If every man, woman, boy and girl, could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standard of its people would be raised tremendously. Science fiction would make people happier, give them a broader understanding of the world, make them more tolerant.
--Hugo Gernsback, editorial in Amazing Stories (1927), qtd. in Brooks Landon, Science Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars (New York: Routledge, 2002 [1995]), 52
When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn’t all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I’d like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin.
--Jo Walton, Among Others (New York: Tor, 2010), 52
"OK, Chief! All tight here. You say it's ten light-years to that star. How long's it going to take us to get there?"
"About ten minutes."
--E. E. "Doc" Smith, Skylark Three (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison, 20004 [1930]), 172
Then her world exploded.
If such a string of words appeared in a mundane fiction text, more than likely we would respond to it as an emotionally muzzy metaphor...
He turned on his left side.
---Samuel R. Delany, "Science Fiction and 'Literature,'" in D. Hartwell and M. Wolf, eds., Visions of Wonder (New York: Tor, 1996), 448
"Mr. Million," my father said, "is perhaps a bit more sentimental than I—besides, I don't like to go out. You see, doctor, your supposition that we are all truly the same individual will have to be modified. We have our little variations."
---Gene Wolfe, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," in The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 239
Although SF does not generate story-structures of its own, it transforms popular cultural materials by reorienting their concerns towards its characteristic horizons: the transformation of human societies as a result of innovations attending technoscientific projects.
--Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction_ (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008), 7
Science fiction is always about the here and now, about this place where humans live.
--Justine Larbalestier, "Introduction," in Larbalestier, ed., Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the 20th Century (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ., 2004), xviii
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook among them…. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
--Ursula K. LeGuin, "Introduction" (1976), in The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1976 [1969]), xii
“Alien planets aren’t Earth, you know. You have to expect wacky things, get along with them, accept them on the basis of the logic that makes them the way they are.”
“I know all that, agreed Mackenzie, “but honest, chief, this place gets in my hair at times. Trees that shoot at you, moss that talks, vines that heave thunderbolts at you—and now, the Encyclopedia.”
--Clifford D. Simak, “Ogre” (1944), in The Best of Astounding, ed. Tony Lewis (New York: Baronet, 1978), 155
Only science fiction can properly confront the moral questions implicit in the political task of steering the human world into a future... I do not say simply that science fiction is useful in this respect: I say that it is necessary.
---Brian Stableford, "To Bring in Fine Things," in Visions of Wonder, 674
"Let me get this straight: you're the KGB's core AI, but you're afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?" Manfred pauses in mid-stride, narrowly avoids being mown down by a GPS-guided roller-blader.
"Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements... Manfred, you must help me-we. Am wishing to defect."
--Charles Stross, "Lobsters," in V. MacIntyre, Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 (New York: Penguin, 2004), 230
[The video] arcade seems nothing more than a defunct landmark around which has gathered this intense cult of paperwork-hobbyists. A wiry teenager in tight black jeans and a black t-shirt prowls among the tables with the provocative confidence of a pool hustler, a long skinny cardboard box slung over his shoulder like a rifle. "These are my ethnic group," he explains in response to the look on her face.
--Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (New York: Avon, 1999), 647.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Last lecture, 2017
A memory of the future.
The shape of things to come.
The world is amazing.
Modern tech helps people.
Modern tech could kill us all.
Modern experimental science helps us understand ourselves.
Modern tech creates beauty.
Modern tech hurts us all.
Kate Elliott is right.
One governing metaphor for sf in general.
One complement to that metaphor.
New worlds, far-future or otherwise.
Fabula and syuzet: a refresher.
One subgenre of sf.
Another subgenre of sf.
What happens to time?
A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.
An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).
A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).
Nnedi Okorafor clarifies some sources.
Nnedi Okorafor generally.
A good essay on "Binti" and its contexts.
The Clarion Workshop and the associated Clarion Foundation.
Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.
The shape of things to come.
The world is amazing.
Modern tech helps people.
Modern tech could kill us all.
Modern experimental science helps us understand ourselves.
Modern tech creates beauty.
Modern tech hurts us all.
Kate Elliott is right.
One governing metaphor for sf in general.
One complement to that metaphor.
New worlds, far-future or otherwise.
Fabula and syuzet: a refresher.
One subgenre of sf.
Another subgenre of sf.
What happens to time?
A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.
An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).
A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).
Nnedi Okorafor clarifies some sources.
Nnedi Okorafor generally.
A good essay on "Binti" and its contexts.
The Clarion Workshop and the associated Clarion Foundation.
Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.
Pie contest, 2017
We will award pie to any complete answer we get to this set of questions, or to the top three answers if we receive no complete and correct ones. Incomplete answers and guesses are encouraged.
Please email your answers by 4pm on Thursday Dec. 7 to Stephanie and to your TF.
(Note also that Stephanie will hold ordinary office hours, 1:30-4pm, next Tues. Dec 6; Stephanie will also be available to meet by appointment when on leave this spring.)
1. Where is Miriam called Miriam, where is she called Helge, and why?
2. What tattooed hero denies that he is a Sin-Eater?
3. What book of poetry set in the future features a main character who lived through the Kwangju uprising?
4. What name does Sax Russell later assume?
5. Why do scanners live in vain?
6. What do Sarah, Alison, Helena, Cosima, Tony, Beth, Krystal and Rachel have in common?
7. What got New Worlds magazine in legal trouble?
8. Did Doro die? If so, who killed Doro?
9. What 1990s rapper told the people of California he was born on Jupiter?
10. What French composer introduced electronic instruments to his postwar orchestra?
11. What British poet who died in 2015 edited sf and later wrote about Stalin?
12. What novella about a charismatic abbess is probably a tribute to James Tiptree, Jr.?
13. What are slipstream and steampunk?
14. What's the difference between the New People and the rest of the people in Bangkok?
15. What Easthampton, Mass.-based magazine had an amazing story about jellyfish, near-future genderqueer kids, and water pollution in its environmental-themed 33rd issue?
16. Who created a habitable future world that extends for 360 degrees around the sun?
17. Why will Ken Liu be in Quincy, Mass. in July 2018?
18. What was Deirdre's profession, when she was human?
19. What aliens' Language requires two speakers or phonemes at once?
20. How is a land ironclad like a communications satellite?
Please email your answers by 4pm on Thursday Dec. 7 to Stephanie and to your TF.
(Note also that Stephanie will hold ordinary office hours, 1:30-4pm, next Tues. Dec 6; Stephanie will also be available to meet by appointment when on leave this spring.)
1. Where is Miriam called Miriam, where is she called Helge, and why?
2. What tattooed hero denies that he is a Sin-Eater?
3. What book of poetry set in the future features a main character who lived through the Kwangju uprising?
4. What name does Sax Russell later assume?
5. Why do scanners live in vain?
6. What do Sarah, Alison, Helena, Cosima, Tony, Beth, Krystal and Rachel have in common?
7. What got New Worlds magazine in legal trouble?
8. Did Doro die? If so, who killed Doro?
9. What 1990s rapper told the people of California he was born on Jupiter?
10. What French composer introduced electronic instruments to his postwar orchestra?
11. What British poet who died in 2015 edited sf and later wrote about Stalin?
12. What novella about a charismatic abbess is probably a tribute to James Tiptree, Jr.?
13. What are slipstream and steampunk?
14. What's the difference between the New People and the rest of the people in Bangkok?
15. What Easthampton, Mass.-based magazine had an amazing story about jellyfish, near-future genderqueer kids, and water pollution in its environmental-themed 33rd issue?
16. Who created a habitable future world that extends for 360 degrees around the sun?
17. Why will Ken Liu be in Quincy, Mass. in July 2018?
18. What was Deirdre's profession, when she was human?
19. What aliens' Language requires two speakers or phonemes at once?
20. How is a land ironclad like a communications satellite?
Monday, November 27, 2017
New media and SF, 2017
SF is time travel: forwards, backwards and sideways, including alternate histories.
SF is also an escape from history.
The Hitler wins topos/trope/meme. The map of America in a famous Hitler wins story that's now a TV show too.
SF is an experiment whose control is not just the real world; it's also other genres.
You can experiment with alternate phenotypes, but also with alternate language.
An earlier innovation in physical substrate that clearly affected what sf writers did.
An even earlier innovation.
Egan's "Black Box," Paste Magazine online version.
Egan's "Black Box" in the original Twitter version thanks to Storify.
The New Yorker interviews Egan about "Black Box."
To read the famous or infamous PowerPoint chapter from Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, go to her own main site and click on the extreme right-hand label "Great Rock and Roll Pauses." You may also be able to view the chapter here.
More material from and about Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.
You can go back to your body, or you can end up in the night sky.
Joe Winkler's Twitter-style review of Egan's "Black Box."
Nick Montfort (and collaborators') interactive fiction. His monograph (2003-05) on interactive fiction.
The first widely influential interactive fiction.
Planetfall, by John Burnett. Burnett's main site. (Warning: may start audio automatically.)
José Adolph's story "Nosotros, no."
Cixin Liu, trans. Ken Liu: The Three-Body Problem.
Audio-native SF: The Bright Sessions. Audio-native slipstream: of course.
One way to think about gaming.
Another way to think about gaming.
SF is also an escape from history.
The Hitler wins topos/trope/meme. The map of America in a famous Hitler wins story that's now a TV show too.
SF is an experiment whose control is not just the real world; it's also other genres.
You can experiment with alternate phenotypes, but also with alternate language.
An earlier innovation in physical substrate that clearly affected what sf writers did.
An even earlier innovation.
Egan's "Black Box," Paste Magazine online version.
Egan's "Black Box" in the original Twitter version thanks to Storify.
The New Yorker interviews Egan about "Black Box."
To read the famous or infamous PowerPoint chapter from Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, go to her own main site and click on the extreme right-hand label "Great Rock and Roll Pauses." You may also be able to view the chapter here.
More material from and about Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.
You can go back to your body, or you can end up in the night sky.
Joe Winkler's Twitter-style review of Egan's "Black Box."
Nick Montfort (and collaborators') interactive fiction. His monograph (2003-05) on interactive fiction.
The first widely influential interactive fiction.
Planetfall, by John Burnett. Burnett's main site. (Warning: may start audio automatically.)
José Adolph's story "Nosotros, no."
Cixin Liu, trans. Ken Liu: The Three-Body Problem.
Audio-native SF: The Bright Sessions. Audio-native slipstream: of course.
One way to think about gaming.
Another way to think about gaming.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Ted Chiang
Review: the science-fictional triangle whose points are explanation, and wonder and warnings about the unknowable or unknown.
Review: sf as experiment, real world and realist fiction as controls.
Review: the novum. Novums within novums.
Review: the idea of genres and subgenres, which branch out over time.
One particularly reflexive subgenre.
Review: sf asks about historical change.
SF also asks about an afterlife.
"Liking What You See" helped inspire influential YA SF.
"Story of Your Life" is now a movie.
An interview with Chiang.
Louise is a reader.
Fiction as face.
Fiction as mirror.
People who misunderstood Hopi.
Nietzschean Eternal Return.
Ideas about characters.
Narrative usually works like that. Real life works like that.
What if we could see our lives like that?
Review: sf as experiment, real world and realist fiction as controls.
Review: the novum. Novums within novums.
Review: the idea of genres and subgenres, which branch out over time.
One particularly reflexive subgenre.
Review: sf asks about historical change.
SF also asks about an afterlife.
"Liking What You See" helped inspire influential YA SF.
"Story of Your Life" is now a movie.
An interview with Chiang.
Louise is a reader.
Fiction as face.
Fiction as mirror.
People who misunderstood Hopi.
Nietzschean Eternal Return.
Ideas about characters.
Narrative usually works like that. Real life works like that.
What if we could see our lives like that?
Practice exam 2017
Our December final exam will have this structure and these kinds of questions, though all the examples will be different. We’re distributing this practice exam before Thanksgiving in response to student requests. We’ll discuss the exam and how to take it after Thanksgiving, in one of our final lecture classes.
PART I. Pick ten terms from the list of twenty below and write, for each of the ten, just one phrase or sentence about what it means and how it functions in a work we have read for this course; give the name of the author of that work (you may but need not give the title of the work as well). A few terms may have more than one right answer (20%).
PART II. Then, from among those ten, pick three and write two or three substantial paragraphs about each, making an argument about how it functions in that work and what it means (45%).
Obsidian ---------------------------The Palace of Green Porcelain
Yorkie --------------- --------------A solar eclipse
Andy ------------------ -------------Cyberspace
The space elevator ----------- ----The Three Laws of Robotics
Gelle-Klara Moynlin -------------Lentz
Florida ------------------------------Ellador
C. P. (“Cold Pig”) -----------------Joe Chip
Jordan -------------------------------cognitive estrangement
Ann Clayborne---------------------A sudden shift into color from black and white
Frelks -------------------------------Joe-Jim
PART III. In a cogent essay with a well-supported argument, answer one of the following questions. Your answer should refer to, and demonstrate that you have thought about, at least two works we have read for this course (35%). You may, of course, refer to others. Please do not duplicate in this part the claims that you made in part II (you may refer to the same works); do not duplicate the arguments you made in the papers you wrote for our course. You may refer to the works on which you wrote papers, though the best essay for this exam would remind us that you have read other works too.
1. Sf developed first as prose fiction, consisting of nothing but printed words. What can images, sound or digital media do for sf that print, on its own, cannot?
2. How do sf works and sf authors construct a tradition, or propose lines of descent, connecting their own works to earlier works within sf?
3. Can sf effectively represent consciousness, intelligence or personality that we can recognize as not human, and as in some important way not like what’s human? If so, how? If not, why do authors keep trying?
4. SF by definition depicts a world in at least one respect (the novum) unlike our own. Does that make all sf an escape from history, or from the present, or from the real world? If not, why not? If so, is that a problem, or a source of strength?
PART I. Pick ten terms from the list of twenty below and write, for each of the ten, just one phrase or sentence about what it means and how it functions in a work we have read for this course; give the name of the author of that work (you may but need not give the title of the work as well). A few terms may have more than one right answer (20%).
PART II. Then, from among those ten, pick three and write two or three substantial paragraphs about each, making an argument about how it functions in that work and what it means (45%).
Obsidian ---------------------------The Palace of Green Porcelain
Yorkie --------------- --------------A solar eclipse
Andy ------------------ -------------Cyberspace
The space elevator ----------- ----The Three Laws of Robotics
Gelle-Klara Moynlin -------------Lentz
Florida ------------------------------Ellador
C. P. (“Cold Pig”) -----------------Joe Chip
Jordan -------------------------------cognitive estrangement
Ann Clayborne---------------------A sudden shift into color from black and white
Frelks -------------------------------Joe-Jim
PART III. In a cogent essay with a well-supported argument, answer one of the following questions. Your answer should refer to, and demonstrate that you have thought about, at least two works we have read for this course (35%). You may, of course, refer to others. Please do not duplicate in this part the claims that you made in part II (you may refer to the same works); do not duplicate the arguments you made in the papers you wrote for our course. You may refer to the works on which you wrote papers, though the best essay for this exam would remind us that you have read other works too.
1. Sf developed first as prose fiction, consisting of nothing but printed words. What can images, sound or digital media do for sf that print, on its own, cannot?
2. How do sf works and sf authors construct a tradition, or propose lines of descent, connecting their own works to earlier works within sf?
3. Can sf effectively represent consciousness, intelligence or personality that we can recognize as not human, and as in some important way not like what’s human? If so, how? If not, why do authors keep trying?
4. SF by definition depicts a world in at least one respect (the novum) unlike our own. Does that make all sf an escape from history, or from the present, or from the real world? If not, why not? If so, is that a problem, or a source of strength?
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Ryman, Roanhorse, Walton...
"Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience."
The Angel of the North is real. You can go see it.
So is Blaydon.
The Mundane Manifesto. And some more Mundane SF.
Authentic Indian territory?
Best picture, 1990. Another useful picture.
Jo Walton's "Other Worlds." Jo Walton's Among Others.
The Angel of the North is real. You can go see it.
So is Blaydon.
The Mundane Manifesto. And some more Mundane SF.
Authentic Indian territory?
Best picture, 1990. Another useful picture.
Jo Walton's "Other Worlds." Jo Walton's Among Others.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Richard Powers (and a bit of Delany)
Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah" now online.
Dangerous Visions.
Welcome to Istanbul.
The second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto.
The author's own website.
The Beckman Institute for interdisciplinary work, including human-machine interaction, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Powers's first two novels. Powers's well-received third.
A relatively accessible, and Pulitzer Prize-winning, source for Powers' thinking about AI.
Thinking again about ELIZA. Thinking about machine translation.
Thinking about time and fruit.
Lentz's "near-opaque glasses."
Computers used to be big.
An extremely important code.
A book of these things too.
Arts and sciences: language as against other kinds of experience and information.
Not all experience is verbal.
Can Richard ever belong here? What about here?
Extremely effective, and therefore unpredictable, learning machines.
Hey, Marcel...
Poems cited in Powers's first pages, by John Keats, and by Wallace Stevens, and by Keats again.
The hippocampus in your head.
A nice Dutch train. (Not sure whether it's running south.)
A book about the limits of novels' directional plot.
A book about the limits of tests.
Personhood: is it about having a human body? Or can you get it from these things?
Literature as connection.
Connecting this book to other books about paths. To other books about education.
Playing Mastermind and Connect Four.
Listening to Hopkins's "The Wind-Hover."
Listening to the Violent Femmes.
"A story about how we're all going to end up in cubicles."
A tangled web of connections.
Getting outside the wall or the bars of the self.
"Good girl outside."
Do you see a face? A face? A face?
Literature as escape. Or as escape.
Dangerous Visions.
Welcome to Istanbul.
The second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto.
The author's own website.
The Beckman Institute for interdisciplinary work, including human-machine interaction, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Powers's first two novels. Powers's well-received third.
A relatively accessible, and Pulitzer Prize-winning, source for Powers' thinking about AI.
Thinking again about ELIZA. Thinking about machine translation.
Thinking about time and fruit.
Lentz's "near-opaque glasses."
Computers used to be big.
An extremely important code.
A book of these things too.
Arts and sciences: language as against other kinds of experience and information.
Not all experience is verbal.
Can Richard ever belong here? What about here?
Extremely effective, and therefore unpredictable, learning machines.
Hey, Marcel...
Poems cited in Powers's first pages, by John Keats, and by Wallace Stevens, and by Keats again.
The hippocampus in your head.
A nice Dutch train. (Not sure whether it's running south.)
A book about the limits of novels' directional plot.
A book about the limits of tests.
Personhood: is it about having a human body? Or can you get it from these things?
Literature as connection.
Connecting this book to other books about paths. To other books about education.
Playing Mastermind and Connect Four.
Listening to Hopkins's "The Wind-Hover."
Listening to the Violent Femmes.
"A story about how we're all going to end up in cubicles."
A tangled web of connections.
Getting outside the wall or the bars of the self.
"Good girl outside."
Do you see a face? A face? A face?
Literature as escape. Or as escape.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Stalker; some reference works
Stalker and other Tarkovsky films online.
About Geoff Dyer's Zona, a book about Stalker.
Shorter Dyer: "it is the reason cinema was invented."
Russian critics remember how the film was made: in Russia, Tajikstan, and Estonia.
Cinema, a visual medium, turns space into time.
A sort of real-life Zone.
John 20 (see especially John 20:29). Revelation 6.
Walking on water. A Russian-style crown of thorns.
Another sacred place.
*******
This belongs somewhere: a lot of review-essays about SF since the 1990s (not academic-scholarly, but critical and serious).
So does a a reminder about the all-purpose SF news site io9.
And so does the new online edition of the SF Encyclopedia, edited by John Clute.
Here are all its entries on film.
About Geoff Dyer's Zona, a book about Stalker.
Shorter Dyer: "it is the reason cinema was invented."
Russian critics remember how the film was made: in Russia, Tajikstan, and Estonia.
Cinema, a visual medium, turns space into time.
A sort of real-life Zone.
John 20 (see especially John 20:29). Revelation 6.
Walking on water. A Russian-style crown of thorns.
Another sacred place.
*******
This belongs somewhere: a lot of review-essays about SF since the 1990s (not academic-scholarly, but critical and serious).
So does a a reminder about the all-purpose SF news site io9.
And so does the new online edition of the SF Encyclopedia, edited by John Clute.
Here are all its entries on film.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Kim Stanley Robinson, "hard sf" and Mars
Something hard.
Something big, old and hard.
Mars seen from Mars.
The real Mars Society and its real prep for people on Mars.
The NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars site. NASA/ JPL pictures from Mars.
Sand and rocks on Mars, thanks to Curiosity Rover.
The first hard sf movie. "Golden Age" sf as an influence on NASA, according to Howard McCurdy.
Larry Niven's Ringworld. io9's guide to Ringworld.
Niven and other hard sf writers from the 1970s as an influence on this guy, who thought this could work.
But hard sf now gives us ways to think about this problem, and thus about this problem, and this problem, directly or by thinking about this place.
Not a completely alien scene.
Not a completely unrecognizable image.
But this thing requires explanation.
Another map of Mars.
Real tweets from Mars. And sarcastic tweets from Mars.
A Mars trilogy glossary, with areological, astronomical, and political terms.
Polyvinylidene difluoride: it's real.
Also real: Martian alases. Here's one in northern Russia.
Deep ecology in one diagram.
Alexander (not Arkady) Bogdanov plays chess with Lenin. Bogdanov's novel: Bolsheviks on Mars.
The first hundred, by name where known (part of a Mars trilogy reference site; links contain spoilers).
Kim Stanley Robinson's almost crushingly informative official site.
Some people think we can really build space elevators.
Not so sure atp abt moholes.
More ice on Mars.
Something big, old and hard.
Mars seen from Mars.
The real Mars Society and its real prep for people on Mars.
The NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars site. NASA/ JPL pictures from Mars.
Sand and rocks on Mars, thanks to Curiosity Rover.
The first hard sf movie. "Golden Age" sf as an influence on NASA, according to Howard McCurdy.
Larry Niven's Ringworld. io9's guide to Ringworld.
Niven and other hard sf writers from the 1970s as an influence on this guy, who thought this could work.
But hard sf now gives us ways to think about this problem, and thus about this problem, and this problem, directly or by thinking about this place.
Not a completely alien scene.
Not a completely unrecognizable image.
But this thing requires explanation.
Another map of Mars.
Real tweets from Mars. And sarcastic tweets from Mars.
A Mars trilogy glossary, with areological, astronomical, and political terms.
Polyvinylidene difluoride: it's real.
Also real: Martian alases. Here's one in northern Russia.
Deep ecology in one diagram.
Alexander (not Arkady) Bogdanov plays chess with Lenin. Bogdanov's novel: Bolsheviks on Mars.
The first hundred, by name where known (part of a Mars trilogy reference site; links contain spoilers).
Kim Stanley Robinson's almost crushingly informative official site.
Some people think we can really build space elevators.
Not so sure atp abt moholes.
More ice on Mars.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Philip K. Dick
A versatile spray can.>
An alarming perfume (via Rachel Martin).
A Philip K. Dick fan site with links to (nonacademic) resources.
Another fan site (largely for book collectors): The Phildickian. Lethem's essay on Dick.
PKD with our favorite accessory, probably from the early 1960s.
Some of the many covers for Dick's many books.
The most important of the many films made from Dick's work. Another. And another.
An important contributor to Dick's voluminous output.
An era of suspicion, if not paranoia.
One visual figure for Dick's aesthetic goals.
Also important to Dick's vision.
Stuck in a box.
Someone is almost always watching.
Who are you? What's wrong with you?
On the "Dies Irae": from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and one of many English translations.
An image of entropy. A big fan of entropy.
Another image of entropy. Another image of where we end up. (Note both names.)
New Yorker writer Gopnik on the Dick revival.
About Dick's Exegesis (1974), with an excerpt.
An alarming perfume (via Rachel Martin).
A Philip K. Dick fan site with links to (nonacademic) resources.
Another fan site (largely for book collectors): The Phildickian. Lethem's essay on Dick.
PKD with our favorite accessory, probably from the early 1960s.
Some of the many covers for Dick's many books.
The most important of the many films made from Dick's work. Another. And another.
An important contributor to Dick's voluminous output.
An era of suspicion, if not paranoia.
One visual figure for Dick's aesthetic goals.
Also important to Dick's vision.
Stuck in a box.
Someone is almost always watching.
Who are you? What's wrong with you?
On the "Dies Irae": from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and one of many English translations.
An image of entropy. A big fan of entropy.
Another image of entropy. Another image of where we end up. (Note both names.)
New Yorker writer Gopnik on the Dick revival.
About Dick's Exegesis (1974), with an excerpt.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Heinlein, Campbell, Asimov
A case for sf today, from The Atlantic.
Lots of pix of midcentury US sf fans.
An ethos fostered though not quite created by John W. Campbell.
A cover from Astounding (1941) that illustrated Heinlein's "Universe."
Another Campbell-era Astounding cover, from 1940.
A mid-1960s paperback cover for Stranger.
Midcentury sf spaceship designs.
How artificial gravity works (simplest version).
An object of non-falsifiable (hermeneutic) interpretation.
An object on which hypotheses can be tested.
The original for "Nevertheless, it still moves!"
Generation ship plots in television.
Rudyard Kipling, beloved of Heinlein and poet of engineers.
Kipling also wrote science fiction.
Pulp-era robots were scary.
The first sf robots, from Capek's R.U.R. Imagining friendly, even very friendly robots.
Sf writers who wrote only for fans, who in turn often read only sf. Sigh.
In popular film and television SF, viewers are encouraged to identify themselves with revolutionaries, not with the people in charge.
Lots of pix of midcentury US sf fans.
An ethos fostered though not quite created by John W. Campbell.
A cover from Astounding (1941) that illustrated Heinlein's "Universe."
Another Campbell-era Astounding cover, from 1940.
A mid-1960s paperback cover for Stranger.
Midcentury sf spaceship designs.
How artificial gravity works (simplest version).
An object of non-falsifiable (hermeneutic) interpretation.
An object on which hypotheses can be tested.
The original for "Nevertheless, it still moves!"
Generation ship plots in television.
Rudyard Kipling, beloved of Heinlein and poet of engineers.
Kipling also wrote science fiction.
Pulp-era robots were scary.
The first sf robots, from Capek's R.U.R. Imagining friendly, even very friendly robots.
Sf writers who wrote only for fans, who in turn often read only sf. Sigh.
In popular film and television SF, viewers are encouraged to identify themselves with revolutionaries, not with the people in charge.
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