What do you think?
Rate this book
Turning Points: Essays on the Art of Science Fiction
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 A walk around the topic: Science fiction: its nature, faults & virtues/ Robert A. Heinlein
Social science fiction/ Isaac Asimov
What is science fiction?/ Damon Knight
2 History without tears: Pilgrim fathers: Lucian & all that/ Brian W. Aldiss
Science fiction before Gernsback/ H. Bruce Franklin
The situation today/ Kingsley Amis
3 Criticism, destructive & otherwise: On science fiction/ C.S. Lewis
Alien monsters/ Joanna Russ
Cathedrals in space/ William Atheling, Jr (James Blish)
Contact/ Pierre Versins
4 SF & science: No copying allowed/ John W. Campbell
Scientists in SF: a debate/ Philip R. Geffe, Milton A. Rothman, John W. Campbell, James V. McConnell
5 How to, in four tricky lessons: On the writing of speculative fiction/ Robert A. Heinlein
How to build a planet/ Poul Anderson
How to collaborate without getting your head shaved/ Keith Laumer
Writing & selling science fiction/ Damon Knight
6 SF as prophecy: Chemical persuasion/ Aldous Huxley
Pandora's box/ Robert A. Heinlein
Gourmet dining in Outer space/ Alfred Bester
Why so much syzygy?/ Theodore Sturgeon
There's nothing like a good foundation/ Isaac Asimov
Son of Dr Strangelove/ Arthur C. Clarke
Journey with a little man/ Richard McKenna
Notes
Introduction
1 A walk around the topic: Science fiction: its nature, faults & virtues/ Robert A. Heinlein
Social science fiction/ Isaac Asimov
What is science fiction?/ Damon Knight
2 History without tears: Pilgrim fathers: Lucian & all that/ Brian W. Aldiss
Science fiction before Gernsback/ H. Bruce Franklin
The situation today/ Kingsley Amis
3 Criticism, destructive & otherwise: On science fiction/ C.S. Lewis
Alien monsters/ Joanna Russ
Cathedrals in space/ William Atheling, Jr (James Blish)
Contact/ Pierre Versins
4 SF & science: No copying allowed/ John W. Campbell
Scientists in SF: a debate/ Philip R. Geffe, Milton A. Rothman, John W. Campbell, James V. McConnell
5 How to, in four tricky lessons: On the writing of speculative fiction/ Robert A. Heinlein
How to build a planet/ Poul Anderson
How to collaborate without getting your head shaved/ Keith Laumer
Writing & selling science fiction/ Damon Knight
6 SF as prophecy: Chemical persuasion/ Aldous Huxley
Pandora's box/ Robert A. Heinlein
Gourmet dining in Outer space/ Alfred Bester
Why so much syzygy?/ Theodore Sturgeon
There's nothing like a good foundation/ Isaac Asimov
Son of Dr Strangelove/ Arthur C. Clarke
Journey with a little man/ Richard McKenna
Notes
315 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1977
8 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Damon Knight
580 books97 followersDamon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic.
Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, "Resilience", was published in 1941. He is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", which was adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was a recipient of the Hugo Award, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writer's Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife Kate Wilhelm.
Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, "Resilience", was published in 1941. He is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", which was adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was a recipient of the Hugo Award, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writer's Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife Kate Wilhelm.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 1, 2023
A collection of mostly-essays by science fiction authors. A great deal of variety in form and length, with some going to 20+ pages and some being only two or three, and entries as a speech and a debate. The editor, Damon Knight, apologetically supplies a few essays he felt had no existing equivalent, and provides some notes and corrections to the writings at the end. There is no overall theme, but the essays are grouped by subject (history, criticism, prophecy, etc.) Being minimum 50 years old, many are quite dated, especially since most aren't dealing with "pure criticism". Those that do, like "Social Science Fiction" and "On Science Fiction" hold up better. I can only imagine myself reading a handful of these ever again.
"Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults, and Virtues" by Robert A Heinlein, 1959: Offers a definition of science fiction (or speculative fiction, as he prefers to call it) as fiction that deals with that which is not imaginary-but-possible, as opposed to fantasy, which deals with the impossible. Being set on a different planet does not make science fiction. Out of the Silent Planet is fantasy, not science fiction. Fair enough, there is plenty "science fiction" which has precious little "science" in it. Of course, nowadays the label of "speculative fiction" has subsumed all of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and what have you. What can you do? He goes on to say it is not prophetic, mostly not of a high literary standard, and most of it not even entertaining. What makes it worthwhile, and more worthwhile than contemporary novels (especially what he terms unhealthy and neurotic novels), is that it grapples with a rapidly changing reality. I'm in firm agreement that in a world governed by artificial satellites, remotely operated explosive drones, the internet, and now the products of machine learning, if you are not writing science fiction, you are writing historical fiction. But all of his points are wrapped up in a smug circlejerking exterior I recoil from.
★ "Social Science Fiction" by Isaac Asimov, 1953: Asimov works at a similar purpose, from a different direction. Heinlein from the view of the engineer, Asimov from the historian. He defines science fiction as that which deals with fictional societies differing from ours in technological development. When combined with "social fiction" (fictional societies used to examine and satirize our own), he believes that "social science fiction" is the most important branch of the subject (as opposed to adventure and gadget stories), and comes to much the same conclusion as Heinlein. To get to that point, he recapitulates the development of awareness of historical change as a concept, the history of science fiction, and a digression into "chess games" vs. "chess puzzles".
"What is Science Fiction?" by Damon Knight, 1977: Knight empirically compares various definitions by scoring award-winning stories according to the number of such definitions they fit.
★ "Pilgrim Fathers: Lucian and All That" by Brian Aldiss, 1973: An excerpt from his Billion Year Spree, covering the prehistory of science fiction.
"Science Fiction Before Gernsback" by H. Bruce Franklin, 1966: Argues that all major nineteenth century American writers wrote at least one story that could be called science fiction, whether it be about a utopia, parapsychology, future war, and other such themes that have fallen out of favour.
★ "The Situation Today" by Kingsley Amis, 1960: Examines the state of science fiction as of 1960. Amis sees it as a field which has improved greatly in quality from the 30s, if not reaching the highest literary heights, while also expanding massively in number of publications. He examines not only the stories, but the trappings (the covers, ads, letters to the editor, fanclubs, the makeup of the readers and writers). Amis writes as if for an outsider audience, and avoids the triumphalist tone of Heinlein/Asimov, though he notes that such an attitude may be a motivating force for producing quality work. I really need to read New Maps of Hell.
★ "On Science Fiction" by C.S. Lewis, 1967: Lewis categorizes various types of SFF, and analyzes what their appeal is. It's interesting, because while Lewis has written science fiction (ignoring Heinlein earlier), he isn't really a "science fiction writer", and wasn't closely familiar with the American tradition. Despite this, as a fantasist, he's sympathetic to the concept, and he has several interesting observations.
"Alien Monsters" by Joanna Russ, 1968: I thought this was gonna be interesting in the first couple pages. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit through its presentation in real life. Suffice it to say, I have never seen this hypermasculine archetype she's imagining outside Burroughs or Conan. If ever it was a problem, it's absolutely irrelevant today when science fiction is more feminine (authorship, readership, subject matter) than it has been at any point in its history. My only question is how a drawing of Yujiro Hanma appeared in an American science fiction magazine decades before Baki the Grappler started publication.
"Cathedrals in Space" by James Blish, 1953: In a bizarre exercise, Blish critiques his own story "A Case of Conscience" under a pseudonym, William Atheling Jr., while also giving a brief and partial history of religious themes in science fiction, concluding they have been there more or less from the beginning. He specifically mentions that Lord of the World has a sequel, but I'm not sure what book he's referring to. The Dawn of All? He then reflects back on that exercise, while also talking of the ways the novel version of A Case of Conscience responded to those criticisms. As a further exercise, he describes the doctrines of the religion concocted in Stranger in a Strange Land.
"Contact" by Pierre Versins, trans. by Damon Knight, 1972: Versins compares and contrasts American ("First Contact" by Murray Leinster) and Soviet ("Cor Serpentis" by Ivan Yefremov) stories on the first contact theme, siding with American pessimism over Soviet optimism.
"No Copying Allowed" by John Campbell, 1966: A science fictional exercise in which Campbell imagines a 60s cruise missile landing in the hands of 1920s scientists, concluding they could not reproduce any of it, except the resistors.
"Scientists in SF: A Debate" by Philip R. Geffe, Milton A. Rothman, John Campbell, James V. McConnell, 1966: The equivalent of a reddit argument in printed form.
"How to Build a Planet" by Poul Anderson, 1966: A how to guide on developing a planet, specifically the one in Ensign Flandry.
"On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" by Robert Heinlein, 1964: Some pretty generic advice.
"How to Collaborate Without Getting Your Head Shaved" by Keith Laumer, 1967: Confirms my suspicion that a lot of scifi collaborations are hackjobs by vets to avoid doing work. He describes a collaboration between himself and Rosel Brown (Earthblood), where neither could have written the book on their own.
"Writing and Selling Science Fiction" by Damon Knight, 1977: The part about finding and developing ideas is fine, the part about physically writing and selling stories is outdated, to say the least.
"Chemical Persuasion" by Aldous Huxley, 1958: Analyzes existing drugs, and speculates about what future drugs might be created and the uses they might be put to, with reference to the fictional "soma" of his Brave New World. Not exactly prescient, but also not terribly off the mark.
"Pandora's Box" by Robert Heinlein, 1966: Heinlein disclaims scifi as prophecy, then reprints an article he wrote that was exactly that, written in 1950, which he then comments on from the perspective of 1966. He was mostly wrong. While our scientific understanding has increased, the kinds of revolutionary changes that took us from horse and carriage to cars haven't materialized. Our cars have more bells and whistles, but they're made on basically the same plan. The 747 has been in service with modifications for 50 years, but it's still a 747. My washing machine is shittier, if anything, than my parents'. Manned spaceflight peaked at the moon landing. Even information technology, the only realm which actually saw revolutionary improvement over the past few decades, seems to be slowing down. Moore's law is dead, and we're relying on parallelization to get us the rest of the way. Crysis still runs badly because we're running 8 separate CPUs, not one CPU which is 8x faster. It remains to be seen what machine learning and Large Language Models will be able to do in the next few years, and whether they'll transform society or not (funnily enough, that sector experienced a 10-year dark age from 1970-1980, and it's only until about now that it's started to break into mainstream consciousness/nontrivial applications). Whether they do or not, we'll probably still be stuck on Earth, still burning Carboniferous plants for power, and still waiting on flying cars.
"Gourmet Dining in Outer Space" by Alfred Bester, 1960: In another science fictional exercise, Bester recapitulates the brief history of food in science fiction, then attempts to imagine what serving food might actually be like in space. Like so many other entries in this book, it instantly dates itself, with talk of "big men" being 185 pounds and smoking on board spacecraft. It does have a little something at the end, the idea that accumulated orbiting food waste may mutate into vacuum-living organisms, that would themselves become a source of space food.
"Why so Much Syzygy?" by Theodore Surgeon, 1953: Sturgeon defends himself of the charge of being obsessed with syzygy. I don't know what emanations of the monad have to do with his writing, but I have yet to read any Sturgeon.
"There's Nothing like a Good Foundation" by Isaac Asimov, 1967: Describes the pluses and minuses of writing a series, and Asimov's resolution to stop writing Foundation novels
★ "Son of Dr. Strangelove" by Arthur C. Clarke, 1972: The story of how 2001: A Space Odyssey was written. As Clarke tells it, the impetus to make a science fiction movie came from Kubrick, and Clarke selected his story "The Sentinel" as the basis for the story. They then worked closely together developing and expanding the story. The book version was completed before the screenplay, but one is not based on the other, and the solo credit for each is merely a formality. Clarke has only good things to say about Kubrick.
★ "Journey with a Little Man" by Richard McKenna, 1967: McKenna describes his writing history and process, as a collaboration with and training of his unconscious mind, which he personifies as "the little man". McKenna died soon after publishing his first (non science fiction) novel at 51, and only published a handful of short stories.
"Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults, and Virtues" by Robert A Heinlein, 1959: Offers a definition of science fiction (or speculative fiction, as he prefers to call it) as fiction that deals with that which is not imaginary-but-possible, as opposed to fantasy, which deals with the impossible. Being set on a different planet does not make science fiction. Out of the Silent Planet is fantasy, not science fiction. Fair enough, there is plenty "science fiction" which has precious little "science" in it. Of course, nowadays the label of "speculative fiction" has subsumed all of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and what have you. What can you do? He goes on to say it is not prophetic, mostly not of a high literary standard, and most of it not even entertaining. What makes it worthwhile, and more worthwhile than contemporary novels (especially what he terms unhealthy and neurotic novels), is that it grapples with a rapidly changing reality. I'm in firm agreement that in a world governed by artificial satellites, remotely operated explosive drones, the internet, and now the products of machine learning, if you are not writing science fiction, you are writing historical fiction. But all of his points are wrapped up in a smug circlejerking exterior I recoil from.
★ "Social Science Fiction" by Isaac Asimov, 1953: Asimov works at a similar purpose, from a different direction. Heinlein from the view of the engineer, Asimov from the historian. He defines science fiction as that which deals with fictional societies differing from ours in technological development. When combined with "social fiction" (fictional societies used to examine and satirize our own), he believes that "social science fiction" is the most important branch of the subject (as opposed to adventure and gadget stories), and comes to much the same conclusion as Heinlein. To get to that point, he recapitulates the development of awareness of historical change as a concept, the history of science fiction, and a digression into "chess games" vs. "chess puzzles".
"What is Science Fiction?" by Damon Knight, 1977: Knight empirically compares various definitions by scoring award-winning stories according to the number of such definitions they fit.
★ "Pilgrim Fathers: Lucian and All That" by Brian Aldiss, 1973: An excerpt from his Billion Year Spree, covering the prehistory of science fiction.
"Science Fiction Before Gernsback" by H. Bruce Franklin, 1966: Argues that all major nineteenth century American writers wrote at least one story that could be called science fiction, whether it be about a utopia, parapsychology, future war, and other such themes that have fallen out of favour.
★ "The Situation Today" by Kingsley Amis, 1960: Examines the state of science fiction as of 1960. Amis sees it as a field which has improved greatly in quality from the 30s, if not reaching the highest literary heights, while also expanding massively in number of publications. He examines not only the stories, but the trappings (the covers, ads, letters to the editor, fanclubs, the makeup of the readers and writers). Amis writes as if for an outsider audience, and avoids the triumphalist tone of Heinlein/Asimov, though he notes that such an attitude may be a motivating force for producing quality work. I really need to read New Maps of Hell.
★ "On Science Fiction" by C.S. Lewis, 1967: Lewis categorizes various types of SFF, and analyzes what their appeal is. It's interesting, because while Lewis has written science fiction (ignoring Heinlein earlier), he isn't really a "science fiction writer", and wasn't closely familiar with the American tradition. Despite this, as a fantasist, he's sympathetic to the concept, and he has several interesting observations.
"Alien Monsters" by Joanna Russ, 1968: I thought this was gonna be interesting in the first couple pages. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit through its presentation in real life. Suffice it to say, I have never seen this hypermasculine archetype she's imagining outside Burroughs or Conan. If ever it was a problem, it's absolutely irrelevant today when science fiction is more feminine (authorship, readership, subject matter) than it has been at any point in its history. My only question is how a drawing of Yujiro Hanma appeared in an American science fiction magazine decades before Baki the Grappler started publication.
"Cathedrals in Space" by James Blish, 1953: In a bizarre exercise, Blish critiques his own story "A Case of Conscience" under a pseudonym, William Atheling Jr., while also giving a brief and partial history of religious themes in science fiction, concluding they have been there more or less from the beginning. He specifically mentions that Lord of the World has a sequel, but I'm not sure what book he's referring to. The Dawn of All? He then reflects back on that exercise, while also talking of the ways the novel version of A Case of Conscience responded to those criticisms. As a further exercise, he describes the doctrines of the religion concocted in Stranger in a Strange Land.
"Contact" by Pierre Versins, trans. by Damon Knight, 1972: Versins compares and contrasts American ("First Contact" by Murray Leinster) and Soviet ("Cor Serpentis" by Ivan Yefremov) stories on the first contact theme, siding with American pessimism over Soviet optimism.
"No Copying Allowed" by John Campbell, 1966: A science fictional exercise in which Campbell imagines a 60s cruise missile landing in the hands of 1920s scientists, concluding they could not reproduce any of it, except the resistors.
"Scientists in SF: A Debate" by Philip R. Geffe, Milton A. Rothman, John Campbell, James V. McConnell, 1966: The equivalent of a reddit argument in printed form.
"How to Build a Planet" by Poul Anderson, 1966: A how to guide on developing a planet, specifically the one in Ensign Flandry.
"On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" by Robert Heinlein, 1964: Some pretty generic advice.
"How to Collaborate Without Getting Your Head Shaved" by Keith Laumer, 1967: Confirms my suspicion that a lot of scifi collaborations are hackjobs by vets to avoid doing work. He describes a collaboration between himself and Rosel Brown (Earthblood), where neither could have written the book on their own.
"Writing and Selling Science Fiction" by Damon Knight, 1977: The part about finding and developing ideas is fine, the part about physically writing and selling stories is outdated, to say the least.
"Chemical Persuasion" by Aldous Huxley, 1958: Analyzes existing drugs, and speculates about what future drugs might be created and the uses they might be put to, with reference to the fictional "soma" of his Brave New World. Not exactly prescient, but also not terribly off the mark.
"Pandora's Box" by Robert Heinlein, 1966: Heinlein disclaims scifi as prophecy, then reprints an article he wrote that was exactly that, written in 1950, which he then comments on from the perspective of 1966. He was mostly wrong. While our scientific understanding has increased, the kinds of revolutionary changes that took us from horse and carriage to cars haven't materialized. Our cars have more bells and whistles, but they're made on basically the same plan. The 747 has been in service with modifications for 50 years, but it's still a 747. My washing machine is shittier, if anything, than my parents'. Manned spaceflight peaked at the moon landing. Even information technology, the only realm which actually saw revolutionary improvement over the past few decades, seems to be slowing down. Moore's law is dead, and we're relying on parallelization to get us the rest of the way. Crysis still runs badly because we're running 8 separate CPUs, not one CPU which is 8x faster. It remains to be seen what machine learning and Large Language Models will be able to do in the next few years, and whether they'll transform society or not (funnily enough, that sector experienced a 10-year dark age from 1970-1980, and it's only until about now that it's started to break into mainstream consciousness/nontrivial applications). Whether they do or not, we'll probably still be stuck on Earth, still burning Carboniferous plants for power, and still waiting on flying cars.
"Gourmet Dining in Outer Space" by Alfred Bester, 1960: In another science fictional exercise, Bester recapitulates the brief history of food in science fiction, then attempts to imagine what serving food might actually be like in space. Like so many other entries in this book, it instantly dates itself, with talk of "big men" being 185 pounds and smoking on board spacecraft. It does have a little something at the end, the idea that accumulated orbiting food waste may mutate into vacuum-living organisms, that would themselves become a source of space food.
"Why so Much Syzygy?" by Theodore Surgeon, 1953: Sturgeon defends himself of the charge of being obsessed with syzygy. I don't know what emanations of the monad have to do with his writing, but I have yet to read any Sturgeon.
"There's Nothing like a Good Foundation" by Isaac Asimov, 1967: Describes the pluses and minuses of writing a series, and Asimov's resolution to stop writing Foundation novels
★ "Son of Dr. Strangelove" by Arthur C. Clarke, 1972: The story of how 2001: A Space Odyssey was written. As Clarke tells it, the impetus to make a science fiction movie came from Kubrick, and Clarke selected his story "The Sentinel" as the basis for the story. They then worked closely together developing and expanding the story. The book version was completed before the screenplay, but one is not based on the other, and the solo credit for each is merely a formality. Clarke has only good things to say about Kubrick.
★ "Journey with a Little Man" by Richard McKenna, 1967: McKenna describes his writing history and process, as a collaboration with and training of his unconscious mind, which he personifies as "the little man". McKenna died soon after publishing his first (non science fiction) novel at 51, and only published a handful of short stories.
July 8, 2019
080719: state of the genre ca. 1977 though most is from 60s. collection of essays some good some less all of era... reminder of when i read many lit crit books on sff, sort of continuing but more reading philosophy... do not know how past 40 years have changed the field, hard to believe i was reading sff if not critical work as kid at that time...
January 9, 2010
This one was sitting on my shelf for a while, and while cleaning it turned up and begged to be read. I really enjoyed the essays in this one, and it gave me a nice glimpse into the SF community of the 1960s.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews