Difference between revisions of "User:Hifrommike65"

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-Although I read sci fi before age 11 (e.g., the New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures, ''The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree'', Arthur D. Stapp's ''Five Who Disappeared''), I fell for the genre after reading the Platt & Munk edition of ''The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Selected Short Stories'' and the Charles Scribner's Sons edition of Robert A. Heinlein's ''Have Space Suit--Will Travel'' in 1966. By 1969, the point I entered high school, I had read all of Heinlein's work and had moved on to Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others (''Captive Universe'' by Harry Harrison was a thrilling read). A major event in my life was joining the Science Fiction Book Club (US) in early 1969. The first club brochure I had, ''Things to Come,'' was for March/April 1969 (Clarke's ''The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night'', and Poul Anderson's ''Seven Conquests: An Adventure in Science Fiction''). The first genre magazine I read was the November 1968 issue of ''F&SF''; I found every book reviewed by Judith Merril and read it: Clarke's ''2001: A Space Odyssey'', Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'', and R. A. Lafferty's ''The Reefs of Earth''. I fondly recall two stories in that issue: Keith Laumer's ''Once There Was a Giant'' and Sterling E. Lanier's ''The Kings of the Sea''. Seeing ''2001'' confirmed my interest in sci fi. I often say that everything I know I learned by age 14, or by the end of 1969. Much of what I learned was from my reading outside of the classroom, and what I saw on TV (a broadcast of George Pal's 1953 ''The War of the Worlds'' knocked me flat). I give the classroom credit for introducing me to Poe and Stevenson, and my 8th grade teacher lent me her Ballantine copy of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Two Towers''. Now that I have retired from teaching, I have dedicated the remainder of my life to unpacking the material I absorbed or first heard of in my teens.
-Many youngsters start out reading sci fi but discontinue it within a few years, but I continued. My interest in sci fi led me to fandom and the presidency of the UT-El Paso Science Fiction Club in 1976-77. We started a convention called Solarcon in El Paso that brought in guests of honor such as Philip José Farmer (1975), George R. R. Martin (1976), and Michael Bishop (1977), the latter two getting their first GoH invites. I ended up doing a doctoral dissertation on Gothic narrative (''U.S. Horror: Gothicism in the Work of William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, and Stanley Kubrick''). After publishing articles on Robert Silverberg and Samuel R. Delany, I have reviewed many books on sci fi, fantasy and horror for ''Choice Magazine'' (a publication of the American Library Association).
-I use the term "sci fi" for three reasons. First, I like the sound of it. Second, it flies in the face of fan dogma (that it implies a "know nothing" attitude towards the genre). Third, it works as an umbrella term for various kinds of genre literature and media better than "speculative fiction" does. I accept Norman Spinrad's definition of "science fiction" in the 1974 Anchor Books anthology, "Modern Science Fiction": "Science fiction is anything published as science fiction." Why is Carol Emshwiller's "Sex And/or Mr. Morrison" sci fi? It has no nonrealistic content. Why is Harlan Ellison's "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin" sci fi? Ditto, and it was nominated for a Nebula award. Arthur C. Clarke's "Glide Path" is a historical novel set during World War II, but it was shelved in the science fiction sections of bookstores because "he's a sci fi author." Why is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s "Slaughterhouse-Five" ''not'' sci fi? It was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards, has space aliens and time travel. But for a "literary" writer, that's supposedly a metaphor. "Sci fi" has an inclusiveness, from UFO books to brass brassiere covers on golden age mags. As Billy Joel put it, "It's still rock 'n' roll to me."

Difference between revisions of "User:Hifrommike65"

Revision as of 13:28, 10 July 2019

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