Written Thoughts

Deep Space Mine

My Journey Through the Heart of Science Fiction

What I’ve Learned I Love and What I Hate About the Genre thanks to
Robert Silverberg’s Science Fiction 101



Firstly, YIKES! The book is really two books in one – with three hundred pages of short stories and two hundred and forty some odd pages of essays and analysis by Science Fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg. Originally published as WORLDS OF WONDER, 101 is a 2001 edition, it exhaustively covers what I would call post-war era of Science Fiction’ – circa late 1940’s through the 1960’s. Silverberg refers to this age as the ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction Short Stories’, which in itself is confusing for me as I had always believed the classic Golden Age of the genre to be the 1930’s – 1940’s.

I realize that trends have changed since most of these stories were written and so much of my ‘bellyaching’, (as you’ll read below), is irrelevant to current styles. In this golden era that Silverberg highlights in 101, the majority of the stories reach for the IDEA, the PLOT, not the character’s reaction to same. Having read a great deal of what published around this time, however, I do know that a sizeable handful of authors were able to accomplish both great plot and great characterization. Smith, Moore, Kuttner, Asimov, Heinlein, to name a few, always reached out to the reader with equal doses of dynamic POV and unique plotting.

The upside of this exhaustive tome was my exposure to several writers I’d never heard of but would like to further explore. Cordwainer Smith, for instance, seemed to tap into the cyberpunk sub-genre long before William Gibson came along. The downside, however, was that a good fifty percent of these writers are dated by their material and did nothing to stimulate ‘wonder’ in their reading. The book, however, did teach me a great deal about what my own preferences are as a reader and a writer and for that I must tip the proverbial hat at Silverberg for this exhaustive work.

Oddly enough, Silverberg spends little time discussing the concept of wonder in Science Fiction. It’s not until towards the end of this compilation – during his essay on Brian Aldiss’ HOTHOUSE, that any consideration is given to the vitality that Wonder brings to fiction, particularly science fiction. Yet, the emotion is, in my opinion, core to the best of what science fiction has to offer. It is, in essence, its foundation. Which is why, most likely, at the ripe old age of 6, I was captivated by books such as Asimov’s FOUNDATION (no pun intended). I was in awe at the wonder that could be crafted by these giants. I have therefore always believed that Science Fiction not only gives the writer to license to write wondrous things but demands it of her/him.

With each story, Silverberg has offered the prospective writer a glance into the tool bag of a successful science fiction author’s technique(s). As I hone my own skills while writing CRITICAL PAST, I found some of these tools to already be in my own armament, others worth adding and then some that were undesirable, whether from the change in styles from 50’s storytelling to today’s or because they contradicted what my own head (and/or heart) has discovered on in my path towards successful writing.

Successful writing. A digression here for a moment, or perhaps not as Silverberg points out in his opening essay that these stories are meant to enlighten the budding writer as to the elements of technique that make for good, strong tales that will be, in turn, bought by editors, enjoyed by readers, and in turn respected by fellow writers. Success, in my own semantics, is two-fold when it comes to writing: A) Crafting a tale that hits its mark with the reader and B) Profit, that dreaded word, from the selling of such a tale.


So though this book has been cumbersome, it has in large part caused me to be more critical of writing – my own and others – and will hopefully push me to write better, smarter, and with a renewed conveyance of wonder that will pull the reader along in the telling of my tale.

Story by story, here is some thoughts, arguments, perspective gained:
click on each title below to go to my comments of that story:
Four In One by Damon Knight
Fondly Farenheit by Alfred Bester
No Woman Born by C.L. Moore
Home Is The Hunter by Henry Kuttner
The Monsters by Robert Sheckley
Common Time by James Blish
Scanners Live In Vain by Cordwainer Smith
Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss
The New Prime by Jack Vance
Colony by Philip K. Dick
The Little Black Bag by C. M. Kornbluth
Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw
Day Million by Frederik Pohl

posted by No One You Know @ 1:46 PM