expected of the ordinary human brain. Such powers are typically associated with the realm of parapsychology and include such phenomena as telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. In science fiction, such powers are often associated with mutants or aliens who naturally have such powers due to the different development of their brains, though they are also often used metaphorically to create images of extraordinary individuals. While the notion of psi powers remains largely associated with pseudo-science, rather than science proper, a number of important science fiction works have employed the concept, which became fairly common in the pulp sf stories of the 1940s. Indeed, pioneering pulp editor John W. Campbell Jr., who helped to define the genre of sf as we know it, famously became fascinated by the concept and promoted it heavily, especially as it was influenced by the “Dianetics” of L. Ron Hubbard. Some of the most effective uses of psi powers in science fiction in the 1950s came in the work of Alfred Bester, whose best-known novel, The Stars My Destination (1957, originally published in Great Britain in 1956 as Tiger! Tiger!), features psychic teleportation and a protagonist, Gully Foyle, who is enhanced with superhuman abilities. Meanwhile, Bester’s earlier The

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Demolished Man (1953) is a detective story involving telepathy that won the first Hugo Award for Best Novel. Psychic powers are, of course, especially valuable to detectives, and many psychic detectives have appeared over the years, as in the case of Peter F. Hamilton’s psi-powered detective Greg Mandel, Mindstar Rising (1993), A Quantum Murder (1994), and The Nano Flower (1995). Set in a near-future Britain, these novels take place in a world plagued by climate change and ruled by a dystopian left-wing government. One of the most popular motifs in science fiction involving psi powers involves individuals (often children) who are persecuted by mainstream society because of their special psychic abilities. An early and still-classic example of this motif can be found in Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human (1953), in which three individuals with special powers ultimately escape persecution to find solace in each other, bonding together to form a single, powerful consciousness. Nancy Kress’s Nebula Award–winning novella Beggars in Spain (1991, expanded into a full-length novel the next year) makes particularly good use of the motif of psi powers in its vision of a group of superhuman children who are genetically engineered not to need sleep, but then find that this modification gives them other abilities. They then must defend themselves from the hostility of “normal” humans in a narrative that raises a number of crucial questions about genetic engineering as well as about the simple fact that some humans are inherently more gifted than others. This premise was then extended in two sequels, Beggars & Choosers (1994) and Beggars Ride (1996). A number of the freaks and outcasts who populate the fiction of Philip K. Dick have psi powers or extraordinary mental abilities, as in the case of Dr. Bloodmoney (1965), which features several such characters. In the case of Dick, such powers can typically be read metaphorically, marking the marginal character of the individuals who bear them. PULLMAN, PHILIP (1946– ). The British writer Philip Pullman has been prominent in recent efforts to bring British fantasy out of the shadow long cast over the genre by the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Pullman moved into adult fantasy with the novel Galatea (1978), then followed with the young adult Gothic narrative Count Karlstein (1978), which was later recast for younger children as Count Karlstein; Or, the Ride of the Demon Huntsman (1991). He gained confidence and power through the “Sally Lockhart” series, comprising The Ruby in the Smoke (1985), The Shadow in the Plate (1986; republished as The Shadow in the North in 1987), The Tiger in the Well (1990), and The Tin Princess (1994). This sequence, set in Victorian England, begins in a relatively realistic mode, but eventually veers into fantasy and steampunk science fiction.

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Pullman’s status as a major contemporary writer, however, rests primarily on the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, comprising Northern Lights (1995, published in the U.S. as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). Here, in a sort of fantasy version of “steampunk” science fiction, Pullman imagines an alternative Victorian world saturated with magic and inhabited by a number of supernatural creatures. This world then becomes, as the trilogy proceeds, only one in a series of parallel worlds, introducing a number of science fiction tropes into the fantasy narrative. The particularly anticlerical and even antireligious nature of this trilogy puts it into stark opposition to the religiosity of the J. R. R. Tolkien–dominated tradition of British fantasy and gives the whole trilogy more the spirit of science fiction than of traditional fantasy.

R RACE AND ETHNICITY. The widespread fascination of science fiction with images of encounters with aliens, mutants, artificial intelligences, or other entities outside the range of the human norm has quite often functioned metaphorically as a commentary on attitudes toward race and ethnicity. Stories focused on race as a theme date back well into the 19th century, though many of these early stories were themselves racist. A favorite topic through World War II involved racist depictions of Asians as foreign and threatening, often by paralleling them with extraterrestrial aliens. Sax Rohmer’s conniving Fu Manchu, who emerged as a villain in novels but then expanded into multimedia appearances, can be taken as a prototype of the alien villain who often appeared in stories of this period—though Ming the Merciless, Oriental foe of Flash Gordon, may be the most famous example in a more properly science fictional context. Especially in an American context, narratives involving black-white relations were particularly prominent early on. The work of the African American author George S. Schuyler was especially important in this regard, and his Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933–1940 (1931) was a landmark in the development of both science fiction and African American literature. In this racial satire, a treatment becomes available that allows blacks to make their skin permanently white, the consequences of which are the stuff of the narrative. In addition to such direct treatments of the situation of African Americans in American society, race relations have been frequently allegorized, either in relations between humans and aliens or between humans and human-like robots or androids. Isaac Asimov’s robot stories of the 1950s, compiled in I, Robot (1950), as well as the robot novels that followed—including The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957)—envisioned a robot class that was marginalized in very much the same way African Americans had traditionally been in American history.

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Robert A. Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold (1964) is a postapocalyptic narrative in which a white American family takes refuge in a bomb shelter during a nuclear war, only to be propelled by the subsequent explosions into a future America in which blacks rule whites absolutely, often brutally, and sometimes even cannibalizing them. This controversial narrative, declared racist by some, seems designed more as a satirical critique of racism, though the possibility of reading it as an endorsement of the very attitudes it criticizes indicates the vexed nature of such issues in Amerian society. Race often figures in the politically engaged writing of the New Wave, especially in works such as Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron (1969), whose description of problematic race relations in a future America is clearly a simple extrapolation from the reality of the author’s present. Race relations are also crucial to the novels of British writer John Brunner during this period, though those novels are often set largely in America, where tensions between the races are particularly crucial to The Jagged Orbit (1969). Much of the work of African American science fiction writers has, understandably, dealt specifically with questions of race and racism. Samuel R. Delany, whose emergence in the 1960s was concurrent with the New Wave (whether or not one considers his work to be part of the New Wave), treated race in sophisticated (and often oblique) ways, as when the confusing, chaotic, and ever-shifting urban environment of Dhalgren (1975) can be seen as a commentary on the social unrest in African American urban communities in the 1960s and 1970s. Also important as explorations of multiculturalism and multiracialism are Triton (1976, later republished as Trouble on Triton) and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) may be the most powerful exploration of racial history in American science fiction. It remains Butler’s most widely read (and taught) novel. Here, an African American woman living in 1976 finds herself periodically (and spontaneously, by means that are never explained) drawn back into the antebellum South, a time-travel scenario that allows Butler to produce detailed descriptions of the experience of slavery, especially for women, somewhat in the mode of Toni Morrison’s later Beloved (1987). Butler’s later “Xenogenesis” trilogy also deals with race and racism in complex ways, based largely on the time-honored sf parallel between aliens and racial minorities. Walter Mosley’s Futureland (2001) includes a number of stories that deal centrally with race, perhaps most strikingly the highly allegorical concluding story “The Nig in Me,” in which a global plague strikes down everyone who does not have a least a certain amount of black African blood. Finally, the recent emergence of postcolonial science fiction has significantly expanded the coverage of race and ethnicity in science fiction on a global scale.

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REEVE, PHILIP (1966– ). The British author and illustrator Philip Reeve has produced books for children and young adults in a variety of genres, including science fiction. Indeed, his innovative Mortal Engines (2001) was an important landmark in the evolution of British young adult fiction. Here, Reeve envisions a strange post-disaster future world in which huge cities (including London) travel about the surface of the globe on wheels, driven by huge engines and cannibalizing the technologies and raw materials that they encounter along the way. This vividly imagined world also provides the scenario for three direct sequels: Predator’s Gold (2003), Infernal Devices (2005), and A Darkling Plain (2006). The final installment won the 2006 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, though the award was somewhat cumulative for the entire sequence. This series touches on many of the motifs of steampunk and salvagepunk; in the subsequent “Larklight” trilogy—comprising Larklight (2006), Starcross (2007), and Mothstorm (2008)—Reeve transfers the imagery of steampunk into outer space. In 2009, with Fever Crumb, Reeve initiated the publication of a series of prequels to Mortal Engines; this series has now included A Web of Air (2010) and Scrivener’s Moon (2011) as well. RELIGION. Religion and science fiction have had something of an unsteady relationship since the beginnings of the genre. In Forever Peace (1997) it is necessary to prevent a cult of Christian fanatics from intentionally causing the end of the universe. Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (1979–1992) has had a great deal of irreverent fun with religion and other attempts by human beings to inflate their sense of importance in the cosmos, though generally moving into a darker and darker mode as the series proceeds. The figure of Jesus Christ has figured in a number of science fiction stories and novels. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), for example, the Bible itself is banned along with all other books, while Jesus Christ now appears on television as a sort of celebrity endorser of commercial products. In 1967, Michael Moorcock won the Nebula Award for Best Novella for “Behold the Man,” an unusual time-travel narrative in which a time traveler takes on the role of Jesus Christ. The protagonist of Barry N. Malzberg’s The Cross of Fire (1982) also becomes Christ, while time travelers in sf narratives have often visited the time of Christ and become involved in events there, as when the time traveler in John Boyd’s satire The Last Starship from Earth (1968) must ensure that Christ dies properly on the cross in order to prevent an undesirable alternative timeline from developing. Even more irreverent is Gore Vidal’s Live from Golgotha (1992), which essentially spoofs the New Testament. On the other hand, The Light of Other Days (2000), by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, simply allows characters to view events in the time of Christ by means of a time viewer.

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The Catholic Church has figured particularly prominently in science fiction, as in Anthony Boucher’s acclaimed short story “The Quest for Saint Aquin” (1951). Perhaps the best-known work in this regard is Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), in which the Catholic Church is portrayed positively as a guardian of civilization and learning, which it seeks to preserve during the periods following their destruction in each of a series of cataclysmic nuclear wars. Also important is Keith Roberts’s Pavane (1968), which explores a world in which the Catholic Church and medieval aristocracy were able to successfully defend their power and to defeat the emergent bourgeois revolution in Europe. Religions other than Christianity have figured less often in Western science fiction, but Islam is central to Donald Moffitt’s “Mechanical Sky” sequence, comprising Crescent in the Sky (1990) and A Gathering of Stars (1990), in which the human colonization of space is dominated by Arab Muslims; Buddhism, meanwhile, is a crucial thematic (and narrative) motif in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), in which both Buddhism and Islam also become much more important forces in global history after the destruction of Christianity by the Black Death of the 14th century. In addition to its engagement with real-world religions, science fiction has often envisioned fictional religions, though often in ways that create an estranged perspective that provides commentary on real-world religions. For example, the depiction of the artificial religion of Mercerism in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) clearly comments on the functioning of Christianity in the contemporary United States. Adherents of the Mercerism religion routinely fuse their consciousnesses with its archetypal founder, Wilbur Mercer, through the technological intervention of a device known as an “empathy box.” In doing so, the believers feel the pain of the Christ-like Mercer’s passive resistance against persecution. Believing that they are participating in their leader’s struggle by doing so, devotees of Mercerism accept that empathy for animals (and other people) is a moral obligation, resulting in a valuation of animals that leads to their commercial exploitation—just as Mercerism itself turns out essentially to be a media hoax, part of a system that uses religion to support the capitalist status quo. Meanwhile, all of Dick’s fiction after the strange series of hallucinations he suffered in early 1974 had strong religious dimensions, as when The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) deals with the efforts of the title character, Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer, to come to grips with the implications of some newly discovered Gnostic scroll fragments that challenge much of received Christian theology. That book, meanwhile, was the third entry in Dick’s “VALIS” trilogy, the first two volumes of which were VALIS (1981) and The Divine Invasion (1981), and all of which deals with Gnostic revisions of the nature of God.

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Perhaps the most direct (and notorious) engagement of science fiction in religion concerns the central role played by sf writer L. Ron Hubbard and his pseudoscience of “Dianetics” in founding the Church of Scientology—a case of religion being inspired by science fiction, rather than the other way around. And, of course, Hubbard’s ideas gained currency in the science fiction community when they drew the positive attention of John W. Campbell Jr., who published much of Hubbard’s related fiction and then published, in Astounding Science-Fiction, a long nonfiction article in 1950 endorsing Dianetics as a form of psychotherapy that could uncover the latent, normally inaccessible powers of the human mind. RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (1973). Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama was one of the most awarded science fiction novels of the 1970s, winning the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Locus Award for Best Novel, as well as a plethora of other awards, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. In the novel, a huge, mysterious object (dubbed “Rama,” thus the title) clearly manufactured by intelligent creators, enters the solar system, and most of the plot simply involves the efforts of a mission from earth to try to determine the purpose of the object. The novel has become a central example of the use of the so-called Big Dumb Object in science fiction, and many of its motifs have since been echoed, perhaps most directly in Ian McDonald’s “Chaga” sequence, especially in Kirinya (1998), in which a similarly mysterious alien-constructed gigantic ship approaches earth. The physical exploration of the giant object in Rendezvous with Rama itself provides some compelling narrative, informed by a sense of wonder and mystery that aligns it with the very best science fiction. The book’s more compelling mysteries, however, have to do with speculations on the source and purpose of the object, which seems to suggest that the vastly advanced aliens (or even gods) who constructed Rama have identified humans as a special species worthy of their attention. In the end, however, the book satirizes such assumptions of human importance when the huge ship simply circles near the sun, using the star’s energies to recharge its batteries, then flies away, apparently having no interest whatsoever in human beings and their culture. See also RELIGION. RESNICK, MIKE (1942– ). The American writer Michael D. Resnick (usually credited simply as “Mike Resnick”) has had a long and prolific career in science fiction, beginning with early planetary romances somewhat reminiscent of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as The Forgotten Sea of Mars (1965, signed as “Michael D. Resnick”). Other early works somewhat

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in the same mode include the “Ganymede” series, comprising The Goddess of Ganymede (1967) and Pursuit on Ganymede (1968), though Resnick moved in a somewhat different direction with the postapocalyptic narrative Redbeard (1969), which focuses on a New York subway system that is inhabited by mutants a thousand years in the future. After spending the 1970s working in other genres, Resnick returned to science fiction, with a variety of works in the 1980s, the most important of which was Birthright: The Book of Man (1982), which would ultimately become the founding text of the extensive “Birthright Universe” future history, which would form the core of Resnick’s subsequent career. In this future history, an aggressive and warlike humanity expands into the galaxy, building a galactic empire by violent conquest that in many ways parallels the process of colonization in earth’s history. The series included a number of novels in subsequences through the 1980s, but really hit its stride at the end of the decade with the “Chronicles of a Distant World” subsequence, in which Resnick makes overt use of the colonization of Africa as a historical analog for galactic conquest, while using Dante’s Divine Comedy as a literary analog. In this subsequence, Paradise (1989) is a retrospective look at the colonization (and decolonization) of the planet Peponi, which serves in the book as a transparent stand-in for Kenya. Subsequent volumes include Purgatory (1993), which builds on the history of Zimbabwe, and Inferno (1994), based on the history of Uganda. Resnick would return to the Kenya-in-outer-space motif in Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia (1998), which built on an earlier short story (“Kirinyaga”) that won a Hugo Award in 1989 and a novelette (“The Manamouki”) that won a Hugo in 1991, to focus on the Gikuyu people of Kenya, dealing in particular with the determination of its protagonist, Koriba, to restore the traditional (precolonial) Gikuyu way of life on the terraformed planetoid of the title (taken from the traditional Gikuyu name for Mt. Kenya). Resnick has written a number of novels outside this future history, as well as a number of short stories, several of which have won major awards. In addition to “Kirinyaga,” Resnick received Hugo Awards for Best Short Story for “The 43 Antarean Dynasties” (1997) and “Travels with My Cats” (2004). Perhaps more impressively, as of this writing he leads all authors with 18 overall Hugo nominations for Best Short Story, as well as leading in the category of Best Novelette with eight nominations. A collection, Win Some, Lose Some: The Hugo Award Winning (and Nominated) Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Mike Resnick (2012), assembles all 26 of these Hugonominated stories and novelettes, plus the four that were nominated for Best Novella, including “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” which won in that category in 1995.

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REYNOLDS, ALASTAIR (1966– ). The British writer Alastair Reynolds is one of the central figures of the British Boom, and one of the writers most central to that movement’s resurrection of the space opera as a vital science fiction subgenre. Reynolds’s fiction is heavily informed by his own expertise as a PhD in physics who worked for more than a decade at the Netherlands European Space Research and Technology Centre. Reynolds began writing and publishing sf short stories while still a graduate student, but did not achieve significant status as a writer until the publication of his first novel, Revelation Space, in 2000. A far-ranging space opera that is a veritable compendium of the subgenre’s major motifs, it was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award. Revelation Space was then followed by Redemption Ark (2002) and Absolution Gap (2003) to form the “Inhibitor” trilogy. Here, an alien race known as the Inhibitors polices the galaxy, exterminating races that become advanced enough to be a threat to the galactic status quo; much of the plot is driven by the fact that humanity has, in fact, reached the threshold required to draw the attention of the Inhibitors, leading to war between the two races. Chasm City (2001) and The Prefect (2007) are also set in this universe, as are many of Reynolds’s short stories. Century Rain (2004) is an alternate-history novel written in a noir mode and set partly in a 1950s Paris modified by the failure of the German invasion of France in 1939, leading to Adolf Hitler’s loss of power in Germany. Much of the plot involves the visit of an agent from the postcapocalyptic future in our own timeline (where humanity has been driven off the planet by rebellious nanomachines) to this alternate universe in 1959. Other stand-alone novels include Pushing Ice (2005), House of Suns (2008), Terminal World (2010), and Harvest of Time (2013). His most recent project is another trilogy, “Poseidon’s Children,” which so far includes Blue Remembered Earth (2012) and On the Steel Breeze (2013), with an additional volume forthcoming. REYNOLDS, MACK (1917–1983). The American writer Dallas McCord “Mack” Reynolds produced a number of politically engaged works of science fiction, highlighted by his speculations of the possibilities of various socioeconomic futures. Reynolds began publishing science fiction stories in 1950, with the story “Isolationist” in Fantastic Adventures. He published numerous stories in the early 1950s, and published his first novel, The Case of the Little Green Men (1951), which mixed sf and mystery fiction. By the end of the 1950s and through most of the 1960s, Reynolds was one of the key contributors to John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction and its successor, Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

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Reynolds’s extensive travels as a foreign correspondent for Rogue magazine from 1953 to 1963 clearly had an impact on his more mature work, often in the form of stories that were later expanded into novels, typically exploring alternative social and economic organizations. Indeed, Reynolds’s ability to imagine interesting visions of the future probably exceeded his technical ability as a writer. For example, Planetary Agent X (1965) features agents of the United Planets Organization working undercover for socioeconomic justice amid the distant colony worlds of a Galactic Empire, beginning a series that would also include Dawnman Planet (1966), The Rival Rigelians (1967), Code Duello (1968), and Section G: United Planets (1976). The Rival Rigelians is particularly notable among works of Cold War science fiction in its exploration of an experiment comparing the methods of capitalism and communism as alternative modes for development of a primitive planet. The Cold War also provides crucial background to Tomorrow Might Be Different (1975), the initial version of which was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction as “Russkies Go Home!” in 1960, projecting a future in which the Soviets have supplanted the Americans as the world’s leading economic power. Reynolds has also treated issues such as multiculturalism and race and ethnicity in his work, including several stories set in Northern Africa, as well as the “Homer Crawford” sequence, including Black Man’s Burden (serialized 1961–1962; book form 1972), Border, Breed nor Birth (serialized 1962; book form 1972), and The Best Ye Breed (1978). Day after Tomorrow (1976, expanded from the 1961 short story “Status Quo”) satirized American statusconsciousness, and was followed by the related Mercenary from Tomorrow (1968, expanded from the 1962 short story “Mercenary”). The latter became the founding text in the “Joe Mauser” series, in which future corporate disputes are settled by what are essentially gladiatorial contests, packaged by the media as entertainment, anticipating such later works as Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces (2004) or even Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008). Later novels in the same sequence (but with less satirical clout) include The Earth War (1963), Time Gladiator (1966), and The Fracas Factor (1978). Reynolds’s young adult novel Mission to Horatius (1968) was the first novel based on the original 1960s Star Trek television series, thus becoming the initial text in a major sf publishing franchise. After several years of writing less-engaged, largely humorous sf in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Reynolds returned to a more serious mode with Looking Backward, From the Year 2000 (1973), which is perhaps his best known individual work. Updating the work of Edward Bellamy, this novel envisions a utopian future that is enabled by the availability of cheap, plentiful energy. This novel was followed by a direct sequel, Equality: In the Year 2000 (1977), which began to question the utopian vision of the first book, and After Utopia (1977), which

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was even more skeptical. During the same period, Reynolds also explored utopian ideas (though less seriously) in the “Bat Hardin” sequence, comprising Rolltown (1976, expanded from a 1969 short story), Commune 2000 A.D. (1974), and The Towers of Utopia (1975). Even less serious as utopian narratives are the entries in the “Lagrange” sequence—including Satellite City (1975) and the story “Of Future Fears” (1977), Lagrange Five (1979), The Lagrangists (1983), and Chaos in Lagrangia (1984). Of these, the latter two were edited by Dean Ing, who in fact put the finishing touches on a number of Reynolds’s manuscripts for posthumous publication, including Eternity (1984), Home Sweet Home: 2010 A.D. (1984), The Other Time (1984), Trojan Orbit (1985), and Deathwish World (1986). ROBERTS, ADAM (1965– ). The prolific British writer and academic Adam Roberts has produced a substantial body of scholarly work on science fiction, while building a growing reputation as a producer of sf in his own right. Beginning with the scholarly overview Science Fiction (2000), Roberts has produced a number of important studies of the genre, the most important of which is The History of Science Fiction (2006). His first novel, Salt, was also published in 2000; shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, it details the competition between the social ideas of two groups of colonists (one patriarchal, one anarchistic) who both settle on the salt-covered planet of the title. The difficult conditions that prevail on this planet are also faced by the societies of the postapocalyptic narrative On (2001), which pursue a precarious existence clinging to the face of a vast cliff that is all that is left of their earth habitat after a huge geological upheaval. Stone (2002), on the other hand, portrays what seems to be a post-scarcity utopia, but this utopian narrative is seriously problematized as the story proceeds. The Snow (2004) is another post-disaster novel, this time set in the aftermath of a three-miledeep fall of snow, while Gradisil (2006) is a near-future political drama that explores a number of ideas, including libertarianism; it won another Clarke Award nomination. Headless (2007) is an unremitting satire of religious fundamentalism, while Splinter (2007) is something of an homage to Jules Verne. Swiftly (2008) also looks back to the literature of the past, imagining, in a mode that often touches on steampunk, what might have happened at the various alternative societies described in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) if they had in fact existed and survived into the 19th century. The Clarke Award–nominated Yellow Blue Tibia (2009) and New Model Army (2010) explore variant forms of recent and contemporary political history (in the Soviet Union and Great Britain, respectively), while By Light Alone (2011) satirizes excessive hopes of the transformative power of solar energy. Roberts’s most critically successful novel to date is Jack Glass: A Golden Age Story (2012), which satirizes both a number of human foibles and a number of excesses of Golden Age science fiction; it won the BSFA

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Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Roberts has also written a number of parodies of popular works (especially films), including Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Da Vinci Code. See also RELIGION. ROBERTS, KEITH (1935–2000). The British author and illustrator Keith Roberts was best known, in the world of science fiction, for his alternatehistory novel (really a collection of interlinked stories) Pavane (1968), which explores a world in which the Catholic Church and medieval aristocracy were able successfully to defend their power and to defeat the emergent bourgeois revolution in Europe. Roberts began publishing sf stories in 1964 and published many stories in British science fiction magazines such as New Worlds and Science Fantasy, to which he also made significant contributions as an artist, producing both covers and interior artwork. He moved into novels with the disaster novel The Furies (1966); most of his other booklength works actually consist of interlinked series of stories. Molly Zero (1980) is a novel that relates a rather bitter dystopian narrative, while two equally dark late series, the “Kaeti” series and the “Kiteworld” steampunk series, consist primarily of volumes made up of interlinked stories. ROBINSON, KIM STANLEY (1952– ). Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the most important American science fiction writers of his generation, the creator of numerous novels and stories marked by a sophisticated political vision and meticulously researched technological details. Robinson’s work thus defeats the common dichotomy between hard and soft science fiction by including the best of both in his work. Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Robinson grew up in Southern California, where, in 1982, he received his doctorate in English from the University of California at San Diego, writing his dissertation (under the direction of the important Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson) on the work of Philip K. Dick, afterward published in book form as The Novels of Philip K. Dick (1984). In his work, Robinson combines a socialist political perspective with a strong commitment to environmental issues and a serious engagement with Buddhist philosophy. Robinson’s first important sf novel was The Wild Shore (1984), a postapocalyptic narrative that details attempts to recover from a disastrous nuclear war that had been provoked by American imperialism and capitalist greed. Two subsequent novels—The Gold Coast (1988), a dystopian narrative that describes a corrupt and decadent capitalist future in which the policies of the Reaganite 1980s have continued unabated into the 2020s, and Pacific Edge (1990), a utopian narrative that demonstrates the

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positive potential of sensible and humane environmental and social policies—eventually joined The Wild Shore to form the “Three Californias” trilogy. Robinson further explored society-building with a utopian emphasis in another sequence, the “Mars” trilogy, possibly the most important work of science fiction in the 1990s. The novels Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996) follow in elaborate detail the colonization and terraforming of Mars and the building of a new social and political system there that respects, to the extent possible, the native environment of the planet. This trilogy was supplemented by The Martians (1999), a collection of related short stories. The novel Antarctica (1997), set on the continent of the title, also supplements the “Mars” trilogy by exploring many of the same issues in a context more directly related to contemporary reality on earth. Robinson’s most recent trilogy of novels, known as the “Science in the Capital” sequence, includes Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). It is a sort of political thriller, set in the very near future, that focuses on the consequences of global climate change and the government’s reaction (or lack thereof) to that change. Robinson’s other early novels include Icehenge (1984), The Memory of Whiteness (1985), and A Short, Sharp Shock (1990). The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) is an ambitious and compelling alternate-history novel that follows global history from the 14th century forward based on the premise that the 14th-century plagues that swept Europe destroyed almost the entire population, effectively removing Europe (and Christianity) from the historical stage, leaving Chinese and Islamic cultures as the major world powers. More recently, Galileo’s Dream (2009) is a fictionalized account of the life of the pioneering scientist of the title (involving visitors from the future who seek out Galileo’s advice), while 2312 (2012) is a sweeping epic of political intrigue in a future in which human civilization has spread throughout the solar system. It includes strong elements of both artificial intelligence and environmentalism, as well as the typical motifs of space opera. ROBINSON, SPIDER (1948– ). Born in New York, the science fiction writer Spider Robinson immigrated to Canada in the 1980s and has lived there ever since. Robinson began publishing sf stories in 1973 and had enough success with his early stories to win the 1974 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer; his 1976 story “By Any Other Name” won a Hugo Award for Best Novella and was expanded into Telempath (1976), his first novel. In 1977, Robinson was named the best sf critic in the Locus Award poll, while his story “Stardance,” published that same year and coauthored with wife Jeanne Robinson, won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for Best Novella; it was later expanded into a novel of the

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same title in 1979. Ultimately, this novel became the first volume in the “Stardance” trilogy, which also includes Starseed (1991) and Starmind (1995), both also coauthored by Jeanne Robinson. Robinson’s story “Melancholy Elephants” won the Hugo for Best Short Story in 1983, completing a very successful first decade as a writer of sf. By this time, he had also published two story collections and his second novel, Mindkiller (1982), which eventually became the first volume in the “Lifehouse” trilogy—completed with Time Pressure (1987) and Lifehouse (1997). All three were published together as The Lifehouse Trilogy in 2008. Robinson’s most extended sequence of connected works is the “Callahan” sequence surrounding bar owner Mike Callahan, which began with the story collection Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon in 1977 and was extended with three other story collections, including Callahan’s Lady (1989), which opened a sort of subsequence of stories set in a whorehouse run by Callahan’s wife, Lady Sally McGee, in a time prior to that of the main sequence. This subsequence moved into the novel form in 1992 with the delightful titled Lady Slings the Booze (1992). The main “Callahan” sequence then moved into the novel form with The Callahan Touch (1993). The sequence now also includes the novels Callahan’s Legacy (1996), Callahan’s Key (2000), and Callahan’s Con (2003). Robinson’s most recent novel sequence focuses on down-and-out newspaper reporter Russell Walker and includes Very Bad Deaths (2004) and Very Hard Choices (2008). In 2008, Robinson was given the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Achievement, officially linking his name with the writer whose legacy was most important to him throughout his career. Indeed, Robinson’s novel Variable Star (2006) was based on an outline prepared by Heinlein and lists Heinlein as the coauthor. See also CANADIAN SCIENCE FICTION. ROBOT. The term “robot” was introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1921 play R.U.R., and, while Čapek’s robots were actually biological, the term has since come to signify primarily electromechanical devices (often humanoid and typically endowed with artificial intelligence) that can perform a variety of functions, partly through programming and partly through their own ability to act autonomously. Robots quickly became one of the iconic staples of science fiction in the early days of the genre, with Isaac Asimov’s stories of intelligent humanoid robots in the 1940s—culminating in the 1950 compilation I, Robot—providing the most important early highlight. Asimov also extended his groundbreaking series of robot stories with the novels The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957), which mix in important elements of the detective story. The concepts in this series, especially the Three Laws of Robotics, are among the most important and influential in the history of science fiction. Asimov also returned to the “Robot” series

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during this last period of his writing career, producing a series of new robot novels that included The Robots of Dawn (1983), Robots and Empire (1985), and The Positronic Man (1993, written with Robert Silverberg and based on Asimov’s 1976 Hugo and Nebula award–winning novelette The Bicentennial Man). In acknowledgment of Asimov’s importance to the history of robotics, when the Honda corporation introduced an advanced humanoid robot in 2000, it was named ASIMO. Robots of various kinds are a staple in the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, which often hinges on the inability to distinguish between humans and humanoid robots—often by the individual humans and robots themselves. In works such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Dick thus uses the figure of the robot not only to explore a number of fundamental existentialist questions but also to probe the boundaries of the human, especially the sometimes-uneasy boundary between humans and the technologies they create. Though Dick himself often uses the term “robot,” robots that are indistinguishable from humans are more commonly referred to in sf as androids. Dick’s interest in the boundary between the naturally human and the technological, meanwhile, has often been embodied in various narratives involving cyborgs, a term that generally refers to figures that are part robot and part human. Asimov and Dick pioneered in the use of robots for the exploration of serious social and philosophical issues, a course that has also been followed by such later writers as Marge Piercy, whose robot Yod—in He, She, and It (1991)—adds the serious exploration of gender issues, while also linking the modern phenomenon of robots with the older Jewish tradition of the golem. Robots have in fact been used in a variety of sf scenarios, as in the combat robots that populate a number of works of military science fiction. Robots have been staples of science fiction film since the iconic appearances of such characters as the giant alien robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and the multitalented Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956). The visual appeal of robots has also made them a common feature of children’s science fiction, being particularly popular as children’s toys and as characters in illustrated science fiction books for children, where they often function essentially as pets, or possibly as companions, for children. Robots often function as comical characters in children’s culture, but have in fact often served a humorous function in sf for adults as well, dating back at least to the comical robot stories in Henry Kuttner’s “Galloway Gallegher” series (1943–1948), collected as Robots Have No Tails (1952). ROBSON, JUSTINA (1968– ). The British writer Justina Robson is one of the leading women writers of the British Boom. A graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, Robson began publishing stories in 1994, but established herself as a writer of importance with her first novel, Silver Screen

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(1999), a post-cyberpunk novel that combines a number of classic cyberpunk motifs (especially artificial intelligence) with a strong engagement with contemporary media culture, adding a utopian dimension that is often missing in cyberpunk narratives. Silver Screen was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. Mappa Mundi (2001) is another post-cyberpunk work, adding significant elements of nanotechnology to its exploration of a potential move to a posthuman future. Robson then moved even further into this territory with the explosively creative Natural History (2003), which posits a future world in which adavances in genetic engineering have allowed some individuals (the “evolved”) to move into genuinely posthuman lifestyles, causing considerable tensions between them and the remaining, unmodified individuals (the “unevolved”). Living Next-Door to the God of Love (2005) is set in the same universe as Natural History. Each of these novels was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the BSFA Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Robson’s most recent work has been concentrated in the less exhilarating but still solid “Quantum Gravity” sequence, centrally relying on parallelworld motifs. It currently comprises Keep It Real (2006), Selling Out (2007), Going Under (2008), Chasing the Dragon (2009), and Down to the Bone (2010). See also CLARION WORKSHOP; POSTHUMANIST SCIENCE FICTION. RUCKER, RUDY (1946– ). Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician and computer scientist who has also worked extensively as a science fiction writer. His work has generally been associated with cyberpunk, of which his “Ware” sequence is widely regarded as a central instance. This sequence—comprising Software (1982), Wetware (1988), Freeware (1997), and Realware (2000)—lies at the center of Rucker’s corpus as a writer. However, Rucker himself has resisted the cyberpunk label for his work, which shows a strong influence of mathematical game theory and explores some of the same philosophical and mathematical issues as the ones he addresses in nonfiction writings such as Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (1977) and Infinity and the Mind (1982). Software won the inaugural Philip K. Dick Award, an award that was won by Wetware as well. Rucker actually published his first story as early as 1962, but he did not publish another story until 1980; he then emerged as a writer of note until the 1980s, just before and during the heyday of cyberpunk. He, however, has proposed the term “transrealism” to characterize his fiction (as distinct from cyberpunk), as outlined in his 1983 essay “The Transrealist Manifesto.” He has also written an extensive series of transrealist novels to illustrate this concept, beginning with White Light (1980) and Spacetime Donuts (1981)

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and extending through Saucer Wisdom (1999). He has also written a number of other science fiction novels, the most recent of which, Turing and Burroughs (2012), was published in e-book form by his own Transreal Books. Labeled as “A Beatnik SF Novel,” the book imagines a gay love affair between William S. Burroughs and computer scientist Alan Turing. Rucker’s short fiction has been collected several times, beginning with The 57th Franz Kafka in 1983. Gnarl! (2006) is a more comprehensive collection, gathering the stories of The 57th Franz Kafka and adding significant amounts of other material as well. RUSHDIE, SALMAN (1947– ). The Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie has parlayed the great literary achievement of novels such as Midnight’s Children (1980) and the high-profile global political controversies caused by novels such as The Satanic Verses (1988) into a position as one of the world’s most prominent literary figures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. All of Rushdie’s fiction draws on fantastic elements that have frequently been associated with magical realism. However, his work sometimes veers into more properly science fictional territory as well. Indeed, Rushdie began his highly successful, though controversial, career with the publication of a science fiction novel with a parallel-universe theme, Grimus, in 1975. On the other hand, Grimus was also influenced by a number of elements from world mythologies. Its early publication made it a groundbreaking work that, if nothing else, proved the viability of such models for the construction of science fiction narratives and thus helped to pave the way for later writers of postcolonial science fiction. Meanwhile, The Ground beneath Her Feet (1999), Rushdie’s rock-music retelling of the Orpheus myth (which also provided the framework for Samuel R. Delany’s The Einstein Intersection), spins off into a more properly science fictional direction when much of the seeming strangeness of the narrative turns out to be due to the fact that the events are occurring in a parallel universe, not our own. See also FANTASY; PARALLEL WORLDS. RUSS, JOANNA (1937–2011). The American writer Joanna Russ began publishing science fiction stories in 1959, but rose to special prominence as one of a group of women sf writers who explored new dimensions of the utopian narrative in the 1970s. During that decade she also began an academic career, becoming a professor of English at the University of Washington in 1977. Her first novel, Picnic on Paradise (1968) broke new genre ground with its use of a strong female hero in a space opera setting, and moved in important new feminist directions with the story “When It Changed” (1972), in which a plague wipes out the male population of the

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planet Whileaway, leaving the female survivors, over hundreds of years, to develop a nonhierarchical, cooperative, and stable society, while also developing the ability to reproduce without men. But it was with her third novel, the militantly feminist The Female Man (1975), that Russ made her mark as a writer of innovative sf. Russ’s bestknown work of the period was The Female Man (1975), which also features the Whileaway, which stands beside three other imagined social structures as the story is narrated by four different women from parallel worlds with different timelines, all of whom are versions of the same woman (and who eventually interact). One of the stories is an all-out dystopian narrative informed by a literal war between the sexes, but the others have strong utopian elements. The Female Man provides a challenge to compulsory heterosexuality in its depiction of explicit lesbian eroticism—as opposed to the sexless all-woman society of Herland. Russ quickly followed with two other feminist sf novels, We Who Are about To . . . (1977) and The Two of Them (1978). Much of her subsequent writing was criticism and other nonfiction, though her 1982 novella “Souls” won the Hugo Award and the Locus Award for Best Novelette. Her criticism won the 1988 Pilgrim Award, and she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. RUSSELL, ERIC FRANK (1905–1978). The British writer Eric Frank Russell began publishing stories in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937 and subsequently became one of the first regular British contributors to that magazine. Indeed, he reproduced the characteristic style of that magazine so successfully that many readers assumed him to be an American. Many of his early stories are assembled in the volume Men, Martians and Machines (1955). He also wrote novels, beginning with Sinister Barrier (serialized 1939, book form 1943). One of his first post–World War II stories was “Metamorphosite” (1946), a tale involving ascension from, or transcendence of, the physical plane that was ahead of its time and that prefigures one of the most popular motifs of the British Boom. After the war, though, his work became particularly distinguished by its tendency toward antiwar and antimilitary satire, particularly in the Gandhian story “And Then There Were None . . .” (1951). One of his antimilitary satires, “Plus X” (1956), was expanded into novel form in 1958 as The Space Willies. The novels Three to Conquer (1956) and With a Strange Device (1964) employ the plot structure of the thriller to explore the possibilities of psi powers. RUSSIAN SCIENCE FICTION. While 19th-century Russian writers such as Nikolai Gogol introduced numerous fantastic and nonrealist elements into their work, there was essentially no tradition of science fiction in Russia

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before the Revolution of 1917, other than certain philosophically oriented utopian narratives and dystopian narratives. With the postrevolutionary establishment of the Soviet Union and its official devotion to the pursuit of scientific principles in the interest of building socialism, science fiction suddenly became an important mode in Russian-language literature. Authors such as Alexei Tolstoy began to produce works of science fiction that were specifically designed to provide literary support for socialism. Tolstoy’s novel Aelita (Russian Аэлита, serialized in 1922–1923 and published in revised book form in 1939), involving a Soviet scientist and Red Army soldier who become involved in a workers’ revolution on Mars, represents perhaps the single most important example of this phenomenon. This novel was quickly adapted to film as Aelita: Queen of Mars, released in the Soviet Union in 1924 during a period of exciting postrevolutionary activity in Soviet film as a whole. On the other hand, one of the most important works of science fiction to emerge from the Soviet Union during this period was Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), a dystopian classic that warns against the possible deterioriation of the revolution into tyranny. By the early 1930s, the Soviet literary establishment had endorsed socialist realism as the official mode in which literature was to contribute to the building of socialism, a policy that seriously hampered the growth of Soviet science fiction. Science fiction would not again become a prominent mode in Soviet literature until the 1950s, when authors such as Ivan Yefremov again began to make use of the potential of sf for producing utopian narratives that were congruent with the official project of building socialism. Particularly important in this phenomenon was Yefremov’s novel Andromeda (1958), but it was the work of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, who started to publish stories at the end of the 1950s, that began to bring widespread international attention in the 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Strugatsky brothers published a variety of sf novels that were translated into a variety of languages, including English. Perhaps the best known is the 1972 novel (English translation Roadside Picnic, 1977) in which alien travelers have left behind not only a number of artifacts, but also a residual impact that seems to have warped the very laws of physics in the zone they visited, making the salvage of these artifacts a complex and perilous enterprise. Roadside Picnic was adapted to film by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker (1979), which joins Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris as two of the most widely acknowledged classics of world sf cinema. None of these works were openly critical of the Soviet regime, but many of the sf works of the late Soviet years were written in a dystopian mode that was highly critical of the crumbling Soviet regime. Works in this mode include such examples as Alexander Zinoviev’s The Yawning Heights (1976) and Vladimir Voinovich’s Moscow 2042 (1987).

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RYMAN, GEOFF (1951– ). The Canadian-born Geoff Ryman moved to the United States at the age of 11 and stayed there through his university studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, then emigrated to Great Britain, where he has remained, pursuing his career as a writer and academic, teaching extensively as a lecturer in Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Manchester. Ryman has written in a number of genres, often crossing the boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and mainstream literary fiction even in a single work. His first science fiction story, “The Diary of the Translator” was published in New Worlds in 1976. He first drew major attention within the sf world, however, with the novel The Unconquered Country: A Life History (published in Interzone magazine in 1984). Set in Cambodia, the novel is a serious exploration of social and economic conditions there, focusing on a young woman who has to rent out her womb for growing machinery, thus exploring the boundary between the biological and the technological in a way that would frequently recur in Ryman’s fiction. It won the BSFA Award and the World Fantasy Award. Ryman’s first full-length novel was the fantasy The Warrior Who Cried Life (1985). He then moved into full possession of his mature powers with the story “Love Sickness” (1987), expanded into full-length novel form as The Child Garden; or A Low Comedy in 1989. This novel, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, presents a future world dominated by biotechnology and vaguely socialist principles. Viruses are used particularly extensively, especially as treatments that endow individuals with specific knowledge or capabilities, somewhat like the implants of cyberpunk. Buildings, machinery, even spacecraft, are grown rather than built, and major decisions that help to rule the world are made by a giant biocomputer collective consciousness known as the Consensus, into which the complete mental pattern of each individual is uploaded so that it can participate in the decision-making process. Ryman’s novel Was (1992) mixes realist and fantasy elements in its exploration of the interconnected lives of a group of characters who are all in some way related to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) or its 1939 film adaptation, either by virtue of being characters in the works themselves or by being involved with the works in the real world. Was was also the first novel in which gay and lesbian themes became prominent in the fiction of Ryman, who is himself gay. The experimental novel Two Five Three: A Novel for the Internet in Seven Cars and a Crash (1996 Internet; published in print in 1998 as 253: The Print Remix) employs rules of constrained textual generation similar to those employed by the Oulipo group. The two versions take advantage of the resources of the two media in which they appear and are quite different from one another. The print version won the Philip K. Dick Award.

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Ryman returned to a prominent focus on gay themes with the erotic fantasy Lust: Or No Harm Done (2001), which features a gay protagonist who has the ability to produce, through the power of his dreams, physical simulacra of fantasy objects (including literary characters such as Tarzan) for whom he feels lust. Air (Or, Have Not Have) (2004) may be Ryman’s most successful novel to date. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the BSFA Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award and deals with a new information and entertainment technology that allows a vast wireless network to connect directly to the brains of individual people. This technology should have the leveling effect of giving all the world’s cultures exactly the same access to information, programming, and services, though the impact on less developed areas, such as the fictional central Asian republic of Karzistan, which provides the principal setting, is complex. Ryman’s novel focuses on the small, remote Karzistani village of Kizuldah, where the young woman Chung Mae learns to make the most of the new technology while mourning its destructive effects on her traditional culture. Air, with its focus on the impact of a near-future technology on everyday life in a small village, was a dramatic move into the world of what has come to be known as “mundane science fiction,” which seeks to situate sf stories in more realistic settings involving more nearly possible technologies. Ryman’s story collection When It Changed: Science into Fiction: An Anthology (2009) also focuses on mundane science fiction, helping to make Ryman an important figure in the movement of 21st-century sf toward more direct political engagement with real-world issues. See also SLIPSTREAM.

S SALVAGEPUNK. Numerous works of science fiction have dealt with the far-future recovery of by-then ancient technological artifacts or, in another variant, with the recovery of technologies left behind (on earth or elsewhere) by now-absent alien intelligences. An excellent early example of this technique can be found in Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Пикник на обочине (1972; English translation Roadside Picnic, 1977), in which alien travelers have left behind not only a number of artifacts but also a residual impact that seems to have warped the very laws of physics in the zone they visited, making the salvage of these artifacts a complex and perilous enterprise. The salvage motif has been particularly popular in the works of the British Boom, as when post-Singularity artificial intelligences develop ultra-advanced technologies, then leave them scattered about the galaxy after they exit the physical plane altogether, experiencing transcendence. This motif is prominent, for example, in Ken MacLeod’s Newton’s Wake (2004), in which humans travel about the galaxy by means of the wormhole gates that are part of this technology, salvaging what they can of the other left-behind technologies, though it is sometimes difficult to discern the operation or even purpose of such technologies. However, to be true salvagepunk, such stories must be infused with a certain punkish, anti-authoritarianism, as in the cyberpunk from which the subgenre derives its name, though the salvagepunk label suggests an affinity with steampunk as well. Thus, David Brin’s Existence (2012), which includes a strong element of salvage of alien technologies, is not salvagepunk. Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines (2001), on the other hand, while a young adult fiction, is more in the salvagepunk mold. Here, Reeve envisions a strange post-disaster future world in which huge cities (including London) travel about the surface of the globe on wheels, driven by mighty engines and cannibalizing the technologies and raw materials that they encounter along the way. Perhaps the best example of salvagepunk is China Miéville’s young adult novel Railsea (2012), a postapocalyptic narrative that also functions as a planetary romance and includes important elements of steampunk in its

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near-surreal vision of a planet criss-crossed by strange, shifting train tracks that intrepid explorers travel in search of leftover technological artifacts from earlier ages, all the while battling a variety of monsters and other dangers. SATIRE. The venerable literary mode known as satire produces critiques (usually humorous) of various human practices, institutions, and behaviors, typically through the use of an exaggeration that shows the object of critique in a new light or from a refreshed perspective that highlights aspects that might not otherwise have been visible. In this sense, satire is inherently akin to science fiction, which is also centrally concerned with placing issues and ideas in new surroundings so that they can be approached from new perspectives. It is thus perhaps not surprising that science fiction is often openly satirical in its orientation. The tradition of speculative fictions with a satirical orientation goes back at least to the second century AD Greek satirist Lucian, whose work included motifs such as voyages to the moon and Venus. Lucian was supposedly inspired by his master Menippus, who often appears as a character in his works, giving the name “Menippean satire” to the subgenre he founded. Going forward, the tradition of Menippean satire includes such writers as the 16th-century French writer Rabelais. One of the great classics of the subgenre, which typically includes substantial elements of speculative fiction, is Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), which among other things lampoons what Swift saw as the follies and excesses of the newly emergent science of the 18th century, setting the stage for critiques of science that inform many modern sf satires. Many more modern works of science fiction proper contain strongly satirical components, including virtually all of the science fiction of H. G. Wells—most obviously in the satirical reversal that makes the British the victims, rather than the perpetrators of colonialism in The War of the Worlds (1898). The important Czech writer Karel Čapek (perhaps best known for coining the term “robot” in his 1921 play R.U.R.) often wrote in a satirical vein, including the dystopian satirical novels The Absolute at Large (1922) and War with the Newts (1936). Indeed, dystopian narratives are generally satirical by their very nature, proposing fictional societies that are largely satires of existing societies. Thus, the leading works that defined the genre—including Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)— are also among the most important works of 20th-century satire. Similarly, authors of utopian narratives—from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) forward—also often construct their more idealized alternative societies largely in order to satirize their own societies.

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Numerous writers in the pulps from the 1930s to the 1950s produced stories in a satirical vein, but sf satire reached its first modern zenith in the 1950s in the work of Frederik Pohl and his collaborators, as when he and Cyril M. Kornbluth skewered the emerging excesses of post–World War II consumer capitalism in The Space Merchants (1953), which projected a future dystopian earth thoroughly dominated by ruthlessly greedy corporations (especially advertising firms). Pohl followed with such satirical novels as Preferred Risk (1955, written with Lester Del Rey, under the joint pseudonym Edson McCann), which satirizes the insurance industry, and Gladiator-at-Law (1955, again with Kornbluth), which satirizes corporate lawyers. Possibly the most unusual sf satire of the early 1950s—and one that reaches back directly to the tradition of Menippean satire—is Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo (1952), a satire of many elements of Cold War culture couched in terms of a postapocalyptic narrative in which citizens, not wishing to repeat the mistakes that led to the still-recent nuclear holocaust, express their support for disarmament by literally having their own arms (or other limbs) removed. Among other things, this outrageous novel lampoons the contributions of the conformist corporate culture of 1950s America to the mindset that made the Cold War arms race thinkable to begin with. Different anxieties of the early 1950s are addressed by Player Piano (1952), an early satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. that responds to a number of anxieties in American life in the early 1950s, focusing especially on fears that automation might render American workers obsolete and that, by extension, computers might someday render humans in general obsolete. Vonnegut would go on to become one of the most important American satirists of his generation, often returning to science fiction themes. The Sirens of Titan (1959) spoofs a variety of science fiction motifs, but aims its central satire at religion as a form of manipulative quackery. Cat’s Cradle (1963), a whimsical story of global apocalypse, also satirizes religion, as well as the Cold War arms race. Vonnegut’s Mother Night (1961) engages with World War II and the Nazis, including an American character named Howard W. Campbell Jr. (who seems to refer to science fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr.), while Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is an antiwar satire that also deals with World War II (focusing on the bombing of Dresden), while employing such key sf motifs as time travel and alien intervention. Several of Vonnegut’s novels feature appearances by fictional science fiction author Kilgore Trout, possibly based on the real science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon. Though he emerged slightly later than Pohl or Vonnegut and though he did not receive widespread recognition until the 1960s, another of the great sf satirists of the 1950s was Philip K. Dick, who burst into the sf world with an explosion of short-story production in 1953 and 1954, producing a number of

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stories that satirized the arms race, anticommunist hysteria, conformism, and the growing corporatization of American life in the early 1950s. Dick continued this same satirical focus as he moved into the novel form in the second half of the 1950s and forward, while also increasingly focusing on more fundamental philosophical issues such as the nature of reality itself. Dick’s satires are notable both for their sometimes outrageousness and for their ability sometimes to anticipate important trends in American society, as in his vision of the persuasive power of advertising and television in novels such as The Simulacra (1964), though his concern with the growing power of the media in American life is perhaps expressed most effectively in the better-known Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), which combines religious satire with media satire in a vision of television as a medium empowered by the spiritual emptiness of life in the real world. Robert Silverberg’s Invaders from Earth (1958) updates Wells’s satire of colonialism in The War of the Worlds to include corporate capitalism as a colonizing agency. Here, Ganymede (the largest moon of Jupiter) has been discovered to be inhabited by intelligent (but apparently primitive) life. An unscrupulous earth corporation quickly moves to take advantage of the discovery as a source of corporate profit, seeking to manipulate the government into aiding in its exploitative quest. Echoing the focus on advertising in both Pohl and Dick, Silverberg’s novel focuses on the Seward and Dinoli (S&D) advertising firm, which has been hired to do public relations work to popularize the colonization process. Other important satirists of this period include Robert Sheckley (with works such as Journey beyond Tomorrow, 1962), Fritz Leiber, Thomas Disch, and Brian W. Aldiss. As in the case of the latter two authors above, much of the best sf satire in the 1960s and 1970s was produced by writers whose work has come to be associated with science fiction’s New Wave. Much of New Wave maven Michael Moorcock’s work—such as the “Dancers at the End of Time” sequence—is openly satirical, as are many of the stories of Harlan Ellison, including “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” a dystopian satire of the growing regimentation of modern life. One of the most prominent novellength New Wave satires is Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron (1969), whose open treatment of themes related to drugs and sex was paradigmatic of the New Wave—but also drew the ire of many early reviewers, accustomed to more sedate and demure sf. Spinrad’s title character is a former 1960s Berkeley student radical who went into national politics, then became the host of the eponymous television talk show in which viewers call in live by videophone to air their various grievances. Set roughly at the end of the 1980s, Bug Jack Barron resembles the work of Dick in its vision of the increasing mediatization of American society, while the television program at its center in many ways anticipates such phenomena as the growth of talk radio and reality television.

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Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972) is an alternate-history novel in which a young Adolf Hitler emigrates to New York in 1919 and thus never rises to power in Germany. Most of the novel, though, consists of the text of Lord of the Swastika, an outrageous (but Hugo Award–winning) postapocalyptic narrative written by Hitler and enacting his personal fantasies of power. Here, most of the human race has been genetically degraded by radiation damage from a nuclear war. But Hitler’s hero (and alter ego), the magnificent Feric Jaggar, a genetically pure human, rises to power and manages to reestablish the dominion of pure humans on earth, in a manner that lampoons certain right-wing tendencies in both science fiction and fantasy novels, while also satirizing phenomena (such as militarism) in our own world that facilitate such novels (and also facilitate sinister political figures such as the real Hitler). Indeed, there is a rich tradition of antimilitarist satire in sf, much of it in reaction to military science fiction such as Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). Harry Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero (1965), generally read as a direct response to Starship Troopers, is a leading example of such satire. Joe Haldeman’s later The Forever War (1974) responds to Heinlein as well, but functions more broadly as a satirical critique of the Vietnam War. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972) also satirized the Vietnam War—and the mindset that enabled it. While primarily aimed at contemporary events in Vietnam, Le Guin’s book also critiques colonialism in general, while also including issues related to gender and environmentalism within its satirical targets. More humorous satires of the 1970s and 1980s include Barry N. Malzberg’s Herovit’s World (1973), which satirizes the science fiction business itself, especially the market pressures that sometimes drive the work of writers who might otherwise move in more creative directions. Meanwhile, Somtow Sucharitkul’s Mallworld (1981) takes on consumerism in a broader sense in its depiction of a planet-sized shopping mall that caters to a variety of alien races. The most prominent satires of this period, however, are Douglas Adams’s Pythonesque The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) and its various sequels, which together lampoon life, the universe, and everything. Terry Bisson established himself as a major new voice in sf satire at the beginning of the 1990s with the short story “Bears Discover Fire” (1990) and the novel Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), a satire of media culture in which an expedition is mounted to Mars just so a blockbuster movie can be filmed there. Other satires by Bisson include Pirates of the Universe (1996), in which astronauts dream of retiring to a theme park, and The Pickup Artist (2001), whose title character is a government operative who confiscates existing artworks in order to make room for new ones.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, given the growing power of global corporations, recent sf satires have often focused on those entities. Recent works satirizing corporate capitalism include Max Barry’s Jennifer Government (2003) and Company (2007) and Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces (2004). See also COMEDY/HUMOR. SAWYER, ROBERT J. (1960– ). The prolific and versatile Robert J. Sawyer has emerged as one of Canada’s leading science fiction writers. Sawyer began publishing sf short stories in 1981 but did not move into the novel form until 1990, with Golden Fleece, a retelling of the classical tale of Jason and the Argonauts set on a starship. That novel won Canada’s Prix Aurora Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Sawyer then began to gain even greater mastery of his material in the “Quintaglio Ascension” sequence of novels, Far-Seer (1992), Fossil Hunter (1993), and Foreigner (1994), which is surprisingly effective, given its unlikely focus on a group of intelligent dinosaurs who have evolved on a distant moon with the help of alien overseers who originally transplanted them there from earth. This focus on dinosaurs is part of an interest in earth’s prehistory that has often shown up in his work, including the Hugo Award–winning novel Hominids (2002), which became the founding text in the “Neanderthal Parallax” sequence, extended to include Humans (2003) and Hybrids (2003). This sequence is based on a parallel-worlds premise in which contact is established between our earth and a parallel earth on which Neanderthals evolved as the dominant intelligent hominid species. Sawyer’s novel The Terminal Report (1995) won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, employing important detective-story elements, as would much of his later work, but also exploring important philosophical issues such as the nature of human identity. Calculating God (2001) was nominated for the Hugo. His most important recent work is the “WWW” trilogy, which began with the Hugo-nominated Wake (2009) and also includes Watch (2010) and Wonder (2011). Built around the spontaneous emergence of an artificial intelligence in the World Wide Web, the trilogy involves a number of subplots from different sf subgenres. Sawyer’s most recent novels are the sf thriller Triggers (2012) and Red Planet Blues (2013), a science fiction murder mystery involving a private eye in a frontier settlement on Mars. SCHMIDT, STANLEY (1944– ). Though he has worked as an author, producing several novels, Stanley Schmidt’s reputation in the science fiction world rests almost entirely on his marathon stint as the editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine from 1978 until his retirement in August 2012. Schmidt was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor every year from 1980 to 2006, without winning. Beginning in 2007,

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that award was split into long-form and short-form categories. Schmidt then continued his unbroken string of winless nominations through 2012, before finally winning the award in 2013. His yeoman-like efforts at the helm of Analog make him one of the most important magazine editors in sf history. SCHUYLER, GEORGE S. (1895–1977). George Schuyler was a pioneer in the writing of African American science fiction, as well as a groundbreaking journalist and commentator. After early work as a journalist, he broke into fiction with the novel Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933–1940 (1931), a landmark in the exploration of race and ethnicity in science fiction. Here, a scientist invents a process that turns black people white, essentially by a simple bleaching of their skin, thus literalizing the notion that race is only skin deep. The process has far-ranging implications for society, which the novel explores, including a substantial amount of criticism of organized religion. Schuyler continued to produce pulp-style sf stories through the 1930s, many published in the black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier. Ethiopia was often a topic in his writing in this period, largely as a reaction to the 1936 invasion of Ethiopia by fascist Italy. Some, though, veered into stranger territory, as in the story “The Beast of Bradhurst Avenue: A Gripping Tale of Adventure in the Heart of Harlem” (1934), about a mad scientist who decapitates black women and attempts to graft their heads onto dog bodies. Schuyler also published non-sf novels, but later moved mostly into political commentary, becoming somewhat notorious during the McCarthyite years of the 1950s for his dramatic turn to the political right, a stance he maintained until the end of his life, putting him in a position of antagonism toward the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY HALL OF FAME. Designed to honor the contributions of important writers and editors in the history of the genres of science fiction and fantasy, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame was established in 1996 in Kansas City, Missouri, by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. Initially, four new members were inducted annually (two living and two deceased), beginning with the inaugural inductees Jack Williamson and A. E. Van Vogt (living) and Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell Jr. (deceased). Other early living inductees included Andre Norton and Arthur C. Clarke (1997), Hal Clement and Frederik Pohl (1998), Ray Bradbury and Robert Silverberg (1999), and Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson (2000). Early posthumous induc-

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tees included H. G. Wells and Isaac Asimov (1997), C. L. Moore and Robert A. Heinlein (1998), Jules Verne and Abraham Merritt (1999), and Theodore Sturgeon and Eric Frank Russell (2000). The relationship of the Hall with fantasy has been somewhat unsteady over the years. It ceased the induction of fantasy writers after 2004, when it became part of the Science Fiction Museum affiliated with the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington, under the name “Science Fiction Hall of Fame.” After the Hall was discontinued as a museum exhibit in 2011 and an ensuing period of instability, it was restored in 2013 under its original name and mission, with J. R. R. Tolkien among the inductees that year. Other 2013 inductees were individuals associated primarily with science fiction, including writers Judith Merril and Joanna Russ, as well as artist/designer H. R. Giger and performer David Bowie, the latter reflecting a more multimedia focus for the Hall in recent years. SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS OF AMERICA (SFWA). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is a professional organization, founded in 1965 by Damon Knight, designed to further communication and cooperation among science fiction and fantasy writers in the United States. Originally entitled the Science Fiction Writers of America, fantasy was soon added to the official title, though the acronym “SFWA” is still used to refer to the organization. Indeed, the organization’s most highprofile campaign involved fantasy, in its efforts to help J. R. R. Tolkien collect revenues on the sales of his Lord of the Rings series, then being widely sold in the United States in pirated versions for which the author received no royalties. However, the SFWA’s highest-profile ongoing activity is the annual selection and administration of the Nebula Awards for achievement in science fiction. To qualify as an active member of SFWA, individuals must be professional science fiction, fantasy, or horror writers, based on the criterion of having sold a novel or dramatic script, or three short stories, to venues that meet certain minimum qualifications in terms of circulations or rates of payment. Professional writers who have not met these specific qualifications can join the organization as associate members, while nonauthors who work in science fiction or fantasy in other capacities can join as affiliates. SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME. See SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY HALL OF FAME. SCIENCE FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION. Founded in 1970, the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) is the oldest organization devoted to supporting those who are professionally involved in the study of

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science fiction and fantasy literature and film. Academic in its orientation, the SFRA was originally designed to provide support for classroom teaching and to promote the teaching of science fiction and fantasy at the college and university level, as well as encouraging professional scholars to engage in research related to science fiction and fantasy. It is also designed to further communication among scholars and teachers in the field and to help provide information related to their work, including the evaluation and publication of books and magazines dealing with the field, as well as other associated materials. The international membership includes a large number of scholars and teachers, but academic affiliation is not a requirement of membership, and many members are authors, editors, publishers, or simply fans of science fiction and fantasy. Among its other activities, the SFRA publishes the quarterly SFRA Review, which includes book reviews, review essays, articles, interviews, and various announcements related to the field. It also sponsors an annual conference, held in various locations globally, typically outside the United States, one of every three years. Activities at the conference include the presentation of a number of awards, the most pretigious of which is probably the Pilgrim Award, created in 1970 and named for J. O. Bailey’s groundbreaking study of science fiction (based on his doctoral dissertation), Pilgrims through Space and Time; the award recognizes lifetime achievement in sf and fantasy scholarship. The Pilgrim Award is given for the best critical essay-length work of the year, while the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service, first given in 1996, recognizes an individual for outstanding service in the areas covered by the SFRA itself. Other awards include the Mary Kay Bray Award (established in 2002 in honor of the late sf scholar for whom it is named), given for the best essay, interview, or extended review to appear in the SFRA Review in a given year. The organization also gives a Graduate Student Paper Award for the best paper delivered by a graduate student at the SFRA’s annual conference. SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES. Science Fiction Studies is probably the leading scholarly journal of science fiction studies, though it occasionally includes material related to fantasy, horror, or other areas of speculative fiction. Founded in 1973 by R. D. Mullen at Indiana State University, the journal published book reviews, review essays, and scholarly essays on various topics related to its field of coverage. It is currently based at DePauw University and is published three times per year. It has long had a reputation for being the most theoretically sophisticated journals devoted to articles on science fiction and has published articles by a number of leading theorists, often with Marxist or other radical orientations, including such figures as Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson. Overseen by an editorial board of

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leading academics in the field, it is also notable for its coverage of global science fiction, as opposed to the Anglophone emphasis of most journals in the field that are published in the U.S. or Great Britain. SEXUALITY. While early science fiction has become notorious for treating sex and sexuality in either puerile or puritanical ways, the resources of the genre have been brought to bear in significant ways since the New Wave of the 1960s. The ability to imagine both a variety of biologies and a wide array of social practices makes science fiction ideal for the exploration of the possible range of conducts and practices that can be encompassed within the realm of the sexual, providing important oppoortunities to produce estranged perspectives on the social constitution of sexuality in our own world. Among other things, science fictional scenarios can reimagine relations between male and female in ways that explore important issues related to feminism and gender, but the flexibility of science fiction also allows for visions of sexuality that go well beyond a simple male-female binary. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is a well-known example of exploring variant formulations of gender, with its depiction of alien humans who have separately evolved on a distant planet; now, the inhabitants of this planet are genderless until a periodic state of kemmer renders them temporarily (and somewhat unpredictably) either male or female, so that all individuals inhabit both genders and neither. In Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords (1993), meanwhile, the alien hwarhath are an advanced species that begins to question whether humans are truly people or are merely dangerous animals that should be exterminated. Meanwhile, in an excellent use of aliens to produce new perspectives on human attitudes, the hwarhath reproduce by artificial insemination, while virtually all sexual relations among the hwarhath are homosexual, heterosexuality being considered a horrifying perversion. Indeed, there is a growing body of gay and lesbian science fiction, much of it by writers who are themselves gay or lesbian. Samuel R. Delany is perhaps the most illustrious of such writers, and his works have often explored alternative configurations of sexuality. In Triton (1976, later republished as Trouble on Triton), for example, Delany envisions a colony on Triton (a moon of Neptune) in which individuals are free to explore a variety of wildly varying lifestyles, including the ability to change freely (via surgical and other methods) among a wide variety of genders and gender behaviors. SHARED WORLD. The term “shared world” is usually used to designate a fictional universe in which a number of different works are set, typically by a number of different authors. In some cases, shared worlds simply involve the continuation of the work of one writer by other writers working within the

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same fictional scenario, as in the case of the continuation of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series with the production of a second “Foundation” trilogy after Asimov’s death, extending his ideas further and including Gregory Benford’s Foundation’s Fear (1997), Greg Bear’s Foundation and Chaos (1998), and David Brin’s Foundation’s Triumph (1999). In other cases, multiple authors participate in the ongoing evolution of the same fictional world, even though it might have been originally created by a single author. For example, in 1958 Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel The Planet Savers introduced the planet Darkover, a lost earth colony whose inhabitants have developed unusual psychic powers. This planet would become the setting for a series of novels by Bradley herself that would extend over the next 30 years, but Bradley also openly invited other authors to write stories and novels set on the planet, becoming the first living sf writer to announce the availability of her creation as a shared world. The “Man-Kzin” series, an extension of Larry Niven’s “Known Space” series, is another such example, consisting of more than a dozen anthologies of stories (the first of which was published in 1988), only a few of which were written by Niven himself; it also consists of half a dozen novels written by Niven in collaboration with others. Some fictional universes have been conceived as shared worlds from the very beginning, leading to collaborative efforts by multiple writers to develop a shared premise. The first effort of this kind occurred with the anthology The Petrified Planet (1952), for which editor Fletcher Pratt supplied a basic scenario that he, H. Beam Piper, and Judith Merril used to generate the stories that make up the anthology. The phenomenon of shared worlds is also related to the more purely commercial publishing phenomenon of “sharecropping,” in which a successful author creates a fictional scenario, then licenses it for a series to be written by others, usually still featuring the original author’s name as the top-billed creator. In addition, franchise tie-in fiction—most notably the extensive series of novels based on the Star Trek franchise, but other film tie-ins as well—is a form of shared-world fiction. SHECKLEY, ROBERT (1928–2005). The American writer Robert Sheckley is best known for his use of a sharply satirical wit in science fiction, often in stories published in Galaxy Science Fiction. He began publishing sf stories in 1952, just as book-length publications were becoming more and more important in sf, and many of his early stories were gathered in collections, including the especially rich Untouched by Human Hands (1954), which includes the early stories “The Monsters,” “Specialist,” and “Seventh Victim,” all originally published in Galaxy in 1953. Subsequent collections followed as his output remained prolific, including Citizen in Space (1955), Pilgrimage to Earth (1957), Notions: Unlimited (1960), Store of Infinity

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(1960), and Shards of Space (1962). Though often very funny, Sheckley’s satires can be quite pointed and dark, bringing into sharp relief many of the foibles of modern humans and perils of modern society. Sheckley’s stories mostly stand alone, but some of his most popular stories of the 1950s constituted the humorous “AAA Ace” sequence, about the AAA Ace Interplanetary (or Planet) Decontamination Service, which despite the fancy name, consists merely of two rather hapless entrepreneurs who pursue a variety of schemes in search of interplanetary profit, but typically run into comically disastrous obstacles due to a combination of bad luck and poor planning. Stories in this sequence, all from Galaxy, include “Milk Run” (1954), “Ghost V” (1954), “The Laxian Key” (1954), “Squirrel Cage” (1955), “The Lifeboat Mutiny” (1955), and “The Necessary Thing” (1955). The much later “Sarkanger” (1986) also belongs to this series. Sheckley continued to publish stories frequently through the 1960s, though he also tried his hand at the novel form, though his longer narratives are typically composed of a series of shorter episodes. Time Killer was serialized in Galaxy in 1958–1959 and published in book form in 1959 as Immortality Delivered, but is better known by the variant title Immortality, Inc. Nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel, this narrative (involving characters who, about to die, kill others so they can claim their bodies and live on) formed a loose basis for the 1992 film Freejack. Other Sheckley novels included The Status Civilization (1960, serialized as Omega that year), Journey beyond Tomorrow (1962, serialized as The Journey of Joenes earlier that year), and Mindswap (1966). All of these books have in common a rather naïve protagonist who encounters difficult (sometimes absurd) conditions that highlight problematic conditions in our own world. Sheckley’s later novels—including Dimension of Miracles (1968), Options (1975), and Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera (1983)—are generally considered to be less successful. He expanded “Seventh Victim” into a novel, The Seventh Victim, in 1966, then later extended it with two unimpressive sequels, Victim Prime (1986) and Hunter/Victim (1987). He continued to write short fiction in the 1970s, though his absurdist tales often appeared outside the sf magazines in such mainstream venues as Playboy. He struggled with writer’s block through much of the 1980s, though he wrote dozens of stories during a return in the 1990s, some of them collected in Uncanny Tales (2003). Much of his short fiction from the 1960s and 1970s is collected in Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? (1971) and The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978). The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley (1991) is a massive five-volume omnibus that gathers most of his stories before the 1990s. Other collections of his stories have continued to appear after his death, including the 2012 volume Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley, coedited by Jonathan Lethem.

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SHEFFIELD, CHARLES (1935–2002). The British-born physicist Charles Sheffield published extensively in science from the early 1960s, but did not publish the first of his numerous science fiction stories until 1977. He published his first novel, Sight of Prometheus, the next year, demonstrating an ability to envision advanced technologies that clearly reflected his physics background. That novel ultimately became the first in a sequence that also includes Proteus Unbound (1989) and Proteus in the Underworld (1995). In 1979, Sheffield’s The Web between the Worlds joined Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise as the first major works of science fiction to feature a space elevator in a prominent role. In honor of that contribution, the space elevator that links Mars to Earth in Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy is anchored on the Martian end at a town called “Sheffield.” Sheffield was particularly prolific in the 1980s, when he produced a variety of works, including the beginning of a series of scientific adventure stories featuring Erasmus Darwin (the grandfather of Charles Darwin) as the protagonist, collected in Erasmus Magister (1982) and, eventually, The Amazing Dr. Darwin (2002). Also begun in the 1980s was the “Chan Dalton” sequence, comprising The Nimrod Hunt (1986) and The Spheres of Heaven (2001); the sequence is space opera with an artificial intelligence in a key role. The Selkie (1982) mixes sf with horror and fantasy, while My Brother’s Keeper (1982) is an sf thriller. Trader’s World (1988) is part postapocalyptic narrative and part alien-invasion narrative. Sheffield’s work in the 1990s includes another series, the “Cold as Ice” space opera sequence set after the destruction of the earth, comprising Cold as Ice (1992), The Ganymede Club (1995), and Dark as Day (2002). His novel Brother to Dragons (1992) won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Sheffield also moved into writing for young adult audiences during that decade, as in Godspeed (1993), a space adventure that looks back to such predecessors as Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert A. Heinlein. The “Heritage Universe” sequence—comprising Summertide (1990), Divergence (1991), Transcendence (1992), and Transvergence (1999)—is also for young adults, as is the “Jupiter” sequence, beginning with Higher Education: A Jupiter Book (1996, co-written with Jerry Pournelle). This sequence, largely designed to be educational, was continued by Sheffield alone in The Billion Dollar Boy (1997), Putting Up Roots (1997), and The Cyborg from Earth (1998). Many of Sheffield’s stories are collected in Vectors (1979); Hidden Variables (1981); Dancing with Myself (1993); Georgia on My Mind, and Other Places (1995); and The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (2002). The story “Georgia on My Mind” won the 1993 Nebula Award and the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Sheffield was married to the sf writer Nancy Kress from 1998 until his death.

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SHELLEY, MARY (1797–1851). Though the English writer worked in a number of different forms, she is best remembered for her 1818 novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, a key entry in the Gothic literature of the time that would ultimately come to be widely regarded as the first science fiction novel. Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Mary Shelley was the daughter of two distinguished parents, the political philosopher William Godwin and the pioneering feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. She took the last name by which she is best known through her marriage to prominent English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (also a writer of Gothic novels, in addition to his poetry), to whom she was married from 1816 until his death in 1822, after a somewhat notorious courtship. Famously inspired during the summer Mary Shelley spent at Lake Geneva in Switzerland in 1816 with Percy Shelley and his fellow poet Lord Byron, Frankenstein was initially published anonymously, then republished with modifications in 1823 and 1831. Its story of the dangers of unrestrained scientific inquiry has become one of the best-known narratives of modern Western culture, partly due to the numerous film adaptations that have appeared since the landmark 1931 Frankenstein and 1934 Bride of Frankenstein, both directed by James Whale. Mary Shelley made another important contribution to the evolution of modern science fiction with her 1826 novel The Last Man, in which a plague ravages the world at the end of the 21st century, apparently leaving protagonist Lionel Verney as the last survivor by the end of the book. Poorly received upon publication and then long forgotten, it has become better known in recent years as an important forerunner of the modern genre of postapocalyptic narrative. SHEPARD, LUCIUS (1947–2014). The American science ficion and fantasy writer Lucius Shepard is best known for the political engagement and historical sense that inform his fictions. Though Shepard apparently published several stories in the 1950s when he was still a small child (there is some dispute about the authorship), he began publishing adult stories in 1983. His first novel, Green Eyes, appeared in 1984, placing him amid the rise of the cyberpunk movement, with which his work was initially associated. Shepard won considerable recognition early on, winning the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer in 1985 and the Nebula Award for Best Novella for “R&R” in 1986. This story later became part of his 1987 novel Life during Wartime, perhaps his most important single work. Set largely in Central America, this novel serves both as a satire of military science fiction and as a critique of U.S. interventionism in Central America. More generally, it serves as a critique of U.S. imperial adventures around the world, with resonances that go back to Vietnam.

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Among his other works, Shepard has published two collections of short stories, The Jaguar Hunter (1988) and The Ends of the Earth Collection (1992), both of which won a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. His alternate-history novel Kalimantan (1990), set in Borneo, reflects many of the characteristics of his mature work, including the use of magical realism and an overall effect that is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Joseph Conrad, with whom Shepard has frequently been compared. Shepard’s novella Aztechs (serialized 2001, book form 2003) updates the universe of Life during Wartime and envisions an increasingly paranoid U.S. separated from Mexico by a laser fence, while also featuring an important artificial intelligence motif reminiscent of cyberpunk. Among other awarded works in Shepard’s oeuvre is the sf novella “Barnacle Bill the Spacer,” which won a Hugo Award in 1993; most recently, his novella “Vacancy” won a Shirley Jackson Award (which recognizes achievement in psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic) in 2008. Much of his later work is in fantasy and horror. SHINER, LEWIS (1950– ). The American writer Lewis Shiner began publishing science fiction stories in 1977 and published a number of stories in the following years, eventually leading to the collections Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990) and The Edges of Things (1991). Later collections of his stories include Love in Vain (2001) and His Collected Stories (2010), the later of which is a fairly comprehensive sampling of his career output. His first novel, Frontera (1984), suggests a rather cynical view of the corporate control of future space exploration, showing a skeptical attitude that has often been associated with cyberpunk, a movement with which much of his work of the 1980s has been associated. Shiner, however, typically drew on a number of different sf subgenres. Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988), set in Mexico, draws on Latin American magical realism in constructing a time-travel narrative involving a trip back to the time of the Mayans. Glimpses (1993), on the other hand, moves more into fantasy, and in fact won the World Fantasy Award. Shiner’s later output has drifted away from speculative genres and into more realist modes. SHIRLEY, JOHN (1953– ). The American writer John Shirley has worked widely in science fiction, horror, and crime fiction, as well as other genres. He is perhaps best known for his work in cyberpunk, a genre for which his own background as a punk rock musician may have helped prepare him. His works in this mode include the dystopian narrative City Come A-Walkin’ (1980), as well as the “Song Called Youth” trilogy, comprising Eclipse

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(1985), Eclipse Penumbra (1988), and Eclipse Corona (1990). The later Black Glass: The Lost Cyberpunk Novel (2008) updates cyberpunk motifs in a decidedly noir mode. Other largely science fictional novels include the planetary romance A Splendid Chaos (1988), Silcon Embrace (1996), and And the Angel with the Television Eyes (2002). Shirley’s output as a writer of short stories is represented in a number of collections, including Heatseeker (1989); Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories (1999); Darkness Divided: An Anthology of the Works of John Shirley (2001); Living Shadows: Stories New and Preowned (2007); and In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley (2011). SILVERBERG, ROBERT (1935– ). Robert Silverberg is an American science fiction writer who got his start in publishing while still an undergraduate at Columbia University. His young adult sf novel Revolt on Alpha C (1955) helped to win him a Hugo Award for Best New Writer in 1956, the year he graduated from Columbia. Silverberg subsequently published numerous sf stories and several novels, including Invaders from Earth (1958), which effectively satirizes colonialism and capitalism. In the 1960s, Silverberg turned to more sophisticated and literary science fiction, in keeping with the direction of the New Wave. The Gate of Worlds (1967) is an alternate-history novel that comments on colonialism by posing the question of what might have happened if the 14th-century plagues that swept Europe had been far more damaging than they actually were, crippling Europe to the point that its subsequent rise to global dominance would have been made impossible. Downward to the Earth (1970), a sort of rejoinder to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is another commentary on colonialism. However, much of Silverberg’s work in the late 1960s and early 1970s explored psychological themes such as loneliness and alienation from others. The World Inside (1970) is a dystopian narrative that deals with such issues, as does the poignant minor classic Dying Inside (1972), which tells the story of a powerful telepath who’s never really used his powers very productively and now finds that, in middle age, he is losing them altogether. Silverberg won a Hugo Award for his 1968 novella “Nightwings,” then won several Nebula Awards in the early 1970s (including one for the 1971 novel A Time of Changes) before taking some time off for health and personal reasons. He returned in 1980 with the planetary romance Lord Valentine’s Castle, which included numerous fantasy elements and became the founding text in his Majipoor series (which ultimately extended to eight volumes), set on a huge planet shared by multiple intelligent species. Silverberg’s novella “Sailing to Byzantium” (1985) won him another Nebula, and he won an additional Hugo for Gilgamesh in the Outback (1986, in which

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various dead personages from history interact in hell). He coauthored the novels Nightfall (1990) and The Positronic Man (1992) with Isaac Asimov, both based on earlier stories by Asimov. Silverberg also edited numerous science fiction anthologies and wrote dozens of nonfiction books on scientific, historical, and other subjects. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, while the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him a Grand Master in 2005. SIMAK, CLIFFORD D. (1904–1988). Clifford D. Simak was a prolific writer who began publishing science fiction short stories in 1931 and continued to write into the 1980s, maintaining employment as a newspaper editor during most of that time. However, Simak did not become seriously engaged as a science fiction writer until he began submitting stories to John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction in 1938. He published numerous stories over the next decade, including the serial novel The Cosmic Engineers in 1939 (published in book form in 1950). One of his most compelling sequences, published serially between 1944 and 1951, was published in book form in 1952 as City, a forerunner of posthuman science fiction offering a panoramic view that sees most of humanity move to Jupiter and take on new bodies, leaving the earth to intelligent dogs and robots. In the process, humanity moves beyond its violent past, something that Simak counsels in much of his work. Other important early novels include the timetravel story Time and Again (1951) and Ring around the Sun (1953), in which parallel worlds offer refuge to paranormals persecuted in our reality. Later novels include the Hugo Award–winning Way Station (1963), which involves interplanetary travel via teleportation; Why Call Them Back from Heaven (1967), involving a corrupt cryonics corporation; and A Choice of Gods (1972), in which most humans are wiped out, but the survivors have ultra-long lifespans. Story collections include The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960) and All the Traps of Earth (1962), while his late work in the 1970s and 1980s often involved hybrids of science fiction and fantasy. As late as 1980, he won both Hugo and Nebula awards for his short story “Grotto of the Dancing Deer.” As a whole, Simak’s work often envisages leaps in the evolution of the human race and celebrates science, rationality, and advanced technology, but hopes that they can all be put to humane use, perhaps enabling peaceful and pastoral lifestyles. Simak was named the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1977. SIMMONS, DAN (1948– ). The American writer Dan Simmons began publishing stories (mostly in the horror genre) in 1982, in the midst of a 16-year stint (1971–1987) as an elementary school teacher. His debut fantasy/horror

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novel Song of Kali (1985) won a World Fantasy Award. Carrion Comfort (serial publication 1983, book form 1989) is also primarily a horror novel, though it involves a vaguely science fictional use of mutants. It won a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, and Simmons has, in fact, been more widely awarded for his work in the horror genre than for his work in science fiction. Simmons’s breakthrough as a writer of sf came with the ambitious space opera Hyperion (1989), which won the Hugo Award and a Locus Award for Best Novel; involving a richly imagined far-future Galactic Empire (which does not include an earth, because that planet has been destroyed by a black hole), it was then followed by a direct sequel, The Fall of Hyperion (1990), which won both another Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. The two “Hyperion novels” were published together in a single volume in 1990 as Hyperion Cantos (1990). Endymion (1996) takes place in the same universe as well, adding important time-travel elements to the basic space-opera matrix of the “Hyperion” novels, as does its sequel The Rise of Endymion (1997), which won another Locus Award. The two “Endymion” novels were published together as The Endymion Omnibus (2004). These four novels together represent one of the most complex extended narratives in sf, especially given the sophisticated play with narrative form that underlies their presentation. Phases of Gravity (1989) is a fiction based on the history of the U.S. space program and thus is not, strictly speaking, science fictional, though it is related to concepts often found in science fiction. The Hollow Man (1992, growing from a shorter version in 1982) is science fiction, but also engages in extensive dialogue with literary precedents from Dante to T. S. Eliot. Much of Simmons’s work in the early 1990s was supernatural horror and much in the later 1990s was outside of speculative fiction altogether. Simmons returned to science fiction with the Locus Award–winning Ilium (2003) and its sequel Olympos (2005), which are reminiscent of the “Hyperion” sequence in both their narrative complexity and their engagement with literary precedents (Shakespeare and Homer are prominent here). These novels once again employ a basic matrix of space opera, adding elements of the terraforming of Mars and posthuman science fiction. SINGULARITY. The point at which the slope (rate of change) of a mathematical function becomes infinite is referred to as a “singularity.” This terminology has also been adapted to refer to a moment of sudden, runaway technological change. The notion of the Singularity as a real-world possibility was originally popularized by the work of the American mathematician and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, beginning with his 1993 essay “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Vinge, in fact, has long worked to call attention to his belief that ongoing developments in computer science are likely to lead to the development of artificial intelligences that will in turn

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rapidly evolve in intelligence to levels well beyond the human. Such a Singularity often features in Vinge’s fiction as well, though it has perhaps been most extensively explored in the works of various writers—such as Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross—associated with the British Boom. Such vastly intelligent entities are often hostile or oblivious to humans, though the “Culture” of Iain M. Banks relies heavily on advanced intelligences (known as “Minds”) that work for the benefit of their human charges. The same can be said for the artificial intelligences of Ian McDonald’s River of Gods (2005), though here the situation is complicated by the worldwide efforts of the U.S. government to prevent the Singularity, not realizing it has already occurred (in India). SLEATOR, WILLIAM (1945–2011). The American writer William Sleator has published widely in the field of young adult science fiction and fantasy (as well as in other genres), and in fact was arguably the most important figure working in that field during a period in the 1970s and 1980s when it was not particularly strong. Sleator worked in a variety of sf subgenres, often mixing elements from science fiction and fantasy. His work was often significantly darker than most of the juvenile sf that had come to prominence in the 1950s and was more sophisticated in a literary sense as well. For example, House of Stairs (1974) is an almost-surreal dystopian narrative in which the young protagonists inexplicably find themselves in a strange world of stairs whose rules they must decipher and follow in order to survive—only eventually to find that they have been placed there as part of a psychological experiment. The Green Futures of Tycho (1981) is a time-travel narrative that critiques the negative impact of unrealistic parental expectations of their children. Another well-known work is Interstellar Pig (1984), in which a popular board game of that title actually causes (potentially catastrophic) events to occur in the real world. A sequel, Parasite Pig, was published in 2002. The prize-winnning Singularity (1985) does not feature the typical sf technological Singularity; instead, the singularity of the title is an interdimensional portal. SLIPSTREAM. The term “slipstream” was coined by cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling to indicate liminal fiction that is identifiably science fiction but refuses to stay within the usual conventions of the genre, freely intermixing elements of sf and other forms, including fantasy and realistic fiction. For Sterling, this kind of fiction, by refusing to obey generic conventions and expectations, can be even more effective than conventional science fiction at producing a sense of estrangement in the reader.

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SLONCZEWSKI, JOAN (1956– ). The American writer Joan Slonczewski earned her doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University in 1982, and has since pursued a career as a microbiologist, teaching in that field at Kenyon College since 1984. Her debut novel, Still Forms on Foxfield (1980), was published while she was still a graduate student. Her writing career, however, took off with A Door into Ocean (1986), which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Scence Fiction Novel, exploring ecofeminist themes in a manner that makes good use of Slonczewski’s scientific background through its central reliance on motifs involving genetic engineering. It formed the basis of a loosely interrelated sequence that eventually included Daughters of Elysium (1993), The Children Star (1998), and Brain Plague (2000). Other novels by Slonczewski include the postapocalyptic narrative The Wall around Eden (1989), in which surviving humans are “protected” by aliens, and The Highest Frontier (2011), which won for Slonczewski a second Campbell Award for Best Novel. The latter deals centrally with official (often inept) attempts to deal with a growing environmental crisis on earth. See also ENVIRONMENTALISM; FEMINISM AND GENDER. SMITH, CORDWAINER (1913–1966). The American author Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was a pioneer of American science fiction, publishing under the pseudonym “Cordwainer Smith.” Linebarger was a political scientist and sinologist who published one sf story under a pseudonym while a college student, then delayed the onset of his work as a writer until 1950, when the story “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950) launched what would become an important career. This career was built on the construction of the extensive “Instrumentality of Mankind” future history, which began with the 1950 story, but was pursued in earnest from 1955, when Smith published “The Game of Rat and Dragon” in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. This story began a more productive period in which Smith published a number of stories that filled in his future history, which involves the “Instrumentality,” a far-flung galactic empire ruled by humans but featuring a significant population of animals who have been converted to human form by genetic engineering. These engineered “underpeople” are growing restless with their status, but are kept in check, largely through the consolations of religion. The various stories in the sequence would initially be collected in four different volumes, including You Will Never Be the Same (1963), Space Lords (1965), Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (1970), and Stardreamer (1971). The stories of the Instrumentality (which were still being written at the time of Smith’s death and are thus incomplete) were reordered and republished in two volumes, The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975) and

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The Instrumentality of Mankind (1989). Norstrilia (1975) was the only novel in this future history, and even it was derived from two different stories that had originally been published separately. SMITH, E. E. “DOC” (1890–1965). The food chemist E. E. Smith was one of the founding figures of American science fiction, especially in the space opera, a subgenre of which he has been called the “father.” Most of his early stories were published by Hugo Gernsback, who listed his name as “E. E. Smith, Phd,” in reference to Smith’s doctorate in chemical engineering and in an attempt to add legitimacy to his stories, leading to the “Doc” Smith appellation by which the writer would come to be widely known. Smith pioneered in the imagination of rousing adventures set in far-flung galactic empires and featuring the exploits of a brilliant and brave scientist-inventor protagonist, helping to set the terms of the pulp version of the space opera for its first several decades. Smith launched his vision with The Skylark of Space (written between 1915 and 1920, with the aid of Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garber, a neighbor), though he was not initially able to find a publisher for the novel. It eventually appeared in serial form in Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1928, and was ultimately published in book form in 1946. Skylark was an immediate hit with the readers of Amazing, and Smith was quickly commissioned to write a sequel, leading to an early trilogy that also includes Skylark Three (serialized in Amazing in 1930; published in book form in 1948) and Skylark of Valeron (serial publication 1934–1935, book form 1949). Smith then added a fourth work to the sequence when he returned to writing space operas late in his career. Skylark DuQuesne (serialized 1965, book form 1966) completed the definitive sequences. Ultimately, however, Smith may be even better known for a second spaceopera sequence, the “Lensman” series (also known as the “History of Civilization” series), which initially consisted of four novels published in serial form in Astounding Stories and then Astounding Science-Fiction between 1937 and 1948. These four novels are Galactic Patrol (serial 1937–1938, book form 1950), Grey Lensman (serial 1939–1940, book form 1951), Second-Stage Lensman (serial 1941–1942, book form 1953), and Children of the Lens (serial 1947–1948, book form 1954). In addition, Smith eventually added what were essentially prequels to the original series by reworking the 1934 story “Triplanetary” as a “Lensmen” novel of the same name in 1948 and by adding another volume, First Lensman, in 1950. Still another volume was added to the series as The Vortex Blaster in 1960, composed of stories from the early 1940s, plus some new additions. The “Lensman” series featured many of the attributes of the “Skylark” series but is an altogether more mature work, insisting among other things on a much higher level of scientific veracity. This series solidified many of the conventions begun in the “Skylark” series, achieving an impressive sense of

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wonder in its elaboration of an ever-surprising galaxy in which two vastly advanced races, the good Arisians and the evil Eddorians have been battling for galactic supremacy for billions of years. SNOW CRASH (1992). Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash draws significantly on the conceits and images of cyberpunk, but its lighter and more comic attitude has generally been taken to mark it as a work of postcyberpunk— perhaps, indeed, as the single work that, more than any other, announced the end of cyberpunk proper and the beginning of the postcyberpunk era. Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Snow Crash is its dystopian narrative of a future United States that has been fragmented into separated, corporatedominated enclaves, with virtually every aspect of life now having been privatized. Particularly striking is the satirical depiction of the way in which even the judicial system (Judge Bob’s Judicial System) and the military (Admiral Bob’s National Security; General Jim’s Defense System) have been privatized. Even the Mafia has been corporate, one of its principal business arms now being Uncle Enzo’s CostraNostra Pizza, for which the book’s central character, the aptly named Hiro Protagonist, works as a high-speed pizza delivery person—when he is not working as a freelance hacker, largely for the Central Intelligence Corporation (CIC), gathering and selling information to their massive database. The other central character is his business partner Y. T. (“Your Truly”), a 15-year-old skateboard Kourier who delivers packages by way of the cars she magnetically “poons” (harpoons) on the freeway. The action begins in a near future Los Angeles, a city not that different from the Los Angeles of today, except that the social problems plaguing the city—especially the gap between the rich and the poor—have only gotten worse, despite the availability of a number of advanced technologies, especially computer technologies that allow for the construction of a virtual reality space, the Metaverse, where much of the action ultimately occurs. Meanwhile, the city is separated into individual neighborhoods that operate virtually as semiautonomous city-states, often walled and heavily guarded, signaling the fragmentation of experience in this future world. Much of the plot of the novel is driven by a plot by right-wing Texas capitalist fanatic L. Bob Rife to use a drug (the Snow Crash of the title) to spread a virus that can cross the boundary between the Metaverse and the physical world, infecting humans in both realms, transmissible either like a computer virus or as a biological virus. Once infected, the victim’s brain comes under the control of Rife, owner of a vast cable television monopoly and the fiber-optic network that runs the Metaverse, as part of the mogul’s plot to gain control of all the world’s information. Hiro leads a fight that ultimately thwarts Rife’s plan, but Stephenson’s use of the virus as a multi-

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faceted metaphor for such things as religion, capitalism, language, and even powerful ideas in general allows Snow Crash to warn that advances in technology might subject humanity to new and previously unimagined threats. SOFT SCIENCE FICTION. The designation “soft science fiction” is used to indicate sf that is focused on engagement with political issues and an exploration of the sociological consequences of scientific and technological change. As a result, it is often less concerned with scientific and technological details in themselves than its counterpart, “hard science fiction.” Soft science fiction also often draws more on the “soft” sciences—such as psychology and sociology—than hard sciences such as physics and chemistry. Most of the leading figures of Golden Age science fiction—such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein—are generally thought of as writers of hard science fiction. While the New Wave of the 1960s is often seen as a turn in the direction of soft science fiction, also important is the production of sociological science fiction in the late 1960s and 1970s by women writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. Indeed, the term “soft science fiction” first came into use in the late 1970s, largely as a response to the work of such writers. Among more recent writers, Kim Stanley Robinson’s immense attention to accurate scientific and technological details epitomizes hard science fiction, yet his work is also among the most politically engaged in all of science fiction. Robinson’s work thus indicates the way in which much of the best science fiction includes elements of both hard and soft science fiction. SOLARIS (1961). The Polish writer Stanisław Lem produced some of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking science fiction of the 20th century. He is best known for his 1961 novel Solaris (translated into English in 1970 via the French), in which explorers from earth encounter a planet with a sentient ocean, one of the most compelling accounts of a human encounter with a genuinely alien intelligence in all of sf. Indeed, the intelligence is so alien that the humans have a great deal of difficulty even recognizing it as an intelligence or understanding that it is attempting to communicate with them (by probing their minds and making manifest in apparently human form their inner psychic obsessions). Indeed, many of the details involving the interaction of the Solaris and the humans on the space station that orbits it for scientific study remain unclear even to the end of the book, and communication between the humans and the planet ultimately fails, suggesting that any such communication would be likely to fail because the minds of humans and aliens would necessarily be so different as to render any communication

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inherently problematic. Solaris has been translated into numerous languages and adapted to feature film three times, including the classic 1972 version by Andrei Tarkovsky, widely regarded as the finest of the adaptations. SOMTOW, S. P. (1952– ). The Thai writer Somtow Papinan Sucharitkul (who has published mostly under the name S. P. Somtow) has spent time living in both Great Britain and the United States and writes in English. In addition to his writing, he has had a career in music as a composer and conductor. He began publishing science fiction stories in 1977, eventually leading to a collection of his early short fiction in Fire from the Wine Dark Sea (1983). Somtow’s debut novel, Starship and Haiku (1981), a postapocalyptic narrative set in Japan (and ultimately featuring the creation of whalehuman hybrids who exit the ruined earth to set out for the star), won a Locus Award. That same year, he published what is probably his best-known work, Mallworld, a satire in which aliens observe the consumerist tendencies of humans. It helped him to win the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer and was later incorporated, with other material, into the broader The Ultimate Mallworld (2000). In the 1980s, Somtow published two series, beginning with the “Inquestor” sequence, comprising Light on the Sound (1982, revised 1986), The Throne of Madness (1983, revised 1986), Utopia Hunters (1984), and The Darkling Wind (1985). This sequence involves advanced immortal aliens of questionable virtue (the Inquestors of the series title) who meddle in the affairs of earth, but ultimately die out. A second series is the alternatehistory “Aquiliad” sequence, comprising The Aquiliad (1983), The Aquiliad #2: Aquila and the Iron Horse (1988), and The Aquiliad #3: Aquila and the Sphinx (1988). This series is set in an alternative Roman Empire in which a time traveler wreaks rather comical havoc. The Shattered Horse (1986) is a stand-alone alternate history in which Troy wins the Trojan War. In his later work, Somtow has moved into fantasy and horror, including a sequence of vampire novels. Among his later works, he won a National Horror Guild Award for Brimstone and Salt in 1996 and a World Fantasy Award for The Bird Catcher in 2002. See also TIME TRAVEL. SPACE ELEVATOR. A space elevator is a transportation system involving a long cable tethered to a planetary surface and extending into space (with a counterweight at the far end holding the cable in place via centrifugal force), allowing elevator “cars” to travel back and forth along the cable much in the same way that they travel in a conventional elevator. The upward propulsion of such a car, meanwhile, would be far more fuel efficient (and safer) than that of current rockets, because it would not require acceleration to escape

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velocity. The space-elevator concept was proposed as long ago as 1895 by the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The concept was discussed as a possibly viable technology several times over the years, then popularized as such in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel The Fountains of Paradise and Charles Sheffield’s less prominent The Web between the Worlds in 1979. Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday (1982) also involves a space elevator. A particularly spectacular use of the space-elevator concept (accompanied by an unusually detailed and convincing account of the device’s actual construction) in science fiction occurs in the first volume of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy, in which a space elevator is built (using material harvested from the asteroid belt) that reaches all the way from a moon of Mars to the earth, making the transport of goods and people from one planet to the other much easier and cheaper than it had been before. The elevator, however, is destroyed when the cable is cut during a war between earth and the Martian colonists. The space elevator concept has since come into wider use in science fiction, appearing in such works as Iain M. Banks’s far-future Feersum Endjinn (1994) and Ian McDonald’s Kirinya (1998), in which the anchoring of a space elevator in Africa makes that continent a focal point of future human development. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (2005) also features the routine use of such a device. THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953). The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, is a dystopian narrative that satirizes the consumer capitalism that was gaining momentum in the United States in the wake of World War II. Serialized in 1952 and appearing in book form a year later, The Space Merchants presents a somewhat-prescient picture of a future world dominated by huge multinational corporations, the most powerful and influential of which are media and advertising firms. In this future world, consumer capitalism has triumphed absolutely, and anyone who questions the virtues of capitalism is considered a dangerous pervert. Members of the U.S. Congress represent various major corporations, while numerous other governmental functions (such as the police) have been privatized. But the world is vastly overpopulated (largely because the corporate system encourages population expansion in order to create more consumers) and virtually all goods and services are in seriously short supply. The novel features Mitch Courtenay, who, as an executive of the huge Fowler Schocken advertising conglomerate, is put in charge of the company’s project to colonize Venus, a planet to which they have been granted exclusive access through bribery and other political manipulations. This assignment brings with it a variety of tribulations, including conflict with the Consies, who are devoted to preserving earth’s environment and who make

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this a key early example of environmentalism in science fiction. Meanwhile, the demonization of the Consies clearly satirizes the anticommunist hysteria sweeping the United States at the time the book was written. In the end, the Consies win over Courtenay and also manage to load the only Venus rocket with their people and to blast off with the hope of building on Venus a new world free of the greed and corruption that capitalism has spread across the earth. But the plot of the book is far less important than its satire, which is aimed at both the overall direction of consumer capitalism as a system and the specific paranoid political climate of the United States in the early 1950s. Most striking are the depictions of the negative consequences of the growing power of consumer capitalism and the growing dominance of media and advertising in the lives of people around the world. These depictions may seem exaggerated in sometimes comical ways, but they turn out on reflection to be much closer to reality than one might first have imagined. SPACE OPERA. In the early days of the science fiction pulps, the most popular stories involved stories of swashbuckling starfaring adventures, which came to be known as “space operas,” a term suggested (by sf writer Wilson Tucker) in 1941. While the early space operas were often of questionable literary quality, they stirred the imaginations of their readers, and the genre ultimately came to include many of the most-beloved works in all of science fiction. Among the writers who helped to found the space opera as a subgenre of sf in the 1920s and 1930s, E. E. “Doc” Smith (who wrote space operas from the mid-1910s to the 1960s) was perhaps the most important. His first novel, The Skylark of Space, originally published in Amazing Stories in 1928, was actually written during the period 1915–1920 and has some claim to being the first true space opera. It was the first in a sequence of four “Skylark” novels. However, Smith’s most definitive works were the stories and novels of the “Lensman” series, which established many of the conventions of the genre, detailing high-tech adventures involving two vastly advanced races, the good Arisians and the evil Eddorians, who have been battling for galactic supremacy for billions of years. John W. Campbell Jr., who published much of Smith’s work in Astounding Science-Fiction, was himself an important early writer of space operas before devoting himself to editing duties at the end of the 1930s. Jack Williamson, who also published extensively in Astounding, added a romantic touch to the space opera in a long career that reached from such early works as The Legion of Space (1934) all the way up to such late works as The Singers of Time (1991), on which he collaborated with Frederik Pohl. On

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the other side of the ledger, the prolific Edmond Hamilton produced numerous space operas in the 1930s that showed a decidedly antiromantic and unsentimental attitude. “Black Destroyer,” the first science fiction short story by A. E. Van Vogt, was a space opera that appeared in Astounding in 1939. This story, combined with several others, was later reworked into the novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), an important milestone in the development of the novel-length space opera. Another important early writer of space opera stories was the pioneering woman sf writer C. L. Moore, one of the first women to write science fiction. Moore produced a number of stories of outer-space adventure from 1933 to 1958, often in collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner. Perhaps her best-known published volume is Judgment Night (1952), which collects five novellas originally printed in Astounding. Isaac Asimov’s The Stars Like Dust (1951) is space opera in an unusually (for him) romantic vein, but Asimov’s most important contribution to the development of space opera was unquestionably the “Foundation” trilogy, comprising Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), all of which consist primarily of material from stories originally published in Astounding in the 1940s. This sequence, while informed by the threat of the collapse of a galactic empire into a second Middle Ages, ultimately shows a confidence in the beneficial effects of science and technology on human history and society. Asimov would eventually expand the “Foundation” series with a fourth volume, Foundation’s Edge (1982), then attempted to merge the “Foundation” sequence with his 1950s sequence of Robot novels and stories in The Robots of Dawn (1983), Robots and Empire (1985), Foundation and Earth (1986), and Prelude to Foundation (1988). After Asimov’s death in 1992, a second Foundation trilogy was produced, extending his ideas further and including Gregory Benford’s Foundation’s Fear (1997), Greg Bear’s Foundation and Chaos (1998), and David Brin’s Foundation’s Triumph (1999). Many of Robert A. Heinlein’s early stories in Astounding were space operas, as were many of his juvenile novels of the 1950s, a decade that was a particularly rich one for the subgenre. Many of these were stories of interstellar war, spilling over into military science fiction, as in the case of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), a key text that influenced many subsequent military space operas, including those—such as Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974)—that responded critically to the militarism of Heinlein’s novel. Harrison also wrote a number of somewhat-comedic space operas featuring the roguish anti-hero James Bolivar diGriz, better known as the “Stainless Steel Rat,” beginning with The Stainless Steel Rat (1961) and extending through The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus (1999).

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While most of the action of the space opera typically takes place in space, the subgenre is also related to the planetary romance, in which the cultures and ecologies of entire alien planets are described. Meanwhile, Heinlein stories such as “Universe” (1941) and “Common Sense” (1941) pioneered the motif of the “generation starship,” in which interstellar journeys that might be centuries long are undertaken by populating the ship with families who live and die on the ship for generation after generation. One of the early classics of this version of the space opera, however, is Brian Aldiss’s NonStop (1958, published in the U.S. in 1959 as Starship), which is ostensibly set on a generation starship on such a journey, but which turns out actually to be set on a ship that is now in perpetual orbit around the earth. Generation starships are typically huge, and their passengers often do not realize that they are on a starship. A variation on this “huge ship” theme is James Blish’s “Cities in Flight” sequence—including Earthman, Come Home (1955); A Clash of Cymbals (1958, published in the U.S. as The Triumph of Time); and A Life for the Stars (1962)—all of which involve entire cities traveling about in space, usually just looking for work, having fallen on hard times. Another variant on the motif of the immensely long space journey involves relativistic time dilation, in which starships travel near the speed of light, causing time to pass much more slowly for those on board than in the universe at large, making the journey (to them) much quicker. Key examples include Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero (1970) and Haldeman’s The Forever War. The space opera became less important in sf literature in the 1960s, though that decade did see the original broadcast of television’s Star Trek (1966–1969), perhaps the most important space opera of all time. The Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem also made important contributions to the subgenre in the 1960s, including both lampoons of traditional space operas and his own important original contribution, the classic Solaris (1961). Still, despite occasional highlights such as Clifford D. Simak’s Hugo Award–winning Way Station (1963), few truly important space operas appeared in the following years. Larry Niven’s “Known Space” sequence injected some new energies into the subgenre, beginning with World of Ptavvs (1966) and including its best-known novel, Ringworld (1970), which involves a gigantic ring-shaped artificial world built around a star. C. J. Cherryh’s extensive “Alliance-Union” sequence, exploring humanity’s colonization of the galaxy, was also important, beginning with Brothers of Earth (1986) and including such key works as Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both of which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Also important during the 1970s was Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973), which features a giant alien “ship” that enters the solar system, triggering considerable excitement and speculation on the part of humans, who mount an expedition to explore the giant craft.

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Also notable during this period was Pohl’s “Heechee” sequence, beginning with the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Gateway (1977). This sequence employs the device of faster-than-light travel to facilitate interstellar adventure, but in this case the technology for this travel is inherited from the mysterious “Heechee” alien civilization, which has mysteriously disappeared from the galaxy, leaving beyond a variety of advanced devices. Advanced technology, especially the instantaneous communication enabled by the “ansible,” also makes possible the intergalactic federation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sequence of “Hainish” novels, many of which are actually detailed explorations of specific planetary cultures, as in The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Word for World Is Forest (1972), and The Dispossessed (1974). Much of the space-opera action in the 1980s shifted from faster-than-light ships to outer-space habitats, as with Bear’s Eon (1985), which features a vast alien space habitat constructed from an asteroid using technologies so advanced that the inside is bigger than the outside, and possibly even limitless. Meanwhile, just as cyberpunk had taken center stage in sf literature, key cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985) marked the stirring of new energies (partly fueled by cyberpunk) in the space opera. Sterling’s novel deftly combined motifs from cyberpunk, posthuman, and alieninvasion science fiction with the increasingly common motif of manmade outer-space habitats. Another contribution to the resurgence of space opera was Dan Simmons’s Hyperion (1989, followed the next year by a sequel, The Fall of Hyperion), which employs a number of familiar space-opera motifs, while exploring complex metaphysical ideas and adding a literary element by modeling its narrative structure on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Women writers continued to make contributions as well, as in the case of Vonda McIntyre, who wrote several novels in the “Star Trek” sequence, as well as independent space operas such as Superluminal (1977); also important was Lois McMaster Bujold, much of whose somewhat-humorous work (including the early entries in the “Vorkosigan” saga) involves space operas featuring a future universe of space colonies connected by faster-than-light travel via wormholes. In the “Uplift” sequence, a series of six novels (published between 1980 and 1998), David Brin imagines a vast and ancient galactic civilization of numerous oxygen-breathing intelligent species, each of which was “uplifted” to sentience through the intervention of another, older sentient species, in a sequence going all the way back to the “Progenitors,” the first intelligent species in the galaxy. Sentient species generally see it as their duty to uplift any promising pre-sentient species they may encounter, subsequently becoming their patrons, though humans are patronless, having achieved intelligence on their own. Many elements of this paternalistic system (which the books

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often criticize) recall the legacy of colonialism and racism on earth, and stories about the colonization of outer space and other planets overlap significantly with the space opera. Mathematician Vernor Vinge produced important space operas with his Hugo Award–winning far-future epics A Fire upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999), which imagine a universe mostly divided into two regions, “The Slow Zone” and “The Beyond.” Because of the basic physical properties of the universe in each zone, much more advanced thought (including the computational abilities required to develop fasterthan-light travel) is possible in the Beyond, but Earth, alas, resides in “The Slow Zone,” limiting the kind of technology that can be developed there. In addition, vastly superhuman post-Singularity artificial intelligences known as “The Powers” exist in an additional region, “The Transcend,” where they have almost limitless technological capabilities. Finally, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 (2012), though limited to earth’s solar system, is an impressive and far-reaching addition to the space-opera tradition, while also dealing with Robinson’s ongoing concern with climate change on earth. While some of the best-known British space operas before the 1990s were actually lampoons of the form—including M. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device (1974) and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series—the writers of the British Boom have become a major force in recent space opera, to which they have often added a new level of literary sophistication, while adding elements more typical of other subgenres, especially cyberpunk. For example, Charles Stross’s Singularity Sky (2003), Iron Sunrise (2004), and Accelerando (2005), and Ken MacLeod’s The Stone Canal (1996), The Cassini Division (1997), Cosmonaut Keep (2001), Dark Light (2002), and Newton’s Wake (2004) all envision post-Singularity universes in which interstellar travel is possible, sometimes via technologies left behind by advanced artificial intelligences that have evolved far beyond humankind, then disappeared from the universe of human experience. Meanwhile, Richard K. Morgan’s “Takeshi Kovacs” novels resemble the works of Stross and MacLeod in their use of cyberpunk conceits within the spaceopera form. In fact, the first novel in this sequence, Altered Carbon (2002), is almost pure cyberpunk, but the series evolves more into space (including the motif of the salvaging of leftover alien technologies) in the sequels Broken Angels (2004) and Woken Furies (2005). British Boomer Alastair Reynolds has produced space operas in a more classic vein with such works as Revelation Space (2000), Redemption Ark (2002), and Absolution Gap (2004), though these resemble the works of Stross and MacLeod in their combination of motifs (and technologies) from a variety of different science fictional subgenres. The British writer Peter Hamilton has been less closely associated with the Boom, but has produced a number of space operas on an epic scale, including volumes in the “Night’s

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Dawn” trilogy (1996–1999), so massive (more than 1,000 pages each) that they were published in the U.S. in six volumes, rather than the original three. Fallen Dragon (2001) is a stand-alone novel that in many ways reads as a condensation of many of the central ideas of “Night’s Dawn,” while its dark depiction of an ultra-capitalist future world complicates Hamilton’s reputation (gained partly from the “Greg Mandel” series of early anticommunist dystopian novels) as a promoter of capitalism. Pandora’s Star (2004) and Judas Unchained (2005) are also large-scale space operas, as is the “Void” trilogy, comprising The Dreaming Void (2007), The Temporal Void (2008), and The Evolutionary Void (2010). Other important recent British space operas include John Clute’s Appleseed (2001) and the volumes of Colin Greenland’s “Plenty” trilogy, notable for their use of a female protagonist. Harrison, having seemingly dismissed the space opera in The Centauri Device, himself returned to the form with Light (2002), a rousing entry that enthusiastically employs the space opera form that Harrison had seemingly rejected in The Centauri Device. This work was then supplemented by two additional volumes—Nova Swing (2006) and Empty Space (2012)—to make up the “Kefahuchi Tract” trilogy, one of the most important interventions in the space-opera subgenre in recent years. Also of special note among the space operas produced in the British Boom are the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks, a sequence that collectively describes the political, social, and cultural practices of the Culture, a vast (and vastly advanced) intergalactic federation governed by hyper-intelligent artificial intelligences known as “Minds.” However, these Minds are efficient and benevolent rulers who manage the affairs of humans so well that their human charges lead rich, healthy, and active lives (with potentially limitless lifespans) in a genuinely achieved utopia. However, the Culture also actively engages in exploration of the galaxy, sometimes subtly influencing the course of other civilizations and sometimes coming into all-out conflict with them. SPECULATIVE FICTION. As long ago as 1947, Robert A. Heinlein suggested the term “speculative fiction” as a designation for works of science fiction that were more serious and sophisticated than the low-quality fiction that had typically appeared in the pulp magazines. This distinction between serious speculative fiction and more haphazard science fiction has largely been lost, though it lives on in the distinction between the abbreviations “sf” (which could, notably, mean either speculative fiction or science fiction) and “sci-fi,” which typically indicates less serious works, either aesthetically or conceptually. Meanwhile, the term “speculative fiction,” beginning with Judith Merril’s championing of the term in the 1960s, has come more to indicate a broadening of generic boundaries to encompass not only tradition-

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al science fiction, but other nonrealist genres as well. In that usage, though, it has also retained some of the earlier sense of greater seriousness, especially in a literary sense, coming to be associated with the works of the New Wave, among other things. This use of the term most commonly encompasses science fiction and fantasy, which have come in recent years to be less and less easily distinguishable in any case, especially in the increasingly thoughtful and sophisticated fantasies produced by contemporary writers such as China Miéville. Meanwhile, the way in which writers such as Miéville draw on multiple genres (especially horror) in addition to science fiction and fantasy is indicative of an even further broadening of the term “speculative fiction” in a generic sense. SPINRAD, NORMAN (1940– ). The American science fiction writer Norman Spinrad has produced some of the most politically engaged science fiction of the past half century. He was born and raised in New York City, a location that figures prominently in his fiction. After publishing his first sf short story in Analog in 1963, Spinrad went on to become identified with the New Wave movement in 1960s science fiction, writing, for example, stories that participated in the “Jerry Cornelius” shared world of New Wave maven Michael Moorcock. After two relatively conventional space operas—The Solarians (1966) and Agent of Chaos (1967)—Spinrad moved toward the politically engaged tone of his mature work with The Men in the Jungle (1967), in which adventures on a distant planet serve as a fairly transparent commentary on the then-current U.S. imperial misadventure in Vietnam. Spinrad also authored, early on, “The Doomsday Machine,” a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek television series that comments on the Cold War arms race. Spinrad then became an especially prominent participant in the New Wave after the publication of his controversial Bug Jack Barron in Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine in 1967–1968, and its subsequent publication in book form in 1969. Though it features depictions of sex acts and drug use that were virtually unheard of at the time in science fiction, this novel (except for the acerbity with which it satirizes capitalism and the media) would not have been unusually striking in mainstream fiction of the time, so that the outcry in certain sf circles of the time over its “obscenity” stands now as an emblem of the prudish narrowmindedness against which the New Wave was designed to act. That the inclusion of Spinrad’s novel caused New Worlds to lose distribution in many outlets is a measure of the controversy it caused. Undaunted, Spinrad continued to produce controversial work with The Iron Dream (1972), an alternate history that features Adolf Hitler as its protagonist, based on the premise that, in this alternate reality, Hitler moves to New York as a young man and never achieves political power in Germany.

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Instead, he becomes an author of right-wing pulp fantasy novels, including “Lord of the Swastika,” the text of which constitutes the bulk of The Iron Dream. In this text, the protagonist, a clear Hitler surrogate, manages to conquer the world. A World Between (1979) is a utopian narrative in which the tranquility of a utopian society is threatened by extremists from both the left and the right. The Mind Game (1980, republished as The Process in 1983) is a vicious satire of religion that features a sinister, manipulative church that most readers have associated with the Church of Scientology. A similar religious satire informs Spinrad’s later treatment of a cult in The Children of Hamelin (1990). Deus X (1993) also focuses on religious satire, with cyberspace in the mix as a possible realm of souls. Other satires appeared along the way as well, including Little Heroes (1987), a dystopian narrrative of a future America in which the gap between the rich and the poor has grown to nightmarish proportions. He followed the next year with Other Americas, a collection of four satires that again address various flaws in American society. That same year saw the initial serial publication of Journals of the Plague Years (published in book form in 1995), which again now appears ahead of its time in its skewering of the American healthcare system by envisioning a conspiracy to suppress a cure for a deadly plague because it might also reduce corporate profits resulting from the plague. Later, Spinrad’s poorly timed Russian Spring (1991) envisioned a Soviet society invigorated by the success of perestroika, but still riddled with problems, not the least of which is interference by right-wing forces from within a jingositic United States; the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to render that book irrelevant, though subsequent events have perhaps proved it prescient in some ways. Spinrad’s work of the 1990s otherwise showed increasing versatility. Vampire Junkies (1994) brings Dracula into modern-day New York; Greenhouse Summer (1999) addresses the problem of environmentalism and climate change. Spinrad remains active as a writer (living in France), though most of his work of the 21st century has been outside of sf. STABLEFORD, BRIAN (1948– ). The British science fiction author and scholar Brian M. Stableford received his doctorate in sociology, which he taught from 1977 to 1988, before turning to writing full time. He began publishing stories in the mid-1960s, however, and published his first novel, the far-future adventure Cradle of the Sun, in 1969. The “Dies Irae” trilogy, comprising The Days of Glory (1971), In the Kingdom of the Beasts (1971), and Day of Wrath (1971), combined space opera with sword-and-sorcery fantasy, providing an early glimmer of the generic versatility that would mark much of his later work. This series was followed by another, the “Grainger” sequence, which involves outer-space adventure narrated in the style of hardboiled detective fiction. This extensive series—consisting of The

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Halcyon Drift (1972), Rhapsody in Black (1973, with a revised edition in 1975), Promised Land (1974), The Paradise Game (1974), The Fenris Device (1974), and Swan Song (1975)—firmly established Stableford as a writer to be reckoned with. Stableford has continued to specialize in series, following the “Grainger” sequence with the “Daedalus Mission” series of novels, including The Florians (1976), Critical Threshold (1977), Wildeblood’s Empire (1977), The City of the Sun (1978), Balance of Power (1979), and The Paradox of the Sets (1979). This series, revolving around a search for long-lost earth colonies, also involves epic adventure in outer space. Other important works of this period include The Mind-Riders (1976), one of the first novels to feature virtual reality; The Realms of Tartarus (1977); and The Walking Shadow (1978), an epic tale revolving around evolution. One of Stableford’s most successful works of fiction is The Empire of Fear (1988), a surprisingly believable alternate history involving an earth ruled by vampires, who are nicely contained within a science fictional (rather than supernatural) premise. Stableford also gives traditional horror motifs a science fictional twist in the werewolf series The Werewolves of London (1990), The Angel of Pain (1991), and The Carnival of Destruction (1993). Young Blood (1992) is another vampire novel. Later, Stableford took on the mythology of Frankenstein with an alternate-history sequence of story collections in which Mary Shelley’s monster actually exists. This “Empire of the Necromancers” sequence includes The Shadow of Frankenstein (2008), Frankenstein and the Vampire Countess (2009), and Frankenstein in London (2011). All in all, Stableford’s most impressive contribution to sf is the longinterlinked sequence of stories and novels that together explore a future history in which biotechnology enables a utopian transformation in global society. This project began with The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000–3000 (1985), coauthored with David Langford, but it reached is full fruition in a sequence of later novels, including Inherit the Earth (1998), Architects of Emortality (1999), The Fountains of Youth (2000), The Cassandra Complex (2001), Dark Ararat (2002), and The Omega Experiment (2002). This same future history is further elaborated in the “Biotech Revolution” sequence, including the story collection Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (2004), and the novels The Undead: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution (2010) and Les fleurs du mal: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution (2010). Stableford has produced a good deal of scholarly work on science fiction, though he also sought to make much of this work accessible to a broad audience. Works in this vein include The Science in Science Fiction (1982), written with David Langford and Peter Nicholls, and The Sociology of Science Fiction (1985). In the important study The Scientific Romance in Brit-

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ain, 1890–1950 (1985), Stableford seeks to characterize a distinctive British line of evolutionary development in sf apart from the American line. Stableford has also published scholarly work in academic journals and anthologies, as well as serving as a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction in its 1979 and 1993 editions, and as the author of the first edition of The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature (2004). Even more extensive and ambitious is Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia (2006), which details, in encyclopedic form, the relationshiop between science knowledge and science fictional speculation. STAND ON ZANZIBAR (1968). Stand on Zanzibar is probably the single most important novel by the British New Wave writer John Brunner, standing at the center of the sequence of important dystopian narratives that he produced at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. Other novels in the sequence include The Jagged Orbit (1969, which focuses on racism and the criminalistic tendencies of the military-industrial complex), The Sheep Look Up (1972, which focuses on future environmental degradation), and The Shockwave Rider (1975, which focuses on the impact of a worldwide communications explosion). The massive Stand on Zanzibar is an ambitious novel that employs a variety of science fiction tropes and modernist literary strategies to project an early 21st-century world in which many of the social and political tendencies of the late 1960s have been extended, with results that are approaching the disastrous. It won the 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the only Hugo won by Brunner in his career. The central emphasis of Stand on Zanzibar is on overpopulation, and its title refers to the fact that, in the 2010 world of the novel, the global population has, for the first time, reached the level where it would no longer be theoretically possible for all of the world’s people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the island of Zanzibar. Partly due to the growing population problem, resources are scarce, and international strife is a fact of life, with the United States and China engaged in an interminable war of attrition that bears obvious similarities to the war in Vietnam, ongoing when the book was written. Though Brunner was British, the book (like much of his fiction) is set mostly in the U.S., still the world’s wealthiest nation, but one with growing social problems, as the gap between the rich and the poor keeps most urban areas on the verge of riots. Strict eugenics laws have been enacted to try to quell population growth, and many young women, unable to have children under the current circumstances, are reduced to the status of roving sexual objects, or “shiggies,” drifting from one man to another, providing sexual favors in return for food and shelter. Pro-Chinese terrorists further destabilize life in the U.S., as does the fact that the pressure of living in this world has driven many individuals (known as “muckers”) to snap and run amuck. The

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general population copes with these pressures via strategies that include mind-numbing drugs, casual sex, and popular culture, thus recalling earlier dystopian works such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The complex literary form of Stand on Zanzibar has been compared to that of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, and Dos Passos was a clear influence on Brunner during this period of his work. Meanwhile, the novel relies less on plot than on these devices and an array of details to present a complete and compelling fictional world, which includes not only the U.S. and China, but also crucial subplots set in the Asian island nation of Yatakang and the “backward” African nation of Beninia, though the representation of the latter fails to overcome a number of colonialist stereotypes. The inhabitants there, for example, are poor but happy, partly because of their calm communitarianism and partly because they bear a mutant gene that causes them to secrete a substance that suppresses the normal human (masculine) tendency toward aggression—thus making them (and anyone they encounter) behave in peaceful and cooperative ways. STAPLEDON, OLAF (1886–1950). The British philosopher and writer Olaf Stapledon was one of the true pioneers of science fiction, known particularly for flights of imagination that allow him to envision far future worlds that are vastly different from our own, including the dramatic transformation of the human species itself, making him one of the first writers of posthuman science fiction. Awarded his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925, Stapledon used his doctoral dissertation as the basis of his first full-scale (nonfiction) book, a treatise on ethics, though he had published a small privately printed volume of verse in 1914. In 1930 he published his first novel, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future; the novel was a significant success, encouraging Stapledon to turn to writing full time, concentrating especially on novels, though his novels do have a distinctively philosophical cast (and, for science fiction, an unusually low level of interest in technology). Last and First Men is a magisterial two-billion-year history of the human race, tracing it through the evolution of a number of distinct species. The narrative is driven by an overall assumption of progress, as humanity as a whole, through local ups and downs, evolves into more advanced and enlightened forms. Stapledon then followed with a sequel, Last Men in London (1932). Odd John: A Story between Jest and Earnest (1935) also deals with the evolution of the human race, focusing on the figure of John Wainwright, a sort of Nietzshean Übermensch, whose obvious superiority to ordinary humans (and the abuse of those humans by Wainwright and his fellow superior men) leads to resentment and (eventually) to his murder and to the destruction of the utopian community he and his fellows attempt to found. Star Maker (1937) is Stapledon’s most ambitious (and perhaps greatest) work,

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somewhat in the mold of Last and First Men, but on a larger and more ambitious scale, again suggesting possibilities for human evolution on a grand scale, but also suggesting that such evolution is sorely needed given the sad state of humanity in the present-day world of the 1930s. Darkness and Light (1942) is a less ambitious look at possible human futures, contrasting a dystopian possibility with a utopian one, as indicated by the metaphorical title. Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord (1944) features a canine protagonist who has been uplifted to essentially human levels of intelligence, ultimately serving, though, as a commentary on the limitations of the human species as currently constituted. Old Man in New World (1944), though a minor work, is one of Stapledon’s most direct commentaries on specific human foibles, this time on the limitations placed on human development by religion. Other late novels include Death in Life (1946) and The Flames (1947). The latter features an alien super-race, originally inhabitants of the sun and now residing in igneous rocks from which they can be released by heat. It well illustrates Stapledon’s lack of interest in literal believability in favor of fiction that illustrates his philosophical points. STARSHIP TROOPERS (1959). Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is a work of military science fiction that was the last of the series of juvenile novels that Heinlein published early in his career as a novelist, ending that series partly because the book was judged by many to be inappropriate for juveniles. However, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and remains one of Heinlein’s most respected works. It focuses on a war between earth and an insect-like alien species referred to as “Bugs.” However, it is less a presentation of actual battle scenes than a celebration of militarism as a way of life, with the clear purpose of urging his American readers toward preparedness in the face of what Heinlein clearly saw as a communist threat to the American way of life—even though he himself seemed to want that way of life to be changed dramatically. Starship Troopers, then, is essentially a call to arms and a declaration that some enemies (read, the Soviets) can be defeated only by force. It presents a rather Darwinian vision of life as a struggle for survival of the strongest, whose strength arises primarily from military might. It is something of a Bildungsroman that follows the growth of its young protagonist Juan Rico as he and his friends grow up in a future world in which high crime and other social problems have led to a systemic collapse, leading to the establishment of the Federation (described by Heinlein as a utopia), a new world government ruled by a military elite, in which only veterans of the military enjoy full citizenship, including the right to vote. Most of the text simply describes the education of Rico as he learns the nature and value of militarism, presumably teaching readers the same lesson as well. Much of this education also includes somewhat ill-informed di-

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atribes against communism. His history teacher, Mr. Dubois, a former military officer, delivers most of this indoctrination, inundating Rico and his fellow students with right-wing expositions (presumably endorsed by Heinlein) on various issues that show the book’s origins in the 1950s, despite the fact that the book is ostensibly set in the distant future. Dubois extols the virtues of strict discipline of the young, including flogging and other forms of corporal punishment; he also dismisses the idea of inalienable human rights as nonsense: for him, people have only the rights they are willing to fight and die for. After the completion of training so rigorous that several cadets are killed in the process, Rico and his fellow students, now highly trained killing machines, go to war against the Bugs. The Bugs are depicted as fiercely imperialistic, hoping to conquer earth, which helps Heinlein to depict his militaristic earthlings as good guys merely seeking to defend themselves. The Bugs also have a highly communal society that makes it easy to read them as stand-ins for communists, suppressing all individualism. Heinlein’s suggestion that blind obedience to military discipline somehow supports individualism is not exactly convincing, but Starship Troopers definitely serves as an example of the potential of science fiction as a literature of ideas, even if the ideas are sometimes a bit questionable. See also ALIEN INVASION; POLITICS. STEAMPUNK. Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that typically involves old-fashioned (often steam-powered) technologies, generally set in the past (typically the 19th century). The term seems to have been coined by science fiction writer K. W. Jeter in 1987 to describe certain works—including his own Morlock Night (1979) and Infernal Devices (1987)—that had some of the spirit of cyberpunk science fiction, but with large, bulky, steampowered technologies, rather than the sleek, often miniaturized computer technologies associated with cyberpunk. Keith Laumer’s Worlds of the Imperium (1962) and Ronald W. Clark’s Queen Victoria’s Bomb (1967) are early examples of steampunk novels, though perhaps the first work to popularize the motif of alternate 19th-century technologies was the television series The Wild Wild West (1965–1969). Writers such as Jeter, James Blaylock, and Tim Powers helped to expand the form in the early 1980s. Steampunk proliferated through the late 1980s, but William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s 1990 novel The Difference Engine (set in a Victorian England in which Charles Babbage’s difference engine has been perfected, supplying the British authorities with considerable computer power) is probably the text that solidified the status of steampunk within the world of science fiction literature. That status, meanwhile, can be seen in the title of Paul Di Filippo’s Steampunk Trilogy (1995), which indicates growing awareness of steampunk as a subgenre.

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Most of the works originally considered to be steampunk are essentially alternate-history narratives actually set in versions of the historical past modified by new technological innovations. As such, these works often draw heavily on the conventions and characters of 19th-century literature, as in the case of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s comic book/graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which began appearing in 1999. More recently, the tropes of steampunk have expanded into entirely fictional worlds that do not correspond to earth’s past, as in the case of China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy (2000–2004), as well as his Railsea (2012), intended largely for young adult readers, as is Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan (2011), set in an alternate-history version of World War I. The Bas-Lag books indicate the way the technologies typical of steampunk have often moved into recent fantasy fiction as well, as in the case of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy (1995–2000). Meanwhile, Railsea, set in a postapocalyptic world in which more advanced technologies are now but a memory, but can sometimes still be retrieved in working condition, points toward the way in which steampunk has now expanded into the world of the future, often in a postapocalyptic mode in which characters in a steam-powered world work to retrieve more advanced technologies from the past, as is also the case in Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines (2001). Such works have recently come to be labeled as salvagepunk. STEPHENSON, NEAL (1959– ). Neal Stephenson had published two minor novels when the publication of Snow Crash (1992) suddenly made him a major figure in science fiction and a leader in the post-cyberpunk phenomenon. Snow Crash is a satirical look at a corporate-dominated high-tech near future in which computer hacker and pizza delivery man Hiro Protagonist battles to prevent a viral apocalypse that infects people in both the virtual and the real world. Stephenson’s next novel, the Hugo Award–winning The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995), incorporates elements of both steampunk and nanotechnology, while also dealing in interesting ways with class issues. With the massive Cryptonomicon (1999), a sort of historical novel exploring the birth and development of information technology, Stephenson began to experience mainstream success. His “Baroque Cycle”—a trilogy of historical novels that includes Quicksilver (2003, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award), The Confusion (2004), and the System of the World (2004)—further cemented his status as an important author with appeal that transcends science fiction. This detailed multigeneric narrative recounts the origins of the modern world in the scientific revolution of Enlightenment-era Europe. The speculative fiction Anathem (2008) deals with themes ranging from Greek philosophy to the parallel-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. REAMDE (2011) is a thriller set in the world of

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online gaming. Stephenson is also one of the principals (who also included Greg Bear, among others) involved in the production of the interactive multimedia fiction The Mongoliad, first published as a series of smartphone apps in 2010–2012, but republished in modified form as a series of three conventional and Kindle novels by Amazon Publishing in 2012–2013. STERLING, BRUCE (1954– ). The American writer Bruce Sterling was, along with William Gibson, one of the two figures most centrally associated with the cyberpunk movement in the 1980s. Sterling published his first science fiction short story in 1976 and his first novel, Involution Ocean, in 1977; by 1980, his novel The Artificial Kid was beginning to move in the direction of cyberpunk, in which he became a central figure mostly through his work as an editor and general promoter of the idea. His self-edited (as Vincent Omniveritas) and self-produced fanzine Cheap Truth (1984–1986) was as close as the cyberpunk movement had to an official journal, and it was in its pages that Sterling helped to elaborate the concept of cyberpunk and to help explain what he saw as the goals and motivations of the movement. Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, which Sterling edited in 1986, is perhaps the central text produced by the movement, even though William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer (1984) is often viewed in that way. Sterling’s novel Schismatrix (1985) is perhaps his own central contribution to cyberpunk fiction, though it also looks beyond the usual boundaries of that subgenre, especially with its central use of conceits that are normally associated with space opera. That novel also indicates more clearly than most works of cyberpunk the connection between that subgenre and the broader phenomenon of posthuman science fiction; it relies centrally on an opposition between competing techniques for becoming posthuman, as the genetically modified Shapers square off against the machine-enhanced Mechanists. This opposition is central to the stories collected in Crystal Express (1989), which further elaborates a future human civilization of posthumans living throughout the solar system in spacegoing habitats. Meanwhile, the less ambitious near-future thriller Islands in the Net (1988), which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, may actually be Sterling’s most purely cyberpunk novel. He then joined with Gibson to coauthor The Difference Engine (1990), one of the founding works of steampunk. Sterling won two Best Novelette Hugo Awards in the 1990s, for “Bicycle Repairman” (1996) and “Taklamakan” (1998). The latter also won a Locus Award, as did the story “Maneki Neko” from the same year. He has, in general, continued to be an important and productive writer of stories, which have been collected in such volumes as Globalhead (1992), A Good OldFashioned Future (1999), Visionary in Residence (2006), Ascendencies: The Best of Bruce Sterling (2007), and Gothic High-Tech (2011).

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As cyberpunk itself faded as an active movement, Sterling continued to produce his own distinctive form of near-future fiction that elaborates the promise and danger of an increasingly interconnected world. His novels in this vein include Heavy Weather (1994), the Hugo-nominated Holy Fire (1996), the Hugo-nominated (and Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning) Distraction (1998), and Zeitgeist (2000). The Zenith Angle (2004) focuses on a computer security expert employed in the post-9/11 U.S. war on terror, while The Caryatids (2009) is an environmentalist thriller that features three women (all clones of the same original woman) who live on a space station and may be the only hope for saving earth from a complete ecological meltdown. See also SLIPSTREAM. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961). One of the best-known novels of science fiction master Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land also did a great deal to make Heinlein a favorite author of the 1960s counterculture, despite his reputation in some circles for right-wing politics sometimes bordering on fascism. The title of the novel encapsulates its plot, which involves Valentine Michael Smith, a human born to astronauts exploring Mars, then orphaned there and raised by Martians. When he comes to earth for the first time as an adult after he is discovered on Mars by a second expedition from earth, Smith finds his “home” planet a strange land indeed as he attempts to adapt to its customs and to basic experiences such as his first ecnounters with human females. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, it has gone on to become one of the most widely read science fiction novels of all time, largely thanks to its popularity with the 1960s counterculture, many of whose members shared Smith’s sense of alienation from their mainstream culture. To add to his confusion, the naïve (but super-intelligent, with superhuman psychic abilities, as well) Smith becomes a pawn in the power struggles of others, especially those who seek control of Mars for potential future colonization and exploitation, given that, according to some interpretations of the law, he (as the sole survivor of the initial expedition) might be considered the owner of the entire red planet. Eventually, Smith’s search for understanding is joined by others, as he becomes the founder of the “Church of All Worlds,” influenced both by his experience with Martian culture and by his earlier encounter with a cult on earth that espouses free sex (among other things) as a road to enlightenment. Smith is ultimately killed by a mob raised by that cult, but his influence lives on, as (apparently) does he in the afterworld, with hints that he might be an incarnation of the Archangel Michael. Stranger in a Strange Land exists in two published versions. The originally published version was cut, at the insistence of the publisher, by some 60,000 words from Heinlein’s massive original, which was then restored in a posthumously published edition released in 1991. Among other things, this

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novel is a prime case of science fiction adding to the general language, as terms from the text such as the Martian word “grok” (which literally means “to drink,” but figuratively means “to understand in a deep way”) moved into general usage, especially among members of the 1960s counterculture, and are still in use today, having been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. STROSS, CHARLES (1964– ). The British science fiction and fantasy writer Charles Stross has emerged in recent years as one of the most important participants in the so-called British Boom. Stross began publishing science fiction stories in the late 1980s, though much of his writing before 2004 was nonfiction, on computer-related topics, including a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper magazine. However, he began to publish fiction more regularly in the late 1990s, leading to the collection Toast: And Other Rusted Futures (2002). He then published his first novel in Singularity Sky (2003), which quickly led to his withdrawal from the Computer Shopper column to devote himself to fiction writing. Stross quickly became identifiable as a major British Boom writer, not only because he was an important contemporary British writer of sf, but also because his work, which continued with such novels as Iron Sunrise (2004) and Accelerando (2005), displayed the characteristics that have come to be associated with the Boom, including a sophisticated left-leaning political vision of the future, a preoccupation with artificial intelligence, and a creative combination and renewal of once-familiar tropes from both cyberpunk and space opera. Stross, like Ken MacLeod, with whom he is often associated, also shows a strong interest in the notion of the Singularity. Indeed, Accelerando goes farther than perhaps any other single text in attempting to describe the ongoing process of the Singularity itself (as an emerging artificial super-intelligence devours the earth, then the solar system, then beyond, converting everything into hardware to house its growing software as humanity flees), rather than simply to posit the Singularity, then describe its aftermath. Since his emergence as a fiction writer, Stross has remained unremittingly productive, while also proving more and more versatile. For example, the “Laundry” sequence—comprising The Atrocity Archives (2004), The Jennifer Morgue (2006), The Fuller Memorandum (2010), and The Apocalypse Codex (2012, winner of a Locus Award)—draws on both the horror of H. P. Lovecraft and the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming. The first of these also includes “The Concrete Jungle,” which won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella. The two volumes of the sequence Halting State (2008) and Rule 34 (2011) are near-future crime novels that address a number of contemporary issues, such as the repressive impact of the post-9/11 war on terror, while reflecting the impact on contemporary culture of the Internet in general and

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of massively multiplayer online role-playing games in particular. His novella “Palimpsest” (2009) won a Hugo Award in 2010. In 2012, Stross coauthored The Rapture of the Nerds with Cory Doctorow. Stross has also become a leading contemporary writer of fantasy, moving into that genre with the “Merchant Princes” sequence—beginning with The Family Trade (2004) and extending (so far) through six novels, the last of which is The Trade of Queens (2010). This sequence is based on a parallelworlds motif of a kind that is common in fantasy, but its use has much in common with the way the motif typically functions in science fiction, while technology ultimately becomes as important as magic in the series. STRUGATSKY, BORIS (1933–2012), AND ARKADY STRUGATSKY (1925–1991). The brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky are two of the most important figures in the history of Soviet science fiction, and are probably the Soviet sf writers best known outside of their native country. The two brothers began producing science fiction in collaboration in the late 1950s, starting with a number of short stories published in six collections between 1958 and 1960. Their first novel, Страна багровых туч (“The Land of the Crimson Clouds,” 1959), has not been published in English. Their breakthrough book came with the volume Полдень, XXII век (1961, expanded in 1962 and 1967, published in English as Noon: 22nd Century in 1978), a collection of interrelated stories that can be read as an episodic novel. This volume became the basis for the “Noon Universe” future history, which has much in common with the “Star Trek” universe so familiar to Western fans of science fiction. The “Noon Universe” series projects a 22nd century in which technological progress and the triumph of socialism have built an ideal post-scarcity society that has expanded outward into the galaxy in a completely nonimperialistic fashion, though earth’s “progressors” do sometimes intervene in the development of the alien societies they encounter in order to nudge them in positive directions. Additional volumes in this important series include Попытка к бегству (1962; English translation Escape Attempt, 1982), Далёкая Радуга (1963; English Far Rainbow, 1978), Трудно быть богом (1964; English Hard to Be a God, 1973), Улитка на склоне (1966–1968; English Snail on the Slope, 1980), Обитаемый остров (1969; English Prisoners of Power, 1977); Малыш (1971; English Space Mowgli, 1982), Парень из преисподней (1974; English The Kid from Hell, 1982), and Волны гасят ветер (1986; English The Time Wanderers, 1987). Much of the work of the Strugatskys is written in a dystopian vein. For example, their 1965 novel Хищные вещи века (English The Final Circle of Paradise, 1976) is a dystopian satire of bourgeois decadence that is often reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. One of their most clearly dystopian works is Гадкие лебеди (1972; English The Ugly Swans, 1972), which undermines a simple reliance on scientific utopianism, but still con-

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tains significant utopian energies of its own. Scientific utopianism, of course, was key to the Soviet project, but the work of the Strugatskys was never openly critical of the Soviet regime, and they were able to publish their work without interference in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that much of it critiques broad phenomena with which the Soviet Union might be associated. Thus, За миллиард лет до конца света (1977; English Definitely Maybe, 1978) aims much of its satire at excessive reliance on scientific progress in general. Finally, the Strugatskys’ single best-known work is probably Пикник на обочине (1972; English Roadside Picnic, 1977), which has gained special prominence from Andrei Tarkovsky’s superb film adaptation Сталкер (Stalker, 1979). Here, mysterious alien visitors have left behind not only a number of artifacts, but also a residual impact that seems to have ravaged the landscape and warped the very laws of physics in the zone they visited, making the salvage of these artifacts a complex and perilous enterprise. As a whole, the text can be read as expressing suspicion of technological utopianism and even of the fundamental possibility of a sudden radical transformation of human societies in ways that are predictably beneficial. Like Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973), it also counsels human humility by suggesting that highly advanced aliens would not be likely to have much interest in our meager species. See also SALVAGEPUNK. STURGEON, THEODORE (1918–1985). The American writer Edward Hamilton Waldo, typically employing the pen name “Theodore Sturgeon,” was one of the best-known science fiction writers of his generation. He began publishing science fiction with the story “The Ether Breather” in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1939, thus placing him near the beginning of the Golden Age, publishing several key stories in Astounding and Unknown magazines over the next few years before falling silent through most of World War II. He did not begin uninterrupted production as a writer of sf until 1946, when he entered a highly active period that produced his best-known work, including numerous stories and several important novels, the bulk of which elaborate his central theme of the alienated outcast from society seeking some form of alternative community to which he can belong. His impressive output of stories during this period has been collected in a number of volumes, beginning as early as 1948, with Without Sorcery. Later selected compilations such as A Touch of Sturgeon (1987) and Selected Stories (2000) are particularly useful, but the definitive collection is the 13volume Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, the first 11 volumes of which were edited by Paul Williams. This collection appeared between 1994 and 2010 and shows both the range and the sheer quantity of Sturgeon’s output as a story writer who both participated in and challenged the boundar-

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ies of Golden Age science fiction writing, the challenges residing primarily in his focus on the need for communication between individuals and his sense that sex was the deepest and truest form of that communication. Sturgeon’s key novels were published between 1950 and 1960, beginning with The Dreaming Jewels (1950, republished in 1957 as The Synthetic Man), a young adult novel whose protagonist suffers a typical adolescent alienation that is exacerbated by his psi powers. More Than Human (1953), possibly Sturgeon’s finest single work, also involves psi powers. The winner of the 1954 International Fantasy Award, it involves six humans with psi powers who are initially regarded as defective, but eventually emerge as forerunners of the next stage in human evolution. Indeed, they join a tradition of similar mutants, the Secret Masters of humanity, who have been acting behind the scenes to aid in human evolution for centuries. The Cosmic Rape (1958) is an alien-invasion narrative in which a hive mind invades the earth; ultimately, though, both the aliens and humans, transformed into a sort of hive mind of their own, profit from the encounter. Venus Plus X (1960) is a utopian narrative centering on a surgical alteration to make all citizens of a presumably utopian society the same sex, though the complex novel explores both the advantages and the disadvantages of this new biological/social arrangement. Sturgeon was much less productive after the beginning of the 1960s, though a 1970s short story “Slow Sculpture” won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. On the other hand, he probably achieved his widest audience as the writer of the teleplays for two episodes of the original Star Trek television series: “Shore Leave” (1966) and “Amok Time” (1967), the latter of which is one of that series’ best-known episodes. He is also widely remembered for his articulation of “Sturgeon’s Law,” which explains the fact that most science fiction is not very good by reminding us that “90% of everything is crud.” Sturgeon was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000. SUVIN, DARKO (1934– ). Darko Ronald Suvin was born Darko Šlesinger in Zagreb, Croatia, in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He would go on to become one of the most important scholars and theorists in the history of science fiction and one of the pioneers who helped to establish the notion that science fiction as a genre was worthy of serious academic study. After being educated at Zagreb University, he taught there for a time, becoming a pioneer in the study of science fiction in Yugoslavia. In addition to translating several important works of Western science fiction into Croatian, Suvin published a book-length scholarly study of science fiction before moving to Montreal, Canada, in 1968, where he spent the bulk of his professional career on the faculty of McGill University.

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During the next decade, Suvin taught and published on science fiction, among other things introducing Western audiences to sf from Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union. He also worked with other forms of literature, including substantial work on the drama of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose theory of the Verfremdungseffekt, or “estrangement effect” in drama would prove a strong influence on Suvin’s later formulation of his most important idea: the notion that science fiction is a literature of “cognitive estrangement.” Suvin argued that science fiction has a unique ability to create worlds in which readers find themselves confronted by unfamiliar situations that encourage them to think productively about the differences between the fictional world and the real world in which they live. This cognitive process, for Suvin, can lead readers to reevaluate their assumptions about what is possible in their own world and thus serve the strongly utopian potential of helping readers to realize that conditions are historically determined and do not necessarily have to remain the way they are. Suvin, meanwhile, contrasts science fiction with fantasy in this respect, arguing that, while fantasy also propels readers into different worlds, it creates worlds that are different for magical reasons that do not invite cognitive analysis or questioning. As a result, fantasy lacks the political power and utopian potential that Suvin associates with the best science fiction. This view of science fiction and fantasy as opposed genres would dominate science fiction criticism, especially that emanating from Marxist and other leftist perspectives, for decades, though it has recently been challenged. Indeed, Suvin himself (who has continued to provide critical commentary on science fiction after his retirement from academic life to live in Italy) has been among those who, responding to the rise of radical fantasy writers such as China Miéville and other members of the British Boom, have acknowledged that fantasy might have the capacity to produce the sort of cognitive estrangement that formerly had been associated only with science fiction. Indeed, the works of such writers have strongly called into question the notion that there actually is an unequivocal distinction that can be made between the two genres. In 1979, Suvin was given the Pilgrim Award by the Science Fiction Research Association in recognition of his contributions to science fiction scholarship. This award followed an impressive series of publications that included the books Russian Science Fiction 1956–1974: A Bibliography (1976), Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (1979), and Victorian Science Fiction in the U.K.: The Discourses of Knowledge and of Power (1983). Much of Suvin’s work is summed up in the late collection Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction, and Political Epistemology (2010).

T TENN, WILLIAM (1920–2010). The British-born Philip Klass moved to the United States as a young child and spent the remainder of his life living in the U.S., where he pursued a career as a science fiction writer under the pseudonym William Tenn, mostly of stories that involved elements of satire. He began publishing stories in 1946 with “Alexander the Bait,” in Astounding Science-Fiction, a story (like much of his fiction) inspired by his experience as a combat engineer in World War II, followed by radar research for the Air Force and professional work for Bell Labs, where he also published technical articles. Though somewhat clumsy, the story was unusual for its time in the way it imagines the future development of spaceflight as the product of large institutional efforts, rather than the work of individual geniuses or explorers. Tenn’s second story, “Child’s Play” (1947), about a lawyer who builds people from kits, has since been anthologized several times; by the time of the time-travel story “Brooklyn Project” (1948), he was already coming to be recognized as one of the most important writers of humorous science fiction, though this story made very serious points about possible links between political repression and an overreliance on technological progress. Through the 1950s, Tenn published numerous stories, with Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as his most important venue. Story collections from the period include Of All Possible Worlds (1955). Tenn was more at home in the short-story form than in the novel, though he did publish one full-length novel, the ironic alien-invasion story Of Men and Monsters (1968, originally published in Galaxy in 1963 as “The Men in the Walls”). The book publication of this novel, meanwhile, corresponded with the release of a novella, A Lamp for Medusa, in book form, as well as three collections of Tenn’s stories in the same year: The Seven Sexes, The Square Root of Man, and The Wooden Star. A two-volume “complete” set of Tenn’s stories was published in 2001, including Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Vol. I and Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Vol. II. Tenn’s essay and interview collection, Dancing 299

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Naked, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Book in 2004; Tenn himself was given the Author Emeritus Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1999. See also COMEDY/HUMOR. TERRAFORMING. Terraforming is the process of modifying the natural environment of an alien planet in order to be more like that of earth, with the goal of making it more easily inhabitable by humans. The idea is quite an old one in science fiction, as when Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930) imagined modifications of the Venusian environment, and the term itself was first used by Jack Williamson in a series of interrelated stories first published in 1942–1943, then collected as Seetee Ship in 1951. It became even more popular as a motif in the 1950s, as growing astronomical knowledge made it gradually more and more clear that nearby planets (such as Mars and Venus), once viewed as ripe for colonization, could not support human life without radical environmental modifications. The idea of terraforming gained momentum as a real-world proposal in the 1960s, beginning with a proposal for the terraforming of Venus in an article in the prestigious journal Science in 1961. Carl Sagan similarly made a proposal for the terraforming of Mars in 1973 in an article in the journal Icarus. That same year, Sagan presented the idea for a broader audience in The Cosmic Connection, and various scientific conferences and research projects addressed the topic in the 1970s as well. Terraforming gained traction in science fiction in the 1970s, with such works as David Gerrold’s Moonstar Odyssey (1977) imagining large-scale terraforming projects, though typically as an element of a broader narrative rather than the main focus. Sweeping modifications on a planetary scale gained more focused attention in science fiction in the 1980s, with works such as Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road (1988), set on Mars. Mars, as the easiest-known planet to terraform, has in fact figured particularly prominently in sf stories of terraforming. Though it is a minor part of the narrative, the alien Oankali who rescue the human race from destruction in Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy (1987–1989) ultimately terraform Mars and relocate some humans there. Most importantly, it is also the setting for Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy, comprising Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996), probably the greatest (and certainly most detailed) of all terraforming narratives. Here, Robinson supplies extensive engineering details concerning the processes required to make Mars liveable, while also seriously and sensitively addressing the need to balance this transformation with respect for the native Martian environment, making the trilogy a sort of environmentalist epic that indirectly addresses the more general question of the potential conflict between environmentalism and technological progress.

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In this vein, Robinson’s later “Science in the Capital” (2004–2007) series envisions large-scale efforts to reverse catastrophic global climate change in what might be described as an attempt to terraform earth itself. This motif, in fact, is literally the stuff of Williamson’s Terraforming Earth (2001), which describes an attempt to restore the earth to a liveable state after the impact of an asteroid on the earth’s surface has triggered a new Ice Age and rendered the planet inhospitable to humans. Terraforming is not, however, limited to planets. Certain moons of Jupiter and Saturn have figured in terraforming narratives as well, as in the transformation of Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter) in Poul Anderson’s The Snows of Ganymede (1958) and Gregory Benford’s Jupiter Project (1975). The terraforming of asteroids has been envisioned as well, most successfully through the notion of hollowing them out and creating earth-like habitats on the interior. The most successful narrative in this vein is probably Robinson’s 2312 (2012), which features a future human civilization spread across a solar system in which such habitats are common, including systems for powered flight that allow the haibtats to travel freely through the system. THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD. The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is presented annually by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to honor the author of the best science fiction short story published in English in the preceding calendar year. At the same time, of course, the award honors the memory of the distinguished sf author after whom it is named, himself a master of the shortstory form. The inaugural winner of the award was Judith Moffett, for her story “Surviving,” published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. No author has, to this date, won the award more than once, though many authors have received multiple nominations, including such well-known figures as Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, John Kessel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ian McDonald, Lucius Shepard, and Michael Swanwick, each of whom has won once, but all of whom have received at least four nominations. “THREE CALIFORNIAS” TRILOGY (1984–1990). Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Three Californias” trilogy presents three different possible future Californias that together represent three distinct science fiction subgenres. The trilogy also launched Robinson’s career as a major sf novelist. Robinson’s first novel was The Wild Shore (1984), a Locus Award–winning postapocalyptic narrative that details attempts to recover from a disastrous nuclear war that had been provoked by American imperialism and capitalist greed, resulting in widespread terrorist-style nuclear attacks on the United States, collapsing the entire system. Robinson followed with The Gold Coast

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(1988), a dystopian narrative that describes a future in which no such apocalyptic attacks occurred, allowed the corporate-dominated imperialistic policies of the Reaganite 1980s to continue unabated into the 2020s, resulting in a corrupt and decadent capitalist future that is similar to the world of the 1980s, except with all of the worst characteristics intensified. Robinson completed the trilogy with Pacific Edge (1990), a utopian narrative in which the rising power of Green politics has overcome the greed and expansionism of the Reaganite 1980s, allowing for the development of a new, humane, environmentally conscious utopian social order free of corporate domination and dedicated to the creation of circumstances in which each and every individual can pursue the fulfillment of his or her own potential as a human being. Each entry in the “Three Californias” trilogy is an effective novel in its own right and can be considered a leading example of its subgenre. However, the true strength of the trilogy is in the way the three alternative visions resonate together to create a reminder that many futures are possible and that it is the actions of human beings that are primarily responsible for determining which historical path will actually be taken. THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS. The pioneering robot stories of Isaac Asimov, published in the 1940s and compiled in the seminal volume I, Robot in 1950, set many of the terms for the depiction of robots in science fiction for decades to come. Perhaps the most influential aspects of these stories was the “Three Laws of Robotics,” a set of fundamental requirements for the design and manufacture of intelligent robots intended to ensure that robots would operate for the benefit of humanity rather than becoming a threat to their makers. As first introduced in the 1942 story “Runaround” (as the “three fundamental Rules of Robotics”), these laws are as follows: 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the order given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. The Three Laws of Robotics form a central principle of organization for Asimov’s robot stories, many of which are largely explorations of the implications of the laws. However, the same laws, either in direct or slightly modified form, have also been adopted by many other authors, becoming a central element of the depiction of robots in science fiction. Indeed, Asimov himself suggested one major modification, the so-called “Zeroth” Law, which supercedes all the others: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm,” thus allowing for the possibility

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of harming individual humans if such is necessary for the greater good of humanity. This law was specifically named in Asimov’s 1985 novel Robots and Empire, though the concept was already the underlying principle of the 1950 story “The Evitable Conflict,” which ends I, Robot with robots secretly seizing control of human society for the good of humans, who cannot necessarily be trusted to act in the best interests of their species. Other variants and possible evasions of the Laws have formed the material of numerous science fiction stories, one of the most interesting of which occurs in David Brin’s Foundation’s Triumph (1999), in which robots use the Zeroth Law to manipulate and evade the other laws, while Asimov’s key robot character, R. Daneel Olivaw, returns to muse on the possibility that robot evolution will render the original laws obsolete. TIDHAR, LAVIE (1976– ). Born in Israel, Lavie Tidhar lives and works in Great Britain and has become one of Britain’s leading contemporary science fiction authors, though his work is distinctive for the postmodern way it combines sf motifs with elements of other genres, such as detective fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. For example, his first book, HebrewPunk (2007), is a collection of interrelated stories that modernize various Hebrew myths, creating a dialogue between different time periods. Such dialogues, of course, are central to subgenres such as steampunk, which is the principal mode of his “Bookman” sequence, comprising The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012). Tidhar has achieved his greatest recognition to date for the novel Osama (2011), a postmodern mixture of detective fiction and alternate-history science fiction set in a reality in which Osama Bin Laden is a fictional character featured in a series of detective novels, in the meantime interrogating the strategies by which we attempt to make sense of reality in general through the construction of narratives that potentially obscure reality as much as clarify it. Martian Sands (2013) plays with a variety of familiar sf tropes, drawing especially on previous narratives of the colonization of Mars, while also addressing a number of key political issues related to such topics as capitalism and colonialism. However, Tidhar puts a refreshing spin on these topics by envisioning a Mars colonization project driven not by the greed of corporations, but by the need of the poor. The Violent Century (2013) is another alternate-history narrative in which a machine is invented in the 1930s that can turn individuals with the proper propensity into superheroes; oddly enough, however, the existence of such heroes is able to do little to deflect the course of history from what it has been in our own world.

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THE TIME MACHINE (1895). The Time Machine was H. G. Wells’s first published novel and thus stands as one of the founding texts of modern science fiction. The novel features an unnamed Victorian scientist who invents a time-travel machine and then uses it to journey into the distant future, thus providing one of the first explorations of what would become one of the classic motifs of science fiction. The traveler ventures forward in time clearly expecting to find an ideal society of the kind projected in late-19thcentury utopian thought, but finds instead a nightmare world in which a degenerate humanity has split into two races, the passive and effete “Eloi” and the brutish, animalistic “Morlocks,” the former (who can be read as descended from the Victorian ruling class) serving as food for the latter (who can be seen as descended from the working class). In so doing, Wells satirizes a number of Victorian anxieties about the working class, but the text is in fact richly coded and addresses a number of issues, setting an important precedent for the exploration of social and political issues in science fiction. The traveler then moves to a far-future time, where he observes the human race continuing to decline; then he returns home to tell his story—though later he apparently embarks on a second voyage into the future, one from which he never returns. The book itself traveled into the future to set many of the terms of the time-travel narrative, of which it is clearly the most important founding text, exercising a strong influence over the evolution of the entire genre as well as on specific texts such as Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships (1995), a Hugo Award–nominated sequel to The Time Machine that is even written in a style that mimics that of the original. TIME TRAVEL. Stories of travel through time have been a staple of science fiction at least since H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). As with travel to another planet, time travel can bring about a sudden shift to an alien environment that brings about the kind of cognitive dissonance that is the hallmark of the best science fiction, though the best time-travel narratives are always first and foremost about the here and now, using the past or the future to produce a new perspective on the present. Time travel sometimes occurs in very simple ways, as when the protagonist of Edward Bellamy’s classic utopian narrative Looking Backward (1888) simply goes into a hypnotic trance in 1887 and awakes to a utopian world in the year 2000. Wells’s dystopian narrative When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) similarly features a protagonist who goes into a long sleep and awakes in a very different future. The Time Machine introduced a more literal version of time travel, though it does not really provide details of the science behind its time-travel technology. It did, however, provide a prototype for all subsequent technologybased time travel, including Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships (1995), conceived as a sequel to Wells’s novel. Meanwhile, the arrival of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity in 1905 provided a more scientific basis for medi-

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tating on the possibility of time travel and has influenced the evolution of the genre ever since. One of the best uses of Einstein’s theory occurs in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974), in which characters who travel through space at near-light speeds experience temporal displacement through the time-dilation effect. It has remained common, however, for time-travel narratives to avoid details of the technology involved in favor of an emphasis on the shift to a different temporal setting, whatever the means. Thus, in Jack Finney’s Time and Again (1970), a scientist develops an unlikely method of time travel that essentially involves transporting travelers to earlier eras simply by placing them in the mindset of that era. In Peter Delacorte’s Time on My Hands (1997) a time traveler from 1994 travels back to the 1930s to try to change history so that Ronald Reagan can never become president, but he uses a found time machine from the future that he himself doesn’t understand and thus can’t explain. Also popular is the “time slip” narrative, in which a character is inexplicably transported through time by an unknown mechanism. This sort of narrative dates back at least to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and includes such notable examples as L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall (1941), in which a time-slipping traveler prevents the coming of the Dark Ages in Europe. Other examples include Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), in which the protagonist becomes “unstuck in time,” and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), in which a modern black woman repeatedly finds herself transported back into the slave South. More recently, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) features a character who experiences time slips due to a genetic disorder. Robert A. Heinlein pioneered many classic time-travel motifs, as in the short story “By His Bootstraps” (1941), which involves a time-travel “loop,” in which travelers in time find that the principal events of history remain unchanged no matter what interventions are attempted. This motif also underlies Heinlein’s brief “All You Zombies” (1959), in which a protagonist uses time travel to become his own father—and mother—yet finds that his activities do not actually change the course of his personal history. Heinlein’s The Door into Summer (1957) employs a double time-travel motif in which the protagonist goes into suspended animation in the year 1970, then awakes in the year 2000, when time-travel technology has been invented, allowing him to travel back to 1970 in an attempt to change intervening events, but to no avail. In other cases, time travelers find that they can change history, but the ramifications of the change often go far beyond their intentions. Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” (1952), in which time travelers kill a dinosaur, causing ripples that run through subsequent time, is an early exam-

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ple of this motif. More recently, the protagonist of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (2011) prevents the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but causes unanticipated woeful results as well. Isaac Asimov explored time travel in The End of Eternity (1955), which introduces the notion of an official organization (called “Eternity”) whose operatives are “time cops” who officially manipulate history via time travel. The End of Eternity also addresses the problem of time-travel paradoxes, as when we learn that the Eternity organization itself was enabled when an Eternity agent traveled back in time to develop the temporal-field technology that made Eternity possible. Ultimately, though, humans from the far future retroactively prevent the establishment of Eternity so that the organization’s work, designed to prevent catastrophe, will not also prevent innovation. Another organization charged with regulating the use of time travel is the Time Patrol of Poul Anderson’s interlinked short-story collection The Guardians of Time (1960), whose task it is to ensure that time travelers do not alter the “true” past. In other cases, time travel is managed in order to better utilize resources, as when a far-future bureaucracy attempts to extract resources (including healthy human bodies) from the past in an effort to save a sickly humanity from environmental devastation in John Varley’s Millennium (1983). In one common motif, scientists remain the focus of time-travel narratives, as when Gregory Benford’s Timescape (1980) focuses on the personal and the professional lives of two groups of scientists who are involved in the development of a viable time-travel device, which they then try to use to send warnings to a second group of scientists back in the past in an attempt to prevent ecological disaster. In Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book (1992) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997), 21st-century Oxford historians use time travel as a research tool, in this case to study the Middle Ages. These historians have, meanwhile, discovered that the temporal continuum protects itself by preventing actions that could alter history. In Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996) historians intentionally change history as scientists from the 23rd century decide to use the time-travel technology to travel back to the time of Christopher Columbus in an effort to avert the horrors wrought upon the inhabitants of the New World as a result of the European colonization of the Americas, even though this change to history will mean that their own reality will paradoxically never have existed. David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself (1973) takes its cue from “All You Zombies” in presenting a time traveler whose movements in time (via a “timebelt” whose origin and workings are never explained) enable him to become both his own mother and his own father. Here, however, this situation is enabled by a vision of time travel as movement among different parallel worlds. Jack Womack’s Terraplane (1988) and Elvissey (1993)

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also involve a sort of time travel through movement between parallel worlds, though in this case there are only two parallel earths, each with a slightly different timeline than the other. John Kessel’s Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997) is a relatively lighthearted satirical novel that also involves parallel universes. Here, if time travelers cause changes in the past, it merely creates a new parallel universe with no consequences for the original timeline. As a result, time travel is practiced extensively, and the past is used both as a source of oil and other resources and simply as a tourist destination. The use of parallel worlds in so many time-travel narratives indicates a kinship between the time-travel subgenre and the alternate-history subgenre, different parallel worlds often being essentially different alternate realities. See also SATIRE. TIPTREE, JAMES, JR. (1915–1987). “James Tiptree Jr.” is the pen name used by American psychologist and fiction writer Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon for her science fiction works, the masculine name presumably making it easier to publish in the male-dominated world of sf. More importantly, Tiptree’s writing focused on gender issues in a way that was typically associated with women writers, blurring the boundary between sf by men and women and challenging the notion that there was a strict distinction between the two. The daughter of popular writer Mary Hastings Bradley, Alice was sometimes featured in her mother’s writing, as when she became a central focus of her mother’s narrative of their trip to Africa, Alice in Jungleland (1927). She literally made a name for herself, however, when she adopted the Tiptree pseudonym in 1967, publishing a series of effective sf short stories, many of them dealing centrally with questions of gender. Stories such as “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973) and “The Women Men Don’t See” (1973) have become sf classics. Tiptree’s stories can be found in the collections Then Thousand Light Years from Home (1973), Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975), Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978), Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981), and Crown of Stars (1988). The falsity of the Tiptree identity was revealed in 1977, but the name lives on in the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is given annually for contribution to the exploration of gender in science fiction. TOLKIEN, J. R. R. (1892–1973). Though not a science fiction writer, the British fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien has been so dominant in the recent history of his genre that his influence has extended in one way or another into various other genres as well, including science fiction. Indeed, later fantasy writers such as M. John Harrison, Philip Pullman, and China Miéville

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have often moved in directions that are more reminiscent of science fiction than fantasy, partly as an effort specifically to escape the limitations posed by Tolkien’s legacy. In fact, in works such as The Hobbit (1937) and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy—comprising The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), and The Return of the King (1955)—Tolkien shows a reliance on religious and magical motifs and imagery of a kind that was centrally responsible for the dismissal of fantasy for many years by most critics as being inherently conservative and unable to inspire progressive visions of social and political change. Nevertheless, the detailed world-building (informed by Tolkien’s work as a distinguished medievalist) that is central to Tolkien’s elaboration of Middle Earth, the setting for his fictions, has proved an inspiration for writers of a variety of stripes for more than half a century. TOLSTOY, ALEXEI (1883–1945). Alexei Tolstoy, son of a Russian count and distantly related by marriage to the great Russian realist novelist Leo Tolstoy, was one of the leading science fiction writers of the early years of the Soviet Union. His novel Aelita (Russian Аэлита, serialized in 1922–1923 and published in revised book form in 1939) represents perhaps the single most important example of the use of science fiction to try to build a socialist consciousness among readers in the new postrevolutionary Soviet Union. It was quickly adapted to film as Aelita: Queen of Mars, released in the Soviet Union in 1924 during a period of exciting postrevolutionary activity in Soviet film as a whole. Tolstoy followed in 1927 with another science fiction novel, Гиперболоид инженера Гарина (literally “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin,” but translated in English variously as The Death Box or as The Garin Death Ray). Here, the engineer-inventor of the title develops a powerful death ray that allows him to attempt to conquer the world, including an America depicted as in the throes of capitalist decadence. Tolstoy’s most important work, however, was a pair of magisterial historical novel sequences in the mode of socialist realism: The Road to Calvary (1921–1940) and Peter I (1929–1934), each of which won the Stalin Prize. TUCKER, WILSON (1914–2006). The American science fiction writer Wilson Tucker first became involved in science fiction as an active fan (and fanzine publisher) in the 1930s and always regarded his writing as a sideline, spending most of his working years as a professional film projectionist. He published his own first story in 1941, and continued to publish stories sporadically. Many of these are collected in The Best of Wilson Tucker (1982). His most successful work, however, was in the novel form, beginning with a mystery novel in 1946 and then moving into science fiction with The City in

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the Sea (1951). Here a postdisaster United States has reverted to savagery but is being recivilized by an emergent matriarchy. A similar scenario underlies the later Ice and Iron (1974), which also employs a time-travel motif, while explicitly linking the fall of the modern United States to catastrophic climate change, making the novel an early example of environmentalism in science fiction. Another early Tucker novel, The Long Loud Silence (1952), features another version of the postapocalyptic narrative. Here, in a story set in a ruined version of the American West, a rather unlikeable protagonist struggles to survive in the wake of the collapse of civilized order. Some of the imagery in this novel is quite graphic, including suggestions of a reversion to cannibalism that were excised from the U.S. version of the novel, though present in the British version. Time travel of one kind or another was a favorite Tucker motif. In the “Time Masters” sequence, comprising The Time Masters (1953) and Time Bomb (1955), two competing aliens have such long lives that they are able to live through (and attempt to manipulate) various epochs of human history, thus effecting time travel of a sort. More literal time travel is crucial to what is perhaps Tucker’s best-known novel, The Lincoln Hunters (1958), in which time travelers from the future travel back to the time of Abraham Lincoln in an attempt to retrieve the text of a lost speech. Meanwhile, The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970) combines Tucker’s interest in postapocalyptic tales with his penchant for time-travel stories; it features a black protagonist who travels forward in time to an early 21st-century America whose racial problems have now been exacerbated by a cataclysmic civil war. Over the extended period between 1955 and 1996, Tucker produced eight separate editions of The Neo-Fan’s Guide to Science Fiction Fandom, an extremely useful historical guide to the first five decades of science fiction fandom, in which he himself had played a significant role as the publisher of (and writer for, using the name “Bob Tucker”) such fanzines as The Planetoid, The Bloomington News Letter (aka The Science Fiction Newsletter), and (especially) Le Zombie, which lasted in various incarnations from 1938 to 2001. The Bloomington News Letter won the Retro Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1951, while Tucker himself won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1970 and the 1954 Retro Hugo for the same category in 2004. In 1996, Tucker was named an Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2003. See also FANDOM; RACE AND ETHNICITY.

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TURTLEDOVE, HARRY (1949– ). The American writer Harry Turtledove has worked in a variety of genres, but is best known for his particularly prolific work in the science fiction subgenre of alternate history. Turtledove received his doctorate in history (with a specialization in Byzantine history) from the University of California at Los Angeles and has used that training to good effect in his writing of alternate histories. He has also written more conventional historical novels, often using the pseudonym “H. N. Turteltaub” for that aspect of his writing. His earliest novels, situated within the sword-and-sorcery subgenre of fantasy, were published under the name “Eric Iverson.” The alternate-history novels for which Turtledove is best known have typically combined an unusual amount of historical detail with rousing scenes of warfare and combat, while often bringing in elements from other genres as well. For example, the “Videssos” sequence employs both Turtledove’s knowledge of Byzantine history and elements normally associated with the fantasy genre to follow the exploits of a Roman Legion of the Byzantine era that is transported into the parallel reality of Videssos, which resembles our own world except for the presence of magic. This sequence includes the novels The Misplaced Legion (1987), An Emperor for the Legion (1987), The Legion of Videssos (1987), and Swords of the Legion (1987); it was followed by a second cycle of novels, the “Krispos” sequence, that serves as a prequel to the first. This series includes Krispos Rising (1991), Krispos of Videssos (1991), and Krispos the Emperor (1994). Early in his career as a novelist, Turtledove sometimes veered into fairly conventional science fiction territory, as in the alien-encounter narratives Noninterference (1988) and Earthgrip (1991), the latter of which features a protagonist whose avid reading of science fiction gives him the knowledge necessary to save alien races. Similarly, when Turtledove moved into alternate history, he brought numerous sf motifs with him, as when A Different Flesh (1988) features both an alternate United States and an alternate version of human evolution, or when A World of Difference (1989) is essentially an alternate version of Martian history. With The Guns of the South: A Novel of the Civil War (1992) Turtledove established himself as a leading figure in the realm of alternate history. Here, Afrikaners from the future employ time travel to return to the world of the American Civil War, bringing with them the military technology necessary to ensure a Southern victory. He subsequently gained the title “Master of Alternate History” by supplementing this stand-alone novel with two extensive alternate-history sequences.

U UPLIFT. “Uplift” is a science fictional motif in which a more advanced race intervenes in the evolution of a less advanced race in order to aid the latter in achieving a leap that brings them to a higher level of intelligence or technological sophistication. Most commonly, the uplift motif involves interplanetary relationships in which a race from one planet travels to a less advanced planet and aids in the evolution of a potentially intelligent species there. Narratives in which aliens aid in the advancement of humanity, for example, have been especially popular. However, the motif can sometimes involve the intervention of a more advanced species on a given planet with less advanced species on the same planet, as in the earliest major Uplift story, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), in which the titular mad scientist, using largely surgical techniques, attempts to transform animals on a remote island into humans, inspiring a number of later film adaptations, including the classic Island of Lost Souls (1932). Perhaps the best-known Uplift story in science fiction is another classic film, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which aliens intervene mysteriously in human evolution. The film, of course, was loosely based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” (1951), while Clarke not only was involved in writing the screenplay of the film, but also, in parallel, wrote a novelization of it with the same title, published in 1968. And Clarke, of course, had written an important early Uplift novel in Childhood’s End (1953), in which aliens intervene in human social, and then biological, evolution. Other uses of the basic Uplift concept (though without the use of the term) include the Underpeople of Cordwainer Smith’s “Instrumentality of Mankind” sequence, who are animals raised essentially to human levels for use as slaves. This sequence began with a 1950 short story and ultimately continued to be produced up to Smith’s death in 1966, including four story collections that appeared between 1963 and 1971. Prominent examples of the uplifting of specific animal species include the laboratory rats of Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971)—the source of the animated film The Secret of NIMH (1982)—and the dogs of Clifford D. Simak’s City (1952). 311

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The most extensive treatment of the Uplift motif in science fiction occurs in the “Uplift” sequence by David Brin, which popularized the actual term, beginning with Sundiver (1980). Brin’s sequence hit its stride with the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award–winning Startide Rising (1983). The Uplift War (1987) also won the Hugo and Locus and was nominated for the Nebula for best novel. The series was then extended with the Uplift trilogy, comprising Brightness Reef (1995), Infinity’s Shore (1996), and Heaven’s Reach (1998). In this series, numerous intelligent species participate in a vast interstellar civilization that actively seeks to “uplift” less developed species to join their ranks. Humans do, in fact, join this civilization, though without the benefit of being uplifted by a “patron” species (causing considerable political difficulties for them), because they manage to achieve faster-than-light travel on their own and having already become patrons of a sort by helping chimpanzees and dolphins achieve full intelligence. Among other things, the uplift motif potentially functions as an effective allegorization of the “white man’s burden” legacy of colonialism on earth, and this aspect of the motif often occurs in tales of the colonization of other planets. This aspect of the motif, for example, is featured in Robert Silverberg’s Downward to the Earth (1970), which often echoes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) in its description of the colonization of the planet Belzagor, which involved efforts to uplift the seemingly slow-witted nildoror, who turn out to be much more intelligent than first thought. On the other hand, Iain M. Banks’s “Culture” novels feature an advanced interstellar utopia administered for humans by artificial intelligences, or “Minds,” so advanced that they sometimes intervene in the evolution of other species and societies as well, seeking to help them along because these Minds are both genuinely more intelligent and truly benevolent; unlike the colonialists of earth’s history, they not only want to help but also are actually equipped to do so. Science fiction that involves artificial enhancement of human beings, such as cyberpunk or stories of genetic engineering, can be viewed as a sort of self-Uplift. Similarly, stories of the Singularity involve artificial intelligences that are originally uplifted by their human creators, then take charge of their own further enhancement and uplifting. UTOPIA. See UTOPIAN NARRATIVE. UTOPIAN NARRATIVE. All fiction, even the most supposedly “realistic,” takes place in a world that is different from our own physical reality. Utopian fiction takes place in a world that is different in ways that suggest that the various social, political, and economic ills of the real world have been solved (or are at least being solved), leaving an ideal realm of justice and tranquility.

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As Darko Suvin has suggested, science fiction is special in that it tends to suggest utopian possibilities more strongly than do other forms of fiction, though all fiction has a potential utopian component and overtly utopian texts certainly pre-date science fiction itself. In the Western tradition, the most important early utopian work is Plato’s Republic (380–370 BC), which has influenced many subsquent writers with its vision of an ideal republic ruled by an enlightened elite of specially trained, philosophically minded thinkers, known as the Guardians. The utopian tradition, meanwhile, takes its name from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), which provides more concrete details than Plato’s text, locating its ideal society in an actual physical setting (an island off the coast of South America), even though the Greek word “utopia” literally means “no place.” More’s text also has a stronger narrative component in its story of the visit of European Raphael Hythloday to the island, though it is also a work of satire designed as much to criticize certain elements of More’s England as to literally describe an ideal society. Among other things, More’s society is communitarian in ways that have been highly influential on utopian thinkers ever since. Other utopian works, such as Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1602–1623) and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), followed soon after More’s, but the tradition of utopian fiction received a special boost with the rise of Enlightenment confidence in the perfectibility of human society in the 18th century and onward. There was a particular flowering of such visions in the late 19th century, with such socialist-inspired visions as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), soon followed by H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia (1905). Wells’s book moved more toward modern science fiction and away from the philosophical and sociological speculation that had traditionally informed utopian texts. Meanwhile, the sf pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, especially those produced by Hugo Gernsback, typically contained strong elements of technological utopianism in their vision of a future world made better through advanced technologies. On the other hand, nontechnological utopian visions continued to appear as well, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), a feminist utopia featuring an all-woman society from which men have been excluded for two thousand years, though again Gilman’s novel also served as a satirical critique of the treatment of women in Gilman’s own early 20th-century America. In 1942, legal philosopher Austin Tappan Wright published Islandia, conveying his vision of an idyllic South Pacific island paradise that includes some of the most detailed descriptions of a utopian society in all of literature. Meanwhile, the best-known utopian work of the 1940s is B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two (1948), though this vision of a presumably ideal community centrally informed by the careful behavioral conditioning of the entire popu-

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lation has seemed to many to constitute more of a dystopian narrative. In this sense, Skinner’s novel seems to anticipate the darker turn taken by science fiction in the 1950s, which tends to be much more skeptical of visions of technological utopianism. Indeed, overtly utopian works were rare in the 1950s and 1960s, though one of the hallmarks of science fiction in the 1970s was a resurgence in utopian energies, especially in texts inspired by the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, including Suzy McKee Charnas’s Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), E. M. Broner’s A Weave of Women (1978), Louky Bersianil’s The Eugélionne (1978), and Sally Miller Gearheart’s The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (1978). Gender was also central to the utopian visions of two of the most important science fiction novels of the 1970s, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) and Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton (1976), both of which are “critical” or “open” utopias, informed both by strong utopian energies and by attempts to overcome concerns that utopian societies inevitably drift into stagnation and repression. Worthy of special mention among the utopian science fiction writers of the 1970s is Mack Reynolds, a former Socialist Labor Party activist who produced a large volume of science fiction from the 1960s to the 1980s, most of it clearly informed by his leftist political vision. Much of his work is set in future utopian societies based on socialist principles, including the novels Looking Backward, from the Year 2000 (1973) and Equality in the Year 2000 (1977), both of which revisit and update Bellamy’s earlier utopian novels. Most of the utopias of the 1970s were specifically keyed to more contemporary political concerns. In addition to the feminist utopias of the decade, for example, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) and its less successful sequel, Ecotopia Emerging (1981), were inspired by the emergent environmentalist movement of the time. On the other hand, its vision of an environmentally friendly economic system has numerous socialist characteristics, including relative economic equality for all citizens, worker-owned companies, reformed working conditions, and universally guaranteed social services. Callenbach’s novels have influenced numerous subsequent texts, including the “green” utopia of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990), the third volume of Robinson’s remarkable “Three Californias” trilogy, which also includes the postapocalyptic narrative The Wild Shore (1984) and the dystopian narrative The Gold Coast (1988), suggesting three possible alternatives of the American future. Even more in line with the legacy of Callenbach, Robinson has also edited Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias (1994), a collection of stories describing ecological utopias.

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George Zebrowski’s Macrolife (1979) stands out among the utopias of the 1970s for the way it looks back to the optimism of science fiction in earlier decades. Here Zebrowski envisions high-tech space habitats (the first of which is merely a hollowed-out asteroid) that travel about the galaxy while their inhabitants (human, alien, artificial, or hybrid) are free to develop their individual potentials thanks to a high-tech economy of abundance that has solved all social ills and made it possible for individuals to achieve virtual immortality. At the same time, with no need to compete for resources, individuals in these habitats work well together to the point that each habitat essentially functions as a giant organism of which each individual (whether organic beings or artificial intelligences) is a component part. By the end of the book, this system is so advanced that it can survive even the eventual collapse and death of the universe itself, surviving into the birth of a subsequent universe. Robinson’s later 2312 (2012) involves similar asteroid-based habitats with strong utopian resonances. Meanwhile, the most important science fiction work of the 1990s, Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy, outlines the colonization and terraforming of Mars as an event with great utopian potential. In Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996), Robinson also includes detailed debates among its colonists of the directions in which they should move to take maximum advantage of the utopian potential of an entire new planet, thus creating a dialogue among different utopian visions rather than simply presenting one specific vision. The 1990s also saw the emergence of a new group of British science fiction and fantasy writers (collectively constituting what came to be known as the “British Boom”) who also brought new utopian energies to the genres. China Miéville, in particular, has brought new utopian energy to fantasy, once declared by Darko Suvin to be bereft of utopian potential. Authors such as Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod have imagined utopian futures made possible by technological advances, though both are more interested in the process of movement toward utopia than in the description of actual existing ideal societies. Meanwhile, the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks involve a post-Singularity society managed (for the benefit of humans) by vastly advanced artificial intelligences, who provide an interstellar life of material plenty and socialist justice for their human charges.

V VAN VOGT, A. E. (1912–2000). The Canadian writer Alfred Elton Van Vogt was a leading participant in science fiction’s Golden Age, especially through his early contribrutions to John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science-Fiction, beginning with “Black Destroyer,” which was the cover story in the July 1939 issue of that magazine, immediately propelling Van Vogt into a central position in the rise of the magazine under Campbell’s editorship. He would go on to become one of the most prolific authors in the genre and one of the most influential on later authors, such as Philip K. Dick, who have admired the imagination and craftsmanship of Van Vogt’s work, even if some (Damon Knight was particularly critical of the quality of Van Vogt’s thinking in general) have seen his political vision (such as the occasional expression of admiration for monarchy) as problematic. Van Vogt published numerous stories over the next several years, leaving his job at the Canadian Department of National Defence in 1941 and then emigrating to the United States (where he would live for the remainder of his life) in 1944. Van Vogt moved into novel publication with Slan in 1946, which was constructed from a series of stories originally published in Astounding in 1940, presenting a super-child protagonist with psi powers who was persecuted by ordinary humans. Similarly, The World of Null-A, again with a superhuman hero, first appeared in 1948, constucted from stories first published in 1945. Indeed, with the rise of sf novel publishing in the 1950s, a number of Van Vogt’s earlier stories were patched together to create novels, as was the case with several other Golden Age writers as well. (Van Vogt himself coined the term “fix-up” for such a novel, a term that has since come into wide use in sf discourse.) Van Vogt was highly interested in a variety of (sometimes questionably pseudo-scientific) philosophical ideas, and served briefly, in 1950, as the director of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics organization in California. His exploration of these ideas provided the inspiration for much of his fiction, which he produced at a rapid pace through much of his life, though many felt that his best work had been done by the beginning of the 1950s. Still, much work did appear in the 1950s, beginning with such classics as the fix-up 317

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novel The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951), which joined The Weapon Makers (1946) as an important sequence featuring another superhuman hero. The World of Null-A was also extended into a sequence with The Pawns of Null-A (1956) and Null-A Three (1985). Empire of the Atom (1956) and The Wizard of Linn (1962) comprised another sequence, while Van Vogt published numerous stand-alone novels as well. The best-known of these is a fix-up that includes his original “Black Destroyer” story as The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950). This novel gained particular attention after the release of the important sf film Alien in 1979, when it appeared to many that Van Vogt’s novel, though uncredited, was an important source for the material in the film, leading, in fact, to a lawsuit that was eventually settled out of court—with Van Vogt reportedly receiving a substantial monetary settlement. In 1995, Van Vogt was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; in 1996 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. VANCE, JACK (1916–2013). The American science fiction writer Jack Vance is best known as one of the leading practitioners of the planetary romance, a subgenre that he developed and to some extent defined. Vance, who also published detective fiction (using his full name, John Holbrook Vance), began publishing sf stories in 1945. He also wrote fantasy stories, some of the earliest of which, involving a far-future earth in which magic has become a dominant fact of life, were collected in The Dying Earth in 1950. This collection suggests one of the types of stories that would become a Vance specialty, and his impressive skills at world-building often went into the construction of detailed visions of a ruined and dying earth, often adding fantasy elements to what were essential postapocalyptic narratives. Many of Vance’s earliest sf short stories were not collected until the 1980s. In the meantime, he had further explored the dying-earth motif in a sequence of later volumes, mostly consisting of collections of interlinked stories; these volumes, in their book form, include The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Morreion: A Tale of the Dying Earth (1979), The Bagful of Dreams (1979), The Seventeen Virgins (1979), Cugel’s Saga (1983), and Rhialto the Marvelous (1984). His story “The Last Castle” (1966), also somewhat in the dying-earth mode, won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the Nebula Award for Best Novella. Beyond their own sometimes-quite-effective presentations, these stories have exercised a considerable influence on other writers of dying-earth stories, including Michael Moorcock and Gene Wolfe. Perhaps even more important and influential, however, is Vance’s pioneering work in more straightforward versions of the planetary romance, which has involved large-scale visions of other planets, beginning with Big Planet (1952, revised into a more compact form in 1957). Indeed, inventing unusu-

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ally large planets (and exploring the implications of that planetary size) became something of a Vance specialty. In other volumes Vance pursued the elaboration of detailed social structures that grow in response to unique planetary conditions, often on colonized worlds. Books in this vein include To Live Forever (1956), The Languages of Pao (1958), The Dragon Masters (1963, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Short Story), Space Opera (1965), The Blue World (1966), Emphyrio (1969), and Showboat World (1975). Later, however, he shifted his explorations of alien planets back into a vein that was more purely fantasy, including such works as the “Cadwal Chronicles,” comprising Araminta Station (1987), Ecce and Old Earth (1991), and Throy (1992). By the 1960s, Vance had begun to coordinate most of his science fiction work within a consistent future history based on the future colonization of a fictional region of space known as the “Gaean Reach,” which became the setting for his stories of the colonization of space, though each colonized planet in the region tends to develop relatively independently of the others, so that the various stories are only loosely interrelated. Vance was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1997 and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2001. His 2009 memoir, This Is Me, Jack Vance!, won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work. VARLEY, JOHN (1947– ). The American science fiction writer John Varley published his first sf story in 1974 and quickly became known for his refreshing vision. On the other hand, he has also been seen as an heir to the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein. His work has often involved the exploration of intergalactic narratives and scenarios in which earth is not at the center, even when it takes place in a relatively near-future setting that is not so distant from the world of the present. Ultimately, Varley’s short fiction would win several major awards, including a Hugo Award and Locus Award for Best Short Story for “The Pusher” (1979) and the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Nebula Award (for Best Novella) for “The Persistence of Vision” (1978) and “PRESS ENTER” (1984). Varley moved into novels with The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), an important alien-invasion narrative in which aliens have, in fact, conquered earth, sending humans into exile in space, to which they have adapted via a variety of techniques, including genetic engineering. This novel was later joined by Steel Beach (1992) and The Golden Globe (1998) as entries in the “Eight Worlds” future history, which consistently suggests that humans might have a bleak and limited future on earth—but possibly a brighter one in space. Titan (1979) features a scientific expedition to explore the eponymous moon of Saturn, which turns out to be much richer than imagined. Titan itself, in fact, turns out to be a sentient structure (called “Gaea”) filled with

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wonders, a motif that was further explored in two additional novels in the same sequence, Wizard (1980) and Demon (1984). The time-travel novel Millennium (serialized 1977, expanded book form 1983) later became the basis for a 1989 film of the same title. Varley published two story collections in the 1980s, Blue Champagne (1986) and Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo (1989). Moving forward, however, Varley’s output lagged. His most important later work is probably the young adult Mars colonization sequence of novels that includes Red Thunder (2003), Red Lightning (2006), and Rolling Thunder (2008). Mammoth (2005) is another time-travel novel. Slow Apocalypse (2012) is somewhat of a change of pace into a relatively near-future disaster scenario in which an engineered virus devours the world’s entire oil supply, sending modern civilization into a death spiral. VERNE, JULES (1828–1905). The French author Jules Verne is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of science fiction, even though most of his work is really more in the mode of the adventure story and contains very little in the way of credible scientific detail. Indeed, most of his best-known works were rightfully labeled “scientific romances.” Nevertheless, several of these have proved to be among the most enduring works of 19th-century French literature. Within that tradition, in fact, he is better known as a literary innovator and forerunner of modern movements such as surrealism. In the Anglophone world, however, he is better known as a groundbreaking author for the way in which the adventure elements of his stories were, in fact, enabled by the development of new technologies, making him an important forerunner of modern science fiction, even if Verne was unable to provide a sound scientific explanation for these technologies. Along with some early writing for the stage, Verne wrote the first of his stories related to science fiction in 1851. But the first of his now-classic scientific romances was not published until 1863 with the appearance of Voyage au centre de la terre (1863, English Voyage to the Center of the Earth), in which advenure is interladen with scientific observation during the titular voyage into the depths of the earth. Such mixed voyages would become a Verne trademark, including the groundbreaking lunar voyage of De la terre à la lune (1865, From the Earth to the Moon), the now-famous submarine voyage of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), and the slightly more conventional adventures of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1872, Around the World in Eighty Days) and L’île mystérieuse (1874, The Mysterious Island). These depictions of “Voyages extraordinaires,” or imaginary voyages, remain the works for which Verne is best remembered, partly because all have been adapted to film numerous times, as well as appearing in other formats, such as comic books. But Verne produced other works that might be consid-

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ered science fiction as well. One of the most interesting of these, Paris au XXe siècle, written in 1863, was not published in Verne’s lifetime. In fact, it did not appear until 1994 (English translation 1996 as Paris in the Twentieth Century), after the rediscovery of its long-lost manuscript. Here Verne projects a (to him) future Paris that includes a number of technological innovations, including computers and automobiles. Perhaps more importantly, the novel projects a dystopian narrative set in a world driven by market forces, thus foreshadowing rather accurately the direction in which Western capitalism would evolve in the century after the book was written. Among other things, the pessimism of this rediscovered early work complicates the previous view that Verne’s vision became darker and more pessimistic in his later years. This view, meanwhile, itself seems to have been furthered by the posthumous appearance of such late novels as L’invasion de la mer (1905, The Invasion of the Sea), which were, in fact, extensively rewritten by his son Michel and given a darker tone. Meanwhile, Verne’s literary legacy has also been complicated by the extensive editing and modification of his work in Anglophone markets, where they were perceived as adventure tales for young readers and often bowdlerized accordingly. VINGE, JOAN D. (1948–). Born Joan Carol Dennison, the American science fiction writer Joan D. Vinge took the surname under which she is best known via her marriage to sf writer Vernor Vinge from 1972 to 1979. She began publishing with the novella “Tin Soldier” in 1974, then won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette for the 1977 story “Eyes of Amber.” She moved into the novel form with The Outcasts of Heaven Belt (1978), which was followed by a sequel, Legacy (1980), to constitute the “Heaven” sequence, set in the asteroid belt and exploring the politics of gender in interesting ways. Vinge then established herself as an important voice with the novel The Snow Queen (1980), based on the fairy tale of the same title by Hans Christian Andersen, but also including important science fiction elements with its setting on the ocean planet of Tiamat. The Snow Queen won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. It was then followed by World’s End (1984), The Summer Queen (1990), and Tangled Up in Blue (2000) to constitute the “Snow Queen” cycle of related novels, all of which intermix science fiction and fantasy elements while exploring a number of crucial issues, especially those related to gender. Another important sequence by Vinge is the “Cat” sequence, whose eponymous half-human, half-alien female protagonist has psi powers and felinelike eyes. This sequence, consisting primarily of space opera, began with the young adult novel Psion (1982), but the later entries—including Catspaw (1988) and Dreampaw (1996)—were marketed as for adults. Vinge has also

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authored a number of film and television novelizations and tie-ins, ranging from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi—The Storybook Based on the Movie (1983), to Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), to Cowboys & Aliens (2011). VINGE, VERNOR (1944– ). The American mathematician and computer scientist Vernor Vinge is perhaps best known for his attempts to bring the notion of a technological Singularity to the attention of the general public. However, he is also a highly successful author whose work, especially in large-scale space operas, has received considerable attention for its effective use of his insights into artificial intelligence and the notion of the Singularity, including the winning of numerous awards. Much of his writing is marked by an optimistic sense of the possibilities offered by technological progress on a grand scale, combined with a rather pessimistic vision of the courses that are likely to be taken by the lives of individuals within this larger story. Vinge began publishing sf short stories regularly as early as 1965, and continued while pursuing his principal career as a professor at San Diego State University, from which he retired in 2000. He moved into novel writing in 1966 with the serialization of Grimm’s World, published in book form in 1969. This novel involves planetary colonization and psi powers, as does his second novel, The Wirling (1987). His novella “True Names” (1981), with its extensive use of the concept of virtual reality, is widely regarded as an important predecessor to cyberpunk, though his imagination has tended toward grander visions of a farther future, as when the following sequence, The Peace War (1984) and Marooned in Realtime (1986) involves the discovery of technologies for looking into the future to view the course of human and social development over time. With A Fire upon the Deep (1992), Vinge initiated the “Zones of Thought” sequence, featuring what is perhaps his most innovative science fiction concept: the idea that there are different zones in the galaxy where variations in the laws of physics essentially make possible the attainment of different levels of intelligence (figured as more complex levels of thought and computation) and thus technological progress, with the “fast” zone allowing more development than the “slow” zone. (Earth, alas, is in the slow zone.) A Fire upon the Deep shared the Hugo Award for Best Novel with Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book (1992) and was nominated for most of the other major best sf novel awards, including the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. It was followed by A Deepness in the Sky (1999), set in the same universe (but taking place earlier in time), again gaining numerous Best Novel nominations; it won the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. The “Zones of Thought” sequence was then continued with The Children of the Sky (2011).

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Vinge won still another Best Novel Hugo for Rainbow’s End (2006), which takes place in the same fictional universe as his 2002 Hugo-winning novella “Fast Times at Fairmont High.” Here, humans (in the year 2025) are learning to interact in complex ways with different levels of virtual reality, amid developments that seem to suggest the approach of the technological Singularity that Vinge is so well known for popularizing, beginning with his 1993 essay “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Vinge, in fact, has long worked to call attention to his belief that ongoing developments in computer science are likely to lead to the development of artificial intelligences that will in turn rapidly evolve in intelligence to levels well beyond the human. Vinge’s prominence in this area has caused him to be referenced in a number of works by other sf authors, especially when they deal with artificial intelligence or the Singularity. The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001) is a useful compilation of much of Vinge’s shorter fiction. Vinge was married to sf writer Joan Vinge from 1972 to 1979. VIRTUAL REALITY. A virtual reality is a simulated environment (usually computer generated) with which users can interact as if it is “real.” Though the term itself dates back to the 1930s, the concept of virtual reality as now used came to prominence in the 1980s with the rise of video gaming, which is a classic, if fairly simple, example of such environments. In science fiction, it became prominent during the same period because of its importance to cyberpunk, in which the action takes place largely in the virtual reality of cyberspace. Since that time, the concept has appeared frequently in science fiction, perhaps most famously in the “holodecks” featured in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994). In these more recent manifestations, the virtual reality is almost always computer generated, but sometimes in ways that pose strong philosophical questions about the nature of what we regard as the “real” reality. For example, Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia (1998) suggests that what we regard as reality is itself actually a simulation. Meanwhile, simulated experience in science fiction goes back well before the capabilities of actually existing technologies to generate such realities, as in the “feelies” imagined by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932) or even the materialized fantasies of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris (1961). And, of course, the multiple and variable realities that appear in much of the work of Philip K. Dick can be regarded as forerunners of the contemporary notion of virtual reality. VIRUS. Viruses, both biological and digital, have become an increasingly popular motif in science fiction in recent years. Though biological viruses have come to be understood much better since the discovery of the structure

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of DNA in the 1950s, their existence has been known and studied by scientists since the 1890s. Because of their ability to mutate and spread rapidly, viruses have been a preferred focus of plague narratives, which have quite frequently involved out-of-control viruses. Meanwhile, the fact that much recent research in the biological sciences is related to viruses has opened the way for a variety of virus-related motifs in science fiction. Stephen King’s massive The Stand (1978, expanded edition 1990) features a virus accidentally released from government experiments that leads to an apocalypse that triggers strange supernatural powers in some of the survivors. More recently, Justin Cronin’s The Passage (2010) also depicts the prelude and aftermath of an apocalypse caused by government-sponsored research with viruses, though this time an attempt to create super soldiers leads to an outbreak of vampirism. A popular motif in science fiction, especially since the rise of cyberpunk in the 1980s, has involved computer viruses, which were possibly first envisioned in John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider (1975), an important forerunner of cyberpunk that features “worms” that operate essentially as computer viruses. Viruses appear virtually everywhere in cyberpunk, but also in other very different computer-related tales. For example, the most compelling science fictional image in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) is probably the “Construct Council,” a particularly weird machine that is a conglomeration cobbled together from discarded computers and other devices, having achieved artificial intelligence through the intervention of a virus. Finally, Neal Stephenson’s post-cyberpunk Snow Crash (1992) collapses the distinction between computer viruses and biological viruses with its vision of a drug (the Snow Crash of the title) that can cause humans to be infected by a virtual-reality computer virus. In particular, much of the plot of the novel is driven by a plot by right-wing Texas capitalist fanatic L. Bob Rife to use the drug to spread a virus that can cross the boundary between the “Metaverse” and the physical world, infecting humans in both realms, transmissible either like a computer virus or as a biological virus. Once infected, the victim’s brain comes under the control of Rife, owner of a vast cable television monopoly and the fiber-optic network that runs the Metaverse, as part of the mogul’s plot to gain control of all the world’s information. Hiro leads a fight that ultimately thwarts Rife’s plan, but through Stephenson’s use of the virus as a multifaceted metaphor for such things as religion, capitalism, language, and even powerful ideas in general, Snow Crash warns that advances in technology might subject humanity to new and previously unimagined threats. Numerous works of sf have envisioned the positive use of engineered viruses (though this use often goes wrong), as when Geoff Ryman comments on the marginalization of gay/lesbian identities in The Child Garden

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(1989), which features a world where genetically engineered viruses carry information and thus educate the populace, as well as performing other positive functions. Some of these, however, are rather questionable, as when viruses are used to eradicate homosexuality as “bad grammar.” Meanwhile, engineered viruses also eliminate cancer from the human species in the world of this novel, but carry the unexpected side effect of greatly reducing the normal human lifespan. Similarly, Mira Grant’s Feed (2010) pivots on the separate engineering of two different viruses, one designed to eradicate cancer and one designed to eliminate the common cold. Unfortunately, once released, the two viruses combine to create a hybrid virus that converts those infected into zombies. VONNEGUT, KURT, JR. (1922–2007). One of the leading American satirists of his generation, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. often employed motifs from science fiction in making his points about American society and the human condition in general, while seldom engaging with science fiction itself in any serious way. Indeed, his career began in a relatively conventional science fiction mode with the short story “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” (1950), which addresses concerns related to the role of science in the Cold War arms race with its vision of a protagonist who attempts to prevent his psi powers from being exploited by the government as a weapon, responding by using those powers to destroy existing weapons systems in an attempt to ensure world peace. Meanwhile, Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952), is a dystopian narrative that addresses contemporary concerns about the growing automation and regimentation of the workplace and life in general in the United States in the early 1950s. Vonnegut concentrated on short stories through most of the 1950s; he returned to the novel form in 1959 with The Sirens of Titan, in which he fully displays the whimsical mode of satire for which he is best known, while at the same time deploying a wide array of science fiction motifs, including an interplanetary war between Mars and earth. Mother Night (1962) is not science fiction, but several of its characters reappeared in Vonnegut’s later sf works, thus blurring generic boundaries. Cat’s Cradle (1963) returns to sf in an apocalyptic mode, featuring an invention that threatens to bring about the end of the world. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) is not itself sf, though it does contain an exaggerated premise of the kind that is often found in satire with its story of the only man in the world who still has a conscience. It also introduces sf writer Kilgore Trout (based at least in part on Theodore Sturgeon), who would subsequently reappear in several other Vonnegut novels—as well as in works by other writers, most notoriously as the reputed author of Venus on the Half Shell (1975), actually written by Philip José Farmer.

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One of the texts in which Trout appears is Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969), a complex, somewhat surreal narrative involving sf motifs such as time travel and aliens, but centered on the allied fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II. Slaughterhouse-Five is a complex literary text that has been widely read and widely taught, receiving considerable serious critical attention. Trout also appears as a character in Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye, Blue Monday! (1973). It, along with Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! (1976) seemed to mark the decline of Vonnegut’s writing into a tired (if sometimes amusingly self-parodic) repetition of his earlier motifs. He did, however, still produce some sf highlights late in his career, including two postapocalyptic narratives: Galápagos (1985) and Hocus Pocus, or What’s the Hurry, Sam? (1990). Vonnegut’s last sf novel was Timequake (1997), in which the world reboots back in 1991, but then retraces the same history as before, suggesting (as does much of Vonnegut’s work) the ultimate folly of all human efforts to change things.

W WALTON, JO (1964– ). The Welsh-born Canadian author Jo Walton is known primarily for her award-winning fantasy writing. However, she has also produced work that interfaces with the typical concerns of science fiction. For example, Walton won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel with Among Others (2011), which is essentially a fantasy, but a fantasy in which the protagonist escapes a confining reality through her imaginative engagement with science fiction. Walton’s most directly science fictional work is the alternate history “Small Changes” series, comprising Farthing (2006), Ha’penny (2007), and Half a Crown (2008). Here, the triumph of Nazi Germany has led England to become a Nazi satellite, generating a dystopian narrative in which the English remain subservient to their German masters even decades after the war. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898). H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds was the most important of a number of alien-invasion narratives that appeared in Great Britain in the late 19th century, expressing some of the key anxieties of the period. As such, Wells’s novel established many conventions of the alien-invasion narrative and became the most important founding text of that genre. Meanwhile, the novel’s vision of a relatively underdeveloped Britain being invaded by technologically superior forces from Mars allegorized (and satirized) the phenomenon of British colonial conquest in some particularly obvious ways. The Martians also echo the perceived threat posed to Britain by Germany, while the mechanized war machines of the Martians anticipate the technologization of modern warfare that in less than two decades would lead to the carnage of World War I. The book’s central conceit, though, is the reversal of colonial roles that makes Great Britain the colonized, rather than the colonizer, through which Wells demonstrated the ability of science fiction to produce new perspectives through cognitive estrangement, thus paving the way for some of the most important works of science fiction in all subgenres.

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The War of the Worlds novel is narrated by an unnamed protagonist who is a writer and philosopher and thus able largely to stand in for Wells, though Wells also creates ironic distance from his narrative, implicating himself in the attitudes that the book is clearly intended to satirize. The text thus shows a great deal of literary and rhetorical complexity, despite the simplicity of its basic narrative and message. Wells’s novel has influenced any number of alien-invasion narratives produced since, including various reincarnations of Wells’s text itself. Probably the best-known of these is Orson Welles’s notorious broadcast of a radio play adapted from the novel in 1939, a broadcast so convincing that many took it as a news report of a real Martian invasion (this time of the U.S.), leading to widespread panic. The novel was adapted to film by American director Byron Haskin in 1953, turning the original story into a reflection of the anxieties of the early Cold War years, just as Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation reflected post-9/11 anxieties. See also COLONIALISM; SATIRE. WATSON, IAN (1943– ). The British science fiction writer Ian Watson studied English and French literature at Oxford University, then subsequently taught in Africa, Japan, and Great Britain. However, he devoted himself to writing full time beginning in 1976, following the appearance of his first novels, The Embedding (1973), which engages in a detailed dialogue with the philosophy of language, and The Jonah Kit (1975), an Uplift story involving the uploading of human consciousness into whales. He has been a prolific author in a variety of forms since that time. His extensive output of short stories has appeared in a variety of collections, beginning with The Very Slow Time Machine (1979) and extending through Saving for a Sunny Day and Other Stories (2012). From his much-respected debut novel forward, however, he has gained particular recognition for his work in the novel form. Watson’s extremely versatile production as a novelist is held together by a consistent thoughtfulness as he explores a variety of ideas and scenarios (such as the relationship between reality and perception) in the science fiction form, though the consistent complexity of his ideas sometimes made his work challenging for casual readers. Among his novels of the 1970s, for example, Orgasmachine (published in French in 1976, but not in English until 2010) involves the custom genetic engineering of girls for sexual purposes; The Martian Inca (1977) is an innovative alien-invasion tale in which the invader is a virus; Alien Embassy (1977) involves an attempt to transform the human race, but is more centrally concerned with the institutional use and control of information; Miracle Visitors (1978) and God’s World

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(1979) both focus on human attempts to reach beyond the mundane boundaries of human experience (though not necessarily into the supernatural, despite the titles). Watson’s work at the beginning of the 1980s often veered in the direction of fantasy, and his most important work of the 1980s was the “Black Current/Yaleen” trilogy, comprising The Book of the River (1984), The Book of the Stars (1984), and The Book of Being (1985), which often resembles fantasy. It posits a world divided into two opposed parts by an apparently sentient river. Converts (1984) is a comic treatment of the theme of artificial evolution; Kingmagic (1987) is a game-based fantasy; The Power (1987) and Meat (1988) are primarily horror. In the 1990s, Watson authored the unusual “Books of MANA” sequence—comprising Lucky’s Harvest (1993) and The Fallen Moon (1994)— which is essentially a planetary romance set on a planet that oddly resembles Finland, with a narrative that is in fact based on the 19th-century Finnish Kalevala. Oracle (1997) is a time-travel narrative that engages with the Roman Empire. Mockymen (2002) is another narrative involving aliens visiting earth. In addition to his own fiction, Watson has written intelligently about science fiction in a number of contexts, including such academic journals as Science Fiction Studies. WE (1924). Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, written in the wake of the Russian Revolution, is supportive of the utopian goals of that revolution, while at the same time warning of the possible descent of the energies of any such project into stagnation and repression. Its compelling vision of an oppressive One State makes it the earliest of the three most important founding texts of the genre of the dystopian narrative, joining Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin’s One State is ruled by the principles of scientific rationality, which, the text suggests, is dehumanizing when taken to such an extreme. The citizens of the One State are so dehumanized, in fact, that they have alphanumeric labels rather than actual names. Activities such as art and sex, which might be expected to give citizens an outlet for the expression of their individuality, are in fact thoroughly regulated by the state according to principles of rationality and efficiency. We focuses largely on the travails of one D-503, the narrator and protagonist of the book, as he comes to realize that the constraints of the society around him are stifling his inidividualism, leading him ultimately to revolt, and the book as a whole is rather optimistic in its suggestion that state power can never fully suppress individual expression and desire. D-503 begins the text as a thoroughly orthodox citizen of the conformist society of the One State; he is a scientist who heads up a project to design an interstellar spacecraft that is being built in order to allow the

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One State to colonize outer space. Indeed, the text itself is a diary that he is writing so that it can be taken into space as a message to any extraterrestrials encountered by the ship so that they can immediately recognize the superiority of the rationalist ideology of the One State. He himself, however, quickly comes to question that superiority when he meets a subversive woman, the mysterious I-330. Through his exhilarating sexual encounters (outside the usual state regulation of such activities) with I-330, he begins to question his devotion to the ideology of the One State for the first time. In fact, I-330 convinces D-503 to join the “Mephis,” an underground rebel organization dedicated to the overthrow of the One State. This organization also includes among its members the official state poet R-13, so that poetry joins sexuality as a locus of subversion, paving the way for motifs that would become staples of dystopian fiction, as the sexual and artistic passions of the individual stand against the rationalist control of the state. At the same time, Zamyatin (himself) does not simply reject science and rationality. The revolutionary Mephis tend to be brilliant mathematicians, and many of the book’s most powerful images of alternatives to the sterility of the One State—such as the concept of infinity, the square root of negative one, and non-Euclidean geometry—are themselves derived from science and mathematics. Futher, the Mephis have no qualms about using technology to further the cause of their revolution. On the other hand, the rulers of the One State may not be as strictly rational as they first appear and have indeed derived many of their practices from religious models. Eventually, an all-out rebellion against the One State—and against rationality itself—erupts, causing the state to take action to try to suppress imagination altogether, including literal surgical removal of the part of the brain responsible for imaginative activity. As the book ends, the rebellion is still underway, though, and the outcome remains uncertain. See also RELIGION. WEINBAUM, STANLEY G. (1902–1935). The American science fiction writer Stanley Weinbaum was a pioneer in the sf pulp magazines of the 1930s. In 1934, for example, his story “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) broke new ground with its decription of a complex Martian environment inhabited by a variety of alien creatures. Unfortunately, his emerging career was cut short when he died of lung cancer the next year at the age of 33. In a sense, however, he continued to be a pioneer when, in 1936, a memorial collection of his stories, Dawn of Flame and Other Stories (edited by Ray Palmer) became one of the first book-length works of science fiction to be published in the United States. All of his short fiction was eventually collected as A Martian Odyssey and Other Science Fiction Tales (1975), edited by Sam Moskowitz. Weinbaum also wrote three novels, none of which were pub-

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lished in his lifetime. The best of these is probably The New Adam (1939), which tells the story of a feral superhuman child growing up among ordinary humans. WEIRD FICTION. Weird fiction is a type of speculative fiction, having much in common with fantasy and horror, that emerged in the late 19th century, before those generic labels were in wide use—and before the conventions of those genres had been well established. As a result, early weird fiction (which prominently appeared in the pulp magazine Weird Tales) tended to have relatively little regard for generic boundaries, a characteristic that has caused it to come back into use in recent years as a label for the fiction being produced by writers, such as M. John Harrison and China Miéville, whose work similarly tends to incorporate characteristics from multiple speculative genres, while at the same time showing the influence of earlier writers of weird fiction, such as H. P. Lovecraft. The work of these recent writers has also sometimes been called the “new weird” in order to distinguish it from the earlier incarnation of the genre. WELLS, H. G. (1866–1946). Herbert George Wells was a highly influential thinker and writer who is often considered the founder of modern science fiction. His meditations on history, politics, and philosophy found their first major expression in a series of pioneering science fiction novels (which he himself referred to as “scientific romances”) that includes such well-known works as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). His socialist political ideas are even more clearly expressed in slightly later works such as When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), The First Men on the Moon (1901), The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904), and A Modern Utopia (1905), but all of Wells’s science fiction demonstrated early on the potential of science fiction as a mode of commentary on social and political issues. His utopian narratives have exercised a particularly strong influence on the modern development of that genre, but his scientific romances have been one of the major influences on the development of modern science fiction as a whole. WILHELM, KATE (1928– ). The American science fiction writer Kate Wilhelm has been publishing sf stories since 1956. She published a mystery novel in 1963, and has published numerous mystery novels since that time, including the extensive “Barbara Holloway” series, which occasionally veers into sf territory as well. Her first sf novel, The Clone, was published in 1965. The Killer Thing (1967), set on an alien planet, was then relatively conventional sf. She received her first major recognition as a science fiction writer

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when her story “The Planners” won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1968. She won that same award again in 1987 for her story “Forever Yours, Anna.” In 1986 she won the Nebula for Best Novelette for “The Girl Who Fell into the Sky.” Wilhelm’s most important single work as a writer of sf was Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, a postapocalyptic narrative in which issues related to environmentalism are central, as is the topic of cloning, in which her work has often shown interest. That novel was a finalist for the Nebula for Best Novel and won the Best Novel Hugo Award and Locus Award. She won another Hugo for Best Related Work for Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (2005). Indeed, her most important contribution to science fiction might be her central participation in the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, in which she participated along with husband Damon Knight for many years until his death in 2002, then continued on her own. Wilhelm was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2003; she was given the Solstice Award for her career contributions to speculative fiction in 2009. WILLIAMS, JAY (1914–1978). The American author Jay Williams worked in a variety of genres, but is best known for his successful works of children’s science fiction and fantasy, though these works had appeal for young adult readers as well. After a extensive career as a press agent, Williams had his first major succcess as a writer in 1956, when he and Raymond Abrashkin published the novel Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, featuring the boy-scientist protagonist of the title, who would manage to remain a teenager through the entire run of a series that would extend through 15 novels and for more than two decades, until the publication of Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue in 1977. Abrashkin died in 1960, after the publication of the fifth book in the series. But Williams, arguing that Abrashkin’s contribution to the conception of the series was crucial to the writing of all subsequent novels, insisted that Abrashkin continue to be listed as a coauthor throughout the series, which ranged through a variety of sf subgenres. Williams also wrote a number of sf short stories, many of which were published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. A number of these appear in the collection Unearthly Beasts and Other Strange People (1979). In fantasy, Williams was probably most notable for the stories collected in The Practical Princess and Other Liberating Fairy Tales (1978), which updates a number of traditional fairy-tale motifs in a progressive vein, in particular revising the passive princess stereotype.

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WILLIAMS, WALTER JON (1953– ). The American science fiction writer Walter Jon Williams is most extensively associated with cyberpunk, but has in fact worked in a number of sf subgenres, as well as writing outside of sf altogether. In particular, he is best known for the “Hardwired” sequence of cyberpunk novels, which includes Hardwired (1986), Voice of the Whirlwind (1987), and Solip: System (1989). This sequence includes many typical cyberpunk motifs (such as a blurring of the boundary between the biological and the electromechanical, but also (for cyberpunk) contains an unusual amount of social and political engagement, especially in its critical representation of the role of corporate power in the problematic use of technology. Williams has produced several other novel sequences as well, including the comic “Maijstral” sequence, including The Crown Jewels (1987) and House of Shards (1988); the “Metropolitan” sequence of dystopian narratives, comprising Metropolitan (1996) and City on Fire (1997); the “Dread Empire’s Fall” space opera sequence, comprising The Praxis: Dread Empire’s Fall 1 (2002), The Sundering: Dread Empire’s Fall 2 (2003), and Conventions of War: Dread Empire’s Fall 3 (2005; and the “Dagmar Shaw” sequence of noir thrillers set in the near future, including This Is Not a Game (2009), Deep State (2011), and The Fourth Wall (2012). Among the best known of Williams’s stand-alone novels is Angel Station (1989), which combines cyberpunk and space opera within the context of Williams’s typical critique of the potential abuses of future corporate power. He has also written significant short fiction, beginning with such early stories as “Dinosaurs” (1987, nominated for a Hugo Award), “Witness” (1987, nominated for a Nebula Award), and “Surfacing” (1988, nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula). He has also scored a number of other nominations, especially for the Nebula; he won Nebulas for the stories “Daddy’s World” (2000) and “The Green Leopard Plague” (2004). WILLIAMSON, JACK (1908–2006). Writing as “Jack Williamson” (and occasionally as “Will Stewart”), John Stewart Williamson was one of the true pioneers of American science fiction, beginning with the publication of his story “The Metal Man” in Amazing Stories in December 1928. His numerous early magazine publications (sometimes written in collaboration with Miles J. Breuer) included both stand-alone stories and serial novels. Williamson’s story “The Legion of Time” (1938) was an influential early version of the alternate-history narrative, though his most important early writing was in the space-opera subgenre, including The Legion of Space (1934, revised 1947). Set later as a sort of sequel, Williamson’s 1936 story “The Cometeers” (later part of the 1950 novel The Cometeers) introduced the term “android” to science fiction, while his “Seetee” stories of the 1940s— published as “Will Stewart”—then gathered as the books Seetee Shock

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(1950) and Seetee Ship (1951), are credited with introducing the concept of terraforming. Meanwhile, his Dragon’s Island (1951) introduced the term “genetic engineering” to science fiction. Showing his range, Williamson opened the 1940s with the werewolf/ shapeshifter serial novel Darker Than You Think in 1940 (published in expanded book form in 1948). Also in the 1940s, Williamson wrote the long story “With Folded Hands . . .” (1947), expanded in serial form in 1948 as “. . . And Searching Mind,” then published in book form as The Humanoids (1949), one of Williamson’s most respected works. Here, the humanoids of the title are intelligent robots whose intervention in the affairs of humanity raises a number of questions about the relationship between humans and their technology. It would eventually be followed by a sequel, The Humanoid Touch, in 1980. Two serials from the late 1930s, Legion of Time and After World’s End, were collected as The Legion of Time in 1952, constituting a far-ranging adventure through time in which representatives of conflicting timelines battle to ensure their continued existence. From 1952 to 1955, Williamson wrote the sf comic strip Beyond Mars (based on the “Seetee” stories) for the New York Sunday News. By this time, Williamson was struggling with the writer’s block that would plague him for decades, a condition he battled partly by collaborating with other writers, as in the space opera Star Bridge (1955), written with James Gunn. Williamson collaborated particularly extensively with Frederik Pohl, with whom he wrote a number of works over a period of decades, including the juvenile “Undersea” trilogy (aka the “Jim Eden” trilogy)—comprising Undersea Quest (1954), Undersea Fleet (1956), and Undersea City (1958); the “Starchild” trilogy—comprising The Reefs of Space (1964), Starchild (1965), and Rogue Star (1969); and the “Cuckoo” saga—comprising Farthest Star (1975) and Wall around a Star (1983). Williamson also combatted his writer’s block by moving into the academic study of science fiction. During the 1950s, he enrolled in Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU), from which he gained both a BA and an MA in English Literature, the latter with a 1957 thesis entitled “A Study of the Sense of Prophecy in Modern Science Fiction.” In 1960, Williamson joined the faculty at ENMU, where he remained until 1977, pioneering in the teaching of science fiction at the university level. He got his doctorate from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a dissertation on the science fiction of H. G. Wells in 1964, subsequently published in book form as H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973). Williamson’s memoir Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction (1984) won a Hugo Award, but his life in science fiction was far from over. He seemed to emerge from his writer’s block with Manseed (1982), which returned to his early interest in genetic engineering, and Lifeburst (1984), an interstellar political thriller. Williamson remained productive into the 21st

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century. Indeed, now in his nineties, he opened the new century by winning the John C. Campbell Memorial Award for Terraforming Earth (2001), while his novella “The Ultimate Earth” (2001) won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award for Best Novella, making him the oldest recipient of each award. In 1976, Williamson became just the second writer to be named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; he was a member of the first class to be inaugurated into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1996. WILLIS, CONNIE (1945– ). The American writer Connie Willis began publishing science fiction stories in 1970, but published only intermittently (while working as a teacher). Willis turned to the novel form with Water Witch (coauthored with Cynthia Felice), which was published in 1982, the year she turned to writing full time. Many of Willis’s best early stories are collected in Fire Watch (1985). The centerpiece of Willis’s highly successful career is a sequence of timetravel narratives featuring faculty and students at a future version of the University of Oxford, who use time-travel technology to journey back in time to gather information for their research projects. This sequence began with the story “Fire Watch” (1982), which won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It was then extended with the Hugo-winning novel Doomsday Book (1992), in which an encounter with the Black Death in the Middle Ages threatens to bring that contagion into the future as well. Doomsday Book also won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The next entry in the series, To Say Nothing of the Dog; Or, How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last (1998), also won a Best Novel Hugo, as well as a Best Novel Locus Award. Finally, the two-volume novel Blackout and All Clear (2010), published separately but constituting a single coherent narrative, swept the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for Best Novel. Among Willis’s most important stand-alone novels is the Hugo-nominated near-future media satire Remake (1995), in which classic Hollywood films are digitally updated to remove any content that increasingly conservative morés have now, and the Nebula-nominated Bellwether (1996), which explores the phenomenon of fads. “Fire Watch” was republished in a collection of the same title in 1985, a collection that also included such groundbreaking stories as the deeply disturbing tale of genetic engineering, rape, and animal abuse, “All My Darling Daughters,” which appeared there for the first time because it was too controversial to appear in the sf magazines of the time. Among other notable works of short fiction by Willis is the dystopian narrative “The Last of the Winne-

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bagos,” which won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for Best Novella, becoming the first of four Best Novella Hugos won by Willis to date. “Even the Queen” (1992) won both the Hugo and the Nebula for Best Short Story. With a total of 11 Hugo and 7 Nebula awards to her credit, Willis has won more of these two major awards combined than any other writer. WILSON, ROBERT CHARLES (1953– ). Though born in the United States, the science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson has spent most of his life in Canada. He began publishing sf stories in 1975, but did not publish his first novel, A Hidden Place, until 1986. That novel, along with the later A Bridge of Tears (1991), was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel published as a paperback original; his novel Mysterium (1994), about a small town that is suddenly transported into a parallel world, won the Dick Award. Wilson moved into the first ranks of contemporay sf authors when his novel Darwinia (1998) was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Locus Award for Best Novel. Here, in an unusual variant on the alternate history, a large chunk of the earth of 1912 is seemingly replaced by a corresponding chunk of an alien tropical world. This apparent event, meanwhile, is ultimately revealed to be part of a larger story involving an attempt to preserve consciousness via computer simulation amid the end of the universe as we know it. The Chronoliths (2001), which also pivots on intrusions from another world into this one, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and was again nominated for the Hugo and Locus awards. Wilson’s most successful sequence is the “Spin” trilogy, which began with Hugo-winning Spin in 2005, imagining a situation in which a mysterious membrane suddenly appears around the earth, virtually stopping the passage of time within, while time outside the membrane continues to pass normally. The trilogy was then completed by Axis (2007) and Vortex (2011). The novel Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2010) was also nominated for a Hugo Award. See also CANADIAN SCIENCE FICTION. WINSTON SCIENCE FICTION. The Winston Science Fiction series was a set of 35 juvenile science fiction novels published by the John C. Winston Company between 1952 and 1960. The series began with the publication of 10 novels in 1952, featuring works by such authors as Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Lester Del Rey, and Raymond F. Jones. Del Rey became a particularly frequent contributor in subsequent years, with such authors as Ben Bova, Jack Vance, and Donald A. Wollheim contributing as

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well. The series was also known for the particularly impressive cover art that adorned its dust jackets, produced by such prominent sf artists as Ed Emshwiller, Virgil Finlay, Mel Hunter, and Alex Schomburg. The series was continued into 1961 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, before finally being terminated. In addition to the 35 novels that constitute the main series, one anthology of stories and one nonfiction volume (about spaceflight) were also published as part of the sequence. See also YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION. WOLFE, GENE (1931– ). The American science fiction and fantasy writer Gene Wolfe has established a reputation for stylistically dense works (reminiscent of the best works of literary modernism) written from a Roman Catholic religious perspective. Wolfe began publishing science fiction fairly regularly as early as 1965 and published his first novel in 1970; he has by now amassed an impressive output. He is best known for his breakthrough “Book of the New Sun” sequence, comprising The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1982), and The Citadel of the Autarch (1983). The success of this sequence helped enable Wolfe to leave his engineering job and pursue writing full time in 1984. “The Book of the New Sun” sequence, whose volumes are so closely interlinked as to be rightly considered a single four-volume novel, may be more notable for its complex literary style and technique than for its content, though it is also an interesting tale of a far-future journey through a ruined and dying earth, growing colder and colder as the sun loses power. The various volumes scored a number of major awards and award nominations, including two Hugo Award and two Nebula Award nominations, though its wins were primarily in the realm of fantasy awards. The original tetralogy was extended via a fifth volume in 1987, The Urth of the New Sun. In addition, the universe of the series has provided the setting for other subsequent works by Wolfe, including several stories and two additional sequences of novels, The Book of the Long Sun (four volumes, 1993–1996) and The Book of the Short Sun (three volumes, 1999–2001). These latter sequences extend the science fictional range of the entire epic narrative, involving a long journey on a World Ship and the subsequent arrival at a new world. They include the volumes Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), Exodus from the Long Sun (1996), On Blue’s Waters (1999), In Green’s Jungles (2000), and Return to the Whorl (2001).

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WOLLHEIM, DONALD A. (1914–1990). The American science fiction writer and editor Donald A. Wollheim began his career as a member of the Futurians fan group. Wollheim published sf stories as early as 1934, and he published a number of stories later, especially in the 1940s; he also published a number of novels in the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of children’s science fiction novels. Most of his sf novels for adults during this period were published under the pseudonym “David Grinnell.” His most lasting contributions to the field of sf, however, were almost surely through his work as an editor. At the beginning of the 1940s, Wollheim became the editor of the sf pulps Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories, which featured many stories by his fellow Futurians. He also edited two groundbreaking anthologies that helped to call attention to some of the best work of the early 1940s, including The Pocket Book of Science Fiction (apparently, in 1943, the first book to contain the words “science fiction” in its title) and Portable Novels of Science (1945). After a stint as an editor at Avon Books from 1947 to 1952, Wollheim moved to Ace Books in 1952; there, he edited one of the most important sf lists for the next two decades, including the Ace Doubles series, in which two separate novels were bound together in a Dos-à-Dos format. This series provided a venue for several important writers to make some of their first appearances in the novel format, including Philip K. Dick, who had several of his early novels published in the series. In 1965, Wollheim was responsible for the unauthorized (but technically legal) paperback publication of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, after the author had haughtily refused permission of the work in that lowly form. Arguably, in fact, it was Wollheim’s decision that made the trilogy the popular classic that it soon became. In 1971, Wollheim left Ace to found his own DAW Books (the name of which comes from his own initials); he subsequently made that press a leading force in science fiction and fantasy publishing as well. Wollheim was poshumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. WOMACK, JACK (1956– ). The American science fiction author Jack Womack has produced a number of important works, including the “Dryco” sequence of dystopian narratives, written in a mode that has much in common with cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk sf. The sequence begins with Ambient (1987), which imagines a violent and deteriorating near-future New York in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster that has hastened the city’s decline. Terraplane (1988) focuses on 1930s New York, while introducing an interesting alternate-history narrative; it also continues in its own way Womack’s exploration of a dystopian future world dominated by the machinations of the nefarious Dryco Corporation, as does Heathern (1990).

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Perhaps the most charming volume in the “Dryco” sequence is Elvissey (1993), in which emissaries of the corporation travel into a parallel world to retrieve an Elvis Presley who is still alive there, hoping to bring him back to their world and use his unique charisma for their own ends. One of the most impressive volumes in the series is Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1993), which highlights the stylistic sophistication of Womack’s writing. Narrated by an adolescent girl who comes of age just as her comfortable middle-class world is falling apart, sending her into a violent life on the streets, the novel parallels the changes in the narrator’s life with the dramatic evolution of her language. Womack then concluded the series with Going, Going, Gone (2000). Womack’s stand-alone novel Let’s Put the Future behind Us (1996) also involves Elvis Presley, in a narrative that satirizes the impact of capitalism on post-Soviet Russia. WORLD FANTASY AWARD. The World Fantasy Award is one of the leading awards given worldwide for achievement in the realm of fantasy literature. The awards (which consist of a bust of fantasy/horror author H. P. Lovecraft) have been given out at the annual World Fantasy Convention since 1975. They are given in a variety of categories, including Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Fiction, Best Anthology (multiple author), Best Collection (single author), and Best Artist. There are also special awards in areas such as Life Achievement. In recent years, the Best Novel award has been won by authors such as China Miéville, Nnedi Okorafor, and Lavie Tidhar, whose work blurs the boundary between fantasy and science fiction, indicating the increasing acceptance of that blurring on both sides of the boundary. WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION. The World Science Fiction Convention, more commonly known as “Worldcon,” is an annual convention of science fiction fandom that has been held every year since 1939, except for the years 1942–1945, when it was interrupted by World War II. The event is sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society. In addition to a variety of speeches, panel sessions, film screenings, life performances, autograph sessions, and other marketing and fellowship activities, the convention is the site of the annual ceremony at which the Hugo Awards (initiated in 1953) are given out. Those awards, the most widely recognized in the science fiction industry, are voted on by Wordcon members, that is, by members of the World Science Fiction Society who have registered for the convention.

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The first Worldcon was held in New York City in conjunction with the future-oriented 1939 New York World’s Fair. Since that time the convention has been held at a variety of locations in the United States and around the world, with a new site selected for each year’s convention. Recent sites include Chicago (2012), San Antonio (2013), and London (2014). WORLD SCIENCE FICTION SOCIETY. The World Science Fiction Society is a leading science fiction fan organization. Its most important activity is the sponsorship of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or “Worldcon.” Meanwhile, the most visible aspect of the Worldcon is the Hugo Awards ceremony; those awards have become the best-known and most prestigious awards for achievement in the production of science fiction literature. WORLD SHIP. A world ship is a spacecraft that is so large that it essentially functions as an entire world; in one key type of use of the motif in science fiction, the world ship is so large that those aboard are unaware that they are on a ship at all, but believe that it is a world. The sf concept of the world ship is similar to the concept of the generational starship, or a starship that is designed to overcome the huge distances (and long travel times) of interstellar flight by providing an environment in which those aboard can live out their lives on the ship, generation after generation, until the trip is finally complete. One of the best-known world ship/generational starship stories is Brian W. Aldiss’s Non-Stop (1958, published in the U.S. as Starship), in which those aboard a world ship discover that they are, in fact, on a ship, but still fail to discover the true nature of their situation, which becomes a sort of political allegory. Other examples of giant ships that function essentially as worlds include the enigmatic alien space habitat in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973) and the world ships that lie at the center of Greg Bear’s Hegira (1979) and Plenty in Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty (1990). The Minds of Iain M. Banks’s “Culture” sequence have virtually unlimited technological capability, including the ability to construct vast world ships that provide especially capacious and fulfulling spacefaring environments. In some cases, world ships are literally worlds, as in the early case of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Gray Lensman (serialized 1939–1940; book form 1951), in which full-sized planets are converted into starships, or in James Blish’s Earthman, Come Home (serialized 1950–1953; book form 1955). In Greg Bear’s Moving Mars (1993), Mars becomes a ship, and in Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy alien engineers convert the earth itself into a spacegoing vessel. Such planetary conversions do require extraordinary feats of

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engineering, however, so it is more common to employ smaller “worlds,” such as moons (as in the accidental conversion of earth’s moon into a ship in the 1975–1977 television series Space: 1999, or, even more commonly, asteroids. Perhaps the best example of the latter involves the customized habitats in the interior of asteroids in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 (2012). WYNDHAM, JOHN (1903–1969). The British science fiction writer John Wyndham wrote a number of successful works, many of which were postapocalyptic narratives influenced by the Cold War context in which he produced his most successful work. Wyndham published a number of works under other names in the 1930s, including the “Stowaway to Mars” sequence (as by John Beynon), comprising Planet Plane (1936) and the novella “Sleepers of Mars” (1938, assembled with other materials in a collection of that title in 1973). However, he did not publish a novel under his own name until 1951, with the appearance of The Day of the Triffids, featuring an apocalypse caused by an epidemic of mobile man-eating plants. This novel, adapted to film in 1962, is still perhaps Wyndham’s single best-known work. Several other novels followed in the 1950s, including the postapocalyptic narrative The Chrysalids (1955), which is possibly his strongest novel, as well as his other well-known work, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), adapted to film in 1960 as Village of the Damned (which was then remade in 1995). This unusual alien-invasion story spills over into horror with its vision of the production of children with psi powers who are perceived as a threat to ordinary humans. Wyndham’s stories of the 1950s were compiled in several collections, including Jizzle (1954), Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956), and The Seeds of Time (1956).

X “XENOGENESIS” TRILOGY (1987–1989). Octavia E. Butler’s “Xenogenesis” trilogy—comprising Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989)—combines the alien-invasion narrative with important elements involving the postapocalyptic narrative and genetic engineering to produce one of the most important works of American science fiction in the late 1980s. The trilogy is set in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war that has destroyed most life on earth, leading the alien Oankali to intervene to try to save the human race—or at least the race’s important genetic material—using its advanced understanding of genetic engineering ultimately to create Oankali-human hybrids. In constructing this compelling narrative, Butler demonstrates the potential of science fiction to explore a number of political issues, including the potentially disastrous consequences of the acceleration of the Cold War arms race under the Ronald Reagan administration of the 1980s, as well as colonialism, race, gender, and environmentalism. As the trilogy begins, the few remaining humans appear to have little hope of survival due to the ongoing after-effects of the war. Indeed, the Oankali, who travel about the galaxy in living, biologically engineered ships seeking interesting genetic material to trade in, are forced to place the surviving humans in stasis on their ship for an extended period while the aliens work to repair earth’s environment to the point where it is again liveable. Humans, as it turns out, have a number of unusual genetic characteristics that make them particularly interesting to the Oankali. For example, humans turn out to be an unusually intelligent species, as well as the first race encountered by the star-hopping Oankali to display the phenomenon of cancer, which the Oankali genetic engineers are able to use for purposes such as the regeneration of limbs and organs. Unfortunately, the human tendency toward competition for dominance is an unusually destructive characteristic that the Oankali have to eradicate through their hybridization program. The Oankali themselves are a particularly fascinating alien species that Butler is able to make seem genuinely alien, yet still at least partly comprehensible. Vaguely humanoid, they look somewhat like undersea creatures, 343

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with an array of arms and tentacles, some of which are used for sensory purposes to help compensate for the fact that they have no eyes and cannot “see” in the human sense. They also have an interesting gender configuration, with three sexes, rather than two: males, females, and the gene-manipulating “ooloi.” All three sexes mate, with males and females supplying genetic material, while the ooloi simply serve as facilitators, empathically furthering the bond among the partners while “mixing” the genes of the males and females into the desired configurations. Based on this configuration, the Oankali devise a method through which all three Oankali sexes mate with a human male and female, producing offspring with genetic material derived from all four male and female parents, mixed by the ooloi parent. In Dawn, the Oankali begin their plan to “trade” with humans by selecting cancer-prone African American Lilith Iyapo to serve as a sort of liaison between themselves and the other surviving humans. They cure her of her cancer then awaken her to help them win the other humans over to their plan, though they still encounter considerable xenophobic resistance. In fact, despite their extensive experience and knowledge, the Oankali seem to have underestimated the human resistance to intermingling with alien Others, which seriously complicates their project, though they ultimately succeed, first transferring human settlers back to earth, then overseeing the gradual transition to human-Oankali hybrids. Lilith’s hybrid child, Akin, is the protagonist of Adulthood Rites, a book in which humans (especially males) come off very badly, which assumes that human biology predisposes the species to violence and viciousness. Ultimately, however, it is decided that the humans who refuse to meld with the Oankali should again be made fertile and allowed to reproduce after being moved to Mars, which the Oankali decide to terraform for them. Earth as we know it, however, will no longer exist but will be largely destroyed, as the Oankali-founded villages on earth turn out to be living organisms that will one day grow into living ships and set off into space, taking with them the pieces of the planet to which they are attached. The Oankali “rescue” of earth mirrors European colonial expansion (especially in Africa) in a number of ways: here, a technologically advanced force arrives on earth and takes control of the lives of the indigenous people, forcing them to live according to the values of the invaders. The Oankali establish a political and economic relationship with the indigenous people, but one in which the Oankali paternalistically dictate the terms according to their own needs and desires without negotiation or consideration for the concerns or desires of the indigenous people. On the other hand, the Oankali “invasion” differs from colonialism in a number of ways, especially in that the Oankali do not disrupt a functioning culture, but arrive after human

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culture has already destroyed itself. In fact, the emphasis on “trade” in “Xenogenesis” tends to make the trilogy read as an allegory less of colonialism than of capitalism and our own contemporary period of globalization. Meanwhile, the vast differences between humans and the Oankali make the kind of differences among humans that have long been used to justify a variety of discriminatory practices seem unimportant. In this sense, Butler’s text resonates with a long science fiction tradition in which the appearance of alien invaders causes humans to put aside their petty differences, usually in the interest of mounting a united front against the aliens. But Butler complicates this tradition by depicting the humans who oppose the Oankali as vicious-minded bigots, horrified of difference, so that their sudden willingness to ignore their own racial differences merely signals a displacement of their xenophobic hatred and fear from other humans to the Oankali. See also FEMINISM AND GENDER.

Y YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION. From its early rise in pulp magazines, science fiction has often been thought of as catering to an audience of rather adolescent male readers. This reputation was only enhanced when the rise of the science fiction novel in the 1950s included an emphasis on “juvenile” fiction for young readers. First and foremost here were the “juvenile novels” of Robert A. Heinlein, who published 13 novels between 1947 (when he started publishing novels) and 1959 (when he published his last novel specifically marketed to young readers) that were labeled as “juveniles,” though the last of them, Starship Troopers (1959), fits especially uneasily in that category and was in fact produced by a different publisher after it was rejected by Scribner’s, publisher of all 12 of the others. Heinlein’s first juvenile novel, Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) became the basis for the pioneering 1950 sf film Destination Moon. Many of the Heinlein juveniles are novels of education set specifically in schools or other training environments, as when the young characters of Space Cadet (1948) train to become members of the Space Patrol or when the boys of Red Planet (1949) rebel against an authoritarian schoolmaster, leading to a wider rebellion against the Martian colonial authorities. Despite his sometimes reputation for right-wing politics, most of Heinlein’s juveniles prior to the militaristic Space Troopers espouse a rather liberal politics, though they do emphasize individualism. Other Heinlein juveniles include such titles as Farmer in the Sky (1953), which was given a retroactive Hugo Award in 2001. Heinlein’s fellow Golden Age icon Isaac Asimov also got in on juvenile publishing, though his series of six novels featuring the space ranger Lucky Starr (published between 1952 and 1958) were published under the pseudonym “Paul French.” Asimov would eventually return to young adult science fiction by coauthoring, with wife Janet Asimov, a series of young readers’ science fiction novels based on the adventures of a character named Norby the Robot that was published between 1983 and 1991.

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Another prominent sf writer who wrote juvenile science fiction in the 1950s was Andre Norton, also a prolific writer of fantasy fiction. Norton moved into science fiction with the postapocalyptic narrative Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. (1952, aka Daybreak, 2250 A.D.). Subsequently, she explored a variety of sf motifs in her juvenile novels. For example, many of her novels feature interstellar travel, in the mode of the space opera; parallel worlds are crucial to the framework of her “Crossroads of Time” series; and time travel is the central motif in her “Time Trader” series, though this series also involves recovery of alien technologies, foreshadowing a variant of salvagepunk, as in its second volume, Galactic Derelict (1959). One of the most important forces in juvenile science fiction in the 1950s was the Winston Science Fiction series, which published 35 juvenile sf novels from 1952 to 1960; nine of the novels (plus the series’ lone nonfiction science book, on rocket travel in space) were written by Lester Del Rey, who also edited much of the series. Other authors to appear in the series include Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, Raymond F. Jones, and Jack Vance. In 1956, Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin published Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, thus initiating a successful juvenile science fiction series featuring boy-scientist Danny Dunn that would extend through 15 novels and for more than two decades, until the publication of Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue in 1977. In general, though, juvenile science fiction receded in prominence after the 1950s; with most of the leading sf writers moving into more mature subject matter, relatively minor writers such as William Sleator became leading figures in juvenile sf during the 1970s and 1980s. Sleator’s fiction, in works such as House of Stairs (1974) and The Green Futures of Tycho (1981), took on a decidedly darker tone than most of the juvenile sf of the 1950s. Indeed, juvenile sf seemed to take something of a turn (with texts such as Norton’s 1976 novel Outside) toward postapocalyptic narratives and dystopian narratives during this period, culminating in Lois Lowry’s highly successful The Giver in 1993. Meanwhile, there were occasional highlights along the way in other modes, such as Orson Scott Card’s much-admired Ender’s Game (1985). In Great Britain Peter Dickinson’s Eva was a step toward greater sophistication in sf for younger readers. Most recently, works such as Scott Westerfeld’s steampunk novel Leviathan (2011), set in an alternate-history version of World War I, have broadened the range of young adult sf even more. The explosive success of the Harry Potter novels beginning in the latter 1990s contributed to a general increase in interest in speculative fiction for juveniles, including science fiction. In the early years of the 21st century, young adult science fiction has reached new prominence; many leading sf writers, including British Boom members China Miéville and Ian McDonald and American Paolo Bacigalupi, have produced work for younger

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readers. Meanwhile, the trend toward dystopian and postapocalyptic young adult fiction has continued, especially in American young adult fiction, where Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy (2008–2010) became one of the publishing phenomena of the early 21st century. Other key works in this mode have included Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines (2001), M. T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008). See also CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION.

Z ZAMYATIN, YEVGENY (1884–1937). The Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, trained as an engineer, made a major contribution to the development of the modern dystopian narrative with the publication of We (which first appeared, in its English translation, in 1924, but was not published in Russian in the Soviet Union until 1988), which warned against the possible deterioration of any revolution (including the recent one in Russia) into tyranny. In its depiction of the rationalist One State, in which individuals have lost not only their distinctive individual identities but also even their humanity in the interest of the larger needs of the state, We endorsed the goals of the Russian Revolution, but expressed skepticism that the goals would actually be achieved. Zamyatin began writing satires as early as 1911, leading to considerable trouble with the Russian authorities. In 1916, he was sent to England to help the British build ice-breakers to aid in the World War I war effort. While in England, he wrote The Islanders and A Fisher of Men, both of which (satirizing the English society he encountered while there) were published in 1917, the year Zamyatin returned to Russia just in time for the October Revolution. He continued to write in a satirical vein, often coming into conflict with the authorities in the new Soviet Union because of his expressed warnings that their project was leading not to socialism, but to stagnation. As a result, he had trouble publishing in his homeland and was known mostly in the West until quite recently. ZELAZNY, ROGER (1937–1995). The American fantasy and science fiction writer Roger Zelazny was one of the most prolific, groundbreaking authors of his time. Best known for his “Chronicles of Amber” series, Zelazny was a much-awarded author who drew extensively on world mythologies in constructing his fantasy works, but also employed important motifs from science fiction. Often associated with the New Wave, Zelazny wrote fantasy works that were complex, ironic, and linguistically complex, thus moving the genre into a new phase of its evolution.

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Zelazny began publishing sf and fantasy in 1962, though his work with the Social Security Administration limited the time he was able to spend on writing until his retirement from the civil service to devote himself to writing full time in 1969. Some of his most interesting work, however, was done prior to 1969, including a number of early stories, some of the best (and most experimental) of which were compiled in Four for Tomorrow (1967) and The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971). This Immortal (serialized in 1965 as “. . . And Call Me Conrad”; book form 1966) won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, establishing Zelazny as a writer to be reckoned with. The Dream Master (serialized in 1965 as “He Who Shapes”; book form 1966) won a Nebula Award for Best Novella. Lord of Light (1967) won the Hugo for Best Novel and may be Zelazny’s most successful stand-alone book. The early work outside the “Amber sequence” includes Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969) and the two-novel sequence Isle of the Dead (1969) and To Die in Italbar (1973). Zelazny’s move into full-time writing made him both more prolific and, perhaps, more conscious of commercial appeal. In the 1970s, he produced a number of works, including sf thrillers. But the most immediate and important result of his turn to full-time writing was his first “Amber” sequence, also known as the “Amber: Corwin” sequence (after its hero), comprising Nine Princes in Amber (1970), The Guns of Avalon (1972), Sign of the Unicorn (1975), The Hand of Oberon (1976), and The Courts of Chaos (1978). All of these individual volumes were compiled into a single omnibus as The Chronicles of Amber in 1979. The second “Amber” sequence, “Amber: Merlin,” features Corwin’s son Merlin and includes Trumps of Doom (1985), Blood of Amber (1986), Sign of Chaos (1987), Knight of Shadows (1989), and Prince of Chaos (1991). The sequence, meanwhile, was supplemented by Roger Zelazny’s Visual Guide to Castle Amber (1988, coauthored with Neil Randall). ZINOVIEV, ALEXANDER (1922–2006). Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev was a Russian logician who wrote dissident fictions critical of the Soviet regime, which he satirically depicted as a dystopian state. His most important work is the massive The Yawning Heights, first circulated informally in the Soviet Union as an underground samizdat text and later published in Switzerland (in 1976); it depicts a dystopian “Ibansk” (roughly, “Fuck-up Land”) that satirizes the absurdities of the Soviet system, though much of its critique is directed at the liberal intelligentsia who are supposedly working for the reform of that system. The text is presented as existing fragments of a semidecomposed manuscript that has been discovered in a garbage dump thousands of years in the future. These fragments feature a cast of quasiallegorical characters, such as “Boss,” who roughly corresponds to Joseph Stalin; “Hog,” who resembles Nikita Khrushchev; “Teacher,” who recalls

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Vladimir Lenin; and “Demagogue,” who is reminiscent of Leon Trotsky. Other characters are more generally representative of types of individuals among the Soviet intelligentsia, including a pro-regime hack “Writer,” “Painter” (an untalented artist who succeeds by flattering those in power), “Thinker” (a dull-witted but highly orthodox philosopher), and “Chatterer” (a scientist who functions as a voice of relative sanity in the book). All in all, The Yawning Heights is a complex, sprawling, lively text. However, despite its comic tone and carnivalesque imagery, the book suggests a dark view of Ibanskian society, suggesting that the society’s most serious problems are sheer repetitiveness and boredom, and that these problems are unlikely to be overcome any time soon. After the publication abroad in 1978 of a second futuristic satire criticizing the Soviet regime, The Radiant Future, Zinoviev was allowed to leave the Soviet Union with his family. They settled in Munich, where they remained until 1999, when Zinoviev returned, now as a harsh critic of the postSoviet regime who had moderated his view of the Soviet Union, meanwhile becoming a critic of capitalism and a proponent of communism.

Bibliography

CONTENTS Introduction General Thematic Studies Aliens and the Other Alternate History Artificial Intelligence British Boom Colonialism and Postcolonialism Comedy Cyberpunk Dystopian Narratives Environmentalism Fandom and Magazines Feminism and Gender Language Military Science Fiction Politics Postapocalyptic Narratives Posthuman Science Fiction Postmodernism Race and Ethnicity Religion Robots Sexuality Space Opera and Space Travel Time Travel Utopian Narratives Young Adult and Children’s Science Fiction National Literatures Australia Canada China Great Britain Japan 355

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Latin America Russia/Soviet Union Individual Authors General Douglas Adams Brian W. Aldiss Poul Anderson Piers Anthony Isaac Asimov Margaret Atwood J. G. Ballard Iain M. Banks Greg Bear Alfred Bester James Blish Anthony Boucher Leigh Brackett Ray Bradbury Fredric Brown John Brunner Edgar Rice Burroughs Octavia E. Butler John W. Campbell Jr. Karel Čapek Orson Scott Card Arthur C. Clarke Hal Clement Samuel R. Delany Philip K. Dick Thomas M. Disch Gardner Dozois Harlan Ellison Philip José Farmer Neil Gaiman William Gibson Charlotte Perkins Gilman Nicola Griffith Joe Haldeman Robert A. Heinlein Frank Herbert Nalo Hopkinson Aldous Huxley Gwyneth Jones

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Ursula K. Le Guin Stanisław Lem Jonathan Lethem H. P. Lovecraft Ken MacLeod Ian McDonald China Miéville Walter M. Miller Jr. Michael Moorcock Richard K. Morgan George Orwell Ray Palmer Marge Piercy Frederik Pohl Kim Stanley Robinson Salman Rushdie Joanna Russ Robert Sheckley Robert Silverberg Cordwainer Smith E. E. Smith Norman Spinrad Olaf Stapledon Neal Stephenson Boris and Arkady Strugatsky Theodore Sturgeon James Tiptree Jr. A. E. Van Vogt Jack Vance Jules Verne Kurt Vonnegut Jr. H. G. Wells Jack Williamson Gene Wolfe Jack Womack Evgeny Zamyatin Roger Zelazny Alexander Zinoviev References Works Internet Resources



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INTRODUCTION After a gradual rise from the early 19th century to the 1930s, science fiction has become one of the most important phenomena in global culture. From the rise of sf pulp magazines in the 1930s until the emergence of the New Wave in the 1960s, the evolution of science fiction was driven by creators and fans, with relatively little in the way of serious critical attention to the genre. Much of the commentary was produced by fans in their own “fanzines” or by sf writers such as Damon Knight, who were also insightful critics. As science fiction itself became more sophisticated and more literary, however, it attracted some of the leading academic critics and literary theorists. Since the 1970s, science fiction has generated a vast body of sophisticated academic criticism while continuing to inspire fan-oriented commentaries and reviews. Probably the leading figure in the rise of academic sf criticism was the Croatian-born Darko Suvin, whose move to Canada in 1968 led to the publication, in English, of a substantial body of work over the next decade that identified science fiction as the literature of “cognitive estrangement,” able to produce new insights and new perspectives like no other literary form. Much of Suvin’s work in the 1970s was ultimately published in the collection Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, and Suvin’s work has subsequently influenced many of the sophisticated critics who followed, especially those (like Fredric Jameson) who see the special progressive political potential of the genre. The 1970s also saw the rise of important academic journals devoted to sf criticism, including the British journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, founded in 1972, and the American journal Science Fiction Studies, founded in 1973. These journals, however, were preceded (and accompanied) by the journal Extrapolation, founded by Thomas Clareson, in 1959. By the 1980s, critical and historical studies of science fiction were virtually an industry unto themselves. Brian W. Aldiss’s Billion-Year Spree (1973) was the first major historical survey of the genre, but such studies became common in the 1980s. Doctoral dissertations on science fiction also became commonplace, such as the one on Philip K. Dick by Kim Stanley Robinson (1982), who, by the end of the decade, would be an important sf author himself. Increasingly, sf criticism came to be dominated by professional critics and scholars rather than fans or authors, although there are overlaps in these categories. There are now dozens of book-length critical studies of science fiction, ranging from reference works to far-ranging historical surveys to thematic studies to detailed analyses of the work of specific authors. Indeed, the maturity of secondary sf literature is such that a number of recent works have

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attempted surveys of the field that incorporate surveys of the secondary literature, ranging from M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas’s The Science Fiction Handbook (2009) to edited volumes of essays by multiple authors, including The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn), Blackwell’s A Companion to Science Fiction (2005, edited by David Seed), and the recent Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014, edited by Rob Latham). Meanwhile, science fiction itself has continually become more variable and more sophisticated over the years, so the boundaries between the genre and literary fiction are now quite vague, as is the once fairly clear line between science fiction and fantasy. As a result, the genre not only repays but also demands even more serious critical attention, so the secondary literature on science fiction, already quite large and various, promises to become ever richer in the coming years.

GENERAL Aldiss, Brian W. Billion Year Spree. London: Gollancz, 1973. Revised edition, with David Wingrove, as Trillion Year Spree. London: Gollancz, 1986. Alkon, Paul K. Origins of Futuristic Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. ———. Science Fiction before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. Boston: Twayne, 1994. Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. London: Gollancz, 1960. Armytage, W. H. G. Yesterday’s Tomorrows: A Historical Survey of Future Societies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Atwood, Margaret. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2011. Booker, M. Keith, ed. Critical Insights: Contemporary Speculative Fiction. Ipswich. MA: Salem Press, 2013. Booker, M. Keith, and Anne-Marie Thomas. The Science Fiction Handbook. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Bould, Mark, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts, and Sherryl Vint, eds. The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2009. Bould, Mark, and Sherryl Vint. The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2011. Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008.

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Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Gunn, James, and Matthew Candelaria, eds. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Hollinger, Veronica, and Joan Gordon, eds. Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. James, Edward. Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. James, Edward, and Farah Mendlesohn, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Jones, Gwyneth. Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Landon, Brooks. Science Fiction after 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars. Boston: Twayne, 1997. Latham, Rob, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Luckhurst, Roger. Science Fiction. London: Polity, 2005. Parrinder, Patrick, ed. Learning from Other Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. ———. Science Fiction: A Critical Guide. London: Longmans, 1979. Philmus, Robert. Into the Unknown: Science Fiction from Francis Godwin to H. G. Wells. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Pierce, John J. Foundations of Science Fiction: A Study in Imagination and Evolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. Roberts, Adam. The History of Science Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ———. Science Fiction. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Rose, Mark. Alien Encounters: Anatomy of Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Seed, David, ed. A Companion to Science Fiction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. ———. Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Spinrad, Norman. Science Fiction in the Real World. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. ———. Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988. Vint, Sherryl. Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Westfahl, Gary. The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1998.

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Willis, Martin. Mesmerists, Monsters, and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth Century. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006. Wolfe, Gary K. Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. ———. The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1979. Wollheim, Donald A. The Universe Makers: Science Fiction Today. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

THEMATIC STUDIES Aliens and the Other Booker, M. Keith. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946–1964. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Slusser, George, and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Aliens: The Anthropology of Science Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Vint, Sherryl. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2010. Alternate History Beatty, Greg. “Varieties of History in Steven Barnes’s Lion’s Blood.” New York Review of Science Fiction 15.7 (March 2003): 1, 4–6. Cowley, Robert. What If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999. Hellekson, Karen. The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001. Artificial Intelligence Sims, Christopher A. Tech Anxiety: Artificial Intelligence and Ontological Awakening in Four Science Fiction Novels. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Warrick, Patricia. “Images of the Machine-Man Intelligence Relationship in Science Fiction.” Many Futures, Many Worlds: Theme and Form in Science Fiction. Ed. Thomas D. Clareson. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1977.

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British Boom Bould, Mark, Andrew M. Butler, and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., eds. Special issue on the British SF Boom. Science Fiction Studies 30.3 (November 2003). Butler, Andrew. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the British Boom.” Science Fiction Studies 30.3 (2003): 374–93. Luckhurst, Roger. “Cultural Governance, New Labor, and the British SF Boom.” Science Fiction Studies 30.3 (November 2003): 417–35. Colonialism and Postcolonialism Attebery, Brian. “Aboriginality in Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 32.3 (November 2005): 385–404. Chambers, Claire. “Postcolonial Science Fiction: Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39.1 (2004): 57–72. Hoagland, Ericka, and Reema Sarwal. Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World: Essays on Postcolonial Literature and Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Hopkinson, Nalo, and Uppinder Mehan, eds. So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. Kerslake, Patricia. Science Fiction and Empire. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2007. Langer, Jessica. Postcolonialism and Science Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Mehan, Uppinder. “The Domestication of Technology in Indian Science Fiction Short Stories.” Foundation 74 (Autumn 1998): 54–66. Nelson, Diane M. “A Social Science of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery: The Calcutta Chromosome, the Colonial Laboratory, and the Postcolonial New Human.” Science Fiction Studies 30 (2003): 246–66. Raja, Masood Ashraf, Jason W. Ellis, and Swaralipi Nandi, eds. The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Rieder, John. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008. Smith, Eric D. Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

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Comedy Hassler, Donald M. Comic Tones in Science Fiction: The Art of Compromise with Nature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Cyberpunk Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Butler, Andrew M. The Pocket Essential Cyberpunk. Harpendon: Pocket Essentials, 2000. Clareson, Thomas D., ed. SF: The Other Side of Realism, Essays on Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1971. Csiscery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. “Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism.” Mississippi Review 47/48 (1988): 266–78. Dery, Mark. Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Featherstone, Mike, and Roger Burrows, eds. Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Foster, Thomas. The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Heuser, Sabine. Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and Science Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. McCaffery, Larry, ed. Storming the Reality Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Murphy, Graham J., and Sherryl Cint, ed. Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2010. Nixon, Nicola. “Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?” Science Fiction Studies 19.2 (1992): 219–35. Rosenthal, Pam. “Jacked In: Fordism, Cyberpunk, Marxism.” Socialist Review 21 (1991): 79–104. Ross, Andrew. Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits. London: Verso, 1991. Slusser, George E., and Tom Shippey, eds. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Sterling, Bruce. Preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. New York: Arbor House, 1986, vii–xiv.

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Dystopian Narratives Baker-Smith, Dominic, and C. C. Barfoot, eds. Between Dream and Nature: Essays on Utopia and Dystopia. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987. Beauchamp, Gorman. “Technology in the Dystopian Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies 32.1 (1986): 53–63. Booker, M. Keith, ed. Critical Insights: Dystopia. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2013. ———. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. ———. Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Brown, E. J. “Brave New World,” “1984,” and “We”: An Essay on AntiUtopia. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1976. Hillegas, Mark. The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Huntington, John. “Utopian and Anti-Utopian Logic: H. G. Wells and His Successors.” Science-Fiction Studies 9 (1982): 122–46. Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987. Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. London: Methuen, 1986. ———. Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. Moylan, Tom, and Raffaella Baccolini, eds. Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination. London: Routledge, 2003. Rabkin, Eric S., Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph Olander. No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. Walsh, Chad. From Utopia to Nightmare. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972. Environmentalism Baratta, Chris, ed. Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. Canavan, Gerry, and Kim Stanley Robinson, eds. Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014. Otto, Eric C. Green Speculations: Science Fiction and Transformative Environmentalism. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012. Stratton, Susan. “The Messiah and the Greens: The Shape of Environmental Action in Dune and Pacific Edge.” Extrapolation 42.4 (2001): 301–16.

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Yanarella, Ernest J. The Cross, the Plow, and the Skyline: Contemporary Science Fiction and the Ecological Imagination. Parkland, FL: Brown Walker Press, 2001. Fandom and Magazines Ashley, Michael. The History of the Science Fiction Magazines. 4 vols. London: New English Library, 1974–1978. ———. The Time Machines: The Story of the Science Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2001. Carter, Paul A. The Creation of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Cheng, John. Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Del Rey, Lester. The World of Science Fiction, 1926–1976: The History of a Subculture. New York: Garland, 1976. Knight, Damon. The Futurians. New York: John Day, 1977. Tymn, Marshall, and Michael Ashley, eds. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. Warner, Harry, Jr. All Our Yesterdays: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties. Chicago: Advent, 1969. Feminism and Gender Albinski, N. B. Women’s Utopias in British and American Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988. Armitt, Lucie, ed. Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 1991. ———. “Your Word Is My Command: The Structures of Language and Power in Women’s Science Fiction.” Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction. Ed. Lucie Armitt. London: Routledge, 1991, 123–38. Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2002. Balsamo, Anne. Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Bammer, Angelika. Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s. New York: Routledge, 1991. Barr, Marleen. Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987.

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———. Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992. ———, ed. Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. ———. Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Barr, Marleen, and Nicholas Smith, eds. Women and Utopia: Critical Interpretations. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983. Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Donawerth, Jane L. Frankenstein’s Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Glorie, Josephine Carubia. “Feminist Utopian Fiction and the Possibility of Social Critique.” Political Science Fiction. Ed. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Hollinger, Veronica. “Feminist Theory and Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 125–36. Larbalestier, Justine. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. ———, ed. Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the TwentyFirst Century. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006. Lefanu, Sarah. In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction. London: Women’s Press, 1988. Merrick, Helen. “Gender in Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 241–52. Pearson, Wendy. “Science Fiction and Queer Theory.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 149–60. Roberts, Robin. A New Species: Gender and Science in Science Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Staicar, Tom, ed. The Feminine Eye: Science Fiction and the Women Who Write It. New York: Ungar, 1982. Thomas, Anne-Marie. “To Devour and Transform: Viral Metaphors in Science Fiction by Women.” Extrapolation 41.2 (2000): 143–60. Wolmark, Jenny. Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994.

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Language Armitt, Lucie. “Your Word Is My Command: The Structures of Language and Power in Women’s Science Fiction.” Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction. Ed. Lucie Armitt. London: Routledge, 1991, 123–38. D’haen, Theo. “Language and Power in Orwell and Burgess.” Essays from Oceania and Eurasia: George Orwell and 1984. Ed. Benoit J. Suykerbuyk. Antwerp: Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen, 1984, 43–55. Meyers, Walter E. Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. Military Science Fiction Clarke, I. F. Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763–3749. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Davies, Philip John, ed. Science Fiction, Social Conflict, and War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Franklin, Bruce. War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hantke, Steffen. “Surgical Strikes and Prosthetic Warriors: The Soldier’s Body in Contemporary Science Fiction.” Science-Fiction Studies 25 (1998): 495–509. Slusser, George, and Eric S. Rabkin. Fights of Fancy: Armed Conflict in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. Spark, Alasdair. “The Art of Future War: Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and Vietnam.” Essays and Studies 43 (1990): 133–65. Politics Bould, Mark, and China Miéville, eds. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009. Hassler, Donald M., and Clyde Wilcox, eds. New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. ———, eds. Political Science Fiction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005. Michaels, Walter Benn. “Political Science Fictions.” New Literary History 31 (2000): 649–64. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979.

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Postapocalyptic Narratives Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Booker, M. Keith. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946–1964. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. ———. Superpower: Heroes, Ghosts, and the Paranormal in American Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Brians, Paul. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895–1984. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1987. Evans, Joyce A. Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Hendershot, Cyndy. Paranoia, the Bomb, and 1950s Science Fiction Films. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1999. Rosen, Elizabeth. Apocalyptic Transformations: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. Seed, David. American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966, 209–25. Weart, Spencer R. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Posthuman Science Fiction Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Porush, David. The Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1985. Vint, Sherryl. Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Warrick, Patricia S. The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980. Postmodernism Broderick, Damien. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 1995. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

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Wolmark, Jenny. Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Race and Ethnicity Golumbia, David. “Black and White World: Race, Ideology, and Utopia in Triton and Star Trek.” Cultural Critique (1995–1996): 75–95. Lavender, Isiah. Race in American Science Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Lennard, Elisabeth Ann, ed. Into Darkness Peering: Race and Color in the Fantastic. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013. Religion Reilly, Robert, ed. The Transcendent Adventure: Studies of Religion in Science Fiction/Fantasy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Robots Lem, Stanisław. “Robots in Science Fiction.” SF: The Other Side of Realism. Ed. Thomas D. Clareson. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1971, 307–25. Thomsen, Christian W. “Robot Ethics and Robot Parody: Remarks on Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Some Critical Essays and Short Stories by Stanislaw Lem.” The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction. Ed. Thomas P. Dunn and Richard D. Erlich. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982, 27–39. Warrick, Patricia. “Images of the Machine-Man Intelligence Relationship in Science Fiction.” Many Futures, Many Worlds: Theme and Form in Science Fiction. Ed. Thomas D. Clareson. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1977. Sexuality Pearson, Wendy Gay, Joan Gordon, and Veronica Hollinger, eds. Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2008.

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Space Opera and Space Travel Green, Roger Lancelyn. Into Other Worlds: Space Flight in Fiction from Lucian to Lewis. New York: Abelard-Schumann, 1958. Nicholson, Marjorie Hope. Voyages to the Moon. New York: Macmillan, 1948. Wachhorst, Wyn. The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Westfahl, Gary, ed. Space and Beyond: The Frontier Theme in Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Time Travel Foote, Bud. The Connecticut Yankee in the Twentieth Century: Travels to the Past in Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Nahin, Paul J. Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999. Westfahl, Gary, George Slusser, and David Leiby. Worlds Enough and Time: Explorations of Time in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Utopian Narratives Albinski, N. B. Women’s Utopias in British and American Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988. Bammer, Angelika. Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s. New York: Routledge, 1991. Barr, Marlene, and Nicholas Smith, eds. Women and Utopia: Critical Interpretations. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983. Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. 1954–1959. 3 vols. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. 1986. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Bloomfield, P. Imaginary Worlds, or the Evolution of Utopia. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1932. Brown, E. J. Brave New World, 1984, and We: An Essay on Anti-Utopia. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1976. Davis, J. C. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Elliott, Robert C. The Shape of Utopia: Studies in a Literary Genre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

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Ferns, Chris. Narrating Utopias: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Fitting, Peter. “Positioning and Closure: On the ‘Reading Effect’ of Contemporary Utopian Fiction.” Utopian Studies 1 (1987): 23–36. Freedman, Carl. “Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview.” Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia. Ed. Patrick Parrinder. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001, 72–97. Glorie, Josephine Carubia. “Feminist Utopian Fiction and the Possibility of Social Critique.” Political Science Fiction. Ed. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005. Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by Louis Wirth and Edward A. Shils. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960. Manuel, Frank, ed. Utopias and Utopian Thought. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Manuel, Frank, and Fritzie P. Manuel, eds. Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Ruppert, Peter. Reader in a Strange Land: The Activity of Reading Literary Utopias. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Wegner, Phillip E. Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Williams, Raymond. “Utopia and Science Fiction.” Science-Fiction Studies 5 (1978): 203–14. Young Adult and Children’s Science Fiction Hintz, Carrie. “Monica Hughes, Lois Lowry, and Young Adult Dystopias.” The Lion and the Unicorn 26 (2002): 254–64. Hintz, Carrie, and Elaine Ostry, eds. Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults. London: Routledge, 2003. Mendlesohn, Farah. The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teen’s Science Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. Reid, Susan Elizabeth. Presenting Young Adult Science Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1998. Sands, Karen, and Marietta Frank. Back in the Spaceship Again: Juvenile Science Fiction Series since 1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

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Stewart, Susan Louise. “A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry’s The Giver.” The Lion and the Unicorn 31 (2007): 21–35. Sullivan, C. W., III, ed. Young Adult Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

NATIONAL LITERATURES Australia Blackford, Russell, Van Ikin, and Sean McMullen. Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. McMullen, Sean, Steven Paulsen, and Paul Collins, eds. The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998. Canada Ketterer, David. Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. China Huss, Mikael. “Journey to the West: SD’s Changing Fortunes in Mainland China.” Science Fiction Studies 27.1 (2000): 92–104. Wu Yan, and Veronica Hollinger, eds. “Special Issue on Chinese Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 119 (March 2013). Great Britain Kincaid, Paul. A Very British Genre: A Short History of British Fantasy and Science Fiction. Folkestone: British Science Fiction Association, 1995. Ruddick, Nicholas. Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.

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Japan Bolton, Christopher, et al. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Matthew, Robert. Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society. London: Routledge, 1989. Latin America Bell, Andrea L., and Yolanda Molina-Gavilan, eds. Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. Dziubinskyj, Aaron. “The Birth of Science Fiction in Spanish America.” Science Fiction Studies 30.1 (2003): 21–32. Ginway, M. Elizabeth. Brazilian Science Fiction: Cultural Myths and Nationhood in the Land of the Future. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004. ———. “A Working Model for Analyzing Third World Science Fiction: The Case of Brazil.” Science Fiction Studies 32.3 (November 2005): 467–94. Lockhart, Darrel B. Latin American Science Fiction Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Russia/Soviet Union Gakov, Vladimir. “Laser Ray in 1926: Alexei Tolstoy’s Science Fiction.” Soviet Literature 1 (1983): 161–69. McGuire, Patrick L. Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985. Nudelman, Rafail. “Soviet Science Fiction and the Ideology of Soviet Society.” Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989): 38–66. Striedter, Yurij. “Three Postrevolutionary Russian Utopian Novels.” The Russian Novel from Pushkin to Pasternak. Ed. John Garrard. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983, 177–201. Suvin, Darko. Russian Science Fiction 1956–1974: A Bibliography. Elizabethtown, NY: Dragon Press, 1976.

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INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS General Cowart, David, and Thomas L. Wymer, eds. Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Writers. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1981. Douglas Adams Gaiman, Neil. Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. London: Titan Books, 2009. Joll, Nicholas, ed. Philosophy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Houndmills, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Webb, Nick. Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams. New York: Ballantine, 2005. Brian W. Aldiss Collings, Michael. Brian W. Aldiss. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont, 1986. Griffin, Brian, and David Wingrove. Apertures: A Study of the Writings of Brian Aldiss. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Mathews, Richard. Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W. Aldiss. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1977. Poul Anderson Miesel, Sandra. Against Time’s Arrow: The High Crusade of Poul Anderson. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1978. Piers Anthony Collings, Michael R. Piers Anthony. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1983. Isaac Asimov Asimov, Isaac. Asimov on Science Fiction. New York: Doubleday, 1981. ———. I, Asimov: A Memoir. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Beauchamp, Gorman. “The Frankenstein Complex and Asimov’s Robots.” Mosaic 13.3–4 (1980): 83–94.

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Elkins, Charles. “Asimov’s Foundation Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical Psychohistory.” Isaac Asimov. Ed. Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg. New York: Taplinger, 1977, 97–110. Fiedler, Jean, and Jim Mele. Isaac Asimov. New York: Ungar, 1982. Freedman, Carl, ed. Conversations with Isaac Asimov. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Gunn, James. Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Hassler, Donald M. Isaac Asimov. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont, 1991. Hayles. N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Olander, Joseph D., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Isaac Asimov. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Palumbo, Donald. Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations and Robots, and Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Patrouch, Joseph F. The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974. Slusser, George E. Asimov: The Foundations of His Science Fiction. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1980. Touponce, William F. Isaac Asimov. Boston: Twayne, 1991. White, Michael. Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005. Margaret Atwood Howells, Coral Ann, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Margaret Atwood. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. Ketterer, David. “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: A Contextual Dystopia.” Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989): 209–17. Miner, Madonne. “‘Trust Me’: Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Twentieth-Century Literature 37 (1991): 148–68. Tomc, Sandra. “‘The Missionary Position’: Feminism and Nationalism in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Literature 138–39 (Fall–Winter 1993): 73–87. J. G. Ballard Baxter, Jeannette. J. G. Ballard. New York: Continuum, 2008.

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Brigg, Peter. J. G. Ballard. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1985. Delville, Michael. J. G. Ballard. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1998. Gasiorek, Adrzej. J. G. Ballard. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Luckhurst, Roger. The Angle between Two Walls: The Fiction of J. G. Ballard. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Pringle, David. Earth Is the Alien Planet: J. G. Ballard’s Four-Dimensional Nightmare. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1979. Stephenson, Gregory. Out of the Night and into the Dream: A Thematic Study of the Fiction of J. G. Ballard. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. Iain M. Banks Colebrook, Martin, and Katharine Cox, eds. The Transgressive Iain Banks: Essays on a Writer beyond Borders. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Middleton, Tim. “The Worlds of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction.” Foundation 76 (Summer 1999): 5–16. Greg Bear Hird, Myra J. “Animal, All Too Animal: Blood Music and an Ethic of Vulnerability.” Animals and the Human Imagination: A Companion to Animal Studies. Ed. Aaron Gross and Anne Vallely. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, 331–48. Luckhurst, Roger. “Catastrophism, American Style: The Fiction of Greg Bear.” Yearbook of English Studies 37.2 (2007): 215–22. Alfred Bester McCarthy, Patrick A. “Science Fiction as Creative Revisionism: The Example of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination.” Science Fiction Studies 10.1 (March 1983): 58–69. Palumbo, Donald E. “The Monomyth in Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination.” Journal of Popular Culture 38.2 (November 2004): 333–68. Wendell, Carolyn. Alfred Bester. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982. James Blish Ketterer, David. Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1987.

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Stableford, Brian. A Clash of Symbols: The Triumph of James Blish. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1979. Anthony Boucher Marks, Jeffrey. Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. Leigh Brackett Carr, John L. Leigh Brackett: American Writer. Polk City, IA: Drumm, 1986. Ray Bradbury De Koster, Katie, ed. Readings on Fahrenheit 451. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Greenberg, Martin Harry, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Ray Bradbury. New York: Taplinger, 1980. Johnson, Wayne L. Ray Bradbury. New York: Ungar, 1980. Mogen, David. Ray Bradbury. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Reid, Robin Anne. Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury. New York: William Morrow, 2005. Zipes, Jack. “Mass Degradation of Humanity and Massive Contradictions in Bradbury’s Vision of America in Fahrenheit 451.” No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Ed. Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, 182–98. Fredric Brown Seabrook, Jack. Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life and Work of Fredric Brown. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1993. John Brunner De Bolt, Joseph W., ed. The Happening Worlds of John Brunner. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975.

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Murphy, Patrick. “Dialogics and Didacticism: John Brunner’s Narrative Blending.” Science Fiction Studies 14.1 (1987): 21–33. Edgar Rice Burroughs Holtsmark, Erling B. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Lupoff, Richard A. Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian Vision. Baltimore, MD: Mirage Press, 1976. Roy, John Flint. A Guide to Barsoom. New York: Ballantine, 1976. Octavia E. Butler Bernardo, Susan. “Nature, Community, and the Self in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Nicola Griffith’s Slow River.” Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Ed. Chris Baratta. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, 59–68. Bonner, Frances. “Difference and Desire, Slavery and Seduction: Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Foundation 48 (1990): 50–62. Boulter, Amanda. “Polymorphous Futures: Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy.” American Bodies: Cultural Histories of the Physique. New York: New York University Press, 1996, 170–85. Hampton, Gregory. Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler: Slaves, Aliens, and Vampires. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010. Holden, Rebecca J. “The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy.” Foundation 72 (Spring 1998): 49–57. Jacobs, Naomi. “Posthuman Bodies and Agency in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination. Ed. Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan. New York: Routledge, 2003, 91–111. Joo, Hee-Jung Serenity. “Old and New Slavery, Old and New Racisms: Strategies of Science Fiction in Octavia Butler’s ‘Parables’ Series.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 52.3 (Fall 2011): 279–99. Robertson, Benjamin J. “‘Some Matching Strangeness’: Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.” Science-Fiction Studies 37.3 (2010): 362–81. White, Eric. “The Erotics of Becoming: Xenogenesis and The Thing.” Science-Fiction Studies 20 (1993): 394–408. Zaki, Hoda. “Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler.” Science-Fiction Studies 17 (1990): 239–51.

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John W. Campbell Jr. Campbell, John W. The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1. Ed. Perry A. Chapdelaine Sr., Tony Chapdelaine, and George Hay. Franklin, TN: AC Project, 1985. ———. The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 2: Isaac Asimov and A. E. van Vogt. Ed. Perry A. Chapdelaine Sr., Tony Chapdelaine, and George Hay. Franklin, TN: AC Project, 1993. Karel Čapek Harkins, William. Karel Čapek. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Maslen, Elisabeth. “Proper Words in Proper Places: The Challenge of Čapek’s War with the Newts.” Science-Fiction Studies 14 (1987): 82–92. Orson Scott Card Collings, Michael R. In the Image of God: Theme, Characterization, and Landscape in the Fiction of Orson Scott Card. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Arthur C. Clarke Clarke, Arthur C. Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography. New York: Bantam, 1990. Hollow, John. Against the Night, the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1983. Rev. ed., Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987. Olander, Joseph P., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Rabin, Eric S. Arthur C. Clarke. Rev. ed. West Linn, OR: Starmont House, 1980. Slusser, George Edgar. The Space Odysseys of Arthur C. Clarke. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1978. Hal Clement Hassler, Donald M. Hal Clement. Mercer Island: WA: Starmont House, 1982.

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Samuel R. Delany Barbour, Douglas. Worlds Out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany. Frome, Somerset: Bran’s Head, 1979. Battis, Jes. “Delany’s Queer Markets: Nevèrÿon and the Texture of Capital.” Science Fiction Studies 36.3 (November 2009): 478–89. Ebert, Teresa L. “The Convergence of Postmodern Innovative Fiction and Science Fiction: An Encounter with Samuel R. Delany’s Technotopia.” Poetics Today 1.4 (1980): 91–104. Jerng, Mark Chia-Yon. “A World of Difference: Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren and the Protocols of Racial Reading.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 83.2 (June 2011): 251–78. Pearson, Wendy Gay. “Born to Be Bron: Destiny and Destinerrence in Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton.” Science Fiction Studies 36.3 (November 2009): 461–77. Sallis, James. Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Stepaniuk, Casey. “‘That Things Could Be Different’: Feminist, Queer and Science Fiction Politics in Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton.” “Curious, If True”: The Fantastic in Literature. Ed. Amy Bright. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, 219–42. Tucker, Jeffrey A. A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity, and Difference. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Weedman, Jane Branham. Samuel R. Delany. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982. Philip K. Dick Butler, Andrew M. Philip K. Dick: Revised and Updated. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials-Oldcastle Books, 2007. ———. “Science Fiction as Postmodernism: The Case of Philip K. Dick.” Impossibility Fiction: Alternativity, Extrapolation, Speculation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996, 45–56. Carrere, Emmanuel. I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick. New York: Holt/Metropolitan, 2003. Dick, Philip K. The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Ed. Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Fitting, Peter. “Reality as Ideological Construct: A Reading of Five Novels by Philip K. Dick.” Science-Fiction Studies 10.2 (1983): 219–36.

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Galvan, Jill. “Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Science Fiction Studies 24.3 (1997): 413–29. Hoberek, Andrew P. “The ‘Work’ of Science Fiction: Philip K. Dick and Occupational Masculinity in the Post-World War II United States.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.2 (Summer 1997): 374–404. Huntington, John. “Philip K. Dick: Authenticity and Insincerity.” ScienceFiction Studies 15.2 (1988): 152–60. Jameson, Fredric. “After Armageddon: Character Systems in Dr. Bloodmoney.” Science-Fiction Studies 5 (1975): 31–42. ———. “Nostalgia for the Present.” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 517–37. Levack, Daniel J. H. PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1988. Mackey, Douglas A. Philip K. Dick. Boston: Twayne, 1988. Mullen, R. D. On Philip K. Dick: 40 Articles from Science-Fiction Studies. Terre Haute, IN: SF-TH, 1992. Olander, Joseph D., and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Philip K. Dick. New York: Taplinger, 1983. Palmer, Christopher. Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2003. Pierce, Hazel. Philip K. Dick. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982. Rickman, Gregg. To the High Castle—Philip K. Dick: A Life, 1928–1962. Long Beach, CA: Valentine Press, 1989. Rieder, John. “The Metafictive World of The Man in the High Castle: Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Political Ideology.” Science-Fiction Studies 15.2 (1988): 214–25. Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Novels of Philip K. Dick. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984. Rossi, Umberto. The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick: A Reading of Twenty Ontologically Uncertain Novels. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Sutin, Lawrence. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005. Umland, Samuel. Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. Warrick, Patricia S. “The Encounter of Taoism and Fascism in The Man in the High Castle.” Philip K. Dick. Ed. Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander. New York: Taplinger, 1983, 27–52. ———. “The Labyrinthian Process of the Artificial: Philip K. Dick’s Androids and Mechanical Constructs.” Philip K. Dick. Ed. Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander. New York: Taplinger, 1983, 189–214. ———. Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

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Williams, Paul. Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick. New York: Arbor House, 1986. Thomas M. Disch Swirski, Peter. “Dystopia or Dischtopia?: The Science-Fiction Paradigms of Thomas M. Disch.” Science-Fiction Studies 18 (1991): 161–79. Wymer, Thomas L. “Naturalism, Aestheticism and Beyond: Tradition and Innovation in the Work of Thomas M. Disch.” Voices for the Future, III. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1984, 186–219. Gardner Dozois Swanwick, Michael. Being Gardner Dozois. Baltimore, MD: Old Earth Books, 2001. Harlan Ellison Slusser, George Edgar. Harlan Ellison: Unrepentent Harlequin. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1977. Weil, Ellen, and Gary K. Wolfe. Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002. Philip José Farmer Brizzi, Mary T. Philip José Farmer: A Reader’s Guide. West Linn, OR: Starmont House, 1980. Carey, Christopher Paul. “The Grand Master of Peoria: Philip José Farmer’s Immortal Legacy.” The Zone. http://web.archive.org/web/ 20070206145227/http://www.zone-sf.com/philfarm.html. Accessed June 10, 2014. Chapman, Edgar L. The Magic Labyrinth of Philip José Farmer. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1985. Neil Gaiman Olesen, Max F. R. “Ambiguous Gods: Mythology, Immigration, and Assimilation in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (2001) and ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ (2004).” “Curious If True”: The Fantastic in Literature. Ed. Amy Bright. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, 116–44.

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Rauch, Stephen. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of the Modern Myth. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2003. William Gibson Booker, M. Keith. “Technology, History, and the Postmodern Imagination: The Cyberpunk Fiction of William Gibson.” Arizona Quarterly 50.4 (1994): 63–87. Cavallaro, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone, 2000. Olsen, Lance. William Gibson. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1992. Suvin, Darko. “On Gibson and Cyberpunk SF.” Foundation 46 (Autumn 1989): 40–51. Charlotte Perkins Gilman Donaldson, Laura E. “The Eve of De-Struction: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminist Recreation of Paradise.” Women’s Studies 16 (1989): 373–87. Gough, Val, and Jill Rudd, eds. A Very Different Story: Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1998. Jones, Libby Falk. “Gilman, Bradley, Piercy, and the Evolving Rhetoric of Feminist Utopias.” Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative. Ed. Libby Falk Jones and Sarah Webster Goodwin. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990, 116–29. Matossian, Lou Ann. “A Woman-Made Language: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Herland.” Women and Language 10.2 (1987): 16–20. Nicola Griffith Bernardo, Susan. “Nature, Community, and the Self in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Nicola Griffith’s Slow River.” Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Ed. Chris Baratta. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, 59–68. Møller, Pia. “The Unsettled Undercurrents of Hedon Road: Power, Knowledge, and Environmental Risk Management in Nicola Griffith’s Slow River.” Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 9.2 (Summer 2002): 133–53.

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Joe Haldeman Gordon, Joan. Joe Haldeman. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1980. Robert A. Heinlein Clareson, Thomas D., and Joseph L. Sanders. The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014. Dolman, Everett Carl. “Military, Democracy, and the State in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.” Political Science Fiction. Ed. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997, 196–213. Franklin, H. Bruce. Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Gifford, James. Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion. Citrus Heights, CA: Nitrosyncretic Press, 2000. Olander, Joseph D., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Taplinger, 1978. Panshin, Alexei. Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical Analysis. Chicago: Advent, 1968. Patterson, William H., and Andrew Thornton, eds. The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land. Citrus Heights, CA: Nitrosyncretic Press, 2001. Slusser, George E. Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in His Own Land. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1976. ———. “Structures of Apprehension: Lem, Heinlein, and the Strugatskys.” Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989): 1–37. Stover, Leon E. Robert A. Heinlein. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Sullivan, Charles William. Heinlein’s Juvenile Novels: A Cultural Dictionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Frank Herbert Herbert, Brian. Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert. New York: Tor, 2003. Miller, David M. Frank Herbert. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1980. Nicholas, Jeffery, ed. Dune and Philosophy: Weirding Way of the Mentat. Chicago: Open Court, 2011. O’Reilly, Timothy. Frank Herbert. New York: Ungar, 1981. Palumbo, Donald. Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations and Robots, and Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

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Stratton, Susan. “The Messiah and the Greens: The Shape of Environmental Action in Dune and Pacific Edge.” Extrapolation 42.4 (2001): 301–16. Williams, Kevin C. The Wisdom of the Sand: Philosophy and Frank Herbert’s Dune. New York: Hampton Press, 2013. Nalo Hopkinson Clemente, Bill. “Tan-Tan’s Exile and Odyssey in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 33.91 (2004): 10–24. Dillon, Grace L. “Indigenous Scientific Literacies in Nalo Hopkinson’s Ceremonial Worlds.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18.1 (2007): 23–41. Enteen, Jillana. “‘On the Receiving End of Colonization’: Nalo Hopkinson’s ’Nansi Web.” Science Fiction Studies 34.2 (2007): 262–82. Rutledge, Gregory. “Nalo Hopkinson’s Urban Jungle and the Cosmology of Freedom: How Capitalism Underdeveloped the Black Americas and Left a Brown Girl in the Ring.” Foundation 81 (Spring 2001): 22–39. Aldous Huxley Adorno, Theodor W. “Aldous Huxley and Utopia.” Prisms. 1967. Translated by Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983. Dasgupta, Sanjukta. “Geographies and Gender: Ideological Shifts in Brave New World and Island.” Aldous Huxley Annual 8 (2008): 207–19. De Koster, Katie, ed. Readings on Brave New World. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Deery, June. “Technology and Gender in Aldous Huxley’s Alternative (?) Worlds.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 33.3 (1992): 258–73. Frost, Laura. “Huxley’s Feelies: The Cinema of Sensation in Brave New World.” Twentieth-Century Literature 52.4 (Winter 2006): 443–73. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Revisited. In “Brave New World” and “Brave New World Revisited.” New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Izzo, David Garrett, and Kim Kirkpatrick, ed. Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. Matter, William. “On Brave New World.” No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Ed. Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, 94–109. Meckier, Jerome. Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure. London: Chatto and Windus, 1969.

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REFERENCES WORKS Barron, Neil, ed. Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction. 4th ed. New Providence, NJ: Bowker, 1995. Booker, M. Keith. Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010. Clute, John, and Peter Nicholls, eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Updated 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Disch, Thomas M. The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World. New York: Free Press, 1998. Gunn, James E., ed. The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: Viking, 1988. Mann, George, ed. The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001. Westfahl, Gary, ed. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. 3 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

INTERNET RESOURCES Analog Science Fiction and Fact: www.analogsf.com/2014_04/index.shtml Asimov’s Science Fiction: www.asimovs.com/2014_03/index.shtml British Science Fiction Association: www.bsfa.co.uk The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: www.sf-encyclopedia.com The Internet Speculative Fiction Database: www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi Locus Online: www.locusmag.com The New York Review of Science Fiction: www.nyrsf.com Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America: www.sfwa.org Science Fiction Studies: www.depauw.edu/sfs SF Reviews: www.sfreviews.net SF Site: www.sfsite.com

About the Author

M. Keith Booker is the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, where he is also the director of the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies program. Before devoting himself to literary and cultural studies, Professor Booker spent 14 years on the scientific research staff of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is the author or editor of dozens of books on literature, popular culture, and literary and cultural theory. His science fiction books include Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946–1964 (2001), Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture (2006), The Science Fiction Handbook (with AnneMarie Thomas, 2009), and Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema (Scarecrow Press, 2010). Edited science fiction books include Critical Insights: Dystopia (2013), Critical Insights: Contemporary Speculative Fiction (2013), and Critical Insights: Brave New World (2014). Other books include Joyce, Bakhtin, and the Literary Tradition: Toward a Comparative Cultural Poetics (1995), A Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism (1996), Colonial Power, Colonial Texts: India in the Modern British Novel (1997), The African Novel in English: An Introduction (1998), Film and the American Left: A Research Guide (1999), The Post-Utopian Imagination: American Culture in the Long 1950s (2002), Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from the Twilight Zone to the X-Files (2003), Science Fiction Television (2004), Drawn to Television: Prime-Time Animated Series from the Flintstones to Family Guy (2006), From Box Office to Ballot Box: The American Political Film (2007), Postmodern Hollywood: What’s New in Film and Why It Makes Us Feel So Strange (2007), May Contain Graphic Material: Comic Books, Graphic Novels (2007), Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages in Children’s Films (2009), and Red, White, and Spooked: The Supernatural in American Culture (2008).

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