Those of you who come to this site looking only for reviews of popular science books might be feeling there has been too much science fiction of late. I try to provide a balance of the two, but I confess that during the pandemic, I have found fiction more something I've looked forward to reading than non-fiction - so please forgive me! While not a review, this feature is inspired by a book - a non-fiction title - but science fiction is, admittedly, its topic. Over the years, the number of science fiction books and short stories I've read runs into four figures - and I've even had a few SF stories published. I've also read quite widely on the history of science fiction, but a book title I spotted the other day totally threw me. It's the first time I've ever rushed to buy a book without having the slightest clue what it was about. The title was The Reading Protocols of Science Fiction: discourses on reading SF . To make it more intriguing, the book's blurb, a