Science Fiction: The Future

by Dick Allen (Editor)

Good condition (few markings, crease on front cover.) Trade paperback. A collection of essays, excerpts & short fiction designed for use in the college classroom or to give an overview of the development of the science fiction genre & its literary criticism. Contributors include Hawthorne, Vonnegut, Heinlein, Asimov, H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Susan Sontag , Kenneth Koch, Zelasny and many others. Suggestions for further reading, 345p.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Dick Allen is an American poet, literary critic and academic, who is serving a five-year term as poet laureate of the state of Connecticut from July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2015. His book This Shadowy Place received the 2013 The New Criterion Poetry Prize.

Allen has retired from his position as Charles A. Dana Endowed Chair Professor at the University of Bridgeport. He has been co-editor of several anthologies of science fiction and science fiction criticism.

His poems have appeared in journals including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, The Massachusetts Review, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, The New Criterion, Ploughshares, and The Gettysburg Review.

Reviews

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Ray Bradbury’s “To the Chicago Abyss,” Robert Silverberg’s “A Happy Day in 2381,” Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days,” Raccoona Sheldon’s “The Screwfly Solution,” And Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Nine Lives” from here.

[Larry Wegman · Rating 2 out of 5]

A college textbook. I like to read fiction (and some non-fiction) as a story. I think that going into analysis (as lit courses, of any genre, do) nearly always detracts from that. There are a number of good (and some not so good) stories in here. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a sci-fi story? It wouldn't have been called that in his day, but it is and it's not bad. There are a number of others I liked (how had I ever missed Heinlein's They?). The analysis was largely poppycock, with the worst example perhaps being The Human Race Has, Maybe, Thirty-Five Years Left, a 1967 Esquire magazine article very reminiscent of today's climate alarmism.

[David]

Table of Contents (copied from Worldcat)
First Perspectives / Dick Allen
Advice to a Prophet / Richard Wilbur
No way out, no way back [article] / Time Magazine
The human race has, maybe, thirty-five years left [article] / David Lyle
Crab-apple crisis / George MacBeth
Earth's Holocaust / Nathaniel Hawthorne
Alternative futures: the present as future / Dick Allen
Poem Rocket / Allen Ginsberg
The country of the blind / H. G. Wells
Jachid and Jachidah / Isaac Bashevis Singer
They / Robert A. Heinlein
The artist / Kenneth Koch
The balloon / Donald Barthelme
The Future / Dick Allen
To the Chicago abyss / Ray Bradbury
Light of other days / Bob Shaw
Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Green Hills of Earth / Robert A. Heinlein
Tithonus / D. M. Thomas
The Machine Stops / E. M. Forster
A Rose for Ecclesiastes / Roger Zelazny
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman / Harlan Ellison
Day Million / Frederik Pohl
History Lesson / Arthur C. Clarke
Excerpt from The Time Machine / H. G. Wells
Theories / Dick Allen
Starting points / Kingsley Amis [article]
Social science fiction / Isaac Asimov [article]
Science fiction, morals, and religion / Gerald Heard [article]
The boredom of fantasy / Arthur Koestler [article]
The imagination of disaster / Susan Sontag [article]
The future of prediction / John P. Sisk [article]