Customer Reviews

Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction

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This is a stuffy, stodgy, & all in all difficult book, a mammoth dissertaion on a confluence of somewhat obscure subjects. That's why I knocked it down a star.

But, basically, it's also a lucid and frighteningly thorough study of what (for lack of a better term) I will call "literarily serious science fiction." It keeps slipping into a paean to the godhood of Samuel R Delany -- but since I would hardly be one to argue with that, this is hardly a black mark. (You *do* own at least one Delany novel... right? No? Bad puppy.)

In backhanded fashion, this book also forms a central node for attempts to define that horribly overworked & vague term from the 1990s, "postmodern."

Don't even try to read this unless you are Very Serious about Delany, modern literature, or science fiction -- preferably all three. But if that's you, then you need to read this book, probably four or five times.