"Aldiss, Brian W - Afterward - This Year in SF 1966" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

who, with fitting justice, used a computer to process the
material.
Advent, a speciality publishing house that produces only
nonfiction about SF, brought out James Blish's The Issue at
Hand, a collection of this author's best critical essays. They
also published The Universes of E. E. Smith, the same "Doc"
referred to earlier, by R. Ellik and B. Evans, an unusual
volume that is referred to as "a concordance to the Lensman
and Skylark novels." Well! A symposium conducted by the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences produced Mumford
Utopias and Utopian Thought (Houghton, Mifflin) which
analyses in detail all the aspects of Utopias, both in fiction and
in practice. The inexhaustible Sam Moskowitz produced two
companion volumes. Seekers of Tomorrow and Modem Mas-
terpieces of SF (World), the latter being an anthology of
stories written by the authors who are examined in the
former. While the effort is a laudable one, it might be wished
that a bit less personal opinion and a shade more accuracy
went into this author's work.
On a more scholarly level is Professor H. Bruce Franklin's
Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth
Century (Oxford University Press). The Professor punctuates
his discussion with stories by Hawthorne, Poe, Melville,
Bierce, Bellamy, O'Brien, Twain, and others. Some critics
have claimed that, in fact, the stories discussed are not science
fiction; their readability has also been questioned. But Frank-
lin's contributions repay careful study. He has many insights
to offer that illuminate the present. Possibly the humanistic
approach of his examples also offers an exemplar for today.
Another scholarly fascinatorand rather funis 1. F.
Clarke's Voices Prophesying War, 1763-1984 (Oxford Univer-
sity Press), English, or Scottish rather, in origin, dealing with
the plethora of invasion and rebellion stories that the nine-
teenth century, expecially France, Germany, and Britain,
inflicted on itself. Clarke is skilful at showing how the
development of a new weapon led to a new attack of nerves
and consequently a new attack of invasion SF. Now we are
saddled with the parallel theme of alien invasion. The transi-
tion point is marked by H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds;
Clarke's examination of this epoch-making novel is one of the
best things in an extremely useful critical history. Fuller
extracts from the scarce works he discusses would have been
appreciated; presumably space did not permit this. As com-
pensation, there are a number of prime illustrations from
various sources.
Memorial to a great and various man is the collection of
essays and stories by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper
and entitled Of Other Worlds (Harcourt, Brace and World).
Lewis was born in Queen Victoria's reign. Like remarkably
many other Victorians, he invented a fantasy-world at a very