Foundation the International Review of Science Fiction Foundation 117 the International Review of Science Fiction
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Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction Foundation 117 The International Review of Science Fiction In this issue: Foundation Vol: 43 No.117 Spring 2014 Vol: Foundation Brian Baker and Christopher McKitterick on Frederik Pohl Dean Conrad on Richard Matheson and Jude Roberts on Iain M. Banks Susan Gray and Christos Callow Jr. on science fiction theatre Andrew Milner on how (not) to periodise sf as a genre Victoria Byard on An Adventure in Space and Time and Paul March-Russell at Tate Britain Timothy Jarvis and James Machin on The Weird In addition, there are reviews by: Bodhissatva Chattopadhyay, Jacob Edwards, Iain Emsley, Grace Halden, Richard Howard, Leimar Garcia-Siino, Paul Kincaid, Anna McFarlane, Chris Pak, Patrick Parrinder, Andy Sawyer and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro Of books by: Brian Attebery and Veronica Hollinger, Andrew Blum, Andrew M. Butler, Al Ewing, Neil Gaiman, Simon J. James, Nicholas Joll, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Cherie Priest, J.-H. Rosny aîné, Eric Frank Russell and Paul Williams Cover: Frederik Pohl (c. 1968) and Richard Matheson Credit: New England Science Fiction Association and New York Magazine Foundation is published three times a year by the Science Fiction Foundation (Registered Charity no. 1041052). It is typeset and printed by The Lavenham Press Ltd., 47 Water Street, Lavenham, Suffolk, CO10 9RD. Foundation is a peer-reviewed journal. Subscription rates for 2014 Individuals (three numbers) United Kingdom £20.00 Europe (inc. Eire) £22.00 Rest of the world £25.00 / $42.00 (U.S.A.) Student discount £14.00 / $23.00 (U.S.A.) Institutions (three numbers) Anywhere £42.00 / $75.00 (U.S.A.) Airmail surcharge £7.00 / $12.00 (U.S.A.) Single issues of Foundation can also be bought for £7.00 / $15.00 (U.S.A.). All cheques should be made payable to The Science Fiction Foundation. All subscriptions are for one calendar year; please specify year of commencement. Address for subscriptions: The Science Fiction Foundation, c/o 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex, RM3 0RG, U.K. Email: Roger Robinson, [email protected] – all messages should include ‘SFF’ in the subject line. Back issues can be obtained from Andy Sawyer – see contact details below. Editorial address (for submissions, correspondence, advertising): Dr Paul March-Russell, [email protected] Articles should be up to 6000 words in length, double-spaced and written in accordance with the style sheet available at the SF Foundation website (www.sf-foundation.org). Books for review: Please send to Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool, PO Box 123, Liverpool, L69 4DA, UK. Please clearly mark ‘For Review’. Reviews (up to 1500 words in length) should be sent to [email protected] All contents copyright © 2014 by the Science Fiction Foundation on behalf of the original contributors ISSN 0306-4964258 The InternationalFoundation Review of Science Fiction Editor: Paul March-Russell Book Reviews Editor: Andy Sawyer Editorial Team: Cait Coker, Dean Conrad, Andrew Ferguson, Heather Osborne, Maureen Speller Contents Volume 43, number 117 Spring 2014 Paul March-Russell 3 Editorial Christopher McKitterick 5 Frederik Pohl: Mr Science Fiction (A Love Story) Brian Baker 18 Frederik Pohl: A Working Man’s Science Fiction Dean Conrad 31 In Search of Richard Matheson: Science Fiction Screenwriter Jude Roberts 46 Iain M. Banks’ Culture of Vulnerable Masculinities Susan Gray and Christos 60 Past and Future of Science Fiction Callow Jr. Theatre Andrew Milner 70 Time Travelling, or How (Not) to Periodise a Genre Review-Essays Victoria Byard 80 An Adventure in Space and Time Paul March-Russell 86 Breakfast in the Ruins (Richard Deacon and Ruin Lust) 1 Conference Report Timothy Jarvis and 91 The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid James Machin Genres Book Reviews Bodhissatva 94 Paul Williams, Race, Ethnicity Chattopadhyay and Nuclear War Grace Halden 98 Andrew Blum, Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet Paul Kincaid 101 Simon J. James, Maps of Utopia: H.G. Wells, Modernity, and the End of Culture Anna McFarlane 104 Nicholas Joll, ed., Philosophy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Chris Pak 106 Brian Attebery and Veronica Hollinger, eds., Parabolas of Science Fiction Andy Sawyer 110 Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds., 1950s Rocketman TV Series and Their Fans Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 114 Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s Jacob Edwards 118 Eric Frank Russell, Wasp Iain Emsley 121 Cherie Priest, Boneshaker and Dreadnought Leimar Garcia-Siino 122 Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane Richard Howard 125 Al Ewing, The Fictional Man Patrick Parrinder 127 J.-H. Rosny aîné, Three Science Fiction Novellas 2 Editorial Paul March-Russell ‘April is the cruellest month’, or so T.S. Eliot once intoned, and this April – when we began to compile and edit F117 – we learnt of the untimely death of Lucius Shepard. His novels, most notably Life During Wartime (1987), remain key examples of the innovations in American sf that followed the first wave of cyberpunk. Without turning Foundation into an extended obituary column, we would like to honour authors and film-makers that have made a significant contribution to sf, and begin the process of evaluating their place within the multiple traditions and media that compose the genre. In F116, we paid respect to Iain Banks, and in this issue we feature Jude Roberts’ reassessment of masculinity in Banks’ fiction. We also assess two other major figures that departed in 2013: Richard Matheson and Frederik Pohl. Both Brian Baker and Dean Conrad attempt the difficult task of trying to place Pohl and Matheson, respectively, whilst Christopher McKitterick lends a touching reminiscence of Pohl. 2013 saw the loss of a number of notable creators from Gerry Anderson to Charles Chilton to Jack Vance but one other stands out, not least because she was a Nobel Prize-winner, and that is Doris Lessing. Obituaries tended to dwell on novels such as The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook with her sf as something on the side. Yet, without the sf novels being as central to her fiction as they were to Banks’ oeuvre, they nevertheless retained an integral function. In truth, the fantastic was never far from Lessing’s fiction – think, for example, of the shift into a post-nuclear environment in The Four-Gated City, the novel that prefigures the dystopian nightmare ofMemoirs of a Survivor; or the explosion of domestic realism by the arrival of the throwback, Ben, in The Fifth Child. Later novels such as Mara and Dann and The Cleft were further reminders that, for Lessing, sf and the fantastic were instruments by which to re-think the possibilities of literary fiction, a necessary move for Lessing and her near-contemporaries, such as Anthony Burgess and Christine Brooke-Rose, working in the shadow of the modernist movement. Lessing’s support of sf – she was a Guest of Honour at the 1987 Worldcon – prefigures the dissolution of genre boundaries in the work of more recent writers such as Maggie Gee and David Mitchell. Perhaps the time is not yet right for a full appreciation of Lessing’s significance but, atFoundation , we will be more than interested in future invitations. This current issue, though, is not all about looking backwards. We also include Christos Callow and Susan Gray’s overview of sf and theatre, and their proposals 3 for its future development. Andrew Milner debates the origins of sf and firmly argues against histories that trace its roots back to classical sources such as Lucian. The inclusion of Milner’s article is deliberately provocative since our next issue will be guest-edited by Tony Keen and will feature articles derived from last year’s SF Foundation conference on sf, fantasy and the classical world. We very much hope that readers will join in the debate and send us your responses. Speaking of which… David Ketterer writes: ‘Reading Stephen Krueger’s useful “Bibliography: Law in Science Fiction” (F115), I was reminded of John Wyndham’s “Brief to Counsel” in the British Argosy (February 1959, pp. 28-30). It was read out on the BBC’s general overseas channel on 18th March 1960. Wyndham, the son of a solicitor who became a barrister, thought at one stage about a law career. His sketch describes a trial in which the protagonist, convicted falsely of murder, correctly predicts the death of the prosecuting counsel within “about twelve minutes.” After that death, he tells the judge he “has about two months” to live. “Brief to Counsel” belongs in Krueger’s Part 3: “law stories which are not science fiction stories” but its exact generic category is arguable. Described in the head note as a murder story with an “uncanny angle”, it could belong in any one of four locations in my apocalyptic/mimetic/hermetic Venn diagram (“Locating Slipstream”, F111). It all depends on whether the reader views second sight as a mimetic reality, as sf-style pre-cognition, or as pure fantasy. Incidentally, an Italian translation of “Locating Slipstream” can now be found with the correctly shaded first Venn diagram in the online journal Anarres, number 2.’ Tony Keen writes: ‘I am grateful for Jim Clarke’s generous description of my paper at the State of the Culture conference (F116). However, somewhere along the line, my views have got distorted. I do not believe that Inversions, Dune or the Barsoom series are “fantasy novels encoded as sf”. In fact, I believe the exact opposite, that these are science fiction encoded as fantasy.’ Please feel free to send further comments and corrections to the Editor or either join our Facebook group or follow us on Twitter.