ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
I HAVE ALWAYS loved fantasy and science-fiction, even the endless lame movies that we watched at family night at the drive-ins back in the early '60s. By the end of that decade, I was hooked on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line of novels and the Dangerous Visions school of science-fiction.
In this category I address/review/criticize books and the people who write them—especially the work of Poul Anderson, Philip Dick, Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, and Norman Spinrad.
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TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO, I was turned on to Glimpses, a novel by Lewis Shiner. I’d never heard of the author but as I don’t keep up with much of anything anymore (it’s the old age thing), that wasn’t surprising. [Continue reading]
THE TRAILER for the 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale did not impress us, but fourteen years later a friend brought the DVD over so we were obliged to sit through it. The star, Heath Ledger, had impressed us in his tour de force as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008). [Continue reading]
I FOUND MY AGING COPY of Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave when I discovered Joachim Boaz’s site Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. I read Joachim’s take on Poul Anderson’s novel—he considered it “vaguely good”—and the comments submitted by his readers and I disagreed with certain observations of theirs. [Continue reading]
I JUST HAD A ‘WHAT A COINCIDENCE’ MOMENT! They are not all that dissimilar from deja vu moments, except the sometimes slightly scary feeling that accompanies the latter is rarely part of the former. When coincidence occurs to me, I am usually delighted, rarely frightened into believing some form of pre-determinism, as deja vu can do. [Continue reading]
IF I SAID that all ‘modern’ fantasy can be traced to one author and one story, J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord Of The Rings, few would argue. While aficionados and historians can make arguments for the influence of Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, and others, almost all the well-known fantasy titles of the past four decades can be traced to the tales of the Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the One Ring. [Continue reading]
THIS IS THE FOURTH of five essays (all titled “modern science fiction and the gimme part 4” or 3 or 1) addressing aspects of the acknowledged “laws” of plotting and story-telling in modern science fiction. It is not necessary to have read the first two parts to understand this part. [Continue reading]
I CAME OF AGE as a reader of science fiction in the late 1960s and early ’70s. My exposure to what was happening in science fiction was limited, as I was never involved in any organized fandom. For me, the early ’70s were spent turning on tuning in dropping out, protesting the war, expanding my consciousness, and discovering the difference between girls and women. [Continue reading]
ALL FANTASTICAL LITERATURE depends on a state of being known as the ‘willful suspension of disbelief.’ That is, the reader enters the story prepared to toss all skepticism aside for the sake of the story! This term was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 in his Biographia literaria (or ‘biographical sketches of my literary life’) and opinions he wrote:
“In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” [Continue reading]
THIS IS THE FIRST OF FIVE interconnected essays on ‘modern’ science fiction and fantasy. They are intended to be read as a piece when all five are posted over the next week. This essay started off as an investigation into two aspects of science fiction based on MY memories concerning the field, most of them from the 1960s and ’70s. [Continue reading]