Reprint: Cyber Circus

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Charles Finney, Kim Lakin-Smith, Ray Bradbury

Finally, for this week, and probably for this year, my review of Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith, which first appeared in Vector 270, late-Spring 2012.

Reprint: Let’s Go to Golgotha

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Aldous Huxley, Ann Vandermeer, Chris Boyce, Chris Morgan, Daphne Castell, Garry Kilworth, Ian Watson, Isaac Asimov, Jeff Vandermeer, John Crowley, Karen Joy Fowler, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury

This column, on ‘Let’s Go to Golgotha’ by Garry Kilworth, was intended as a companion piece to the column on ‘Standing Room Only’ by Karen Joy Fowler that had appeared in the previous issue. This was first published in Vector 277, Autumn 2014:

Reprint: Mars

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Arthur C Clarke, Ben Bova, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Elisabeth Malartre, George Griffiths, Giovanni Schiaparelli, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, H.G. Wells, Ian McDonald, Ian Watson, John W. Campbell, Kim Stanley Robinson, Paul McAuley, Percival Lowell, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Z. Gallun, Roger Zelazny, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Terry Bisson

Another Cognitive Mapping column. This one, which discusses one of science fiction’s great objects of desire, appeared in Vector 214, November-December 2000:

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.

Life After Life

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Kate Atkinson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Bradbury

One of the questions I find myself returning to time and again is: what is science fiction? Or, perhaps more accurately, why do we consider book X to be science fiction, but not book Y? The borders are fluid, porous, constantly open to being redefined, reimagined, they are never the same for any two people, they are never the same for one person at different times; yet we always end up drawing distinctions, deciding to read X as science fiction, Y as mainstream. I don’t think there is any great mystery about why this should be: we are a pigeonholing species, categorization is simply what we do. But how do we do it? What is the trigger that determines which side of our imaginary border we place any particular book?