In the first half of this collection of over forty essays, American author Thomas M. Disch (1940 - 2008) critiques sf (science fiction and speculative fiction) as a genre and its connection to mythology, religion, history, culture and science. In the second half, the author assess individual sf writers such as Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Rudy Rucker.

As a reader fairly new to sf, the book gave me exactly what I was after: a clear understanding of the genre and its power and place within the past, present and projected into the future. Thomas M. Disch is a most perceptive and articulate literary critic, such a joy to read. He also has a number of strong opinions he doesn't hold back on. To share the specific flavor of the author’s voice, here are direct quotes from several essays along with my comments:

The Embarrassments of Science Fiction
“Science fiction writers are the provincials of literature. We have always been able to embarrass each other, but to the world at large our gaucheries are generally accounted a major (if not the entire) part of our charm.” ---------- Disch maintains through most of its history, science fiction has been a lower-class literature that supplies power fantasies for a reading public acutely aware of their lack of social status and formal education. While the college educated liberal arts types were reading their Henry James and Virginia Woolf, the marginalized technical crowd had their H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Also, another prime audience for science fiction has always been teenagers, especially that magic age of thirteen, the age when many young people become lifelong fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if avid sf fans reading this recall their first science fiction story that set their imagination on fire back when they were thirteen, fourteen or fifteen.

“The emphasis on replication rather than creation does explain why cookery – and hack writing – finally must be considered as crafts rather than arts. Indeed, the very mention of “art” is apt to bring a manly sneer to the lips of the hack writer, who prides himself on his craftsmanship, his competence as an entertainer meeting the demands of an audience.” ---------- How many science fiction stories and novels through the years feature rocket ships and exotic adventure, a world where men are courageous tough guys while the woman are scantily-clad beauties? For Disch, all too many of such, as are the many authors who shape their stories to follow a cookie cutter science fiction mold. While reading this passage, I imagined a serious fan, a mechanical engineer, thinking of a great new story of how a rocket ship lands safely on Mars when the lowest ranking member of the crew, a mechanical engineer, figures out a unique solution employing his knowledge of mechanical engineering. The artistry of fiction can go to hell, our mechanical engineer thinks – just let me alone to write my story. I'll make it just like all the other science fiction stories I've been reading for the past ten years!

“There is nothing that so militates against the sense of one’s own vast ignorance as adopting some such Big Idea, and the young, whose ignorance is largest and rawest and most exasperating, have a natural predilection for Big Ideas. Marxists, Aye Randers, Scientologists, and deconstructionists have one thing in common: they tend to have been recruited young.” ---------- Intriguing section comparing the apocalyptic and “one big solution” mindset of a sizable chunk of science fiction to religious fundamentalism and totalitarianism. The author alludes to Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream as a prime sf book debunking this type narrow minded thinking. I was so happy to see Thomas Disch reference The Iron Dream since I too found Spinrad’s novel first-rate, a novel within a novel about hack writer Adolph Hitler at his hack-writing finest. By my lights, The Iron Dream should be on every high school reading list in the country. You may ask: what country? My answer: every country!

On Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's stories are meretricious more often than not. Because he's risked being loud, vulgar, and smelly? No, because his imagination so regularly gets mired in genteel gush and self-pity, because environing clichés have made him nearly oblivious to new data from any source, and because as a writer he's a slop." ---------- Ray comes in for some harsh judgement – likened to that other well-known cultural sanitizer, Walt Disney and also likened to Norman Rockwell in his championing small town apple pie America and everything it represents. The most flattering thing about Ray Bradbury comes as an acknowledgement that the famous author of Fahrenheit 451 has a knack for linking a certain kind of reader to their eleven-year-old selves. A collection of Ray Bradbury short stories as an entire buffet of Hostess Twinkies. Sidebar: John Updike equated book reviewing to “hugging the shore,” that is, playing it safe, writing about other people’s books rather than venturing oneself into the deep sea of fiction. I can better appreciate Updike's observation as I would not want anybody judging my writing in the way Thomas Disch judges the writing of Ray Bradbury.

On Kurt Vonnegut
"He is a masterful debunker, a superb monologuist, an ingenious farceur, and has a quick and wicked tongue. Like Chaplin he can switch from farce to sentiment by the batting of an last. All that he lacks to be decathlon champion of comedy is the mimetic genius of a Dickens, but though Vonnegut is a shrewd observer of character, his dramatic strategy would militate against ventriloquism, even if he had the knack." ---------- Disch applauds Kurt's brand of teasing humor, the way in which the popular author has taken on the role of wise Everyman sharing his moral lessons laced with comedy.

On L. Ron Hubbard
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard is to other, ordinary dumb books what a Dyson sphere is to an ordinary landscape –awesomely much bigger, though not different in kind. Page by page, it’s about on a par with the latest ersatz quest-adventure of Philip Jose Farmer or with most hack writing of the pulp era – the Golden Age, as it is known to those who were young then (and what age is not?). ---------- Reviewing Battlefield Earth Dish concludes this unending mix of boners, groaners and worn out clichés was slapped together as if Hubbard received an advance to write the longest dime store piece of crap on record.

On Isaac Asimov
“He was a lifelong teenager, and his persona, whenever he was far enough away from the typewriter to wear one, was that of a typical high school, slide-rule-toting science nerd. But in Asimov’s case, the nerd was triumphant.” ---------- Thomas is generous with his praise: Asimov's output is astonishing, his broad knowledge of the sciences astounding and the imagination to write, at the age of twenty, one of the greatest ever sf stories, Nightfall, is noting short of amazing.

On William Gibson
"Like punk rock, and like most traditional rocket-and-blaster sf, Cyberpunk caters to the wish-fulfillment requirements of male teenagers, but this is a job that can be done with varying degrees of panache, and in the whole field of sf there is presently no more accomplished caterer than William Gibson. He is the undisputed champion of Cyberpunk." ---------- Disch encourages fans of sf to read Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light since those Gibson novels capture much of the energy of our brave new cyberspace world, all with a flair for language and the hippest attention to fashion and style.

On Philip K. Dick
“But his commitment to an aesthetic of process means that, by and large, whatever he writes is what we read. There is no turning back to rethink, revise, or erase. He improvises rather than composes, thereby making his experience of the creative process the focus of his art.” ---------- When Thomas Disch wanted to find out if someone was on his same vibe, he had a simple rule of thumb: ask them if they have read and admire the worlds of PKD. Sounds like a sensible acid text to me.

On William S. Burroughs
“Forget morality! Forget art! What Mr. Burroughs offered the rubes back in 1959 and what he offers them today, in somewhat wearier condition, is entrance to a slideshow where they can view his curious id capering and making faces and confessing to bizarre inclinations. The backdrops are changed every few minutes by lazy stagehands, but the capering id delivers an identical performance before each one. Its grotesque, it’s disgusting, but gosh – it’s real!” --------------- I included this quote as an example of the elegance and grace of Disch's writing style. For me, his reviews set the gold standard. ( )

Disch and I aren't always in harmony (he slays one of my favorite novels [admittedly one I haven't read in years:]), but his vision is insightful, focused, consistent, hence, refreshing. Anyone interested in science fiction should read this.His opening essay about SF and his appreciations of PKD are highpoints for me. ( )

http://home.earthlink.net/~karen20000/OnSF.htm ( )