Soft-boiled Sci Fi

In the inimitable 1980 rendition of Flash Gordon, Voltan
(Brian Blessed) brandishes the Hawk Men's giant crystal
tribute to Ming - that's hard SF, right?

In the October 9^th issue of T.P.’s Weekly [1] in 1903, journalist Robert H. Sherard quoted Jules Verne’s comment on his British peer H. G. Wells:

‘Je pensiez bien que vous alliez me demander cela,’ he said. ‘His books were sent to me, and I have read them. It is very curious, and, I will add, very English. But I do not see the possibility of comparison between his work and mine. We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on very scientific bases. No, there is no rapport between his work and mine. I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannon-ball, discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to Mars in an airship, which he constructs of a metal which does away with the law of gravitation. Ça c’est très joli,’ cried Monsieur Verne in an animated way, ‘but show me this metal. Let him produce it. (T.P.’s Weekly, ii, 589) [2]

And so it was that one of the arguments of our genre began: hard vs soft.

Fast forward to today, and the battle rages on: does Star Wars count as SF? If not, why not? How about Star Trek? Battlestar Galactica? Avatar? Iron Man? Lord of the Rings?[3]  And of course, the argument boils down to the question of hard vs soft.

Traditionally [4], science fiction has typically been looked at mainly in the context of the science or engineering aspects that are presented, but of course the position these concepts have in the story varies widely.  Now, the concept of “hard” science fiction wasn’t really coined until 1957 [5] and its counterpart “soft” SF not until the 1970s [6] but it should be noted that the three types of SF identified by Asimov in his 1953 essay (which I referenced here) are already beginning to create this distinction, with his scale that goes from (effectively) “explain this thing” through “use this thing” to “how is society changed by this thing” – and of course Verne’s comment tells us that the tension has been present more or less from the beginning.

Asimov, of course, was writing at a special time in SF, more or less at the beginning of a cresting wave of “Campbellian” hard SF popularity that gave rise to the crystallization of science fiction as a discrete genre. [7] Nevertheless, the concept of “hardness” in science fiction has endured, and the modern era has even given rise to a Mohs Scale just for SF.

In general, people think of this hardness scale as having to do with “realism” – that is to say that the more realistic a work is (i.e. how closely it adheres to what we actually know about science and engineering) the harder it is.  Thus, things like A Princess of Mars are at the extremely soft end of the scale, while things like 2001: A Space Odyssey are at the hard end. 

As such things go, the scale is an interesting way to sort science fiction literature, but I see a problem with it:

The scale practically invites fans to argue over whether a work belongs in the category of science fiction at all – it creates an implicit scale of legitimacy, in other words.  Is A Princess of Mars science fiction? Or is it just sword and sorcery fantasy that happens to include other planets and atomic rifles?

Does this distinction even matter?

And in fact I think this is an important question; when you look back at the sorts of work that were being published prior to the Campbellian revolution and the de facto establishment of this scale of hardness, it becomes clear that authors routinely mixed and blended aspects of science, fantasy, and horror in their stories.  True, stories seem to lean heavily in one direction or another, but there’s no hesitation to include fantastic elements in what is essentially a science fiction tale, or to include some esoteric technology in what is essentially a horror or fantasy one. After the philosophical shift that Campbell encouraged, on the other hand, there appeared to be a fairly clear division between fantasy/horror and science fiction – with those works that straddled the gap becoming gradually more uncommon through the 50s and 60s.

Part of what drove this shift was of course the tendency toward hardness in mainstream science fiction, which makes the gap more obvious – but it also leaves some kinds of work (work that harks back to the roots of science fiction itself!) difficult to classify.

And if rigorous realism in speculative fiction is what constitutes “hard science fiction” what are we to make of books like The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien built rigorously with his knowledge of the mythology and history of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and his intricately considered languages? Is this science fiction? Is it “hard fantasy” – can there even be such a thing as “hard fantasy”?

For that matter, how can we deal with magical realism from this kind of perspective?  Is it unusually “soft” science fiction?  Is it fantasy? Is it something else entirely? [8]

And then let's consider this side of things: if a book waves away the technical details of engineering but instead presents a detailed view of the biology and sociology of the world, is that soft? Bearing in mind the fact that the hard/soft dichotomy in SF was in conscious reference to the hard/soft division in the sciences, the answer would seem to be yes...and yet, the story may well be as rigorous a consideration of the sociological aspect as, for example, Niven's Neutron Star is a rigorous treatment of the physics of the situation.  Surely that qualifies as hard? 

I think to answer these questions we have to come to some understanding about what exactly it is that this “hardness” is referring to, and ultimately I think that the problem really lies in that the classification isn’t sufficient to deal with the two key dimensions from which people usually look at science fiction, and for an added bonus it over specifies the one dimension it actually deals with. [9]

In order to try to re-unify the genres into a more coherent means of classification (one that doesn't rely on what are essentially marketing categories rather than literary ones) I suggest that two dimensions (at least) may be needed.

Integrity

Here's the thing: consistent and coherent trumps nearly anything else when it comes to how satisfying a story is. [10] In essence, most readers will swallow nearly anything so long as it makes sense within the boundaries of the story.  This is one reason why the reflexive habit of thinking "harder" science fiction (in the usual sense) is obviously better is a problem: just because something is ruthlessly rigorous in its science doesn't make it a good story [11] - the story part is just as important.  

So there we have one criterion - or one dimension if you like: internal consistency, rigorous rules. a coherent reality from which the action derives. This, more than realism per se, is the core of what makes hard SF compelling to those who love it. Certainly, those who love what we call hard SF (and I am certainly one) love it because of the way in which the story itself is rooted in concrete facts, and how events follow in a logical progression of cause and effect, taking into account the unchanging rules of the universe.

Niven's Neutron Star is of course an example of this (SPOILER ahead - but then, if you're reading this you're almost certainly familiar with Known Space...right?): the necessity for Beowulf Shaeffer's mission [12] derives from the known characteristics of neutron stars and their consequences. The events of the mission likewise. Beowulf's actions, reactions, and eventual fate are firmly rooted in the cause and effect of known physics.

But the point I want to make here is that while Neutron Star and the many stories like it [13] rely on real-world science and the engineering that can reasonably be extrapolated from it [14] the same principle can be applied not only in SF but in fantasy as well.

No, really - consider:

George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series does contain some iconic fantastic elements, but on the whole the story proceeds according to fairly concrete rules, with very little in the way of deus ex machina introduction of new powers or abilities just to allow the plot to move ahead. In fact, much of the action is, really, grittily grounded in a fairly realistic Dark Ages/Mediaeval style world, despite the dragons and the dread prophesies and the apparently odd climate. Moreover, thus far it appears that Mr. Martin is making a serious effort to ensure that even the fantastic elements operate in a consistent, coherent way - as though they were subject to laws of nature. [15]

Similarly, C. S. Friedman's Black Sun Rising [16] seems on the surface to be fairly fantastic. But we can look more closely, and it quickly becomes clear that Friedman has thought out the implications of the Fae and their impact on Erna very carefully - everything follows rules, the Fae are consistent, and despite the trappings of ritual and myth, the "magic" her characters wield is very much like engineering.

Both science fiction and fantasy can have this characteristic of a coherent set of fundamental rules - what I call integrity - and the degree to which it has this character can vary widely, from the most rigorous examples like Neutron Star and Game of Thrones to what might be thought of as their opposites: Perry Rhodan and Narnia: tales where the rules are flexible and can be bent, broken or replaced according to the needs of the story.

These counter-examples are what make it clear that the ordinary "hardness scale" by which SF is sorted is insufficient (not to mention a useless measure of quality - but that's another argument) by itself.  Clearly, even stories with very flexible integrity can be deeply satisfying to our sense of narrative. This makes it clear that there must be another dimension with which we measure them, but what?

What over-analysis of genre fiction is complete without
some kind of artificial visualization?

Symbolism

One thing that separates Narnia from Game of Thrones, and Black Sun Rising from Neutron Star is the way in which the world is presented - the logic by which it works.

Stories like Neutron Star rely on real world science and engineering for their narrative - they may throw in bells and whistles like a presumed FTL mode of travel, exotic hull materials, or flashy aliens like the Puppeteers, but at base that's all they are: bells and whistles. The story itself runs on the fuel of a gritty, concrete set of rules that drive the cause and effect of the action. But this isn't the only way in which the engine of a story can run.

In Black Sun Rising we have an example of a world which at first glance seems to operate without logic, at the whim of mysterious forces.  As the story progresses, however, we learn that there is a coherence to the rules, but that those rules don't bear much resemblance to the gritty realism of physics - instead, the driving force is symbolism. The world runs on a magical logic, the logic of essential resonance and symbolic harmonies. Cause and effect is still the rule, but the nature of causes - and the nature of effects, of course - is radically different, because the important factor is no longer the physical facts, but the abstract, "Platonic" meaning behind them.

For a similar example, and one where the symbolic nature of the logic is more evident, we can look at a book like Ursula le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea - here the rules are more flexible, but nevertheless there is a fairly coherent pattern of cause and effect, though it is more explicitly founded on a logic of symbol and abstraction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the use of Naming as the foundation of magic, and the use of the Gebbeth as Ged's nemesis, the personification of his inner failure.

This style of storytelling naturally lends itself to fantasy - indeed, where it can most evidently be seen is in things like myth and fairy tales, where the symbolic or abstract dimension is paramount. But that's not to say that symbolism can have no place in science fiction as well.

Look at the way symbolism and abstraction are leveraged in the storytelling we see in superhero comics, for example:

Superman is rendered impotent by the presence of a symbol of his shattered past: crystals of kryptonite.

Captain America lives as a personification of the essence of the democratic revolution of the post-Enlightenment era, a reminder of the ideals that the Allies were fighting for in World War 2 and later the Cold War.

The Hulk - does the symbolism here really need exposition?

Superhero stories are typically presented as rooted in science and engineering, but that's really window-dressing.  The truth is that while science and engineering may play a part, the more powerful fuel for the narrative engine is symbolism. Doctor Doom isn't a super-villain because he has technically superior tools that he uses inappropriately - he's a super-villain because he represents the arrogance of believing that technology can make a person superior, and give the right to dominate others. But the important part is this: what he does, and how he is opposed by the heroes, is driven by this super-structure of representation.

All stories, I believe, contain some degree of rigorous narrative "consequence", some degree of flexibility. All stories likewise contain some degree of concrete realism, some degree of symbol. It's the nature of things - it's the foundation of what makes us love stories that we can blend these aspects together.

Great writers carefully balance these two dimensions - abstraction and integrity - to match the tone and nature of the story being told.

For some stories, granular, concrete reality will work best. For others, symbolic drivers are a better fit.

For some stories, it's critical that effects flow naturally from causes, that the reader can clearly see the nature of the underpinning reality. For others it's less important how characters get from A to B than that they do.

Where a story falls on these dimensions doesn't make it good or bad - but a mismatch between where it lies and the nature of the story being told can be jarring, and that's where the feeling that "harder SF is better" (and its equivalent for other qualities) comes from.

--30--

1. One of several publishing ventures by T.P. O’Connor, a penny weekly that featured such names as H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad.  Interestingly, the journal had been launched less than a year previous to the interview in which Verne made this comment.

2. Having read Verne, the idea of him positioning himself as a technically precise SF author is actually rather amusing – even taking into account the knowledge gained in the past century.

3. No seriously: why is Lord of the Rings not science fiction?

4. Insofar as you can call it tradition with a realm of literature so young, I suppose.

5. Apparently, the first appearance in print was in Astounding Science Fiction (Nov 1957) by SF writer and critic P. Schuyler Miller in his review of the modernized novelization Campbell’s serial Islands of Space which had previously been published in the Spring 1931 issue of Amazing Quarterly. Miller, incidentally, was an amazingly prolific reviewer, with an astounding <snerk> number of entries in nearly every issue of Astounding that year – heck in quite a few years!

6. Unsurprisingly: this corresponds with the peak of New Wave, which in contrast to the Campellian “Golden Age” SF was delving more deeply into sociology, anthropology and psychology – thus the analogy to the academic division of hard and soft sciences.

7. More on this another time, but I believe that the Campbellian revolution was responsible for the “divorce” of science fiction from the more general speculative or weird fiction of the pulp era, and in turn the growth of science fiction and fantasy as independent genres combined with the boom in corporate, mass-market book-sellers in the 80s to cause The Great Delisting, a literary extinction event of amazing proportions that may never have been possible before.

8. I confess to leaning toward “something else” but for the sake of argument, let’s consider it.

9. This isn't so much a criticism of the concept of SF hardness itself, but an observation that it was intended for what is essentially a very arbitrary subset of speculative fiction, and one that doesn't seem to really reflect either the history of the genre or the reality of readers' experiences. 

10. This is part of my reluctance to include magical realism, since...well, it's the nature of the genre to be incoherent. (I mean that in a technical way, not a slur)

11. If you disagree, I have a couple of old Apple II+ operation manuals you might be interested in.

12. Fun fact: Neutron Star (Worlds of If Magazine, August 1966) was Beowulf's first appearance in Niven's universe. Part scientist hero, part Harry Lime lookalike, Beowulf may well be my favorite of Niven's characters.

13. Engineering puzzle box type stories have a long and glorious history well back into the era of the pulps, after all.

14. And in fact in Neutron Star Niven really only relies on "unobtainium" to generate the necessary "frictionless sphere of uniform density" needed to make the calculations work, if you ignore the framing.

15. Of course, Professor Tolkien is the iconic example of what might be described as "hard" fantasy, but the enormous variety of ways in which his work has been re-interpreted - not to mention the range of ways in which he himself wrote in works other than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - makes his work a tricky choice here.

16. Incidentally one of my favourite books from the 90s - I thought Black Sun Rising was amazing fantasy in an older ethos when I read it. The rest of the Coldfire Trilogy is also strong, but it was the first book that really caught my imagination.

Asimov's Three

The March 1939 issue in which Asimov's first published
story, Marooned Off Vesta appeared, 77 years ago!

April 6, 2016 marks the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Good Doctor, who sadly died in 1992 of heart and kidney failure.

Having been writing science fiction for 15 years, and having cemented his reputation with an impressive bibliography that included what is sometimes considered science fiction’s most famous story, Nightfall [1] Isaac Asimov was tapped to provide an essay for Reginald Bretnor’s [2] volume Modern Science Fiction: It’s Meaning and It’s Future (1953) where he was published alongside other big names of the era such as John W. Campbell, Rosalie Moore, L. Sprague de Camp, and Arthur C. Clarke.

The whole volume was of course mainly dedicated to the ways in which the authors imagined science fiction would impact society [3], including such titles as Science Fiction: Preparation for the Age of Science (Clarke), Science Fiction and Sanity in an Age of Crisis (Philip Wylie), and Science Fiction, Morals, and Religion (Gerald Heard).  Asimov’s own contribution, Social Science Fiction, is perhaps most notable for its effort at a taxonomy of science fiction stories – which results in his assertion that there are ultimately three categories of science fiction story: Gadget, Adventure, and Social.  To illustrate, he imagines three 19th century authors writing about an “imaginary” device they tentatively call an “automobile”:

“Writer X spends most of his time describing how the machine would run, explaining the workings of an internal-combustion engine, painting a word-picture of the struggles of the inventor, who after numerous failures, comes up with a successful model. The climax of the yarn is the drama of the machine, chugging its way along at the gigantic speed of twenty miles an hour, possibly beating a horse and carriage which have been challenged to a race. This is gadget science fiction. […] 

 “Writer Y invents the automobile in a hurry, but now there is a gang of ruthless crooks intent on stealing this valuable invention. First they steal the inventor's beautiful daughter, whom they threaten with every dire eventuality but rape (in these adventure stories, girls exist to be rescued and have no other uses). The inventor's young assistant goes to the rescue. He can accomplish his purpose only by the use of the newly perfected automobile. He dashes into the desert at an unheard-of speed of twenty miles an hour to pick up the girl who otherwise would have died of thirst if he had relied on a horse, however rapid and sustained the horse's gallop. This is adventure science fiction. […] 

 “Writer Z has the automobile already perfected. A society exists in which it is already a problem. Because of the automobile, a gigantic oil industry has grown up, highways have been paved across the nation, America has become a land of travelers, cities have spread into the suburbs—and what do we do about automobile accidents? Men, women, and children are being killed by automobiles faster than by artillery shells or airplane bombs. What can be done? What is the solution? This is social science fiction.” (Asimov, "Social Science Fiction")

This can all of course be neatly summarized:

• Gadget story: describes how some hypothetical thing might work.
• Adventure story: describes how some hypothetical thing might be used to solve a problem.
• Social story: describes what society might look like when some hypothetical thing exists.

As anyone familiar with Asimov's work and his advocacy for SF to aim for literary achievement might predict, his essay largely advocates for the social story as being the pinnacle.

There are a couple of curious things about this position though, even ignoring the quibble (which I'm sure the Good Doctor would actually have agreed with) that it's a rare story indeed that neatly falls into just one of these categories.

One of the first thing that springs to mind is that, while Asimov doesn't obviously dismiss other kinds of fiction as unworthy, it's clear that in his opinion "social SF" is best placed to reach the "heights" of literary fiction.

While I'm right alongside Dr. Asimov in agreeing that social SF can be much harder to write, and certainly requires more writing skill than simply sketching out a neat idea in a flashy fiction wrapper, even in the era he was writing in and before it should have been obvious: the basic fact that writing a saleable story of the first two species doesn't require the type of literary skills Asimov advocated for in SF doesn't actually preclude their application.

I'm not of course suggesting that Isaac Asimov was ignorant of what came before him - on the contrary, looking at his early work in particular you can almost see the impact of previous writers in its inverse: Asimov's prose is consciously direct and unornamented, and while he develops over the course of his remarkably prolific career [4] even to the end his stories lack so much in the way of literary flourish that he has proven a slippery target for the ordinary literary critic. [5] For many, this is a huge plus: in fact, the ruthlessly plot-and-idea oriented writing that is Asimov’s hallmark is one of the things that made him so popular. [6] I’m not even suggesting that Asimov was himself without literary skill – in fact, despite constantly breaking cardinal rules of fiction (minimize exposition, show don’t tell, write natural, believable dialogue, and others) he demonstrates that he’s capable of some amazing characterization at important points in his plots (look at Liar! for example, or Second Foundation), not to mention the skillful way in which he contrived the narrative of (especially) longer tales, nesting plots and snapping together timelines in fascinating non-linear ways. [7]

No, Asimov certainly knew what he was about in developing his personal style, and I feel sure he had a good grasp of what had come before (indeed, what was still being produced by his peers when he started and into the 50s).  Where I disagree with him is really in his own words, which he gives us in his 3 paragraph author’s note at the beginning of Nemesis (1989) [8]:

“I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing – to be ‘clear’. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally [9], or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize.  I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics –Well, they can do whatever they wish.”

You see, he is making a fundamental mistake here, I think – eschewing poetry and symbol and “art” in writing isn’t the only way to achieve clarity.  Certainly, it’s easy to become unclear if you rely too heavily on these things, but the bright imagery of Leigh Brackett’s descriptions, the rich language of Jack Vance’s satirical tweaks are anything but unclear in my mind.  And this mistake is where I think he gets his sense that social SF is where the genre is best placed to achieve literary quality.

He has taken the stance that only through clarity – by which he specifically means “unadorned writing” – can good SF stories be told (at least by him) and a relationship built with the readers.  From the perspective of this stance his idea that social SF has the best potential for literary quality makes perfect sense, I think, but it’s because the “artistic flourishes” he chose to avoid are what give stories of the first two varieties life, and his own style was in fact best adapted for painting the complex future stories he ultimately went on to write in his Robot series and in the Foundation books.

But this brings me to my second point: that I think Asimov’s idea that social SF is the realm in which science fiction was best able to aspire to literary achievement betrays the “class angst” shared by so many genre writers. 

In trying to find ways in which SF might “one day” aspire to literary greatness, Asimov makes himself complicit in placing SF – and other “genre” writing – as somehow automatically unliterary…and by extension unworthy.  In arguing for literary merit in SF he flies the flag high, but in the same motion tears it down again, somehow blind to the fact that SF was already literary: authors like Mary Shelley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis Stevens, Abraham Merritt and many others had already proven that, contemporaries of Asimov like Catherine Moore and Leigh Brackett [10] or the better known Ray Bradbury were still proving that, while they might not reach the heights every time (who does!) they were fully capable of it.

So where does this self-consciousness come from in genre?

I think it’s clear:

Somewhere along the line we have been convinced that stories that “merely” paint a picture of a complex object or scenario don’t count as literature.

Somewhere along the line we have been taught that stories that “merely” recounts an adventure don’t count either.

Genre writing – and science fiction in particular – have quite a lot of these kinds of stories, so obviously they don’t count as literature, right?

But of course we accept the military fantasy of the Illiad as literature, we accept the satirical travels of Gulliver as literature, we accept prose poems (which are surely no more than vivid descriptions of a scene, of a feeling), and Shakespeare’s murder mysteries (and what did you think Macbeth and Hamlet were?), we accept Beowulf, and most ironically we accept things like Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Poe and Welles and Doyle and (ahem) Shelley as literature.

It’s long past time we realised that it isn’t (necessarily) the writing that makes people dismiss SF&F, detective stories, westerns, romance, etc as unworthy – it’s the formats they’ve been traditionally associated with.  Formats that were cheap, mass produced, and hungry for as much content as they could get: pulps.

Yes, this format paid little and produced a lot – not only was it hard for a writer to make a living [11] unless they produced astounding volumes for a multitude of venues, but the publications themselves had a challenge: they had to be cheap enough for nearly anyone to afford, they had to be substantial enough to seem good value for money, and they needed to produce often enough to remain visible in an incredibly competitive market.  These two factors pushed authors and publishers to pump out enormous volumes of text each and every month, so while the best writers could produce truly amazing work the fact was that any random story was probably merely mediocre. [12]

The economics of this era colours our perceptions and and the attitudes of people of the time, though I feel sure that there was an element of elitism involved as well: for the most part the pulps were dismissed as “yellow journals” without interest to authors who could publish in “legitimate” ways – and beneath the notice of the academy.  It wasn’t that there were no literary quality authors writing for the pulps, it was that they were tainted by turning to the pulps to facilitate their desire to write a kind of story that has captivated human beings for as long as there have been stories. [13]

Interestingly, I can see this phenomenon emerging again with the explosion of digital media.  It will be interesting to see if we can overcome the prejudices of our own era to see the gems hidden in the digital pulps.

--30--

1. Amazingly, published a mere 3 years after he had been inspired to try his hand at SF writing Nightfall was already Asimov’s 32nd story, though apparently only his 20th published (admittedly a remarkable acceptance rate).

2. Although little talked about today, Brentnor himself was an interesting character, whose career included writing propaganda to be sent to Japan during WW2 and membership in The Order of the Trapezoid in the 50s.  Yes, that one.  In SF, he’s mainly remembered today for his symposia and essay collections on the craft of writing it.

3. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there seem to be a few Futurians in the credits…

4. Seriously: 500 books in 54 years? Even with story collections included that's remarkable. More astoundingly, he seems to have produced more than 100 of them just in his last 10 years!

5. Though not entirely impossible: Professor Emeritus James Gunn (University of Kansas/English Literature) seems to have done quite well, for one.

6. In an article published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (July 1980) Gunn noted two very interesting points about Asimov’s style: character is almost never significant, and the plot is driven forward in functional dialogue rather than action.  To quote his summary of the style: “The robot stories, and as a matter of fact almost all Asimov fiction – play themselves on a relatively bare stage.”  When I first read this comment I had an interesting thought: could it be that Asimov’s style reflected the “laboratory aesthetic” of his early era – the 40s and 50s? Anyone who has actually worked in a lab would of course sneer at the ideal as fantasy, but there can be no doubt that the whole minimalist lab filled with expanses of gleaming stainless-steel counters broken only by the occasional sleek machine and lit with the clear white of fluorescent strips was a powerful image.

7. Not that this is universally loved – personally, although I’m not a big Asimov fan (I like rich language and characterization) I think this is the most intriguing aspect of his writing, the way he could fit things together like the parts of some complex machine and make them mesh smoothly.  In light of his incredible output, the skill involved here is amazing.

8. In which, it should be said, he also takes the time to warn the reader that a) the story doesn’t (yet) connect to any of his other universes, and b) that the narrative structure is “odd”

9. And what does he think his non-linear intersecting timelines are if not experimental!?

10. Though their work was losing visibility at the time Asimov wrote his article.

11. We’re so much more fortunate now…

12. Thinking just of the venues that survived – because they realized that no matter how hungry they were to fill their pages, publishing actually bad work would be suicide.

13. Ironically, Ray Bradbury reputedly wanted to be a pulp legend like his mentors Moore, Kuttner, Brackett and Hamilton – and his failure to achieve his goal is a big part of what allowed his writing to be taken as literary rather than dismissed as pulp.  The same might be said of Orwell, whose best known works should surely be filed under SF&F.