Subject: Book Review - Fictional Space

From: [email-masked] (Danny Yee)
Date: 20 May 1995 20:16:39 GMT

title: Fictional Space
          : Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction
    edited: Tom Shippey
 publisher: Basil Blackwell 1991
  subjects: science fiction, literary criticism
     other: 227 pages

_Fictional Space_ is a miscellaneous collection of essays on
science fiction.  Shippey's introduction is a survey of some of
the defining characteristics of science fiction.  Two of the essays
take postmodernist approaches and talk about Gibson a lot; neither
of these appealed much to me, but that's probably just prejudice on
my part (I never understood all the fuss about _Neuromancer_, and
suffer nonsense like "In _Neuromancer_ we are seeing evidence of a
new, perhaps the final, stage in the trajectory of science fiction"
poorly).  On specialised subjects, one essay looks at the relationship
between _Starship Troopers_, _The Forever War_ and the Vietnam war,
while another considers the origins of the "underpeople" in the work
of Cordwainer Smith.  More general essays look at the appearance
of museums in works of science fiction, at "the fall of America"
as a recurrent theme, and at the role of linguistics and language.
All of the essays (even the postmodernist ones) are light on jargon,
and _Fictional Space_ may interest readers of science fiction who
wouldn't normally touch literary criticism.

--

%T	Fictional Space
%S	Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction
%E	Tom Shippey
%I	Basil Blackwell
%C	Oxford
%D	1991
%O	hardcover
%G	ISBN 0-631-17762-0
%P	vii,227pp
%K	science fiction, literary criticism

Danny Yee ([email-masked])
30 April 1995

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