New Year; New Project

About eighteen months ago, I embarked on a completely new kind of literary adventure. I scrapped my long science fiction reading list and began reading Classics, starting with Plato and Aristotle. I’ve been away for a while, and I even announced earlier this summer that I would be giving up this site and the domain, but when the due date came, my gut told me to keep it going.

I now feel I have gained adequate perspective to return to SF on my own terms, and with a new purpose. I want to write a survey of the genre.

This survey will be divided into two parts. The first, much shorter part, will be a series of essays about topics concerning SF. The second, much larger part, will be biographies, reviews, and literary analyses of the twelve authors I consider most important to the last two centuries of science fiction.

I plan on debuting the rudiments of all this work on this blog for free. Each of the essays and reviews will appear here first, in somewhat abridged form. The final, more substantive works will appear in ebook and print form, as I finish each section.

Here is the working outline (subject to revision):

Topics

What is Science Fiction?

Solidity in Science Fiction and the Intellectual Divide

A Trajectory for the Future

Biographies & Reviews

Mary Shelley

Jules Verne

H.G. Wells

Aldous Huxley

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Boris & Arkady Strugatsky

Staisław Lem

J.G. Ballard

Ursula K Le Guin

Kazuo Ishiguro

David Mitchell

China Miéville

This is a big, multi-year project. I will consider 2019 a success if I can get through Mary Shelley. The three topics above may appear simple in outline form, but there’s a lot of research for me to do. Fun research. Exciting research! On my own terms, too. This is going to be great.

Hey, SF. I’m back.