The Golden Age of British Science Fiction

Filed under General • 17-09-2009 •

Writing for New Scientist magazine, US science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson thinks British science fiction is in a golden age, with a huge number of active and talented writers producing work on the cutting edge of the genre. He also thinks it’s time it won some literary awards.

“Many recent British science fiction novels describe the near future, creating a kind of anticipatory realism, the best description of the first decade of this century. Others venture into the depths of distant space and time, creating a new space opera that is not only sophisticated entertainment, but also usually a surreal allegory for the choices we have to make as a civilisation and a species. Some even explore what I think is the hardest zone of all (which is why I asked the writers here to give it a go) – the time about a century from now, when our growing capabilities will be confronted by immense dangers, creating an unstable and unpredictable future.

“The result is the best British literature of our time.”

Read the full article, plus short fiction from eight leading British SF writers, by following the link here.

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