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Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction
Colourfields is a wide-ranging, deeply knowledgeable, cheerfully argumentative exploration of how historians, critics, biographers have thought about the many interweaving traditions of science fiction. In the reviews and essays collected here, Paul Kincaid examines the changing stories told about SF, asks how different theoretical approaches are useful (or not) to readers, and demonstrates why in the end, it’s each individual perspective – each individual work – that really matters.
Praise for Colourfields
“Why is it that we are drawn again and again to theorise, proselytise and re-invent the perennial arguments about science fiction? Paul Kincaid is here to help us find out. This is a fascinating and essential volume that every fan and critic will want to read.”
– Nina Allan, author, Conquest
“The clarity of Kincaid's thought, allied to the precision of his prose, has made him one of the central voices of science fiction criticism … Kincaid is always authoritative without being pompous, generous without being sentimental. Read this latest collection and then read everything else.”
– Paul March-Russell, editor, The International Review of Science Fiction
“One of speculative fiction's most erudite critics discusses criticism itself. A refreshingly sophisticated, beautifully grounded analysis of the many histories, definitions, and purposes with which science fiction contends.”
– Vajra Chandrasekera, author, The Saint of Bright Doors
“A book for anyone interested not only in science fiction, but in how literature as a whole works - its communities and cross-currents, its contexts and contradictions.”
– Dan Hartland, reviews editor, Strange Horizons
About the Author
Paul Kincaid has been writing about science fiction in one form or another for nearly half a century. In that time he has twice been a Hugo finalist, twice won the BSFA Best Non-Fiction Award, and has received the Thomas D. Clareson Award from the Science Fiction Research Association. He has written acclaimed books on Brian Aldiss, Iain M. Banks, and Christopher Priest, as well as critical studies of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock and Pavane by Keith Roberts.
Praise for Colourfields
“Why is it that we are drawn again and again to theorise, proselytise and re-invent the perennial arguments about science fiction? Paul Kincaid is here to help us find out. This is a fascinating and essential volume that every fan and critic will want to read.”
– Nina Allan, author, Conquest
“The clarity of Kincaid's thought, allied to the precision of his prose, has made him one of the central voices of science fiction criticism … Kincaid is always authoritative without being pompous, generous without being sentimental. Read this latest collection and then read everything else.”
– Paul March-Russell, editor, The International Review of Science Fiction
“One of speculative fiction's most erudite critics discusses criticism itself. A refreshingly sophisticated, beautifully grounded analysis of the many histories, definitions, and purposes with which science fiction contends.”
– Vajra Chandrasekera, author, The Saint of Bright Doors
“A book for anyone interested not only in science fiction, but in how literature as a whole works - its communities and cross-currents, its contexts and contradictions.”
– Dan Hartland, reviews editor, Strange Horizons
About the Author
Paul Kincaid has been writing about science fiction in one form or another for nearly half a century. In that time he has twice been a Hugo finalist, twice won the BSFA Best Non-Fiction Award, and has received the Thomas D. Clareson Award from the Science Fiction Research Association. He has written acclaimed books on Brian Aldiss, Iain M. Banks, and Christopher Priest, as well as critical studies of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock and Pavane by Keith Roberts.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
448 pages, Paperback
First published April 17, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 21, 2025
What a wonderful treasure trove. Kincaid is a critic's critic - provocative, always teasing out nuances and inconsistencies - but in a manner that showcases his intellectual rigour and unabashed passion for everything SF. There is humility, wonder, respect, and a natural incisiveness to flay the wheat from the chaff ... For example, his criticism of Delany's 'Starboard Wine' is one of the best engagements with this recondite raconteur ever. Kincaid is also immensely readable and entertaining, so if you are curious about SF criticism in general, this is Ground Zero. I think Kincaid has reviewed every major critical book from Delany to 'Trillion Year Spree' by Aldiss and beyond. His immense contribution to SF scholarship is only truly discernible in a major (and at times overwhelming) collection like this. An indispensable lodestone for the history of the genre, and its decolonial potential, especially when Global South SF is flourishing.
A luta continua!
A luta continua!
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March 22, 2025I went over the word limit with my review for Locus. Clocked over 1,000 words (where the limit is typically 800). I had plenty to say, and I could have written more. I won’t repeat any of it here other than to note that Kincaid is brilliant at what he does. He can take dry topics such as taxonomic and ontological debates about what is and what isn’t science fiction and turn them into lively, urgent discussions where it feels like the genre's future is at stake. Well, maybe not that melodramatic, but in Kincaid’s hands, science fiction always feels alive, subject to constant change and reassessment. That he never gets bogged down in the academia of it all, that he’s always clear and precise in his language, that he’s always thorough and meticulous with his argumentation, that he has a parched sense of humour, makes the reading experience all the more delightful.
One thing I didn’t do in my review because it would have taken the focus away from Paul is extol the virtues of Paul’s publisher, Briardene Books. Colourfields is their third collection of reviews and essays, following books by [Niall Harrison]() and [Abigail Nussbaum](). Like so many small presses, they are putting in the hard work, sacrificing who knows what and more, to present us with the work of brilliant, thoughtful, important writers who are never likely to get a contract from a big publisher—unless their small press book somehow becomes viral (which infrequently does happen). Publishing criticism, especially on a topic as niche as genre fiction, is even more of a thankless task. But Briardene are doing it anyway, and I thank them for this.* May they continue for many, many years to come.
*I know University Presses publish criticism. But it costs a fortune and isn’t always readily available. For example, [Kincaid’s recent monograph on Keith Roberts’s Pavane](https://www.booktopia.com.au/keith-ro...) costs a King’s ransom if you’re not associated with a University. (Yes, some of that cost involves exorbitant shipping costs to Australia, but even the Kindle edition is $50). It’s a bloody shame because I’ve just read Pavane (review forthcoming), and I’d love to know Paul’s thoughts, but not at those prices. (And, yes, I also know that Uni presses always charge more because of the niche nature of the work).
One thing I didn’t do in my review because it would have taken the focus away from Paul is extol the virtues of Paul’s publisher, Briardene Books. Colourfields is their third collection of reviews and essays, following books by [Niall Harrison]() and [Abigail Nussbaum](). Like so many small presses, they are putting in the hard work, sacrificing who knows what and more, to present us with the work of brilliant, thoughtful, important writers who are never likely to get a contract from a big publisher—unless their small press book somehow becomes viral (which infrequently does happen). Publishing criticism, especially on a topic as niche as genre fiction, is even more of a thankless task. But Briardene are doing it anyway, and I thank them for this.* May they continue for many, many years to come.
*I know University Presses publish criticism. But it costs a fortune and isn’t always readily available. For example, [Kincaid’s recent monograph on Keith Roberts’s Pavane](https://www.booktopia.com.au/keith-ro...) costs a King’s ransom if you’re not associated with a University. (Yes, some of that cost involves exorbitant shipping costs to Australia, but even the Kindle edition is $50). It’s a bloody shame because I’ve just read Pavane (review forthcoming), and I’d love to know Paul’s thoughts, but not at those prices. (And, yes, I also know that Uni presses always charge more because of the niche nature of the work).
June 10, 2026
Winner of the 2026 BSFA Award for Best Long Non-Fiction, this latest collection of Paul Kincaid’s writings gathers together articles, essays and reviews published between 2004 and 2024, focusing primarily on works of science fiction (SF) history and criticism, hence the book’s subtitle, Writing About Writing About Science Fiction.
Split into three sections, Kincaid first tackles SF “Histories,” before moving on to “Topics” and then “Authors.” Contained within each section are journeys, he says, “through the colourfield of science fiction” that move into progressively “sharper focus” to reveal how “the more closely we look, the less it is possible to determine the simple, unitary nature of what it is we are trying to see.”
Kincaid sets out his stall immediately in the opening reviews of various histories published over the last 20 years, noting the tendency of historians to create “neat categories” that do an injustice to the “curious mess” that science fiction actually is. Kincaid is most sympathetic to works that acknowledge this complexity, as in the case of The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019), edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, where it is acknowledged that science fiction is essentially “indefinable.” Yet his frustrations soon resurface in discussions around attempts to determine when SF began: was it with Frankenstein (1818), or perhaps Somnium (1608), or was it when SF became self-aware as “Scientifiction” in the pages of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories magazine in 1926? As Kincaid rightly points out, if nobody can agree what science fiction is, then surely “there is no way of knowing when it might have begun.”
As a final note on this section, I particularly enjoyed his 2019 review of Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee, in which Kincaid highlights how the book never really explains why the period from the late 1930s to the late 1950s should be considered a “golden age” at all. He goes on to argue that, given the reputational legacy of the four men it focuses on — Campbell the racist, the notoriously arrogant Heinlein, Hubbard the conman, and Asimov, an “inveterate bottom pincher” — it is perhaps wrong to define this era as golden in the first place.
Moving on to “Topics,” Kincaid’s writings consider subjects including the art of SF criticism itself, genre, utopia and dystopia, ideology, colonialism, and the importance (or otherwise) of science and technology in SF. In his review of Rob Latham’s Science Fiction Criticism (2017), Kincaid is pleased to report that it is clear from the book that “there are many science fictions, each using different tools to achieve different ends,” adding that SF criticism is perhaps better described as “criticisms of the many different science fictions.” On the subject of genre, via his discussion of Brian Attebery’s Parabolas of Science Fiction (2013), we learn that SF is not really a genre at all, but rather “a set of tools (the future, the alien, the generation starship) that can be accessed as required to suit various literary (or filmic, televisual, dramatic, graphic) needs.”
It is in the discussions around ideology, however, that these more academic studies come under Kincaid’s most severe scrutiny. In particular, he has a very specific beef with Marxist critics such as the Canadian scholar Darko Suvin, whom he regards as overly “authoritarian” in their analyses, always tending towards closing debate down by insisting their theories are ultimately the correct ones. Reading this, I found myself wondering whether Kincaid is equally agitated by some of the dogmatic attitudes that pervade contemporary SF fandom, where there often seems to be little room for alternative perspectives or opinions in the discourse. As he states in his review of Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (1984/2012) by Samuel R. Delany: “I believe disagreement is a vital part of critical engagement. We learn more when we test our own views against those of others.”
Thinkers such as Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. fare better in Kincaid’s assessment, largely because they embrace the fluid nature of SF rather than insisting it is governed by strict rules. This idea is perhaps best outlined in the later discussion of utopia, where, via Caroline Edwards’s Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel (2020), Kincaid notes how our understanding of utopia has shifted from being a fixed destination to something better understood as an ongoing process. Given the importance of utopia to the arguments developed throughout Colourfields, I was surprised that Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005) is absent from this collection. I would love to read Kincaid’s thoughts on such a significant work.
In the final section, “Authors,” Kincaid offers some excellent meditations on writers whose works exemplify many of the ideas explored throughout the collection. A particular highlight is the material on M. John Harrison, which outlines, through one essay and two reviews, a kind of manifesto for Harrison’s approach to writing; one that continually seeks to disrupt the established boundaries and conventions associated with SF. The discussion even extends to Harrison’s “anti-memoir,” which I have yet to read but which sounds fascinating.
Here we get more of Kincaid’s analysis of fiction, every bit as compelling as his non-fiction criticism. It is also worth noting that this section contains tantalising details from Kincaid’s own life: being part of a science fiction group with Harrison and Michael Moorcock that met in a Manchester bookshop during the late 1970s, where Harrison worked on what would become some of his most famous books; attending dinner parties with Ursula Le Guin; and studying at university in Belfast during the height of the Troubles. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was left with the impression that Kincaid is an extraordinarily interesting man; not only phenomenally well-read, but exceptionally well connected, and shaped by a range of formative experiences that have undoubtedly helped mould his mind into one of the most perceptive critical voices in the field.
Split into three sections, Kincaid first tackles SF “Histories,” before moving on to “Topics” and then “Authors.” Contained within each section are journeys, he says, “through the colourfield of science fiction” that move into progressively “sharper focus” to reveal how “the more closely we look, the less it is possible to determine the simple, unitary nature of what it is we are trying to see.”
Kincaid sets out his stall immediately in the opening reviews of various histories published over the last 20 years, noting the tendency of historians to create “neat categories” that do an injustice to the “curious mess” that science fiction actually is. Kincaid is most sympathetic to works that acknowledge this complexity, as in the case of The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019), edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, where it is acknowledged that science fiction is essentially “indefinable.” Yet his frustrations soon resurface in discussions around attempts to determine when SF began: was it with Frankenstein (1818), or perhaps Somnium (1608), or was it when SF became self-aware as “Scientifiction” in the pages of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories magazine in 1926? As Kincaid rightly points out, if nobody can agree what science fiction is, then surely “there is no way of knowing when it might have begun.”
As a final note on this section, I particularly enjoyed his 2019 review of Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee, in which Kincaid highlights how the book never really explains why the period from the late 1930s to the late 1950s should be considered a “golden age” at all. He goes on to argue that, given the reputational legacy of the four men it focuses on — Campbell the racist, the notoriously arrogant Heinlein, Hubbard the conman, and Asimov, an “inveterate bottom pincher” — it is perhaps wrong to define this era as golden in the first place.
Moving on to “Topics,” Kincaid’s writings consider subjects including the art of SF criticism itself, genre, utopia and dystopia, ideology, colonialism, and the importance (or otherwise) of science and technology in SF. In his review of Rob Latham’s Science Fiction Criticism (2017), Kincaid is pleased to report that it is clear from the book that “there are many science fictions, each using different tools to achieve different ends,” adding that SF criticism is perhaps better described as “criticisms of the many different science fictions.” On the subject of genre, via his discussion of Brian Attebery’s Parabolas of Science Fiction (2013), we learn that SF is not really a genre at all, but rather “a set of tools (the future, the alien, the generation starship) that can be accessed as required to suit various literary (or filmic, televisual, dramatic, graphic) needs.”
It is in the discussions around ideology, however, that these more academic studies come under Kincaid’s most severe scrutiny. In particular, he has a very specific beef with Marxist critics such as the Canadian scholar Darko Suvin, whom he regards as overly “authoritarian” in their analyses, always tending towards closing debate down by insisting their theories are ultimately the correct ones. Reading this, I found myself wondering whether Kincaid is equally agitated by some of the dogmatic attitudes that pervade contemporary SF fandom, where there often seems to be little room for alternative perspectives or opinions in the discourse. As he states in his review of Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (1984/2012) by Samuel R. Delany: “I believe disagreement is a vital part of critical engagement. We learn more when we test our own views against those of others.”
Thinkers such as Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. fare better in Kincaid’s assessment, largely because they embrace the fluid nature of SF rather than insisting it is governed by strict rules. This idea is perhaps best outlined in the later discussion of utopia, where, via Caroline Edwards’s Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel (2020), Kincaid notes how our understanding of utopia has shifted from being a fixed destination to something better understood as an ongoing process. Given the importance of utopia to the arguments developed throughout Colourfields, I was surprised that Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005) is absent from this collection. I would love to read Kincaid’s thoughts on such a significant work.
In the final section, “Authors,” Kincaid offers some excellent meditations on writers whose works exemplify many of the ideas explored throughout the collection. A particular highlight is the material on M. John Harrison, which outlines, through one essay and two reviews, a kind of manifesto for Harrison’s approach to writing; one that continually seeks to disrupt the established boundaries and conventions associated with SF. The discussion even extends to Harrison’s “anti-memoir,” which I have yet to read but which sounds fascinating.
Here we get more of Kincaid’s analysis of fiction, every bit as compelling as his non-fiction criticism. It is also worth noting that this section contains tantalising details from Kincaid’s own life: being part of a science fiction group with Harrison and Michael Moorcock that met in a Manchester bookshop during the late 1970s, where Harrison worked on what would become some of his most famous books; attending dinner parties with Ursula Le Guin; and studying at university in Belfast during the height of the Troubles. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was left with the impression that Kincaid is an extraordinarily interesting man; not only phenomenally well-read, but exceptionally well connected, and shaped by a range of formative experiences that have undoubtedly helped mould his mind into one of the most perceptive critical voices in the field.
July 16, 2025
Reprints of reviews that Kincaid has written over the years about various science fiction books and authors. He's a good critic, but your enjoyment will depend on how familiar you are with the books and authors he reviews. He spends a lot of time on M. John Harrison and H.G. Wells. He also has a clever and heartfelt appreciation of fellow critic John Clute.
September 27, 2025
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/colourfields-writing-about-writing-about-science-fiction-by-paul-kincaid/
A substantial collection of essays by Paul Kincaid, who is one of the few people to have been both Administrator of the Hugo Awards and a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (the other two are David Langford, and me). They are almost all reviews of other critical works, hence the title, with commentary inserted by the author to contextualise and explain a little more. I had read very few of the books described here, so it made me realise how much more there is to read about sf, and will spur me to add some more to my bookshelves
While I particularly enjoyed the pieces on Brian Aldiss and Ursula Le Guin, I’m afraid I am still unconvinced of the added value of the Marxist analysis of Frederic James and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, or of the literary merits of M. John Harrison; but maybe that proves Kincaid’s larger point, that there can be no single definition of science fiction, which he pushes in a gentlemanly way. I learned a lot from this, as I had expected.
A substantial collection of essays by Paul Kincaid, who is one of the few people to have been both Administrator of the Hugo Awards and a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (the other two are David Langford, and me). They are almost all reviews of other critical works, hence the title, with commentary inserted by the author to contextualise and explain a little more. I had read very few of the books described here, so it made me realise how much more there is to read about sf, and will spur me to add some more to my bookshelves
While I particularly enjoyed the pieces on Brian Aldiss and Ursula Le Guin, I’m afraid I am still unconvinced of the added value of the Marxist analysis of Frederic James and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, or of the literary merits of M. John Harrison; but maybe that proves Kincaid’s larger point, that there can be no single definition of science fiction, which he pushes in a gentlemanly way. I learned a lot from this, as I had expected.
April 28, 2025
Paul Kincaid is the sf critic with whom I feel most aligned so it's not really a surprise I enjoyed this book so much, even when I disagreed with him.
I enjoyed the histories section most and felt some of his frustration. We are overdue a real overhaul of the history of science fiction, one that is both more international and less focused on great men, that understands publishing environments, and reprint rules.
As with all of Paul's work, well worth reading, and this collection gives a very good sense of his interests over many years of work in the field.
I enjoyed the histories section most and felt some of his frustration. We are overdue a real overhaul of the history of science fiction, one that is both more international and less focused on great men, that understands publishing environments, and reprint rules.
As with all of Paul's work, well worth reading, and this collection gives a very good sense of his interests over many years of work in the field.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews