Category Archives: Book Notes

de Camp & de Camp, SCIENCE FICTION HANDBOOK, REVISED

Posted on Tuesday 10 April 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “How to Write and Sell Imaginative Stories” This is more of a curiosity now, than an essential book of criticism or history, though it does reveal some attitudes of its time. I have a 1975 revision, show here, of … Continue reading →

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Neil deGrasse Tyson, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY

Posted on Monday 9 April 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

This slender volume of magazine essays came out nearly a year ago, and I read it then, and thought it pleasant but nowhere near foundational. But since it still shows up on bestseller lists, nearly a year later, and has … Continue reading →

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James Blish’s ISSUES AT HAND

Posted on Thursday 5 April 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

James Blish, a science fiction author who emerged in roughly the same era as Damon Knight (they were born a year apart in 1920 and 1921 and both began publishing notable fiction in the early 1950s), wrote critical essays about … Continue reading →

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Damon Knight, IN SEARCH OF WONDER 3/e

Posted on Thursday 22 March 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Damon Knight was perhaps the earliest knowledgeable critic of science fiction. He was a science fiction author himself, beginning in 1948, and is most famous for a couple early short stories, “Not with a Bang” (1950) and “To Serve Man” … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury: FAREWELL SUMMER

Posted on Tuesday 13 March 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

FAREWELL SUMMER (2006) is a belated sequel to Ray Bradbury’s famous novel DANDELION WINE (1957), the book set in a fictionalized version of the town Bradbury grew up in, in Illinois, named in the books Green Town. (My post about … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury: DANDELION WINE

Posted on Thursday 8 March 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

DANDELION WINE (DW) is certainly Bradbury’s most personal book, because it is so clearly based on Bradbury’s own life as a boy in small-town Illinois. It was published in 1957 as a novel, not a short story collection, though actually … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury: Core Bibliography and Themes

Posted on Wednesday 7 March 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a chronological list of principal Ray Bradbury titles I’ll be referring to in coming posts. For an exhaustive bibliography, see the Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry for Bradbury; but as thorough as the listings are in that reference, in cases … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury: THE OCTOBER COUNTRY

Posted on Thursday 22 February 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Ray Bradbury’s THE OCTOBER COUNTRY (TOC) was published in 1955, part way through the publication of what I think are Bradbury’s three essential, classic books: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (abbreviated in future as TMC; first published 1950), FAHRENHEIT 451 (F451; 1953), … Continue reading →

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SFNF: Bretnor, Modern Science Fiction

Posted on Friday 19 January 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Reginald Bretnor’s 1953 Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Future is one of the earliest critical volumes about SF. If follows Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s 1947 OF WORLDS BEYOND (summarized here) and precedes the anonymously-edited 1959 volume THE SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL … Continue reading →

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Pinker and Crane: Quotes and Comments about Faith and Religion

Posted on Monday 30 October 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Still working my way, slowly, through Steven Pinker’s THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE. In Chapter 4, The Humanitarian Revolution, he discusses various kinds of violence over human history, beginning with human sacrifice, and then to violence “against blasphemers, heretics, … Continue reading →

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