Science Fiction - Glyn Morgan (Ed.) ***

There are two ways to write a non-fiction book on science fiction - for the fans, or for those who don't currently read SF. Being as big science fiction fan I’m not sure I’m the ideal audience for this book, which is very much aimed at persuading those who think they don’t like SF that it’s actually acceptably cool. It's technically an accompaniment to an exhibition at London's Science Museum, though I believe it takes a different and more sophisticated tack.

We get a bit of introduction, including an essay on 'What is science fiction for?' - this only briefly touches on the usual spiel that it's not about predicting the future, and rather sadly never says it's for enjoyment, or getting insights into people and their response to changes in their world and worldview - in fact, it's quite difficult to elicit anything from this rather obscure piece of writing.

Editor Glyn Morgan then divides the SF writing-scape into five areas: people and machines, travelling the cosmos, communication and language, aliens and alienation and somewhat vaguely, anxieties and hopes, which proves to be primarily about nuclear war and climate change. This means there's not much feel of a contiguous structure to the book, which has a multiplicity of authors. Each section darts around in time, trying to get across the message the author of that segment feels is important, rather than the perhaps more enlightening approach of systematically telling us the history of science fiction and how it has developed.

There are certainly some serious gaps here. Although we get an image from Doctor Who (the pictures here, in typical museum style, don't really illustrate the text but give us sometimes relevant, sometimes confusing, imagery that often wastes about three quarters of the space available for text), there is pretty much nothing about time travel, or about the Brandon Sanderson-style military SF that follows in the tradition of Heinlein and was so successfully countered by Joe Haldeman. There is a real problem with the approach, which is driven by the authors' pet topics, rather than what real world SF has been about.

Equally, some big names in science fiction history either get a one line mention or nothing at all - names such as John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, Brian Aldiss, Iain M. Banks or Alastair Reynolds. Even Adam Roberts, who should be more to the taste of these authors, only gets a reference to one novel. Instead, I think the person who gets most coverage is 'Sun Ra', apparently an experimental musician and hardly a significant contributor to the SF canon. This reflects a relentless 'right on' attitude, which results, for example, in far too much weight being given to twenty-first century authors.

I presume the way the book seems aimed at a certain segment of potential readership is why it never explores the literary elite's habitual disdain for science fiction. They don't mention that a certain author (who amusingly they label as an SF writer) claimed she didn't write science fiction, as it was limited to 'talking squids from outer space.' Although the contributors rightly celebrate Ursula K. LeGuin, they don't point out that LeGuin commented that the aforementioned author's rejection of SF was 'designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders.'

Overall then, a nicely produced book, with some interesting material - but distinctly flawed in the balance of content, and in not mentioning the disdain of many in the literary world.

Hardback:   

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here