The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction

[Henry]

Tachyon's Moving Forward (Go Ahead, Physicists, Laugh)
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing/tachyons_moving_forward_go_a
head_physicists_laugh_103984.asp 
"And then there's an anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly, and John
Kessel, which we can't wait to read-it takes its organizing principle from a
Jonathan Lethem essay called "The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction,"
which basically postulates that the genre could've gained mainstream
respectability if Thomas Pynchon had won the Hugo for Gravity's Rainbow 35
years ago. Weisman explained that Kelly and Kessel will be compiling science
fiction stories by "literary" authors, along with stories of a literary bent
by authors generally regarded as strictly genre, from that 1973 date up to
2008, when Michael Chabon was embraced by sci-fan fans and writers."

The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction
by 
Jonathan Lethem
http://www.verysilly.org/lethem/lethems_vision.html 
"In 1973 Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was awarded the Nebula, the
highest honor available in the field once known as "science fiction" - a
term now mostly forgotten. 

Sorry, just dreaming. In our world Bruce is dead, while Bob Hope lurches on.
And though Gravity's Rainbow really was nominated for the 1973 Nebula, it
was passed over for Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, which
commentator Carter Scholz rightly deemed "less a novel than a schematic
diagram in prose." Pynchon's nomination now stands as a hidden tombstone
marking the death of the hope that science fiction was about to merge with
the mainstream."

Henry Mu
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