From rec.arts.sf.written Mon May 22 15:48:57 1995 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Book Review - Fictional Space Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 20 May 1995 20:16:39 GMT Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Sciece, Uni of Sydney, Australia Lines: 49 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <3plin7$gs6@CUBoulder.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu Originator: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:576 rec.arts.books:121904 alt.books.reviews:12426 rec.arts.sf.written:100459 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 (danny@cs.su.oz.au) 30 April 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (C) Danny Yee 1995 : Comments and criticism welcome ------------------------------------------------------------- URL http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------