Early 20th century science fiction was often written as erotica, a connection I don't understand.
Speculative Fiction is the most difficult genre to write well. It requires not only a plot, character, descriptive narrative and language spoken by a culture that either never existed or has not yet existed, but creating an internally cohesive and consistent new universe. The story itself is the easy part.
Why is there no Kathleen Mac award? We need to start a petition!
I did, in fact, know about the ISFDB - I was kicked in a bit at the start but then it turned almost immediately into a screen-scraping exercise, so I was meh. And eventually forgot it about it, because it doesn't turn up much in searches. But they do have a Doris Pischera listing so that's cool.
The vast majority of my reading as a teen and young man was "science fiction", my uncle left me his stash of ANALOG Magazines, as well as 'The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy', Amazing Stories' and many others. Those magazines were my primers in learning advanced English.
I continued to read speculative fiction into my 30s, but was slowly truning to History. The segue is natural, as Sci Fi is the future and history is the past.
My current library has perhaps a hundred SF titles in it.
Did you ever see the film HUGO? It is a wonderful movie about the first film maker to make 'science fiction movies', Georges Méliès. It is a fictional account concerning a boy name Hugo, who rouses Méliès from his drab present as a shop owner in a train station to admitting to his past as a fim maker...which he felt was a disaster and had become ashamed of.
It is on Netflix by subscripion now. It is a 'must see' in my opinion!
Early 20th century science fiction was often written as erotica, a connection I don't understand.
Speculative Fiction is the most difficult genre to write well. It requires not only a plot, character, descriptive narrative and language spoken by a culture that either never existed or has not yet existed, but creating an internally cohesive and consistent new universe. The story itself is the easy part.
Why is there no Kathleen Mac award? We need to start a petition!
I use this database quite a bit. It's especially useful to identify sf artists.
I did, in fact, know about the ISFDB - I was kicked in a bit at the start but then it turned almost immediately into a screen-scraping exercise, so I was meh. And eventually forgot it about it, because it doesn't turn up much in searches. But they do have a Doris Pischera listing so that's cool.
elm
andre norton's gandalf is super cool thing to see
Kathleen,
What a superb topic, Speculative Fiction!!!
The vast majority of my reading as a teen and young man was "science fiction", my uncle left me his stash of ANALOG Magazines, as well as 'The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy', Amazing Stories' and many others. Those magazines were my primers in learning advanced English.
I continued to read speculative fiction into my 30s, but was slowly truning to History. The segue is natural, as Sci Fi is the future and history is the past.
My current library has perhaps a hundred SF titles in it.
Did you ever see the film HUGO? It is a wonderful movie about the first film maker to make 'science fiction movies', Georges Méliès. It is a fictional account concerning a boy name Hugo, who rouses Méliès from his drab present as a shop owner in a train station to admitting to his past as a fim maker...which he felt was a disaster and had become ashamed of.
It is on Netflix by subscripion now. It is a 'must see' in my opinion!
Happy reading!
-Willy