The Secret History of Science Fiction »

James Patrick Kelly is the author of Burn, Think Like a Dinosaur, and Wildlife, and the coeditor of Feeling Very Strange and Rewired. He is a columnist for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and the winner of two Hugo Awards. He lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire. John Kessel is a Nebula-, Sturgeon-, Tiptree-, and Locus-award winner and the author of Corrupting Dr. Nice, Good News from Outer Space, and The Pure Product. He is the coeditor of Feeling Very Strange and Rewired and teaches science fiction, fantasy, and fiction writing at North Carolina State University. His criticism has appeared in Foundation, Los Angeles Times Book Review, New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Age. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

This ingeniously conceived anthology raises the intriguing question, If Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow had won the Nebula award in 1973, would the future distinction between literary fiction and science fiction have been erased? Exploring the possibility of an alternate history of speculative fiction, this literary collection reveals that the lines between genres have already been obscured. Don DeLillo’s “Human Moments in World War III” follows the strange detachment of two astronauts who are orbiting in a skylab while a third world war rages on earth. “The Ziggurat” by Gene Wolfe traverses a dissolving marriage, a custody dispute, and the visit of time travelers from the future. T. C. Boyle’s “Descent of Man” is the subversively funny tale of a man who suspects that his primatologist lover is having an affair with one of her charges. In “Schwarzschild Radius,” Connie Willis draws an allegorical parallel between the horrors of trench warfare and the speculative physics of black holes. Artfully crafted and offering a wealth of esteemed authors—from writers within the genre to those normally associated with mainstream fiction, as well as those with a crossover reputation—this volume aptly demonstrates that great science fiction appears in many guises.

Publishers Weekly

Genre-bending anthologists Kelly and Kessel (Rewired) select a wide range of post-1970 stories by authors who occupy the nebulous land between “literary” and “genre.” Offerings like Margaret Atwood's “Homelanding,” a vignette about alien life, and Steven Millhauser's “The Wizard of West Orange,” which conclusively demonstrates that any story centering around a new science is science fiction, make it clear that nongenre authors have been writing stories that appropriate many genre tropes. But while the title will attract genre fans, “li-fi” readers who might otherwise be drawn in by T.C. Boyle and Don DeLillo may well be put off by the Tachyon imprint and the words “science fiction,” undermining the editors' assertion that “the walls that separate the mainstream from science fiction are, in fact, crumbling.” (Nov.)