The New York Review of Science Fiction

Science Fiction in the Edgelands, by Chris N. Brown

 

0. Border and Futures

“BORDER CLOSED. NETWORK OPEN.”

So reads the text of an information card handed out earlier this summer to occupants of the twelve lanes of cars backed up two hours and longer to cross the border from Tijuana into metro San Diego. The card was one of hundreds of different future interventions conducted by science fiction writer Pepe Rojo, also a member of the media studies faculty of the Autonomous University of Baja California, and 150 of his students—energetic members of the imaginary Tijuana Liberation Front (FLT). Over a period of two months, with official sponsorship from the Tijuana Cultural Center and a guerilla budget, Rojo and team hacked the paramilitary zone of the border crossing with experiential suggestions as to how locals can see their own future through that razorwire prism of cultural confluence. Notable interventions included:

• The procession of Santa ste.la, the patron saint of technological accidents, through urban Tijuana, her appearance as a cyborg Guadalupe causing numerous pleas for baptism from confused bystanders.

April 2012 Table of Contents

ISSUE #284 April 2012
Volume 24, No. 8 ISSN #1052-9438
ESSAYS
Chris N. Brown: Science Fiction in the Edgelands: 1
Mike Barrett: “War Drums of Mercury Lost”: John Jakes’s Fantasy & Science Fiction Short Stories:
Victor Grech: The Pinocchio Syndrome and the Prosthetic Impulse in Science Fiction: 11
Darrell Schweitzer: Dying in an Ecstasy of Blood: The Half-Remembered Perversities
of David H. Keller’s “The Revolt of the Pedestrians” (1928): 16
James Morrow: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain: Pragmatism and Fantasy in American Popular Culture: 20
Robert Eldridge: Friedebert Tuglas, Estonian Gothic Symbolist: 21

April 2012 Editorial: The Future's Not Ours to See

    First the announcements: We are close to an arrangement to publish electronically, in multiple formats (PDF, epub, and possibly others). We will have more details on that front to announce next month. And: unless we have a stoke of luck, the next issue, May, is going to be late. We cannot find an agreeable time in the first half of April to meet and produce an issue. If we had had sufficient inventory, we would have doubled up issues this March weekend (we’ve done that many times), but our stock of reviews and essays is low right now. So send ’em if you’ve got ’em!

Breaking News! NYRSF has been nominated for a Hugo Award

http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2012-hugo-awards/

Congratulations to our fellow nominees. Thank you, dear readers, contributors, and staff. It's great to be nominated again.

March 2012 Table of Contents

Volume 24, No. 7 ISSN #1052-9438

ESSAYS

Brian Stableford: The French Origin of the Science Fiction Genre: 1

Christopher S. Kovacs and Susan M. MacDonald: More Medical Myths and Errors in Science Fiction and Fantasy: 11

Amy J. Ransom: Horror from the Edge: The New Canadian Weird: 15

Mike Barrett: From Star Kings to Firebirds: John Jakes’s Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels: 18

March 2012 Editorial: To the Sunlit Lands Beyond

It is possible that this issue will appear on time, in late February or early March, well before the March 21 launch of the ICFA, where several of us will be. If so, it will be the first on-time issue in four months. In the meantime, I am finishing collaboration on four different anthologies in four months, two fantasy and two sf, including the usual Year’s Best SF and the unusual Year’s Best Fantasy (both with Kathryn Cramer).

The French Origin of the Science Fiction Genre by Brian Stableford

Many discussions of “the origins of sf” automatically take the form of combative attempts to identify “primal texts” that present significant analogies with the body of work (however defined) that later came to be identified as the genre’s principal constitution. Plausible examples for that honor include John Kepler’s Somnium (1634), Voltaire’s Micromégas (1752), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), but many others have been suggested, depending on the particular identification made of the key features of sf.

February 2012 Editorial Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

 

    The title of this editorial is borrowed from a Marilyn Hacker

sonnet sequence, referring to an older comment that all poetry is

about love, death, and the changing of the seasons. Award season

is upon us, too. We are still eligible for the Hugo Award as Best

Semiprozine, and we hope that you nominate us and vote for us.

It has taken a few years to recenter and recast that Hugo category,

and it is now sort of settled down, pending a confirming vote at

Worldcon this August, and we’re happy to be part of it.

February 2012 Table of Contents

ISSUE #282 February 2012

Volume 22, No. 6 ISSN #1052-9438

ESSAYS

Robert Guffey: Film Noird and the Multiple Realities Thereof: Bowery at Midnight, The Chase, and Kiss Me Deadly: 1

Takayuki Tatsumi: From Surrealism to Postmodernism: An Introduction to Chiaki Kawamata’s Death Sentences: 1

Darrell Schweitzer: Texts, Authors, and the Enduring Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe: 12

Gregory Benford: Dining with Dirac: 16

REVIEWS

John Baxter’s The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard, reviewed by Rob Latham: 7

Death Valley, written by Adam Scott Mazer, directed by Dan Rogers, reviewed by Jen Gunnels: 20

PLUS

An editorial (24).

Samuel R. Delany, Contributing Editor; Kris Dikeman and Avram Grumer, Associate Managing Editors.

David G. Hartwell, Reviews and Features Editor; Kevin J. Maroney, Managing Editor.

Staff: Ann Crimmins, Alex Donald, Jen Gunnels, Heather Masri, M’jit Raindancer-Stahl, Eugene Reynolds, and Anne Zanoni.

Weekly Crew: Lisa Padol and Christine Quiñones.

Special thanks to Arthur D. Hlavaty and Eugene Surowitz.

 

January 2012 Table of Contents

ISSUE #281 January 2012

Volume 24, No. 5 ISSN #1052-9438

ESSAYS

Andrew Ferguson: Unpublished Lafferty: 1

Patrick L. McGuire: Lukyanenko’s Genom: Breezes through the Reopened Window on the West: 12

Deji Olukotun: How to Create Your Own Jurassic Park: 17

Michael Andre-Driussi: A Roadside Picnic Triptych: 20

REVIEWS

Xenophilia, based on the works of James Tiptree, Jr., and Connie Converse, reviewed by Jen Gunnels: 1

Robert Charles Wilson’s Vortex, reviewed by David Mead: 6

Michael Dirda’s On Conan Doyle, or: The Whole Art of Storytelling, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer: 7

Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell; Lewd I Did Live, edited by Michael Kelly, reviewed by Ursula Pflug: 21

David Anthony Durham’s The Sacred Band, reviewed by Paul Witcover: 22

PLUS

The eternal, infernal pubic hair (15); Verne in other hands (19); Whither Canada? (23); and a major announcement (24).

Samuel R. Delany, Contributing Editor; Kris Dikeman and Avram Grumer, Associate Managing Editors.

David G. Hartwell, Reviews and Features Editor; Kevin J. Maroney, Managing Editor.

Staff: Ann Crimmins, Alex Donald, Jen Gunnels, Heather Masri, M’jit Raindancer-Stahl, Eugene Reynolds, and Anne Zanoni.

Weekly Crew: Lisa Padol and Christine Quiñones.

Special thanks to Arthur D. Hlavaty and Eugene Surowitz.

 

January 2012 Editorial

Note: This editorial contains important information for subscribers.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

    We are at a moment of decision in the publishing of NYRSF, and here is what we see in our future: We will continue to publish print issues through the end of the current volume in July 2012. It does not appear that we will continue in print past then but will switch to PDFs of entire issues. These may be emailed to subscribers, or we may decide not to have subscribers and just make each issue available online, either for a nominal charge or for free. We will almost certainly also offer a print-on-demand option as well.

    What has brought us to this moment is that our long-time printer, Odyssey Press, was sold in October, after we had sent the November issue to them. Odyssey did not print it, because by the time it was prepared they had run entirely out of paper, and so they sent the job to the new owner in Pennsylvania. They did ultimately print it, late in November, but did not mail it until December 2. Thus we missed a calendar month for the first time in our 23-year history. We have only now received our first printing bill from them and have sent our December issue to them today, two weeks late, because we were not confident that they could remain our printer until they actually printed and mailed an issue at the agreed price. It has been an anxious six weeks. We do not know how it will play out over the coming months.

    Many of you know that we have offered a PDF subscription to overseas and non-US subscribers for the last couple of years, but we are now, this minute, offering this option to all subscribers. If it is time for you to renew your subscription, we want you to know that you can switch immediately to all-electronic for the reduced price of $3.00/issue. We recommend it to you as the best option, since the process is already in place. And that price is good worldwide.

    For now, we are not accepting subscriptions past July until we have decided on our future course. For those of you who have recently renewed, contact us directly about subscription extension and conversion to PDF if you wish to convert now. A year from now we may well not be offering a print option. 

—David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney,

& the editors