(urth) Palgrave History of Science Fiction

[Eric Bourland]

For what it's worth, An Evil Guest is one of my favorite of his books. 
For a few years maybe it was my favorite. I've got a whole disquisition 
about it, which inevitably prompts vigorous eye-rolling, so I'll spare 
you. ;-) Looking forward to vol. 2. Eric


On 3/7/2018 11:14 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> I think my editor will have time to get volume 2 ready to go in May, 
> but I am not sure. I haven't pressed because my pace on these last six 
> essays has been glacial.  You would think I would have the energy to 
> just finish it .. but geez there's always something. I predict the 
> weakest essay will be on An Evil Guest. I have adopted a more pedantic 
> approach to these final longer essays. Sometimes pedantry is a gift.
>
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 4:19 PM, Ab de Vos <foxyab at casema.nl 
> <mailto:foxyab at casema.nl>> wrote:
>
>     Thanks anyway. It has been some time I read the books and much of
>     them alas went over my head.
>
>     When are your books coming out?
>
>
>     Op 7-3-2018 om 00:41 schreef Marc Aramini:
>>     I don't want to start a round of Short Sun stuff (please, please,
>>     please) but here is my take on what he may or may not be talking
>>     about: some time after Horn falls into the pit on Blue, a
>>     Vanished Person who also calls himself Horn appears to speak to
>>     our narrator. That's the only new speciation that might have
>>     anything to do with Horn - the rest Roberts refers to are the
>>     false clues Wolfe is giving us that Silkhorn might be inhumi:
>>     (light, doesn't have a good appetite - is he truly a normal man
>>     with his ability to walk through the woods without being touched?
>>     (yes, he has made a deal with the vanished gods, who are trees)
>>
>>     Having said that, Horn dies on Green, goes into Silk's body who
>>     has just faced Hyacinth's death on the whorl and has either
>>     psychologically retreated or mostly succeeded in killing himself,
>>     is a true amalgam of Horn and Silk as he writes On Blue's Waters
>>     in as the Rajan of Gaon. When he sits under the tree at the end
>>     of On Blue's Waters the majority of Horn's spirit goes into
>>     Babbie and becomes the beast with three horns, then it is Silk in
>>     denial for the rest of the book, Silk a man as he always was,
>>     until finally he is faced with the truth with the passage
>>     invoking the death of Hyacinth in the writings and has come home
>>     to a house that is not his.
>>
>>     But hey anyone can believe what they want - I have zero interest
>>     in arguing this one at all. Just trying to address what he might
>>     be talking about.
>>
>>     On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 2:46 PM, Ab de Vos <foxyab at casema.nl
>>     <mailto:foxyab at casema.nl>> wrote:
>>
>>         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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-- 
Eric Bourland
eb at hwaet.com
https://www.hwaet.com

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