A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay.com I have some Lightning News Flashes for this post. The month of April has sadly seen the loss of two science fiction writers but it’s also seen some good news, too. N ew TV shows based on science fiction and fantasy novels have been announced as being in the works and also an Edgar Allen Poe Museum ha s acquired a genuine letter written by Poe. For longer versions of these stories, click on the links below. Obituaries Science fiction and fantasy author Vonda McIntyre passed away at age 70 on the first of the month. She wrote several Star Trek books, including the novel adaptations of movies ST II: The Wrath of Khan and ST III: The Search for Spock . Her 1978 novel, Dreamsnake , had won both a Hugo and a Nebula. According to Geekwire .com, McIntyre started the Clarion West writers’ workshop in Seattle in 1971. Geekwire also says she completed her last novel, Curve of the World , “in less than two weeks before her death” from pancreatic ...

The thing that I don’t understand about some science fiction writers is how they can straight out deny the genre as prophecy. The late Ursula Le Guin (may she rest in peace) did this and Corey Doctorow does do it, among others. It’s nearly obvious that yesterday’s science fiction has become today’s science fact. Even so, authors such as the above like to explain away this fact with their rationalisation. But does prophecy have to be unexplainable or supernatural (at least directly)? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to predict the future correctly if at all. And so, like science fiction, prophecy doesn’t always get its visions of future society right. The science fiction writers who like to deny the genre being prophecy often use the rationale that sci fi is a criticism of today ’s issues re-im agin ed as futuristic ones. While this isn’t completely wrong, Ursula Le Guin thought of the genre in this way and Corey Doctorow does similar. Using Isaac Asimov as an examp...