Product Description

The first comprehensive critical history of 'SF' for thirty years, "The History of Science Fiction" traces the origin and development of science fiction from Ancient Greece, via its rebirth in the Seventeenth-century, up to the present day. It covers both literary SF and cinema/TV. The author is both an academic literary critic and an acclaimed creative writer of science fiction. Written in lively, accessible prose, this study is specifically designed to bridge the worlds of academic criticism and the SF fandom, and will be lively reading for anyone interested in SF.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1292705 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 392 pages

The Guardian
'This impressive tome is ambitious in its scope, tracing SF's origins back to the fantastic voyages of the ancient Greek novel'

Stephen Baxter, The British Science Fiction Association
`... the most significant history of the genre since "The Trillion Year Spree" by Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove'

Strange Horizons
'[A] refreshingly irreverent attempt to look at science fiction without blinkers.'

Customer Reviews

Excellent with one puzzling ommision
Comprehensive and academic yet accessible, this is one of the best histories of science fiction I've read. Taking science fiction from its earliest, and sometimes controversial, roots, via the twin themes of rational and magical philosophy or belief systems to today's complex set of conventions which define modern science fiction.

The importance of this work is difficult to overstate, as a sometimes neglected genre of literature powerful academic works of history and criticism are at a premium and this, combined with the equally excellent encyclopaedia of science fiction by Peter Nicholls and John Clute, form a powerful meta-text to this, my favourite, genre of fiction and help negate some of the sneering commentary sometimes expressed by those whose only experience of science fiction is via Dr Who.

As is usual with these sorts of works, Professor Roberts has aligned his history with a thesis that science fiction is tied to rationality and partially mirrors the depth of "rationality" within society rather than "fantasy" works which have a more magical bent. This is an excellent device to use to string together this history and allows works from classical Greece and reformation-era Europe to be discussed without jarring intellectual leaps by the reader.

To the same end, Roberts breaks sci-fi into tightly defined classifications, in particular a chapter devoted to the works of Verne and Wells, which progresses the narrative rapidly and makes the work much more accessible to the reader, giving sensible start and stop points for casual interaction and easy reference.

All in all this is an excellent work and I have only one criticism to make, in such a work there will inevitably be omissions but the lack of any mention of Cordwainer Smith (one pseudonym of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger ) who was, well to my mind, one of the most important and influential sci-fi authors of the 20th century whose stories demonstrate such a highly developed moral centre and whose prose is as good as any other author of the last 200 years, to be baffling in the extreme.

A wide-ranging but curiously narrow preaching on SF
Adam Roberts will be familiar to SF readers as the author of a number of novels which were all potentially interesting but rapidly became unstructured and flawed -- making him one of the least stimulating of the current SF "big guns". In real life, however, Roberts is Professor of 19th C Literature in the University of London, and this history is pretty much his academic treatise on the subject.

Academic, yes -- it's a word to strike fear into anybody hoping to take the book on face value of its promising title. And Roberts cannot avoid drifting into academic mumble throughout the book, repeatedly mistaking linguistic obfuscations for insight. At times the book descends into impenetrable "prof speak", but as a professor of literature, surrounded by academic books in a University library, it is only to be expected. However, despite this, the book is readable, and even those who might be scared off by all that vocabularistic flatulence will be able to claw their way through it and pick up something meaningful among the position-justifying blither.

I would say that Roberts as the academe is better than Roberts as the SF author. But the book is as flawed -- if not quite as unstructured -- as his novels. Laudably, he tosses out traditional views of SF as a relatively modern medium, birthed unnaturally by Mary Shelley or (worse still) Verne or Wells. He traces the story back to ancient Greece, and describes very well the way it permeated through the 17th and 18th centuries, during which stories were created that seem oddly familiar -- proof that, in movies at least, SF is pretty conservative and still dwelling on the stuff most authors gave up long ago. But nevertheless, Roberts has a narrow focus. He is at pains to say that not ALL science fiction is about god, but his thesis is that SF was born essentially out of the intellectual crisis sparked off by Copernicus, and became a medium for the explorations of that crisis -- between the mechanistic world and the spirit world, between, as Roberts puts it, the Protestant and Catholic viewpoint. This, Roberts argues, boils much of SF down to one single question: in a universe where the Earth is just one planet among many, what of traditional (Christian) notions of God? Many will find this question dreary, but Roberts argues plausibly that it remains central to much of SF, even that which seems inherently "protestant", such as cyberpunk. And clearly, few can ignore the fact that books like "Neuromancer" and movies like "ET" and "The Matrix" (let alone all the superhero comics and movies) are concerned with a technological "messiah", or a new configuration of god and salvation in a machine age. Indeed, the more Roberts is correct, the more depressing SF becomes -- still churning through those same old religious issues, not yet working up the courage to ditch the childhood toys and move forward. Roberts is careful to mention how many of the modern SF writers are Catholic (in religious belief) and how their work is a means of working through the Copernican problem for themselves.

There is still much to admire. Roberts's reach is admirable, and he covers just about everything you'd want him to. With a work of this small size, of course he can't cover everybody's personal favourites but that doesn't denigrate the thrust of the book. He presents a clear trajectory for SF, covering, perhaps unsurprisingly, its 18th and 19th century developments better than near contemporary ones, and is refreshingly dismissive of the cyberpunk movement, a form of literature he rightly sees as just a temporary adjunct to SF. (It is, however, surprising that he doesn't mention "Videodrome" or any other movie of its type.) He also has a clear-headed view of Scientology, objecting not to its beliefs (which he comments are no less ludicrous than those of any other religion) but to the banality of its SF.

He fares less well as the narrative approaches the modern day (which is 2005, the date of publication), presenting an ill-researched overview of SF in popular music. He is not that great on movies either, churning out the usual history of grim early 70s SF movies turning into largely lamentable whizz-bang kiddie SF after "Star Wars". He ends by apologising that the size of the book doesn't give him time to talk about any of the many interesting contemporary SF authors, but if he'd focused more on written SF and less on movies, music and the UFO phenomenon, he might have had more to say.

That's probably a little unfair: comics, movies, pop and dance music, UFOs -- SF is everywhere, and Roberts rightly shows how around the time of "Star Wars" (perhaps its most risible influence) SF turned from a largely written genre, confined to a certain fandom, to a largely visual genre, understood and enjoyed by many more -- indeed, many of the biggest movies of all time were SF, and must have attracted an audience who would never dream of picking up an SF novel. The SF novel, therefore, Roberts concludes, is waning away. I agree, but I also think that audiences will eventually grow tired of all the Hollywood gee-whiz and turn back to something with a bit more substance. Whether written SF can shake off its religious adolescence has yet to be seen -- given Roberts's account, you'd doubt it. But Roberts is only one account out of many, and must be read that way.

If you're trying to bridge the gap, say, between one of those post-Pringle "100 must-read" books, and the indigestible lump of the Clute and Nichols Encyclopedia, Roberts is a good bet. Many of the key texts are here, and you can use him to branch out into other authors. But we're still -- STILL -- waiting for the perfect detailed guide to SF. This isn't it, but it's the best account I've read so far, and is therefore recommended.