Reprint: Songs of War

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Allan Reeth, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Harry Harrison, Kit Reed

Time for another of my ‘In Short’ columns. This one, on a story by the incomparable Kit Reed, first appeared in Vector 274 (Winter 2013/14).

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Reprint: And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side

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Christopher Priest, Harry Harrison, James Tiptree Jr, John Keats, kameron hurley, Theodore Sturgeon

Given the review of the Tiptree biography I reprinted a few days ago, it seems appropriate to link to this column on Tiptree’s story. The column first appeared in Vector 272, Spring 2013.

Reprint: God

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Andrew M. Greely, Anthony Boucher, Arthur C Clarke, Dan Simmons, David Zindell, Donald Barthelme, Francis Godwin, Garry Kilworth, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, James Blish, James Morrow, m john harrison, Mary Doria Russell, Michael Bishop, Michael Moorcock, Olaf Stapledon, Paul McAuley, Philip K. Dick, Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg, Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, Walter M. Miller, William Tenn

And so, as we come to the end of another religious holiday, it is time to look at one of the most persistent themes of science fiction. It is a subject I find myself coming back to on a regular basis. I feel that God (as opposed to religion) has no part to play in science fiction, that the introduction of a figure who can casually change the whole nature of reality is lazy in science fictional terms. This particular iteration of the point came in one of my Cognitive Mapping columns that was first published in Vector 217 (May-June 2001).

Reprint: Alternate History

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A.J.P. Taylor, Bruce Sterling, G.K. Chesterton, G.M. Trevelyan, Harold Nicolson, Harry Harrison, Harry Turtledove, Hilaire Belloc, Hilary Bailey, J.C. Squire, Keith Roberts, Kingsley Amis, L. Sprague De Camp, Len Deighton, Lisa Tuttle, MacKinlay Kantor, Martin Cruz Smith, Philip K. Dick, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Harris, Stephen Baxter, Terry Bisson, Vladimir Nabokov, Ward Moore, William Gibson, William L. Shirer, Winston Churchill

Someone asked for more of my Cognitive Mapping columns, so here’s another one. In fact, this is the first one I wrote. It appeared in Vector 186 (December 1995). To be honest, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the term ‘alternate history’, one cannot help feeling that grammatically it ought to be ‘alternative’, but usage means we are stuck with it. As a sub-genre, however, it is one of my favourites.

Reprint: Nebula Awards Showcase 2004

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A.E. Van Vogt, Adam-Troy Castro, Alexei Panshin, Allen Steele, Anna Kavan, Anthony Boucher, Arthur Sellings, Bob Shaw, Brian Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Charles Stross, Damon Knight, Darko Suvin, Frederik Pohl, Groff Conklin, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, Jack McDevitt, Jerry Oltion, John Wyndham, Katherine MacLean, Lesley What, Megan Lindholm, Mervyn Peake, Michael Swanwick, Molly Gloss, Neil Gaiman, Peter Jackson, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Richard Chwedyk, Sharon Lee, Ted Chiang, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Willis E. McNelly, Willy Ley

I haven’t actually included any anthologies in my reprints so far, even though I have reviewed an awful lot of them. So I thought I should include one today. This review of Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 edited by Vonda N. McIntyre was, I think, written for The New York Review of Science Fiction, but I can’t find a record of it being published. So this may be its first appearance.

Reprint: Histories of the Future

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Alan Sandison, Alasdair Spark, Beatrice Battaglia, Brian Baker, Bruce Brasington, Charles E. Gannon, Damien Broderick, David Seed, E.M. Forster, Frederic Jameson, H.G. Wells, Harry Harrison, Hugo Gernsback, I.F. Clarke, Ken MacLeod, Robert Crossley, Robert Dingley, Tom Shippey

Today a piece of criticism about criticism. This review of Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Alan Sandison and Robert Dingley was first published in Foundation 83, Autumn 2001.