{"id":1007,"date":"2010-08-04T19:00:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T23:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2010-08-20T20:33:56","modified_gmt":"2010-08-21T00:33:56","slug":"the-secret-history-of-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2010\/08\/the-secret-history-of-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret History of Science Fiction<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Secret History of Science Fiction, edited by James Ptrick Kelly & John Kessel, Tachyon Publications, 2010<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n

This book seeks to prove that science fiction cannot really be distinguished from mainstream literature, arguing this in the introduction and in quotes before each story. Whether it prevails or not, it offers stories by some of the usual suspects (powerful ones by Ursula K. LeGuin and Connie Willis) some liminal figures (Johnathan Letham, who presents a prison made of criminals) and others – e.g., Don DeLillo, in whose story two men orbit Earth during World War III. (In a beautiful scene, they begin saying whatever they feel like as they calibrate the lethal system to their voiceprints.) There are non-human primates: T. C. Boyle’s tale of a man whose primatologist wife leaves him and George Saunders’s “93990,” a deft critique of science. Carter Scholz’s “The Nine Billion Names of God” has its own take on that author Pierre Menard, created by Borges. (Was he a science fiction author?) Even the weakest stories in here are well-written and worthwhile; most go far beyond that, making for a truly great collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book seeks to prove that science fiction cannot really be distinguished from mainstream literature, arguing this in the introduction and in quotes before each story. Whether it prevails or not, it offers stories by some of the usual suspects (powerful ones by Ursula K. LeGuin and Connie Willis) some liminal figures (Johnathan Letham, who … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Secret History of Science Fiction<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,18,7,13],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1k","tag-books","tag-review","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1074,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}