(urth) Palgrave History of Science Fiction
Ab de Vos
foxyab at casema.nl
Tue Mar 6 14:46:05 PST 2018
Adam Roberts is a literature professor as well as a science fiction writer.
In his "The History of Science Fiction" he devotes a short chapter to
Wolfe which he concludes by relating Wolfe to his (Roberts) main thesis
throughout the book: "Wolfe not only revisits many of the conventions of
20th-century SF, he goes further back than that, tapping into the deep
roots of the genre, interrogating the many ways in which notions of
salvation are inflected by our much broader materialist understanding of
the cosmos."(page 439)
After treating preliminaries his history starts in chapter 4:
"Seventeenth century SF". Central is the dialectic between matter,
spirit and technology. Very interesting. His chapter on Wolfe contains,
I believe, some errors. He says for instance:"Horn may or may not,
mutate into a new form of life across the course of the trilogy. "(page
438) Anybody ring a bell. I thought Silk was Horn but didn't want to
give him up because then he Horn would be dead as they were sharing the
same body.
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