GR as SF

[Jay Herzog]

On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Paul DiFilippo wrote:

> 
> 
> In my wide-open, exceedingly slack view of SF, GR fully qualifies
> as a member of that elastic set.  But even in such a relatively
> rigid view as Isaac Asimov's, it probably would.  He was the fellow
> who first identified three large branches of SF:  "Why not?";
> "What if?"; and "If this goes on...".  GR plainly falls into
> the latter category, showing us exactly what perilous road
> we have set our twentieth century feet on.
> 
> --
> Paul Di Filippo&Deborah Newton/2 Poplar/Providence, RI 02906
> Dada Charity:  "Clothe the hungry and feed the naked."
> Capitalist Charity:  "Give the hungry clothes, the naked food,
> and let them create a market economy."
> 
> I came to read GR ten years ago mainly due to the fact that it was name
> dropped by SF writers like Gibson and Sterling- my formative teenage
> reading consisted mainly of writers like R.A. Lafferty, Harlan Ellison,
> S. Delany and older stuff like Alfred Bester. Pynchon seemed to fit
> right in with this crowd(I remember reading somewhere that in his 20's
> TP applied for a grant to write a libretto for a musical version of
> Bester's Stars my Destination). By the way Paul I thought your
> reimagining of the 19th century in "The Steampunk trilogy"was
> great(especially the story Walt and Emily)  and I think a lot of the
> folks on this list would dig it too.