Eric S. RabkinCritiques

An interesting overview of fantasy and science fiction literature. The first half of the course looks at the development of imaginative fiction since the Grimms and Mary Shelley, and refers back to their literary antecedents. The second half focuses on science fiction. Excellent.½

What an interesting selection.

One of my coworkers is an early scifi geek, which is cool; he was telling me about this Hoffman guy. This thing has, like, Hawthorne in it. Just a neat way of looking at it.

Highlights: Voltaire, Hawthorne, Bellamy, London, Stapledon, Asimov, Bradbury, Keyes, Zelazny

Avoid: Gernsback, Finney, Pohl, Ellison, Sheckley

Some disappointing stuff in here (not one of Arthur C Clarke's strongest ideas), but then any kind of historical anthology is bound to demonstrating evolution and the thematic concerns of the genre as well as to quality. Very interesting to see how the earliest writers use other worlds to examine our own, a technique which is still going strong, but technology, its possibilities and threats, becomes so dominant.½