Category Archives: science fiction

Recent Links and Comments: Ken Ham, Timothy Egan, Valerie Tarico, Adam Frank, Nathaniel Frank

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m some two weeks behind on posting comments and links here, though I’ve been compiling such links for eventual posting. Website issues have preoccupied me. Here’s a first bunch of them. More tomorrow. 23 July: Salon: The Christian right’s 5 … Continue reading →

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Literary SF authors

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Thought of the day – is a characteristic of a ‘literary’ genre SF writer one who writes short fiction? (By ‘genre SF writer’ I exclude those ‘outsider’ literary authors who happen to write books resembling SF. Like today’s example, Edan … Continue reading →

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Rereading Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”

Posted on Thursday 3 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Gene Wolfe is one of the most intelligent, albeit ambiguous in effect, writers in science fiction (and fantasy). He was an industrial engineer, famously for having partly invented the machine that made Pringle potato chips, before he began writing in … Continue reading →

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Science Fiction and the perception of a greater truth

Posted on Monday 23 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a passage from an early 1960s science fiction story, a story later incorporated into a novel, about a young man who works as a yardboy in a small town in a pre-industrial society near the “Katskil border”. One morning … Continue reading →

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Clarke, Childhood’s End, part 3 – passages

Posted on Saturday 7 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Passages from Clarke’s Childhood’s End. The early part of the book involves a faction of the public that objects to the Overlords’ presence, on the grounds that their influence deprives them of “Freedom to control our own lives, under God’s … Continue reading →

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Clarke, Childhood’s End, part 2 – themes

Posted on Friday 6 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Last week I started my discussion of re-reading several classic Arthur C. Clarke novels, and summarized the plot of Childhood’s End, in this post. Now some comments on themes. My purpose in these rereadings is not to explore the history … Continue reading →

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Clarke, Childhood’s End, part 1

Posted on Saturday 31 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I have been re-reading several classic novels by Arthur C. Clarke, published in the 1950s and ‘60s, because they were books that I read in my formative years (i.e. ages 13 to 15), and so influenced my early thinking and … Continue reading →

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Trek vs Wars

Posted on Wednesday 14 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A long Facebook post by David Gerrold a few days ago captures my own feelings about Star Trek vs Star Wars, and since I can’t figure out how to link it, I’ll quote it below, and hope he doesn’t mind. … Continue reading →

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Passage from Clarke, 1

Posted on Wednesday 14 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Science fiction isn’t about prediction, of course, but some SF authors do take seriously the idea of projecting future possibilities. I’ve read several works by Arthur C. Clarke in the past month, and am rallying my notes on them for … Continue reading →

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Goonan Quotes

Posted on Sunday 4 May 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the meaty interview with Joan Slonczewski a couple months ago, Locus Magazine’s May interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan, of which I posted excerpts this afternoon, has several passages of particular interest to my theme here. About science fiction: At … Continue reading →

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