Science Fiction Source Book

Small correction: Good is the condition; the publisher is Longman . David Wingrove is the editor rather than the sole author, as the book contains contributions from several prominent science-fiction writers and critics. Science fiction has imagined galactic empires, immortal humans, sentient planets and machines capable of thinking independently. It has also produced thousands of books with nearly identical pictures of spaceships on their covers, leaving the ordinary reader to wonder which particular future is worth entering. The Science Fiction Source Book arrives with maps, recommendations and a large supply of opinions. Edited by David Wingrove, this ambitious reference volume combines a history of science fiction, an examination of its principal subgenres, essays by working writers and a vast guide to authors and books. It is part literary companion, part reading list and part emergency navigation system for anyone who has become lost somewhere between Isaac Asimov and Roger Zelazny. Brian Aldiss begins with a concise history of the genre, tracing its development from early speculative literature through scientific romance, pulp magazines, the Golden Age and the more experimental fiction of the post-war decades. The journey demonstrates that science fiction existed long before bookshops decided precisely which shelf should contain it. The historical section considers how writers responded to industrialisation, scientific discovery, world war, nuclear weapons, space travel and changing ideas about humanity?s future. Every technological advance supplied possibilities for utopia and disaster, although disaster generally produced the more attractive cover illustration. Brian Stableford surveys fifteen major science-fiction subgenres and thematic traditions. These include space opera, time travel, alternative history, utopian and dystopian fiction, alien encounters and speculative treatments of future societies. The categories are useful, though science-fiction novels frequently ignore them and wander into several departments without completing the appropriate forms. Space opera takes politics, warfare and personal rivalry into the galaxy, where everything becomes larger and can be settled with fleets. Time-travel fiction allows characters to alter history and then spend the remainder of the book attempting to repair it. Alternative history explores worlds in which one important event happened differently, often producing an alarming quantity of military tailoring. Utopian fiction imagines a perfect society; dystopian fiction explains what happened once the organising committee took control. Stories about robots ask whether machines can become human, while stories about humans occasionally suggest that this would not represent an obvious promotion. At the centre of the volume is an enormous consumer guide covering approximately 880 novelists and more than 2,000 individual works. Entries describe authors and books, identify major titles and offer assessments intended to help readers choose among several lifetimes? worth of speculative fiction. Books are rated for readability, characterisation, idea content and literary merit. This permits the critic to distinguish between a novel containing splendid ideas and no believable people, a beautifully written book in which nothing occurs, and the rare masterpiece that achieves both thought and entertainment without accidentally becoming 900 pages long. The ratings are informative, convenient and guaranteed to provoke disagreement. Every reader will eventually discover a cherished novel receiving fewer stars than deserved, while an inexplicably celebrated work has been rewarded for qualities visible only to the editorial committee. Reference books thereby encourage active critical engagement, sometimes expressed through muttering. The guide ranges across celebrated authors, prolific professionals and figures who have slipped from general memory. It provides an intriguing snapshot of th.…