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vincent1126's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Minor: Racial slurs
spitzig's review against another edition
4.0
Kind of disappointing. Maybe it's the nature of essays. It seemed heavy on the opinions and light on the facts. I'd have preferred more objective analysis.
Some of the chapters didn't seem strongly connected to Science Fiction. The chapter about America being a culture of lying for example. Hoaxes and con artists are a big part of American culture. Examples of this connected with SF are UFO hoaxes and various psychological/psychic cons, like Scientology. But, the connection seems loose to me.
Also, there was a chapter about Poe being SF's primary ancestor. His argument seemed kind of weak, to me. Most of what Poe is known for wouldn't be called SF. He didn't really talk much about later SF authors being influenced by Poe. He attacked the claim that Frankenstein wasn't SF's primary ancestor. And, I tend to agree with him there, but he missed something. He said that because the Frankenstein in the public consciousness isn't Shelley's. But, Shelley is certainly the ORIGIN of the Frankenstein story, even if the generally known one has changed. So, it's still the ancestor of the story. And, later in the book, he talks about much SF being either a technological savior or destroyer story. Shelley certainly influenced a lot of authors who wrote a Frankenstein(destroyer) type-story.
I was kind of disappointed about the SF as a religion chapter. Too much of it was about Scientology. I know about Scientology, so I didn't really learn anything from that stuff. The discussion about other religions, like Heaven's Gate, Manson's Family, and the Japanese death cult that released the sarin gas in the subway. I found it particularly interesting that Manson required all his followers to read Stranger in a Strange Land.
He talked about trends in publishing that were kind of depressing. Like, a VERY large(and increasing) percentage of the SF published is part of some franchise(like Star Trek). Considering the depth of most of the franchise books, that is sad. Also, it's the same case for series books. While I like to read a series, too. I also like standalone books. If I REALLY like an author, I want to see what NEW things he can show me. And, you can't see as many new things in the same world. However, series books can be good for more complicated plots or expanding on other ideas, so I'm not as upset about this as about the franchise books.
I guess I can see the trend on the bookshelves at the bookstore. I suspect those books come and go quickly, because it sounds like the percentage of sf books that are franchise is higher than the percentage I see in stores. Which would seem to indicate a lot of people like them, but consider them somewhat generic. That has been my impression from hearing authors talk about writing in those universes. It seems like the publisher maps out a plot for lots of books and inserts subgenre authors(like military SF). It seems like the authors are considered generic by the publisher. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of creativity in that kind of process.
I'm reading another book about SF. I thought I should at this point of comparison. While I considered this to be an academic book, its academic in the same kind of way your pot smoking professor is. Disch makes intelligent literature references, but he also makes jokes about sex and drugs.
Some of the chapters didn't seem strongly connected to Science Fiction. The chapter about America being a culture of lying for example. Hoaxes and con artists are a big part of American culture. Examples of this connected with SF are UFO hoaxes and various psychological/psychic cons, like Scientology. But, the connection seems loose to me.
Also, there was a chapter about Poe being SF's primary ancestor. His argument seemed kind of weak, to me. Most of what Poe is known for wouldn't be called SF. He didn't really talk much about later SF authors being influenced by Poe. He attacked the claim that Frankenstein wasn't SF's primary ancestor. And, I tend to agree with him there, but he missed something. He said that because the Frankenstein in the public consciousness isn't Shelley's. But, Shelley is certainly the ORIGIN of the Frankenstein story, even if the generally known one has changed. So, it's still the ancestor of the story. And, later in the book, he talks about much SF being either a technological savior or destroyer story. Shelley certainly influenced a lot of authors who wrote a Frankenstein(destroyer) type-story.
I was kind of disappointed about the SF as a religion chapter. Too much of it was about Scientology. I know about Scientology, so I didn't really learn anything from that stuff. The discussion about other religions, like Heaven's Gate, Manson's Family, and the Japanese death cult that released the sarin gas in the subway. I found it particularly interesting that Manson required all his followers to read Stranger in a Strange Land.
He talked about trends in publishing that were kind of depressing. Like, a VERY large(and increasing) percentage of the SF published is part of some franchise(like Star Trek). Considering the depth of most of the franchise books, that is sad. Also, it's the same case for series books. While I like to read a series, too. I also like standalone books. If I REALLY like an author, I want to see what NEW things he can show me. And, you can't see as many new things in the same world. However, series books can be good for more complicated plots or expanding on other ideas, so I'm not as upset about this as about the franchise books.
I guess I can see the trend on the bookshelves at the bookstore. I suspect those books come and go quickly, because it sounds like the percentage of sf books that are franchise is higher than the percentage I see in stores. Which would seem to indicate a lot of people like them, but consider them somewhat generic. That has been my impression from hearing authors talk about writing in those universes. It seems like the publisher maps out a plot for lots of books and inserts subgenre authors(like military SF). It seems like the authors are considered generic by the publisher. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of creativity in that kind of process.
I'm reading another book about SF. I thought I should at this point of comparison. While I considered this to be an academic book, its academic in the same kind of way your pot smoking professor is. Disch makes intelligent literature references, but he also makes jokes about sex and drugs.
megapolisomancy's review against another edition
1.0
I have so many problems with this stupid book that I think just listing them out is probably the best way to include most of them (and I'll still forget a few, I'm sure). I'll just add more as I think of them.
So:
1. Thomas Disch, who was a lifelong author of science fiction and presumably reader of science fiction and, with this book, "historian" of science fiction, HATES science fiction, and people who write science fiction, and especially people who enjoy reading science fiction.
2. Disch opens with the truism that golden age of science fiction is 12 (specifically 12 year old boys. Not girls. Girls don't belong here, but more on that later. Also, only white boys.) This isn't in order to deconstruct or just laugh at that assertion, though - this is one of Disch's central points.
3. Chapter two deals with the origin of the genre (why not chapter one? I don't know. More on that later also). Many (some? most? I don't know. Aldiss and Luckhurst, at any rate) point to Frankenstein as the first modern science fiction novel. Not Disch. Why? Because even though most people are familiar with the story, not many have read it.* Also no one would have ever taken Mary Shelley seriously if it weren't for her wealthy parents and her husband, who was a superior writer.
...
... You heard me. So who does Disch select instead? Edgar Allen Poe, who is an obvious choice because I (and I'm sure all of you) have read all of his science fiction works, like "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart" and his one novel, _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket_. Wait, no, none of those are science fiction. Disch is referring, of course, to the very well-known and widely-read Poe story "Mesmeric Revelation." You've read "Mesmeric Revelation," haven't you? God knows it is not only more popular than _Frankenstein_, but also has infiltrated the popular consciousness more fully. There's also a weird reference to Poe's other immensely popular and widely known "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (1839) and the contemporary event in... Hiroshima? (To be fair, because of his often muddled and confusing prose, he might have meant Hiroshima was contemporary to the 1990s, although...?)
4. "Mesmeric Revelation" brings us to Disch's other main point (and the chief focus of chapter one): Poe was into mesmerism, which was a hoax, and science fiction is therefore the genre most suited to lying (as in "Suvinian novum = a lie" which is just one of many bizarre logical leaps Disch subjects us to), and America is now a nation of liars. Now, you and I might think to point out that fiction is, by definition, not "true," but to be frank this chapter has little to do with science fiction in general other than setting the scene for the rest of this book's kind of rambling non-sequitur presentation, and allowing Disch to spend a lot of time complaining about scientology (which makes some sense) but also Heaven's Gate (which doesn't make a lot of sense) and Aum Shinrikyo (which makes no sense at all given the fact that this is, I think, the only time ANYTHING having to do with a country other than the US or England is mentioned in the whole stupid book).
5. Disch is also pretty sure that books are a dying medium, because at the time of his writing (the late 1990s) special-effects technology was finally (and cost-effectively) catching up with the human imagination, so who would prefer books anymore to films or TV?
6. Disch also takes a certain breed of SF author, starting with Robert Heinlein, to task for promoting libertarianism and acting as shills for the military-industrial complex. This was the only interesting point that Disch had to make.
7. Disch also takes feminist SF authors to task for... being women in a man's game, essentially? Someone else on goodreads writes that "The chapter on feminism would have been offensive if it wasn't so absurd as to be amusing," which is absolutely true - this section really has to be read to be believed. Disch's biggest target in this section is Ursula K. Le Guin, who no one reads for fun (??) and who put together a Norton anthology of science fiction but, because of her RADICAL FEMINIST AGENDA, unfairly stacked the table of contents for her "one-volume affirmative action campaign" so that 26 out of 67 authors were women, "remedying the genre's perceived historical neglect of women and other exemplary victims" (so, just to be clear, Disch thinks that 38% of a volume consisting of stories by women is TOO MANY WOMEN! THOSE RADICAL FEMINISTS!!). Oh also that slim number of stories by men? RADICAL FEMINIST Le Guin made sure to select "relatively feeble or ephemeral stories by older big-name male writers" in order to make the women look better. Disch also mentions on one page that UKL unfairly left out British authors (despite the fact that one of his central arguments is that SF is a definitively American concern) and also some American "fellow-travellers" of the New Wave such as himself. He then, with no apparent hint of shame, reveals a page later that Le Guin solicited one of his stories for the book but that he turned her down. Like, seriously, Disch seems to be honestly aggrieved that he was not included in the anthology but has decided that this was not because he TURNED THEM DOWN but because of an unfair bias against men who write well. This is some MRA bullshit.
8. The chapter on race is mostly about white men writing about the 3rd world, and then we learn that Octavia Butler's "intense conviction coupled with a total lack of humor" allows her to "invent compelling, if implausible, plots." Butler's moral, then (that "miscegenation is a good thing, albeit very unpleasant") is something that Disch thinks should be called out, but, "[a]s SF's only prominent black writer who has chosen to focus on racial concerns, Butler is not about to be challenged for being politically incorrect." This concludes Disch's summation of the life and work of Octavia Butler, which took all of a single paragraph. He then spends two pages talking about Heinlein's _Farnham's Freehold_, which is a novel in which a nuclear war somehow throws a white family forward through time into a future where the Earth is ruled by cannibalistic black folk (this, it bears mentioning, apparently strikes Disch as a much more plausible plot than anything Butler came up with). He does admit that this plot might be just a little bit racist, but he insists that "the enjoyment of witnessing a taboo artfully broken is contagious." This is some reverse-racism bullshit.
Samuel Delany is the only other author of color mentioned, and Disch decides that he's more of an academic than an SF author (and Disch, surprise surprise, despises academics).
9. Speaking of Delany: "One of the genre's many teen prodigies, his first novel appeared in 1960, when he was twenty." [note: not only is 20 not a teenager as far as I am aware, but this novel came out in 1962, not 1960]
Were he alive today I guess Disch would be a big proponent of Jon Stewart's stupid Rally to Restore Sanity or whatever it was called, given his insistence that feminists are as bad as sexists and that African Americans should just, you know, Calm Down about racism and so forth. He comes right out and says, in fact, that "ideology" or political positions have no place in science fiction, which he thinks should be reserved for dumb meaningless escapism - missing the fact, as all good centrist liberals do, that his outlook is just as much an ideology as any other.
This is garbage. Perhaps I should get in the habit of automatically dumping books that use the phrase "politically correct" in earnest.
* An unsubstantiated claim, just like most claims made here. This is what makes reading journalism/popular works of nonfiction kind of frustrating for me sometimes, and is particularly infuriating in this kind of personal-memoir-cum-historical-review-essay.
So:
1. Thomas Disch, who was a lifelong author of science fiction and presumably reader of science fiction and, with this book, "historian" of science fiction, HATES science fiction, and people who write science fiction, and especially people who enjoy reading science fiction.
2. Disch opens with the truism that golden age of science fiction is 12 (specifically 12 year old boys. Not girls. Girls don't belong here, but more on that later. Also, only white boys.) This isn't in order to deconstruct or just laugh at that assertion, though - this is one of Disch's central points.
3. Chapter two deals with the origin of the genre (why not chapter one? I don't know. More on that later also). Many (some? most? I don't know. Aldiss and Luckhurst, at any rate) point to Frankenstein as the first modern science fiction novel. Not Disch. Why? Because even though most people are familiar with the story, not many have read it.* Also no one would have ever taken Mary Shelley seriously if it weren't for her wealthy parents and her husband, who was a superior writer.
...
... You heard me. So who does Disch select instead? Edgar Allen Poe, who is an obvious choice because I (and I'm sure all of you) have read all of his science fiction works, like "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart" and his one novel, _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket_. Wait, no, none of those are science fiction. Disch is referring, of course, to the very well-known and widely-read Poe story "Mesmeric Revelation." You've read "Mesmeric Revelation," haven't you? God knows it is not only more popular than _Frankenstein_, but also has infiltrated the popular consciousness more fully. There's also a weird reference to Poe's other immensely popular and widely known "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (1839) and the contemporary event in... Hiroshima? (To be fair, because of his often muddled and confusing prose, he might have meant Hiroshima was contemporary to the 1990s, although...?)
4. "Mesmeric Revelation" brings us to Disch's other main point (and the chief focus of chapter one): Poe was into mesmerism, which was a hoax, and science fiction is therefore the genre most suited to lying (as in "Suvinian novum = a lie" which is just one of many bizarre logical leaps Disch subjects us to), and America is now a nation of liars. Now, you and I might think to point out that fiction is, by definition, not "true," but to be frank this chapter has little to do with science fiction in general other than setting the scene for the rest of this book's kind of rambling non-sequitur presentation, and allowing Disch to spend a lot of time complaining about scientology (which makes some sense) but also Heaven's Gate (which doesn't make a lot of sense) and Aum Shinrikyo (which makes no sense at all given the fact that this is, I think, the only time ANYTHING having to do with a country other than the US or England is mentioned in the whole stupid book).
5. Disch is also pretty sure that books are a dying medium, because at the time of his writing (the late 1990s) special-effects technology was finally (and cost-effectively) catching up with the human imagination, so who would prefer books anymore to films or TV?
6. Disch also takes a certain breed of SF author, starting with Robert Heinlein, to task for promoting libertarianism and acting as shills for the military-industrial complex. This was the only interesting point that Disch had to make.
7. Disch also takes feminist SF authors to task for... being women in a man's game, essentially? Someone else on goodreads writes that "The chapter on feminism would have been offensive if it wasn't so absurd as to be amusing," which is absolutely true - this section really has to be read to be believed. Disch's biggest target in this section is Ursula K. Le Guin, who no one reads for fun (??) and who put together a Norton anthology of science fiction but, because of her RADICAL FEMINIST AGENDA, unfairly stacked the table of contents for her "one-volume affirmative action campaign" so that 26 out of 67 authors were women, "remedying the genre's perceived historical neglect of women and other exemplary victims" (so, just to be clear, Disch thinks that 38% of a volume consisting of stories by women is TOO MANY WOMEN! THOSE RADICAL FEMINISTS!!). Oh also that slim number of stories by men? RADICAL FEMINIST Le Guin made sure to select "relatively feeble or ephemeral stories by older big-name male writers" in order to make the women look better. Disch also mentions on one page that UKL unfairly left out British authors (despite the fact that one of his central arguments is that SF is a definitively American concern) and also some American "fellow-travellers" of the New Wave such as himself. He then, with no apparent hint of shame, reveals a page later that Le Guin solicited one of his stories for the book but that he turned her down. Like, seriously, Disch seems to be honestly aggrieved that he was not included in the anthology but has decided that this was not because he TURNED THEM DOWN but because of an unfair bias against men who write well. This is some MRA bullshit.
8. The chapter on race is mostly about white men writing about the 3rd world, and then we learn that Octavia Butler's "intense conviction coupled with a total lack of humor" allows her to "invent compelling, if implausible, plots." Butler's moral, then (that "miscegenation is a good thing, albeit very unpleasant") is something that Disch thinks should be called out, but, "[a]s SF's only prominent black writer who has chosen to focus on racial concerns, Butler is not about to be challenged for being politically incorrect." This concludes Disch's summation of the life and work of Octavia Butler, which took all of a single paragraph. He then spends two pages talking about Heinlein's _Farnham's Freehold_, which is a novel in which a nuclear war somehow throws a white family forward through time into a future where the Earth is ruled by cannibalistic black folk (this, it bears mentioning, apparently strikes Disch as a much more plausible plot than anything Butler came up with). He does admit that this plot might be just a little bit racist, but he insists that "the enjoyment of witnessing a taboo artfully broken is contagious." This is some reverse-racism bullshit.
Samuel Delany is the only other author of color mentioned, and Disch decides that he's more of an academic than an SF author (and Disch, surprise surprise, despises academics).
9. Speaking of Delany: "One of the genre's many teen prodigies, his first novel appeared in 1960, when he was twenty." [note: not only is 20 not a teenager as far as I am aware, but this novel came out in 1962, not 1960]
Were he alive today I guess Disch would be a big proponent of Jon Stewart's stupid Rally to Restore Sanity or whatever it was called, given his insistence that feminists are as bad as sexists and that African Americans should just, you know, Calm Down about racism and so forth. He comes right out and says, in fact, that "ideology" or political positions have no place in science fiction, which he thinks should be reserved for dumb meaningless escapism - missing the fact, as all good centrist liberals do, that his outlook is just as much an ideology as any other.
This is garbage. Perhaps I should get in the habit of automatically dumping books that use the phrase "politically correct" in earnest.
* An unsubstantiated claim, just like most claims made here. This is what makes reading journalism/popular works of nonfiction kind of frustrating for me sometimes, and is particularly infuriating in this kind of personal-memoir-cum-historical-review-essay.
lamusadelils's review against another edition
2.0
Ugh.
Pensé que sería una oportunidad de tener más clara la historia de uno de mis géneros favoritos, pero Disch tenía unos sesgos terribles y cuenta la misma historia que cualquier otro whiteboi pero de forma condescendiente porque minimizaba las aportaciones de innumerables nombres a lo largo de la historia y el talento necesario para formular las preguntas que la ciencia ficción plantea.
Traté de digerirlo poco a poco para no hacer corajes, pero entre una que otra cosa interesante hay mucha paja y muchos berrinches. No es una versión que intente la neutralidad ni por asomo, pero la gota que colmo el vaso para mi es que sugiera que mamá Leguin solo es leída por feminista y como una especie de cuota para tener mujeres autoras en las bibliotecas y no por su increíble talento.
Quisiera leer la versión que cuente de lo que se estaba haciendo en ciencia ficción en diversos lugares en diversos puntos de la historia, conocer voces que quizá nunca llegaron a la fama pero que probablemente trataban temas relevantes de sus tiempos (muy probablemente de grupos oprimidos) y quizá en el proceso ahondar un poco en la razón de que los elementos de la ciencia ficción nos llamen tanto y, a pesar de alejarse de la realidad, parecen acercarnos más a ella de lo que parece.
Pensé que sería una oportunidad de tener más clara la historia de uno de mis géneros favoritos, pero Disch tenía unos sesgos terribles y cuenta la misma historia que cualquier otro whiteboi pero de forma condescendiente porque minimizaba las aportaciones de innumerables nombres a lo largo de la historia y el talento necesario para formular las preguntas que la ciencia ficción plantea.
Traté de digerirlo poco a poco para no hacer corajes, pero entre una que otra cosa interesante hay mucha paja y muchos berrinches. No es una versión que intente la neutralidad ni por asomo, pero la gota que colmo el vaso para mi es que sugiera que mamá Leguin solo es leída por feminista y como una especie de cuota para tener mujeres autoras en las bibliotecas y no por su increíble talento.
Quisiera leer la versión que cuente de lo que se estaba haciendo en ciencia ficción en diversos lugares en diversos puntos de la historia, conocer voces que quizá nunca llegaron a la fama pero que probablemente trataban temas relevantes de sus tiempos (muy probablemente de grupos oprimidos) y quizá en el proceso ahondar un poco en la razón de que los elementos de la ciencia ficción nos llamen tanto y, a pesar de alejarse de la realidad, parecen acercarnos más a ella de lo que parece.
deadwolfbones's review against another edition
3.0
Worth it for the section on the founding of Scientology alone.
ianbanks's review
4.0
Mr Disch comes across in this book as a sneering elitist. What he is, though, is just a snob. A contradictory snob at times, but a snob nonetheless. What he dislikes is work that takes an easy way, or one that has a particular barrow to push. He’s a slightly more articulate - and readable - version of Holden Caulfield, but here we get a glimpse at what Disch does enjoy, as well as glimpses into the contradictory self-awareness that arires from it.
He has a wide knowledge of the field and the personalities that inhabit it and while he is harsh on authors that he sees as being of less worth than others (many of whom are, if I can be permitted a snide aside, younger and more successful than him) he does place his razor-like gaze (if I may be permitted a mixed metaphor) on the giants of the field whom he accuses of being successful on the coattails of an agenda. His piece about Ursula le Guin has angered many, but his annoyance seems to come largely from the fact that she was pushing a political vision in much the same way that others like Heinlein or John Norman were.
Disch has no truck with agendas, it would seem. And, given his written work in this book about L. Ron Hubbard and his contributions to SF literature, it would seem that he can hardly be blamed. While it does seem churlish to blame professional storytellers for being economical with the truth, the examples he chooses are almost entirely ones that do not present a vision of our beloved literature that is entirely honest and truthful or accurate.
And I admire him for that: not many people can marry their idealism to as bitchy a tone as Disch, but he manages it and provides an interesting read along the way.
He has a wide knowledge of the field and the personalities that inhabit it and while he is harsh on authors that he sees as being of less worth than others (many of whom are, if I can be permitted a snide aside, younger and more successful than him) he does place his razor-like gaze (if I may be permitted a mixed metaphor) on the giants of the field whom he accuses of being successful on the coattails of an agenda. His piece about Ursula le Guin has angered many, but his annoyance seems to come largely from the fact that she was pushing a political vision in much the same way that others like Heinlein or John Norman were.
Disch has no truck with agendas, it would seem. And, given his written work in this book about L. Ron Hubbard and his contributions to SF literature, it would seem that he can hardly be blamed. While it does seem churlish to blame professional storytellers for being economical with the truth, the examples he chooses are almost entirely ones that do not present a vision of our beloved literature that is entirely honest and truthful or accurate.
And I admire him for that: not many people can marry their idealism to as bitchy a tone as Disch, but he manages it and provides an interesting read along the way.
jasminenoack's review against another edition
3.0
This is a Karen 3 star book not a Jasmine three star book. I mean I didn't dislike it as much as books that I usually give three stars. Today three stars is good. It is a good fun book.
It is written by the guy who wrote the brave little toaster, yeah I know who knew the brave little toaster was actually a book. Why didn't I just read that you ask? it appears to be heavily out of print and difficult to find. However I found it on demonoid and will read it eventually. I am very excited about the prospect.
This book is about low culture scifi. The Disch lists his favorite authors and specifically says that he won't be talking about them because they are not the type of authors with mainstream pull (John Crowley is in this list). Scifi according to Disch is written by perpetual twelve year olds, this is constantly directed at ray bradbury among others. Authors who age become old news. He also talks about the necessary productivity of scifi authors. A book a year is the rule. There is an inherent culture in scifi that separates it from the more literary aka John Crowley and Atwood. although some literary gentlemen are very important to scifi for him mainly ballard and burroughs (william not agusten).
This book is about how scifi comments on and shapes the directions of technology. He says that the moon figured majorly in scifi novels until there was space travel. When the moon could no longer be imagined we had to move further out eventually into warp speed. This eventually leading to cyberpunk. The discussion of cyberpunk seems well done to me but since I don't know cyberpunk I can't be positive.
another interesting aspect of this book is it's age. historically Scifi was much bigger than it is now. Now people have fallen heavily into fantasy and vampires. When I was growing up I was obsessed with ray bradbury but now if I recommend him to a young girl people look at me like I have two heads. This book was written in the era when scifi was super popular by a writer who made his living writing it. It is a very inside history which I think sometimes makes the book a little boring or difficult for people like me who aren't there to grasp.
There is an interesting premise that scifi is a truly american genre based on american's belief in the right to lie. I can't do this argument justice but I think he is probably mostly right regardless of the fact I prefer british scifi.
He also has a long argument about the fact the Poe is the father of scifi not a few other people who at the moment I can't remember who are.
basically an interesting collection of thoughts by an author who is probably trying harder to understand his own place than to convince us of it.
It is written by the guy who wrote the brave little toaster, yeah I know who knew the brave little toaster was actually a book. Why didn't I just read that you ask? it appears to be heavily out of print and difficult to find. However I found it on demonoid and will read it eventually. I am very excited about the prospect.
This book is about low culture scifi. The Disch lists his favorite authors and specifically says that he won't be talking about them because they are not the type of authors with mainstream pull (John Crowley is in this list). Scifi according to Disch is written by perpetual twelve year olds, this is constantly directed at ray bradbury among others. Authors who age become old news. He also talks about the necessary productivity of scifi authors. A book a year is the rule. There is an inherent culture in scifi that separates it from the more literary aka John Crowley and Atwood. although some literary gentlemen are very important to scifi for him mainly ballard and burroughs (william not agusten).
This book is about how scifi comments on and shapes the directions of technology. He says that the moon figured majorly in scifi novels until there was space travel. When the moon could no longer be imagined we had to move further out eventually into warp speed. This eventually leading to cyberpunk. The discussion of cyberpunk seems well done to me but since I don't know cyberpunk I can't be positive.
another interesting aspect of this book is it's age. historically Scifi was much bigger than it is now. Now people have fallen heavily into fantasy and vampires. When I was growing up I was obsessed with ray bradbury but now if I recommend him to a young girl people look at me like I have two heads. This book was written in the era when scifi was super popular by a writer who made his living writing it. It is a very inside history which I think sometimes makes the book a little boring or difficult for people like me who aren't there to grasp.
There is an interesting premise that scifi is a truly american genre based on american's belief in the right to lie. I can't do this argument justice but I think he is probably mostly right regardless of the fact I prefer british scifi.
He also has a long argument about the fact the Poe is the father of scifi not a few other people who at the moment I can't remember who are.
basically an interesting collection of thoughts by an author who is probably trying harder to understand his own place than to convince us of it.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
4.0
This is an unusual history, linking together grand ideas with the live of the author, who very much "was there, and did that." The first chapters stumble in the dark, as Disch tries to establish the links of science-fiction to the very American tradition of the Big Liar, the confidence man who is so outrageous that we go along with the swindle gladly out of a sense of fun. The mostly forgotten Ignatius L. Donnelly, who's books on Atlantis and ancient aliens prefigured the New Age, is the leading figure of this era, while the populist/trash writers Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne are its perfection. This history of SF is interesting, if not particularly well balanced or supported.
Once the book gets into the period when Disch was most active, the late 50s through the 80s, it really takes off. He is a cutting cultural critic of the work that SF has done in making the atomic Armageddon livable, supporting the indefinite expansion of the military-industrial critic into space, and normalizing and familiarizating the 'office of the future', as epitomized by Star Trek. Sex, consumerism, war, and death are the major themes of the book. There isn't much on the Campbellian Golden Age, or on the Cyberpunk Movement, but other people have written about that. A fascinating, if partial look at my favorite genre.
Once the book gets into the period when Disch was most active, the late 50s through the 80s, it really takes off. He is a cutting cultural critic of the work that SF has done in making the atomic Armageddon livable, supporting the indefinite expansion of the military-industrial critic into space, and normalizing and familiarizating the 'office of the future', as epitomized by Star Trek. Sex, consumerism, war, and death are the major themes of the book. There isn't much on the Campbellian Golden Age, or on the Cyberpunk Movement, but other people have written about that. A fascinating, if partial look at my favorite genre.
bibliomaniac2021's review
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
What an interesting conceit this book presents, namely that SF is a form of clever lies, predominantly targeted towards the neotenic personality. As Disch argues, Americans are more inclined to believe the Great Lie, wether it be UFOS, Atlantis, or Christian Science, and SF continues in that charlatanistic tradition. So, Disch identifies Edgar Allen Poe as the orginator of SF- within his terms- since he perpetrated hoaxes, or wrote about such pseudo-scientific topics as mesmerism. Unlike Aldiss who argued that Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is the fons et origo of SF, Disch shuns this interpretation as purely theoretical: Shelley is an unread author, and for her gothic shocker to be part of SF, she must have a wider readership.
In fact, Disch's investigation doesn't pursue the literary so much as the real facts, present in the history of hucksterism, fandom, Star Trek, the iconography of Sf - the rocket ship, the alien etc- all of which he places within a shrewd argument about Lies inc. Indeed, SF has plenty of this with L Ron Hubbard, the UFO- fanatics, and all the various claims made by notable individuals in the field. One of these is Dick- a personal friend of Disch- who the critic thought was spinning lies with his tales about Valis, and the alien intelligence makeover of the 1970s. Another author who occurs frequently in these pages is Heinlein who is posited as the head of the School of MilSF, the sign up/ship out branch of the genre. Heinlein and his comrades, namely Pournelle and the ones who followed him, were the public side of the military industrial complex. Heinlein, an advocate of SDI, fell out with Arthur C Clarke who presumably saw science as an instrument of human development, not war.
And another great thing about this book is that it ponders the links between SF and popular culture within the post-war technological boom and political re-orientation after the 60s and 70s. "Star Trek" is seen as prodomic of the PC era with its multi-ethic cast; it's also seen as the blueprint for the office found in corporations and institutions. SF as lifestyle, in Disch's formulation.
Ideas are wittily presented, and there's real humour when Disch says in a footnote that he offered the recipe of an aunt instead of a bad short story that Ursula Le Guin sought from him. Le Guin, surprisingly, is seen as one of the chief organisers of feminism in SF. I haven't read her in ages, but Disch quotes some speech where she complains about SF being "too white" and there not being many black authors. Sadly, about a decade after this Disch would take his own life, but at least he left us this, which nicely supplements his own SF achievements.
In fact, Disch's investigation doesn't pursue the literary so much as the real facts, present in the history of hucksterism, fandom, Star Trek, the iconography of Sf - the rocket ship, the alien etc- all of which he places within a shrewd argument about Lies inc. Indeed, SF has plenty of this with L Ron Hubbard, the UFO- fanatics, and all the various claims made by notable individuals in the field. One of these is Dick- a personal friend of Disch- who the critic thought was spinning lies with his tales about Valis, and the alien intelligence makeover of the 1970s. Another author who occurs frequently in these pages is Heinlein who is posited as the head of the School of MilSF, the sign up/ship out branch of the genre. Heinlein and his comrades, namely Pournelle and the ones who followed him, were the public side of the military industrial complex. Heinlein, an advocate of SDI, fell out with Arthur C Clarke who presumably saw science as an instrument of human development, not war.
And another great thing about this book is that it ponders the links between SF and popular culture within the post-war technological boom and political re-orientation after the 60s and 70s. "Star Trek" is seen as prodomic of the PC era with its multi-ethic cast; it's also seen as the blueprint for the office found in corporations and institutions. SF as lifestyle, in Disch's formulation.
Ideas are wittily presented, and there's real humour when Disch says in a footnote that he offered the recipe of an aunt instead of a bad short story that Ursula Le Guin sought from him. Le Guin, surprisingly, is seen as one of the chief organisers of feminism in SF. I haven't read her in ages, but Disch quotes some speech where she complains about SF being "too white" and there not being many black authors. Sadly, about a decade after this Disch would take his own life, but at least he left us this, which nicely supplements his own SF achievements.