Gary K. Wolfe

Modern Science Fiction

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This summer’s project seems to be James Gunn.

I’m only going to do a brief review of this book. Following a pattern similar to what I did with Brian Stableford’s book of critical essays on science fiction, Opening Minds, I’ll have some thoughts on individual chapters and do separate blog posts on them.

I’ll also be looking at some Gunn short stories and will comment on how they relate to Gunn’s theories.

Review: Modern Science Fiction: A Critical Analysis, James Gunn and edited and annotated by Michael R. Page, 2018.51QhTYVGKDL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_

Anybody interested in science fiction criticism will want to pick this one up. It’s the first real critical study of contemporary science fiction.

Its only predecessors are J. O. Bailey’s Pilgrims Through Space and Time (a doctoral dissertation from 1933 and published in 1947) and Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s Voyages to the Moon from 1948. But Bailey, a Victorian scholar, concentrated on works from that period and barely looked at pulp magazines. Nicolson’s work was only about a certain type of science fiction.

Gunn’s thesis is from 1951 and addresses what he terms science fiction in the realistic mode and definitely looks at contemporary works.

His sample drew from the pulps and also from five reprint anthologies.

What is peculiar to Gunn’s work is his emphasis on plot types, and he gives a schematic classifying them all. In the foreword, science fiction scholar Gary K. Wolfe, who was put on his lifetime vocation by encountering parts of Gunn’s thesis when it was reprinted in Dynamic Science Fiction, remarks that this reflects Gunn’s work as a writer. A science fiction writer could use this thesis to think about story generation, and Gunn gives his advice on which plots are and are not worth pursuing. Continue reading →

“SF: The Nature of the Medium”

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Rather than write a really long review of Brian Stableford’s Opening Minds: Essays on Fantastic Literature, I’m going to do a post on each essay.

The Lovecraft series will continue in the days I don’t have something new to put up.

Review: “SF: The Nature of the Medium“, Brian Stableford, 1974.Opening Minds

Using the media theories of Marshal McLuhan, Stableford argues that science fiction cannot function like mainstream, realistic fiction and shouldn’t try to.

There is a progression of media for human thought: speech, writing, print, literature, science fiction.

Each member of that progression incorporates its successor. However, it does not retain all the advantages of that successor. The tradeoff is each medium adds something.

In the case of literature, patterns and not “unitary blocks” are transmitted. Cultural information is communicated and not mere “simple classification” (presumably by that he means non-fiction work). The increasing specialization of cultural data brought about literary techniques to best convey the desired patterns.

Non-fantastic literature has developed sophisticated means of presenting that information and making it more dense. It can assume a context known by the reader. Continue reading →

Quin’s Shanghai Circus

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Quin's Shanghai Circus

My notes tell me I got a review copy, via NetGalley, of this book on July 17, 2013.

I’m sure the folks at Open Road Media will be happy to know that, while the reviewing mill at MarzAat grinds exceedingly slow, it grinds exceedingly …

Well, perhaps not fine. There’s a lot going on in this novel. I’m not sure, after about a month, I totally understand the relationships between all the characters. That’s appropriate because one of Whittemore’s themes is “relationships can be quite complex. Quite complex when we look into it.”

One of the advantages of the Web of a Million Lies is that you can steal the work of others — or, if you prefer, draw upon the wisdom and insight of others.

So, in that spirit, I’ll refer you to others if you want a more detailed description of plot than what I’ll give in my review:

  • Jeff Topham’s review from 2003
  • Jerome Charyn’s review from New York Times Book Review, 1974.
  • A Time magazine article, circa 1974 from one J. S.

Quin’s Shanghai Circus was the first of Whittemore’s five novels, published from 1974 to 1987. None sold well though there were some favorable reviews. Old Earth Books mounted a resurrection operation on Whittemore’s reputation in 2003. (Whittemore died in 1995.)

It worked — at least in gaining critical favor. Gary K. Wolfe favorably reviewed all of Whittemore’s work in the March 2003 issue of Locus. Jeff VanderMeer wrote about Whittemore’s influence on him in 2002.

I don’t know how successful Old Earth Books was in terms of sales on Whittemore’s books, but, in 2013, Open Road Media attached the marketing electrodes up to Whittemore’s corpus and tried to revive his reputation again via e-book editions.

I remain agnostic on Whittemore’s worth.

I read his Sinai Tapestry in 2004. In my notes, I said it was “a picturesque novel with nothing much at the core”. That was my reaction to this one too, so I still don’t know if I’ll tackle the rest of the Jerusalem Quartet, as the series of Whittemore’s last four books are known.

Review: Quin’s Shanghai Circus, Edward Whittemore, 1974.

Tuneless, masterless

Come the acts of memory,

A Shanghai circus.

So, one character in this novel ponders before the apocalyptic end of Quin’s Shanghai Circus, a fake event in the middle of this novel.

There are two things you need to know about this novel.

It has no quotation marks.

It’s a spy’s novel, specifically a spy with a sense of drama.

And that’s what Whittemore was: an ex-CIA case officer who took up being a novelist. Continue reading →