Sunday Times SF Article
Filed under Uncategorized • 04-12-2007 •
Brian Appleyard explores the “sniffy” British attitude to science fiction in an article for the Sunday Times.
“The truth is,” Aldiss has written, “that we are at last living in an SF scenario.” A collapsing environment, a hyperconnected world, suicide bombers, perpetual surveillance, the discovery of other solar systems, novel pathogens, tourists in space, children drugged with behaviour controllers – it’s all coming true at last. Aldiss thinks this makes SF redundant. I disagree. In such a climate, it is the conventionally literary that is threatened, and SF comes into its own as the most hardcore realism.
He goes on to claim that HG Wells was responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Astounding magazine caused the Cold War…
Tags: Literature • Media • SF • Writing
Brian Aldiss is pretty interesting. He wrote Million Year Spree, A History of Science Fiction.
I agree with him that we are living in a science fiction world. William Gibson and many other science fiction writers can simply switch to thrillers– Gibson recently wrote Spook Country as a thriller. It had a lot of science fictiony concepts in it.