Book Review: The Secret History of Science Fiction

[rich]

Didn't Jonathan Lethem riff on that before, what if GR won the nebula
(make a good comic)

what if spiderman joined the FF--my favorite

rich

On 10/5/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> Book Review: The Secret History of Science Fiction
> edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
> Author: Tim Gebhart — Published: Oct 04, 2009
>
>
> The Secret History of Science Fiction, a new anthology aimed at
> questioning the existence of genre boundaries, could be a victim of
> the very issue it seeks to address. It uses the term "science fiction"
> in the title.
>
> The anthology proceeds from an interesting premise. Thomas Pynchon's
> Gravity's Rainbow was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best
> Novel, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It
> didn't win. But then, the SFFWA treated Pynchon better than Pulitzer
> Prize officials. In 1974, the three-member fiction jury unanimously
> recommended the book receive the fiction award but the Pulitzer board
> vetoed the recommendation, calling the novel "unreadable," "turgid,"
> "overwritten," and, in parts, "obscene."
>
> Yet given that Gravity's Rainbow is viewed as a classic of postmodern
> literature, James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel ask what impact it
> winning the Nebula Award might have had on science fiction.
> Specifically, would that have eliminated the distinction between
> literary fiction ('li-fi") and science fiction ("sci-fi"), a
> distinction many, myself included, have led to unequal treatment of
> the two? Would they have merged into a literary universe that had no
> regard for genre as opposed to creating new labels, such as
> slipstream, as an accommodation? In making the case that genre labels
> should be meaningless, The Secret History of Science Fiction also
> demonstrates how pervasive they are.,..
>
> http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-secret-history-of/
>
>