In this wide-ranging series of essays, an award-winning science fiction critic explores how the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror evolve, merge, and finally "evaporate" into new and more dynamic forms. Beginning with a discussion of how literary readers "unlearned" how to read the fantastic during the heyday of realistic fiction, Gary K. Wolfe goes on to show how the fantastic reasserted itself in popular genre literature, and how these genres themselves grew increasingly unstable in terms of both narrative form and the worlds they portray. More detailed discussions of how specific contemporary writers have promoted this evolution are followed by a final essay examining how the competing discourses have led toward an emerging synthesis of critical approaches and vocabularies. The essays cover a vast range of authors and texts, and include substantial discussions of very current fiction published within the last few years.
Evaporating Genres
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"There is much to admire in Evaporating Genres."--Matthew Cheney, Strange Horizons
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"Evaporating Genres is, as Wolfe's work has always been, lively, impressively knowledgeable, and crystal clear. It is a major contribution, examining the ways genres function in the late 20th and early 21st centuries." (Brian Attebery, author of Decoding Gender in Science Fiction)
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Recently I've been reading science fiction literary criticism. Gary K. Wolfe's offering, Evaporating Genres, is one of the best I've encountered. Not only are the topics very interesting and thought provoking, the text is nearly jargon-free. And Wolfe can be hilarious at times, as illustrated by his take on Asimov's Foundation series:
"Despite his reputation, Asimov was never one of science fiction's great inventors, but he was its single greatest apostle of management, and his dream of managing history, of reducing millennia of chaos to a few centuries through the science of statistics and a handful of strategically placed public service announcements..."
I never considered Hari Seldon in those terms before, but Wolfe is absolutely correct.
This book is highly recommended. If you have the same experience as I had, you'll probably be jotting down many of the titles that Wolfe mentions and adding them to your reading list.
"Despite his reputation, Asimov was never one of science fiction's great inventors, but he was its single greatest apostle of management, and his dream of managing history, of reducing millennia of chaos to a few centuries through the science of statistics and a handful of strategically placed public service announcements..."
I never considered Hari Seldon in those terms before, but Wolfe is absolutely correct.
This book is highly recommended. If you have the same experience as I had, you'll probably be jotting down many of the titles that Wolfe mentions and adding them to your reading list.
