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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications 6-1-2000 SFRA ewN sletter 246 Science Fiction Research Association Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub Part of the Fiction Commons Scholar Commons Citation Science Fiction Research Association, "SFRA eN wsletter 246 " (2000). Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications. Paper 65. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub/65 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. #~4# lIaT/lune 1~~~ (oeo'tiors: Karen Hellekson Crajs Jacobsen Honndion leyielYs Eo'tior: lIej. Barron lidion leyielYs Eo'tior: Crajs Jacobsen The SFRAReview (lSSN 1068-395X) is published six times a year by the Science Fiction ResearchAssociation (SFRA) and distributed to SFRA mem bers.lndividual issues are not for sale. For information about the SFRA and its benefits, see the description at the back of this issue. For a membership application, contact SFRA Treasurer Michael M. Levy or get one from the SFRA website: <wwvv.sfra.org>. SUBMISSIONS The SFRAReview editors encourage submissions, including essays, review essays that cover several related texts, and interviews. Please send submis sions or queries to both coeditors. If you would like to review nonfiction or fiction, please contact the respec tive editor. The general editorial ad dress for the SFRAReview is: <[email protected]>. Karen Hellekson, Coeditor 742 N. 5th Street Lawrence,KS 66044 <[email protected]> Craig Jacobsen, Coeditor & Fiction Reviews Editor 208 East Baseline Rd. #3 I I Tempe,AZ 85283 <[email protected]> Neil Barron, Nonfiction Reviews Editor I 149 Lime Place Vista, CA 92083-7428 <[email protected]> Visit UsAt: www.sfra.org PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE "HE FIIR ANllrHER SFRA ANrHIILllay Alan Elms WORK IN PROGRESS AND The Science Fiction Research Association is really the Science MEMBER UPDATES Fiction Research (and Teaching) Association. Formal SFRA activities, including the annual conference, the awards, the Review, the journals we Jan Bogstad has been promoted to distribute, and our Web presence, are mainly research oriented. But (ull professor. from the organization's beginning, a majority of our members have been teachers of SF at one level or another, and each of the formal Edgar L Chapman is putting activities just listed has included teaching-oriented components. In together an anthology o( essays on addition, the SFRA has been involved in one mainly teaching-oriented alternate history fiction. activity: the sponsorship and editing of anthologies. Courses in science fiction typically give some attention both to Helen Collins reports that her latest novel, tentatively titled Neurogenesis, novels and to shorter fiction. But short fiction has been so central to is finished and will be published by the development of SF that representative anthologies are even more David Hartwell at Tor. important than in most other kinds of literature courses. Given that literature departments rarely offer more than one or two SF courses, Joan Gordon has a new e-mail and that such courses are usually limited to one 10- to IS-week term, address:<joangordon@dellnetcom>. anthologies that include a sampling of the diverse forms and themes of SF are essential. Craig Jacobsen is working on the Strictly commercial SF anthologies can be used as textbooks, and ethical implications a( virtual reality in they often have been-especially The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, SF film and literature. Volume 1, edited by Robert Silverberg. But the contents of such anthologies are seldom chosen with college courses in mind, and the Philip Kaveney reports that he has anthologies themselves may go out of print without warning. James recently retired (ram the University o( Gunn has managed to keep parts of his excellent Road to Science Fiction WISconsin-Madison. series intermittently in print, but it has been a struggle for Jim, and one he may not be able to win much longer. Susan Kray reports that she has Enter the SFRA. The first anthology to include Significant input several projects in the works on film from several SFRA members, The Mirror of Infinity (also edited by and SF. Robert Silverberg), reached print at about the same time the SFRA was formed. Our first officially sponsored anthology, simply titled Science Joe Sanders is completing and revising Tom C/areson's book on Fiction (edited by Patricia Warrick, Charles Waugh, and Martin H. Heinlein. Greenberg), was developed through repeated polling of SFRA mem bers about the stories they wanted to teach. The poll results included Steven H. Silver appeared on so many stories from The Science Fiction Hall of Fame that an editorial Jeopardy/ on June 13. He is also a decision was made to reduce their number significantly in favor of Hugo nominee (or Best Fan Writer. more contemporary work. Our most recent sponsored anthology, Visions of Wonder (edited by David Hartwell and Milton Wolf), includes Susan Stratton is working on an no Hall of Fame stories, but it does range over a broad sample of more eco(eminist critique o( utopian fictions. recent SF and fantasy, plus various nonfiction discussions of SF recommended by Gary K. Wolfe and Samuel Delaney. Marshall Tymn has moved to I 16 The Warrick/Waugh/Greenberg anthology has recently gone out Mill Road Court, Stevens Point, WI of print. The Hartwell/Wolf anthology appears to be designed mainly 54481-6328. for upper-division college courses and for fairly sophisticated SF readers. So is the other anthology currently in wide classroom use, the Norton Book of Science Fiction (edited by Ursula Le Guin and Brian PROJECTS THE SFRA Attebery with Karen Joy Fowler). Well and good for those upper SHOULD UNDERTAKE division courses, at least for the time being-but what about courses at the high school and introductory college levels, as well as courses Craig Jacobsen suggests developing nominally upper-division but containing mainly students who have a fUll SF-based curricula (or primary, read little if any SF previously? Those are the students whose attention secondary, and postsecondary schools. we most need to catch, and who most need to be exposed to the pre postmodern classics of SF, before they can move on to the more ANNOUNCEMENTS sophisticated styles and the more complex themes of recent antholo gies. Member Andy Sawyer reports that Several years ago, an effort was begun to develop another SFRA the University o( Uverpool Ubrary sponsored anthology, this one aimed mainly at the high school class SpeCial Collections andArchives will be room market. That effort seems to have faded away without results: unavailable during the summer as far as I can determine, no one is currently working on the project. But the idea is still a good one, and I hope some of you will come forth to renew the effort. My own limited experiences with teaching SF to college freshmen suggest that no single anthology now summer of 2000, from available-indeed, no two anthologies-can provide a sound basis, at the middle ofJune until the end of reasonable expense, for introducing SF-naIve students to the field. September, because the facilities are Many or perhaps most of our members got our first real taste of being upgraded with environmental short SF by reading anthologies of the early classics in our early teens. controls. Not all those classics still work, and some "modern" classics are well worth adding to the introductory canon. As a group, spearheaded by Bruce A. Beatie has posted the an eager editorial crew, we should be able to come up with a solid tentative program for SFRA 2000; he collection of stories that will expand the horizons of young SF readers will repost again before the actual far beyond movie and TV tie-ins, on campus and off. And we should event occurs. The program is also be able to find a publisher willing to give such a collection a shelf life available on the conference's Website. long enough for us to plan our introductory classes around it for years to come. ADDITION TO PUBLISHING THEORY & BEYOND SOURCES IN'R~."~rl~N r~ 'HE~RY Ie BEY~N. FOUNDATlON:THE Edited by Joan Gordon and Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SCIENCE FlaION. Who are the Alien Others and why do we fear them? Why should critical theories be counted in their number? By understanding the Specs: 3lyear; c. 128 pages; 5.75 x 8 Alien Other, or even critical theory, our own humanity, or maybe just inches; circulation: 450. our own critical analysis, will expand. Theory & Beyond is a series of essays written by SFRA members Audience:Academic and fan. for SFRA members. In each issue, the column will highlight a particu lar theory, discussing its implications for the researching and teaching Review:Academic articles refereed, of science fiction and including a list of major critical works. Over the professional authors commissioned. next few issues, authors will discuss Alien Otherness in terms of queer theory and feminism; Earth's place in SF through Contact: Editor: eco (feminist) criticism; and who and what SF and SF readers are, and Edward F.James, Department of what they do, through reader response theory. But the list goes on, and History you too can add to it-for example, Marxist implications of techno University of Reading logical innovations, de constructive readings of hybrid characters and Whitekights, Reading RG6 6AA, UK objects, and psychoanalytical interpretations of who we were, who we <[email protected]>; are, and who we will be.