The Sword and Laser discussion

Hello, I need help writing a 15 page history on SF, from its beginnings to its present forms, detailing a chronological history, while simultaneously examining divergent trends in the SF written since 1900, to its feminist cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk leanings today.

I have read Patrick Parrinder's 'Science Fiction : A Critical Guide' but it is not enough. I have searched the internet extensively, I believe, but I still am in confusion. I intend to write this essay all by myself, so it is imperative that I understand the history myself properly before beginning to write the essay, but am unable to locate reliable books that can explain it to me.

Am very new to SF, but have chosen it to research academically for a doctorate degree, and am just stepping into the realm. Any suggestions for sites that I have missed, or good reference books is eagerly awaited. Thank you.

This might be a good place to start: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/ . It's just come out with a new edition, or is about to, and is a seriously researched compendium.

Also, Googling science fiction history turns up some resources.

Anyway, asking the folks at the SF Encyclopedia might get you a pointer to good resources. Justine Larbalestier's dissertation was on women in early SF pulp fiction and has been published as a book. There is or was a journal of SF Studies or the like, I think Darko Suvin's project, but it's been years since I read about it.

All of this is off the top of my head and may be suspect, but I figure it's a start.

Sounds like a lot to cram in, good luck with it. I wrote a few SF-based pieces for my lit class at uni back in the day, so as I think about it more stuff may pop up from the recesses of memory.

My first thoughts are the masses of academic work done by John Clute and David Langford (Clute is most well known as the editor of the Encyclopaedias of SF and Fantasy, which are wonderful resources and are moving online - Serendi's link may be it). Both have also done reams of more specific stuff, well worth looking up.

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction is a wonderful book I discovered during my research and fell in love with. It's a collection of essays and talks from le Guin, and is a must read - for anyone interested in literary criticism, not just SF.

Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction is getting a bit outdated by now (published in the mid 70s) but is a superb overview from that time.

Wow, and thank you both for helping out! Your resources were the best so far, the most informative pertaining to my requirements, and Google churned out very inadequate sources so after long hours of searching I finally put up this post. I will look into these more deeply, but you've provided enough material for a sensible start. :)

Only fifteen pages? Good luck with that. I don't know if I could do that kind of paper under thirty pages. Fifteen pages is barely enough time to cover feminism in SF let alone from 1900.

If I were you, I would list the areas you want to hit by category and then choose the best representative for that specific category. Assuming you'll need to draw at least two secondary sources for each primary example in the given category, you'll end up with three sources per example. But what seems to be the main problem? Are you looking for categories or sources for these categories?
Is there any way you can bump the page count up in order to include a better sampling?

Here are the two books I would start with.
* The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
* The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction 1960-90

Only 15 pages because this is my first draft. First rough draft. Then I will start examining the details and filling it in, and will be quite lengthier then. This is just for a beginning. Am a complete newbie to SF itself, so having access to a systematic history of SF is a huge problem in a place where SF novels are not available even. But I have outlined my draft, but did not get the information to fill it in.

eg, I drew up a basic draft of development of SF from 1920s to 2000. Now, a lot has taken place during that. Golden age of SF, cold-war SF, feminist leanings by 1970s, cyberpunk of 1980s, post-cyberpunk, feminist cyberpunk like those of Laura Mixon or Pat Cadigan or Octavia Butler.

I know the hard facts, but I don't know the analytical part of how one thing led to another, the joining of these separate dots in the timeline. I need to read and analyze on this, but there's no reliable book to read. Google throws up these facts, but not the historical analysis. That's what I need.

I think the books you listed is exactly what I need. To trace the development of sf from what it was in its beginnings to what it is now.

I intend to do my Ph.D. in feminist cyberpunk.

Here's the visual representation of the history of sf:
http://www.geekologie.com/2011/03/10/history-of-scifi-full.jpg
It might help with how the various trends developed.

Paul 'Pezski' wrote: "Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction is getting a bit outdated by now (published in the mid 70s) but is a superb overview from that time."

There was an updated version -- Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction -- but that still came out in 1986, so "updated" is a relative term. Wonder if he's working on Quadrillion Year Spree.

Since I do not have access to books, I can only use internet now, can someone suggest a good site where they have some info on the historical context of SF in the 1950s and 60s? I searched quite a lot, and there was some good info, but I need more. There are tits-bits everywhere, but not a logical history. Please let me know if anyone has access to it. Thanks again...