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The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of
Thomas M. Disch was raised in Minnesota and started publishing science fiction in the early 1960s. His close involvement with the New Wave meant much of his early work was more closely associated with the UK than with the country of his birth. From the mid-1970s, he has been as well known for his poetry. Though he has not ceased to write, his increasingly large sphere of interest has reduced his science fictional output considerably, though he clearly remains in close contact with the authors and trends of the genre. His literate, intelligent approach is apparent in all he does.
The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of sets out to present a critical history of science fiction but is perhaps more interesting instead as a critical view of the American psyche. Disch's thesis is built on twin foundations -- that science fiction is an American form and that Americans believe they have a "right to lie." The first pillar is not thoroughly investigated -- at least, the argument is unlikely to convince non-Americans. The second idea is approached from almost every angle; its corollary -- and the reason for Disch's subtitle -- is that people want to believe. Disch's exploration of science fiction can decide that Edgar Allen Poe is "our embarrassing ancestor" because he has already reached the decision that SF is itself an American form. He dismisses Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a progenitor because her science is "fast talking and stage props" which serves to set the stage for classic melodrama, rather than as the real core of the book. Against this, Poe is set up as a prototypical American hoaxer and that his 'science fiction' is defined by a genuine desire to convince readers that what he writes is not mere fiction. It is thanks to this root stock that Disch feels able to discuss science fiction beyond its existence as a literary and visual form.
The book is primarily structured as a series of thematic essays, without much emphasis on timeline. Disch assumes a reasonably well-read audience, while making considerable room for those unfamiliar with his more obscure subjects. This is, of course, a necessary approach as it is often through early authors (with works unavailable to the general public) that Disch builds his background. Nevertheless, he does not rely on them to provide him with sacrificial victims; he would far rather tear pieces off the big names we are already familiar with. There is no shortage of diatribe in these pages. The invective is principally concentrated on those who have come to use the form for their own propaganda and those who present their fictions as fact. In the first camp, his principle targets are famous names who have spent the latter parts of their career attempting to reshape their work or the history of the field itself. Heinlein is an obvious target; Disch provides a good serving on this author's long march from Radical Socialist to Radical Libertarian. He has even less good to say for the "military strategist" members of Heinlein's circle and very little to the benefit of Ursula Le Guin. His concerns with Le Guin are based on her apparent attempt to mould not just science fictional histories and futures to her own ends but the history and future of science fiction. According to Disch, Le Guin has gained vertiginous regard in academic circles and is using this position to influence the manner in which SF is taught academically. A particularly tasty element of his case against Le Guin involves his Aunt Cecilia's recipe for lemon pudding -- you too can cook a footnote.
Disch prefers to see the blemishes of the field he loves than to remake it in his own image but he retains his greatest scorn for those who attempt to remake the world in the image of their own fictions. This is where SF is indeed in danger of conquering the world. The principal natures of this particular megalomania are the UFOlogists and the home-made religions. Readers familiar with Disch will know of his long-standing disgust at Whitley Strieber and can enjoy the thorough dismantling of Strieber's alien encounters. Disch returns again and again to the UFOlogists and their increasing hold on the American mind: he compares the nature of these tales with the stories of science fiction itself, he discusses the increasing complexity of the scam which constitutes the average abduction tale, he considers the place of such beliefs alongside other modern manias for recovered memory. The ability of the human mind to "entertain" belief is a vital element for the success of these alien tales. The desire to actually believe is essential to the success of the 'science fiction religions' and, Disch suggests, the most successful of these in the late twentieth century is Scientology. Like Strieber, he recalls, L. Ron Hubbard started out as a science fiction writer. Like Strieber, Hubbard wanted more. Unlike Strieber, though, Hubbard was supported -- at first -- by the SF community from which he came. His first public presentation of Dianetics was in Astounding Science Fiction, after Hubbard had apparently already suggested that "if a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion." Disch's final position is that, amongst the many deluded minds, there are those who have realized that the best way to make money from fiction is to present it as fact, and the fiction that people most want to believe in our era are fictions of a better future -- science fiction.
The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of offers hugely entertaining detail and such incisive insight that it earns forgiveness for its inevitable moments of contrariness.
You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek, and you may want to check out Thomas M. Disch's website as well. Me:
Disclaimer: No, I am not one of the people selling this book there. I just happen to really like half.com.
I appreciate your follow-up. That was a much better response than the people nitpicking over a misspelled word, or the use of cars vs. trains for transportation. That's another item - due to the vastness of the USA, mass transit is not economically feasible for most of our country - the population density is not high enough.
Next time you're going to be such a dick, you should make sure you're 100% correct...
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"what-if" book based on a scientific principle.
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This novel was written in the <A HREF="http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_c
of electricty between Franklin's kite experiment in 1747 and the electic motor in 1820.
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I will be curious to read this and see what he has to say about HG Wells. As far as "science fiction" is concerned, I have always thought it to be a reasonable projection, based on current technology, of where we will be at a certain time.
Look at some of the things that are basically unpatentable now due to them being pre-written about:
microwaves
waterbeds
heated floors
UV sterilizers for rooms when people arent in them.
(thanks RAH!)
Seems to me from the review, that he is more interested in attacking the politics of the authors than he is in wondering about "science fiction" itself.
I wonder what his take on Ellison is, the man who announced (after recieving several awards) that he was "no longer a sci-fi writer, but was a fantasy writer now, as there was no money left in sci-fi". (or so niven said, in "playgrounds of the mind") If ever there was a political mover and shaker, or one who tried to mold the genre to fit his personal views, it is Ellison. (and Bradbury to a lesser extent).
That has a lot less to do with "fiction" than it does with what the Author felt at the time.
Heinlein, himself, in the blurbs in his anthologies, explained a lot of his viewpoint changes and why they happened. Niven and Pournelle also have a tendency to do this. I do not need a reviewer telling me what they did, when I can read in the authors own words why their opinions and feelings changed.
Heinlein, as an example, was in the military. After watching a war, his attitudes changed. he also began writing on a lark, not for any great cause.. as a supplement for his money.. and you have to remember.. this man wrote for over half a century.. there is a *lot* of sociological change that goes on in that period, leading him to go from anti-nuke (mistakes happen) anti war (starship troopers) to group love (number of the beast) and multiple wives (lazarus long). His opinions changed a *lot* around the first heart surgery he had, possibly him coming to grips with his own mortality, and suddenly realizing there are other things in life to worry about. (though I could have done with a lot less of horny old maureen in the later books, and more with some of the other characters).
I will have to read this book, and see what is up!
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
The Dreams of Science Fiction are based on lies, and therefore *what*?
Technically, any fiction, anything invented, is, in a certain sense, a lie of sorts.
so do we now get all moral about this an decry this sort of lying?
maybe I read it too fast, or something.
But this type of creative thinking, these so called "lies" are the things from which we build our future. It gives us something to work towards.
Let's see - - - we look around and see an imperfect world. And so we create a story of a better world. We should say well that is all a lie and therefore we shouldn't even bother?
maybe I'm getting it wrong here, but it smells like a certain kind of FUD going on here, in the guise of being *so* intellectual.
I'm starting to wonder if being certain kinds of "intellectual" is just an excuse to FUD around.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In short, British/European science fiction is rooted in late Romanticism and is often concerned with the community. American science fiction is formed by a self-reliant streak that was part of the 19th century national character. Neither one is "better" in an objective sense, just different.
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Anyone noticed how Michael Crichton's novels all follow the same pattern? Here's how it goes:
I've found that most of Crichton's work follows this pattern, including:
The noteable exceptions that I know of are Westworld and Rising Sun, anyone know of any others?
Anyway, I'm calling it "Crichton's Law" ;)
"His close involvement with the New Wave meant much of his early work was more closely associated with the UK than with the country of his birth. "
As if he would only be dealing with American writers if he was around in 1890!
So far as I am concerned, the history of Science Fiction begins with H.G. Wells.
I don't really consider Poe to be a science fiction writer. His short story "Into the Maelstrom" was a very convincing tale of an adventure that he obviously never had, but sci-fi had little to do with it.
Props to old Edgar for writing the first great story that gives a detail account of encryption hacking ("The Gold Bug")... but I would say that he is a lot closer, in both style and substance, to Herman Melville than to Isaac Asimov.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Of course, the author also screws up by failing to note the most important thing to know about science fiction -- that as literature, most of it is abysmal.
This is true to a certain extent, but I think that bad SF is mostly perpetrated in other forms (e.g. TV and film) - mainly because production executives mistake it for "family entertainment", or the writers think that special effects are an effective substitute for bad dialogue and poor plots. It's funny, the production companies spend so much time and money developing SFX for SF tv and movies, when a bit of extra script development time would render it unecessary, and improve the quality at the same time!
These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. -- Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV
According to Disch, Le Guin has gained vertiginous regard in academic circles and is using this position to influence the manner in which SF is taught academically.
;) lit classes can do is pretentiously pick over the bones of what has come before, fluffing each others egos in an ultimately pointless academic love-fest. Nothing useful whatsoever comes from their ponderings.
Who gives a flying hooey how 'SF is taught academically'? Brilliant science fiction is only rarely produced by 'students' or 'academics'. All those college sci-fi (yep, that's what I still call it
Someone, somewhere, will always be writing something brilliant.
**>>BELCH
**What was, I think, pioneered in the US was science fiction as a genre. That formed around Doc Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Amazing Stories and the like. Someone correct me if I'm wrong...**
.02
You are right. You mised Gardner, L Sprague De Camp, (dead on on the Lensman).
I also credit (believe it or not) Dixon with "the hardy boys" and the fellow who wrote the Tom Swift stuff. People who read this as children went on to read more mind-opening question asking fiction as they got older.. Conan, Pellucidar, ERB's Lost World, etc. This led in time to the other "antique" authors who were churning stuff out heavily in the range of the 1950's, when the boom *really* started to kickoff.
I still dont consider Bradbury to be Science Fiction.. he pretty much takes history and rewrites it into the future, AFAIC, which isnt much of a stretch. One I keep *not* seeing mentioned, is Anthony Burgess.. who tended to play with a bizarre and not-so distant future, based on trends obvious in the present.
Just my
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
1) all communication between airplane and control tower, anywhere in the world, is conducted in English
2) a lot of European companies conduct their business in English, even if none of the parties involved are from an english speaking country.
3) English is an approved language for official documents in China
"Quantum Physics - the dreams that stuff is made of" -- Michael Sinz
In case you're wondering where that joke came from.
Does my bum look big in this?
It's really nice to see something as literate and well-written as that posted to Slashdot.
:-).
Perhaps it will start a trend
On the American right to lie, I think it's a good point - Americans do think they have a right to lie.
But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's through the American arrogance that such a great nation has been built.
You don't make the greatest country on Earth by being nice to everyone.
Also, even though lieing is a positive thing from a success point of view, I think in many respects Americans have a right to lie - as human beings (the most successful animal), we have dominion over the animals, and as the most successful nation, I think America should be allowed a little leeway.
The Oddessey is just Fantasy, not Sci-Fi. Yes, there's a decided difference between "Space Fantasy" and "Science Fiction" (and, of course, Ellisons claim that Science Fiction doesn't exist), but under the more common definitions of Sci-Fi, Somnium counts, and Homer doesn't.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I got it when it first came out, and just re-read it. Caused quite a stir in the SF field when it came out. I don't agree with his argument that SF is an American form of literature, but his arguments are well presented and entertaining.
In other news, Jerry Pournelle is reporting that Gordon R. Dickson has died.
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For the longest time, back when I had Television, I thought that the Disney channel had become the Brave Little Toaster Channel. Every freaking time I surfed past, THERE IT WAS!
It was almost as bad as the Milo and Otis Networks of my Youth. (Shudder.)
Just one of the many reasons I mostly avoid TV now.
At the risk of drawing some flamage, I'd like to point out that Neal Stephenson did NOT invent the concept of VR Avatars.
As crude as they may have been, and slow at 1200baud or less, the first Avatar based chat room was back in my Commodore 64 day during the mid 80's
For the life of me I cant remember the name of the darn thing..but I know it existed. Little cartoons with big heads and word balloons.
Anyone else out there remember that thing?
Now all we need is Avatars as detailed and functional as those described in SNow Crash. Then some of us would NEVER have to leave our computers!
Well, I remember doing an essay in college on the roots of SciFi. Much to my amazement, SciFi goes back much farther than many of us think. The earliest work I found was by none other than the Frenchman Cyrano DeBergerac (yes, he of prodigious proboscis) who wrote the novel "A Voyage to the Moon" in 1657. So, if you want to call a genre with a 350 year history and whose origins can be traced to a Frenchman 'new' or 'American' or 'British' well I guess you're all entitled to your opinions. :-)
Another interesting tidbit about Cyrano: Understandably, in the 17th century anyone writing about voyaging to luna (lunatics) was considered quite insane and the two words were irrevocably associated. So it is this novel that is at the root of our modern understanding of the word 'lunatic'.
FWIW.
--locust
Kepler wrote a book, Somnium (trans: "The Dream"), about man flying to the moon and seeing the earth from the moon, in the early 1600s.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Depends on what you think sci-fi is. If you think that descriptions of cool gadgets are more important than the story, then sure, a lot of sci-fi isn't.
:-)
But if you reckon that the sci-fi/fantasy aspect is there to present a different world in which things happen differently, and the actions and reactions of the characters in this environment, then Frankenstein fits perfectly. Taking Asimov's robots as an example, the actions of each robot's personality in following the Laws is the important element, not the fact of the robot's construction.
So it all hinges on your definition of sci-fi. Which really comes down to "sci-fi is what sci-fi writers write" - and good luck getting a better definition!
Grab.
IIRC, many of the classic "Arabian Nights" stories involved a hero who had to solve mysteries. While Poe might have been the first to do so in the form of a novel, the "detective story" goes back a lot farther.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I think that fact is way too obvious to be a serious omission. As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud."
(Yes, in the original quote it was "crud", not "crap".)
Before he was writer, Heinlein ran for the California assembly on Upton Sinclair's EPIC ticket. EPIC was strongly socialist, with links to radicals, communists, unions, and anti-poverty groups. Heinlein was considered such a radical leftist at the time that the Republican candidate was able to cross-file as a Democrat and win their primaries, leaving him unchallenged on the ballot.
Heinlein certainly takes a strong stance against any kind of interference in markets in his later books, but the positions of EPIC were diametrically opposed to those he espoused in Expanded Universe. They were interventionist, they demanded government action against the Depression and they had nothing but contempt for California's wealthy industrialists and land owners who did nothing in the face of such vast public misery.
Certainly, Heinlein's politics changed a lot between 1938 and 1980. Frankly, I liked the younger Heinlein a lot more. The authoritarian, Chicago-school, Reaganite Heinlein of the 70's and 80's was half the writter of the witty, liberal, socially and culturally conscious Heinlein of the 40's and 50's.
The late Heinlein was a far cry from any anarcho-syndicalist that I know of, although the young one had his moments. He takes a near Randian position on the virtues of the market in all his books after Time Enough for Love (for example, his utopian portrayal of Hell in Job), while taking a truly unlibertarian position on the importance of a powerful central state in Friday. The later Heinlein appears to place little value in democracy and collective action (which are perhaps the most central values of traditional anarcho-syndicalism) and advocates a sort of minimalist dictatorship as the ideal form of government, or at least he does in all of the Lazarus Long books.
Perhaps those weren't his "true" politcal feelings. I have no way to know, authors are allowed to play with ideas. But at the very least, the opinions he lays out in Expanded Universe, a polemic by his own admission, are quite remote from anarcho-syndicalism and even more remote from his political roots.
To a certain extent I have to agree with you. It is typically American to either never learn a second language or make only a half-hearted attempt at it. Even those of us who make the attempt have difficulty maintaining fluency. At one time I had learned enough French and German to ask direction on the street and order a meal. I haven't used either in years and couldn't manage now. I learned even more Spanish, but I haven't spoken that in over a decade and have lost most of it.
Where monolingualism crosses the line into arrogance is when it includes the expectation that the world will come to us linguistically. Not bothering to learn other languages to speak to foreigners visiting your homeland is simply a choice. Going abroad and relying on short English words spoken loudly is arrogance.
Sed mi flue parolas Esperanto, kiel naciulo.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
He dismisses Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a progenitor because her science is "fast talking and stage props" which serves to set the stage for classic melodrama, rather than as the real core of the book
Which means that Mary Shelley got it right. The best Science Fiction has never been about the technology, but about people. The technology merely serves as a backdrop to get the people into an interesting situation, or presents new obstacles or opportunities for the characters.
Having been through several wars on rec.arts.sf.writtten over various definitions of SF -- I've learned that no definition of the genre is ultimately defensible. In fact, SF is generally accepted to stand for speculative fiction rather than science fiction nowadays because of these issues. (For fun, venture over to rasfw and argue that fantasy isn't SF).
I like the Bujold quote because it captures a popular sentiment among many SF fans about Crichton and SF in general. Namely that stories about the evils of technology aren't what attracted us to the genre.
In fact, I suspect Bujold isn't trying to define the genre so much as to distinguish the sorts of stories Crichton writes from the main current of the genre. She didn't say Crichton wasn't SF she said is wasn't REAL SF -- which I took as more of a normative judgement rather than a formal definition of the genre.
Rob
A friend of mine, who lives in Michigan, was surprised when some visitors from Europe thought it would be feasible to drive down to Disney World for the day. The Europeans, thinking it was a couple hour drive, where shocked to find out it would take over 20 hours to drive there.
From most of the USA, it takes a day or two to just to get to Canada or Mexico. This makes it more remote, and not feasible for a weekend getaway.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the original quote was "shit." It was the opening of Sturgeon's GOH speech at a WorldCon.
Science Fiction is about ideas. The best source of new ideas is speculation about imaginary societies, the future, the unknown past, alternate histories, and so on.
One of the most popular works of Science Fiction from the past was a book called Slan, which is not really considered a great book these days (not that I've heard anyway) but the idea behind it was that there was a group of humans (or aliens that looked human) that was vastly superior to the rest of humanity, hidden within society. This idea appealed to the early SF fans.
Later, much of the jargon developed in SF fandom was transfered to hacker jargon. I think the idea of born superiority still appears to the core of hackerdom today.
The reality of life in America seems to escape non-Americans. Most people I went to school with learned another language(for example, ich kann deutsch). However, unlike people in other countries, it's quite far/expensive for us to travel someplace where English is not the primary language. Thus, we're unable to practice and maintain any form of fluency.
I'd spoken with a German about this once in the late 80's(he used to use the internet to get to a modem in Houston to call my BBS). He had mentioned the "language arrogance" so I asked him how long it took to him to travel to another country where German was not the language - a mear 3 hour drive, and another 3 hours on top of that to get to where a 3rd language was required.
Contrast that to America. I live in Houston. To drive to Mexico would take about 7 hours. To drive to Canada would take close to 30 hours. Going west to San Francisco would take 32 hours, and going East to New York would take 27 hours. English is the primary language everywhere within this driving range.
Heinlein didn't neccesarily agree with the views he was showing in his books, he was just exploring different ideas.
from here: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail81.html
Scroll down to the section on Talin and Starship Troopers
I am tempted to give Larry Niven's answer to the chap who wrote to complain about the attitudes of one of the characters in Niven's "How the Heroes Die." Larry wrote: "We in the writing profession have a technical term for people who believe that the authors believe everything their characters believe. We call them 'idiots'. None of my best friends are idiots. Merry Christmas."
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
I would heartily disagree with this quote. The moral standing or permenance of scifi tech is not a defining charecteristic of the genre, any more than the moral standing or permanence of a magical event is for fantasy, or the moral standing or permanence of a haunting is to horror.
Individual stories in many genres use the plot device of "something is changing in the world, but by the end of the story the change has been averted and only a few people know that it had ever been happening." Even the "and then he woke up" or "but it was all a flash of imagination in the instant he died" endings don't (IMHO) change the genre status of the intervening story.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I can't help wondering how the Frenchman Jules Verne didn't make your list. I would consider him the real originator of what we know as science fiction, lit-crit cleverness about Poe or Shelley aside.
What was, I think, pioneered in the US was science fiction as a genre. That formed around Doc Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Amazing Stories and the like. Someone correct me if I'm wrong...
I don't buy it. "fast talking and stage props" describes half of the sci fi tech out there, and how else would you describe the motivating force of the entire story except as the core of the book.
Frankenstein actually sort of reminds me of some of Criton's (sp?) work, like congo. Sort of a "twenty minutes in the future"* idea that reaches seemingly just a little farther than the advances of the day and discovers something totally other.
Sounds a little like he formed an opinion then interpreted the evidence to support it.
* gold star (but no Karma) for identifying the line.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
It doesn't change the fact that most people in Europe can get to another country far quicker than most people in the USA.
here at the bottom of that days view.
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What's more telling though is the areas involved. The country of Germany covers 356,910 sq km, compared to the state of Texas which covers almost twice that at 692,247 sq km.
(Just to pick one: Disch asserts that the Delany novel "The Madman" is devoted to the thesis that HIV does not cause AIDS. This is a completely insane reaction to the novel: nowhere in it is anything like this thesis stated (many others are however), and nothing in the events of the story contradict the HIV hypothesis. When you can get something *this* far wrong, nothing else you say can be trusted.)
Disch's main take on Science Fiction is that it's largely based on a worship of Big Ideas, grand theories about how the world works. From Disch's point of view, the idea that you can rationally understand how the world is put together is a ridiculous, sophomoric notion, hence the idea that Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature, and so on. (Here's some more stuff on that subject: DISCH )
It's difficult to state the main thesis of this book, because Disch has a way of backtracking to cover himself, but roughly he points out that ideas from SF have a way of leaking out into the real world, in sometimes unsavory contexts. He keeps stabbing in the direction of saying that Science Fiction is immoral because it encourages people to believe in things that turn out to be destructive ("in dreams begin responsibilities", is the closing quote).
He is, however, not quite willing to go as far as to blame Charlie Manson on Robert Heinlein... because if he did it would be obvious that his thesis is ridiculous (e.g. why not blame Manson on John Lennon?).
Max Headroom
Who ever thought a stutter would be so popular?
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
Yet by any even halfheartedly rigorous definition, very few of these works are truly SF.
Mark Twain anticipated a couple of narrative devices which were later used in science fiction. However, his writings lacked the intellectual flavor of science fiction, and can't be considered part of the genre. In any case, juxtaposing a modern person with an ancient setting and vice versa is far older device than Twain; it occurs at least once in Homer, and Swift made use of a similar device a hundred years earlier. I dare say that something similar happened in the bible, though it doesn't come to mind.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I don't believe this argument, however; it presumes that science fiction is fundamentally intellectual, which it isn't, or at least, not in the same way that detective stories are. Science fiction is not, in the main, an intellectual exercise for the author, except in those dreadful Asimov and Clarke outings where he tries to deduce sixty semi-amusing implications of one piece of speculative science.
A lot of science fiction is slap bang in the Mary Shelley tradition, and to pretend otherwise by saying that her "science" wasn't central enough is to completely ignore one of the main features of the genre -- its relationship to fantasy and thence to the gothic tradition. He certainly needs to come up with some explanation of the proximity of the fantasy and science fiction sections of most bookshops in order to defend this idea.
And anyone who can pretend that science fiction is essentially American ought to be introduced to HG Wells or his descendants. It has its roots in Whiggish extrapolation of modern technology, which started off as a British trait, and moved to America along with global technological hegemony, about the end of the First World War. American science fiction is essentially American; British science fiction isn't, or doesn't have to be.
Of course, the author also screws up by failing to note the most important thing to know about science fiction -- that as literature, most of it is abysmal.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Now I realize that isn't what he actually says but its what I got from this...
Minor points based on the review
In my analysis, I'd say he's trying to make money off his jealousy towards SciFi authors. Though I have to admit I'm surprised to see that the reviewer didn't mention Harlan Ellison in the laundry list of authors that Disch seems to have a grudge against.
Plead sanity, then they'll know you're crazy...
Are avatar-oriented chat rooms still around? I remember hearing about them as an example of why VRML would be "the next big thing". VRML died, so what happened to the avatars?
Let's get on the ball here, people.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall