The Star-Spangled Future: Fourteen Stories in Search of the Future

by Norman Spinrad

American Dream or American Nightmare? Norman Spinrad describes The Star-Spangled "America is something new under the sun. not so much a nation at all as a precog flash of the future of the species . . .I wrote believing that I was simply writing disconnected science fiction stories from whatever came into my head . . . And they all turned out to be about America, the leading edge of all possible futures unfolding around us . . . After all, that was what was coming into my head, that's the mother lode of science fiction realities - the American fusion plasma of which we are creatures - and all we have to do is keep ourselves open to it . . . that's my definition of science fiction.We have seen the future and it is us."

Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction

407 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1979

About the author

Born in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad is an acclaimed SF writer.

Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good collection of Spinrad's short fiction from the start of his career through the 1970's. The stories are thematically linked, to a greater or lesser extent, as visions of the future of the United States. Several of them were previously collected in one of his previous collections, The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde and No Direction Home. Spinrad was always one of the writers in the field who seemed equally adept with novels and at shorter lengths. My favorites in this one were Carcinoma Angels (from Ellison's Dangerous Visions), The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (featuring Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, so not really an America-centric story), It's a Bird! It's a Plane!, The National Pastime, and The Lost Continent.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never simply discard seventies SF, especially when it is by Norman Spinrad. This is a great collection of well worked out intriguing science fiction ideas, with only one real clunker of a story (“The Perils of Pauline”). There is also a Jerry Cornelius story (“The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde”) that doesn’t quite work, but the very fact that it was Jerry Cornelius story I hadn’t read was almost enough in itself to make up for that fact that the story itself didn’t quite work for me.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very 60's/70's vibe to the stories, but they do take you to places you likely haven't encountered previously. If you like Harlan Ellison or some of the more whimsical SF writers, you'll like this.