May’s acquisitions include:
April’s acquisitions include:
Dave Truesdale’s gone “Off on a Tangent” again:
The Oddball, the Whacky, and the Prophetic in Short SF
From April, 1926 to . . . now?
SF, taken as an official genre and in the broadest sense, has never consciously set out to “predict” the future. Yes, there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule. That it has on occasion happened to do so in its 80+ years of official existence as a genre–April, 2006 marking its 80th year–merely happens to be a sideline plus. But it gave rise to the mistaken notion in its earlier days (after the public began to take notice of our new literature) that this was the primary (if not the only) purpose of SF, and the field was thus defined by many in the general public and the press solely on this basis; as a predictive literature. This popular and long-standing notion still exists among a very few of the unenlightened. Actually, more often than not and truth be told, the imaginative SF writer threw many inventive, creative, wild ideas against the wall–in the service of story–and a few of them, down through the years, have stuck (i.e. have come to pass).
Go read it and then argue with him about it.
March’s acquisitions include:
Another of my slush survivors had one of her stories published online recently. This time, it’s Heather Lindsley, and this time it’s a podcast at Escape Pod, of her story “Just Do It.”
February’s acquisitions include:
Dave Truesdale pontificates about alien invasions in his latest “Off on a Tangent” column for F&SF:
Alien invasion has been one of SF’s most enduring themes. It has taken many literary variations and forms since H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1894, exposing our vulnerability and scaring everyone to death. While the human race survived his Martian invasion, it was due not to anything we as human beings did–after all, our military was powerless against the invaders–but through the inability of the Martian life forms to assimilate safely our planetary microbes, which turned out to be deadly to their alien immune system. If not for this oversight on the part of the Martians we would have been dead meat. Their overwhelming force and singular desire to crush us like bugs would have sealed our fate, no questions asked. They weren’t interested in negotiation or compromise, or enslaving us for whatever malevolent purpose most suited their alien intellect. They wished simply to exterminate us and take over earth for their own purposes. And there was nothing we could do about it. We were helpless. Toast.
Go read it and then argue about it.
You can now read the F&SF stories that have made the preliminary Nebula ballot on the magazine’s website. The stories are:
I recently posted about my collection of F&SF, mentioning how I had every issue except for the November 1983 issue. Well, aspiring writer and all-around cool guy Andy Wolverton came to the rescue and sent me a copy he’d picked up at a sidewalk sale. Thanks Andy!
Now my collection is truly complete. Excellent, he said, in his best Monty Burns voice.