James, Edward: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
Edited by: Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn
Genre: Genre History/Critical Theory
Pages: 295
I had a few reasons for choosing this book as my critical text for this term. For starters, many previous students discuss it as useful, and since digitalclone was reading it this term as well, I figured it'd be a good choice, since we'd have a chance to discuss it. I was particularly excited when the book arrived and I noticed the various essays listed. This looked like a great choice.
Unfortunately, this book was very difficult to get through. I spent a lot of time thinking about why too, because I enjoy the whole scholarly aspect of the genre and enjoy reading such essays, whereas many genre writers (and readers) do not. Instead, this book sucked my brain dry.
Part of the problem stemmed from the first part of the book, which focused on the genre's history. While I did learn some new tidbits, I found the essays very dry and very laborious, especially in comparison to David Hartwell's Age of Wonders. It's odd I had problems, because Hartwell wrote his entire book, whereas The Cambridge Companion is penned by many different authors. I expected a variety of styles and tones, and yet nearly every essay was very academic, whereas Hartwell's essays spoke in laymen's terms. In both cases, I hadn't read most of the books being discussed, but only in the case of Hartwell's book did I feel that I could understand the point of the essay.
Part one, "The History," left me hungry for parts two and three, "Critical Approaches" and "Sub-Genres and Themes" respectively. And I did find some solace in the various essays in these sections. The essays "Feminist theory and Science Fiction" and "Science fiction and queer theory" really grabbed my interest, as did the essays "Science fiction and the life sciences," "Hard science fiction" (this one surprised me), "Alternate history," "Utopias and anti-utopias," and "Politics and science fiction" also caught my eye. Actually, most every essay in parts two and three offered some interesting insight and angles to the genre and its sub-genres, though in almost every case, I found the essays to be dry and brittle in tone.
Other critical theory and history books, such as Hartwell's, do a good job articulating the content of the examples it pulls from. Since I'm a relative newbie to the SF genre, there's a lot of turf I haven't covered, and when an author of an essay expounds on a story or novel I haven't read yet to make his or her point, I'm very grateful. Here, such explanation was either missing or didn't quite hit the mark, and I think the reason said explanation didn't hit the mark was because in the cases where I had read the material, I didn't see eye-to-eye with the author of the essay, or I felt the author had sidestepped his/her original point.
It's not a bad book by any means, and I don't regret reading it at all. I find that this book would make for a great companion (I mean that literally) in a classroom where the texts discussed are being read in parallel to lectures on the various subjects. In other words, this would make for an interesting textbook. Outside of the classroom, I find this to be a good jumping point, with every essay summarizing its points rather than digging for any depth (which isn't a bad thing: a book with a variety of essays must summarize to an extent, expecting readers to seek out additional material to satisfy their curiosity). The reading list provided is going to be most useful in the future, and there's plenty of resources listed as well, so The Cambridge Companion will likely be the first book I use for a reference when I'm looking for a particular title or essay about a particular subject.
I don't think this is the kind of book meant to be read in one go. It's an essay-by-essay kind of book, something to read a little bit of, then one should read something else before coming back for another essay. I think the individual essays in parts two and three are very beneficial to writers, but some writers may simply want to focus on these individual essays rather than reading the book as a whole.
Behind the cut, I've listed the contents of the book by essay and author. I encourage anyone writing SF (or even fantasy) to at least take a look at the contents. There may be an essay here worth checking out.
James Gunn: Forward
Farah Mendlesohn: Introduction: "Reading Science Fiction"
PART I: THE HISTORY
Brian Stableford: "Science fiction before the genre"
Brian Attebery: "The magazine era: 1926--1960"
Damien Broderick: "New wave and backwash: 1960--1980"
John Clute: "Science fiction from 1980 to the present"
Mark Bould: "Film and television"
Gary K. Wolfe: "Science fiction and its editors"
PART II. CRITICAL APPROACHES
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.: "Marxist theory and science fiction"
Veronica Hollinger: "Feminist theory and science fiction"
Andrew M. Butler: "Postmodernism and science fiction"
Wendy Pearson: "Science fiction and queer theory"
PART III. SUB-GENRES AND THEMES
Gwyneth Jones: "The icons of science fiction"
Joan Slonczewski & Michael Levy: "Science fiction and the life sciences"
Kathryn Cramer: "Hard science fiction"
Gary Westfahl: "Space opera"
Andy Duncan: "Alternate history"
Edward James: "Utopias and anti-utopias"
Ken MacLeod: "Politics and science fiction"
Helen Merrick: "Gender and science fiction"
Elisabeth Anne Leonard: "Race and ethnicity in science fiction"
Farah Mendlesohn: "Religion and science fiction"
Next up: I just finished reading it, actually: Kitty Takes a Holiday by Carrie Vaughn