Bould, Butler, Roberts and Vint 2009a and Bould, Butler, Roberts and Vint 2009b

[faustus]

Barely has the ink dried upon the Companion - which is to be launched at Eaton (with a strong piece of elastic - it's heavy) - when we are given a schedule for Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. ETA is July, in both hardback and paperback.

You can imagine the fun we had boiling all of sf (prose fiction, film, tv, theatre, comics, critical theory; reflecting diversity and history) down to 50 names, and the horse trading that's gone on. Then we saw a preview of the cover, with half a dozen or so names on it, and the horse trading begins anew. So, should we need to release Seven Keyer Figures in Science Fiction:

• Octavia E. Butler
  
• Robert A. Heinlein
  
• Ursula K. Le Guin
  
• Stan Lee
  
• George Lucas
  
• Gene Roddenberry
  
• H.G. Wells
  

And you can imagine the joy of people using parenthetical referencing with these two books - Bould et al 2009a and Bould et al 2009b.


It feels like I've been beavering away since I finished the Pratchett book, but with little more than reviews actually being published. With these and the Russ book there is a throughput again.

ETA: We've also had fun writing imaginary reviews listing the names we've wrongheadedly left out/included.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

... George Lucas?

All the others I can see, but Lucas ... well, it really depends on your definition of science fiction as opposed to fantasy. And aside from that first Star Wars movie, and possibly the first sequel (script written in no small part by Leigh Brackett), I personally find him toothgratingly bad!

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

W-e-l-l - we've sort-of avoided a definition of sf, but for all kinds of reasons he turns out to be key.

Perhaps we should retitle it Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, Alas. Or Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction - But No One Said They Had To Be Any Good.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

"Forty-Nine Key Figures in Science Fiction. Oh, and George Lucas."

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll grant you he's a key figure.

(Mind you, so was Ed Wood :)

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I suspect Ed Wood was on the long list before it was whittled down. There's going to be a tension between descriptive and prescriptive in these kind of exercises.