Fruitless Recursion

Issue 4 - Delany, Luckhurst, Gunn, Barr and Candelaria

Jonathan McCalmont — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:07:22 +0100

(image from here)

EDITORIAL :

It has been a while since our last issue but we are still ticking over with three rather splendid pieces of writing. I have also updated the side-bar keeping track of which books we currently have available for review. As ever, if you see anything you like in that side-bar and feel like tking a crack at a review then drop me a line and I'm sure we can work something out. Similarly, if you have a book coming out and would like someone to review it then drop me a line too.

One of the things I have noticed since I started this project is that people tend to respond very differently to works of non-fiction than they do to works of fiction. Ask a critic to write about a book or a film and they will immediately start talking about what works and what does not work. However, ask those same critics to take on a work of non-fiction and their approach immediately changes. Rather than concentrating upon what works and what doesn't people tend to summarise the arguments and write about what they liked and didn't like subjectively. Alternatively, they might use the book as a leaping off point for a wider discussion. As editor, I am happy to publish all three approaches as I think all three have value (particularly when dealing with long works of sustained argument and scholarship) but it is interesting to note how the subject matter can dictate the rules of engagement.

Paul Raven's piece about Gunn, Barr and Candelaria's Reading Science Fiction is a fantastic example of using a book as a starting point rather than an end point. Paul expresses frustration with how one-sided critical monographs can feel and goes on to propose a new approach for publishing works of criticism that someone somewhere really needs to try.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro looks at Roger Luckhurst's Science Fiction and produces a piece so detailed in its analyses and discussions that I think it comes close to being a cultural history of science fiction in its own right.

Karen Burnham continues Fruitless Recursion's commitment to older works of criticism by looking at the profoundly out of print Starboard Wine by Delany. Although less 'Dorothy Parker' than Karen's last outing for us, the review wonderfully captures the essence of Delany's thinking. However, I can't help but wonder whether his distinction between literature and paraliterature is not somewhat out of date. As the embracing of genre tropes by mainstream authors and the blurring of the lines championed by The annual Arthur C. Clarke Award seems to suggest that the line between mainstream subject-oriented fiction and genre event-oriented fiction might well no longer exist.

Speaking of 'Dorothy Parker', Karen's last review prompted David Ketterer to write a letter in response, so we also have that for you.

Thanks for reading :-)

- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)

THIS ISSUE'S PIECES :

Karen Burnham's review of Starboard Wine by Samuel Delany.

Paul Graham Raven's review of Reading Science Fiction edited by James Gunn, Marleen S. Barr and Matthew Candelaria.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's review of Science Fiction (Cultural History of Literature) by Roger Luckhurst.

A Response Letter by David Ketterer.

INTERESTING LINKS :

Istvan Csicery-Ronay, Jr's The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction has received quite a lot of discussion. Its basic idea can be found in the Science Fiction Studies article that presumably kicked off the writing of the book in the first place. The book has been reviewed By Adam Roberts at Strange Horizons, by Paul Kincaid at SF Site and by Marcie Bianco at the Feminist Review blog. Kincaid also discussed the book on his Livejournal here, here and here.

Farah Mendlesohn's On Joanna Russ has been reviewed by Carole Cooper in The Village Voice and by cheryl Morgan as Cheryl's Mewsings.

Bibliophile Stalker has a rather interesting piece about genre book bloggers changing their focus away from producing only reviews, raising questions about the sustainability of review blooging. Interesting comments too.

On a more depressing note, there was a discussion at Torque Control about people pulling their punches in reviews because of fear for their future as writers. The comments then saw UK-based genre reviewer Saxon Bullock being 'outed' over his recent 5-star review of a book he also copy edited.

Issue 3 - Joshi, Houellebecq, Levy, Seed and Blish

Jonathan McCalmont — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:44:10 +0000

(image from here)

EDITORIAL :

I am particularly happy with this issue of Fruitless Recursion as it introduces a couple of innovations; it is the first issue to include an interview and it is the first issue to devote more than one piece to a particular subject. Luckily enough, the three Lovecraft-related pieces demonstrate exactly why interviewing critics is a good idea.

Indeed, consider my reviews of Houelebecq's H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life and Marice Levy's Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic and consider them in the light of my interview with S. T. Joshi and you'll see something quite interesting going on. In my review of Levy, I accuse him of letting his preconceptions cloud his understanding of Lovecraft. In fact, this conceptual bias is the reason why my review of Levy's work is less favourable than my review of Houellebecq's. However, when I asked Joshi about both of these works, he downplayed the importance of Houellebecq's book on precisely these same grounds. Namely that Houellebecq allows his preconceptions to cloud his judgment. Clearly the fact that I agree with much of Houellebecq's world-view made his conceptual bias tolerable whereas my dislike for fantasy (and the sacred) made Levy's work seem stilted and poorly argued. I suspect that the same is true of Joshi's view of the two texts, demonstrating that knowing a bit about where critics are writing from is probably quite useful.

Setting Lovecraft aside, we are also lucky enough to have two rather splendid reviews by Duncan Lawie and Karen Burnham.

Karen's review of David Seed's epic anthology of critical writings A Companion to Science Fiction, is a great read. Not only is it an insightful piece about an evidently rather uneven collection, it is also animated by an incredibly waspish sense of humour. All it needs is a dry martini and a 1920s Manhattan hotel bar and Dorothy Parker starts springing to mind.

Duncan's piece is a real work of retro-criticism in that it reviews a book that was published in the 1960s. The Issue at Hand by William Atheling, Jr. is a true classic of SF criticism. Drawn from a series of columns written by James Blish under a nom de plume, the collection stands out (as Duncan correctly says) due to its incredibly concrete focus. Indeed, where most contemporary critics write about plot and characterisation, Blish writes about the technical aspects of genre from story construction to grammar. Unfortunately, with fewer and fewer people being taught grammar and composition, this style of criticism seems likely to stay an endangered species.

Thanks for reading :-)

- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)

THIS ISSUE'S PIECES :

Duncan Lawie's review of William Atheling, Jr.'s The Issue at Hand.

Karen Burnham's review of David Seed's A Companion to Science Fiction.

Jonathan McCalmont's review of Houellebecq's H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life.

Jonathan McCalmont's review of Maurice Levy's Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic.

Jonathan McCalmont's interview of S. T. Joshi.

INTERESTING LINKS :

Every year, the British Science Fiction Association puts out a shortlist of notable works of genre criticism. Nominations are currently open and Martin Lewis has set up a thread on the BSFA's forum in which people can discuss their nominations.

Regarding Martin's suggestions : Keller's V for Vendetta as Cultural Pastiche has only received a little online discussion. By contrast, Gibbons, Kidd and Essl's Watching the Watchmen has received quite a bit more. There has also been some discussion of Nevins' Impossible Territories, a book about Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics. Meadows' Studio Space also seems interesting. As does Wagner, Golden and Bissette's Prince of Stories : The Many world of Neil Gaiman.

Farah Mendlesohn has also done some checking as to what might be eligible and she suggests looking at Superheroes! by Roz Kaveney, Tolkien on Fairy Stories, by Tolkien with Flieger and Anderson and Hal Duncan's long summer blog posts about SF, Fantasy and Horror. She also suggests some other stuff but it's either offline or it has been linked to on here before.

Also worth looking at is John Enzinas' review of Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Turtle Moves!, yet another book about Pratchett's Discworld.

Tammy Moore's review of the utterly preposterous Grimoire of the Necronomicon by Donald Tyson, a book attempting to pull together a formal system of worship based upon the writings of Lovecraft.

David Maddox's review of Dalek : I Loved you by Nick Griffiths, which also got a very sweet Paul Raven review in the latest issue of Vector but unfortunately it is not (yet) online.

As ever, if you come across any interesting reviews or hear of any books that are worth checking out then drop me a line.

Issue 2 - Ashley, Chabon, Christakos, McKee

Jonathan McCalmont — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:13:04 +0100

EDITORIAL:
Welcome to the second issue of Fruitless Recursion. I must say that while I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the pieces I have received this far for the journal, I think that I can comfortably say that this is our best issue yet (and seeing as it's only our second official one, that's at the very least a step in the right direction). I'm particularly happy with the way that this issue illustrates the variety of possible ways in which a critic can approach his or her subject material and how the different critical perspectives of each review has cast new light on not only the texts being reviewed, but also the ultimate subject matter; genre itself. That is indeed a fruitful recursion.

For example, Paul Kincaid's review of Mike Ashley's Gateways to Forever takes what is really quite a dry and lengthy work of empirical field work and turns it into a great review that touches upon the hazards and limitations of a 'dispassionate' or even 'objective' approach to the history of science fiction. Even when you are dealing with the history of SF magazines, is it possible to simply gather the facts and leave the analysis up to others?

In a similar vein, Niall Harrison's review of Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends takes a closer look at the subtleties of Chabon's attitudes towards genre. When Chabon began championing genre in a way that eventually lead him to picking up this year's Hugo award for The Yiddish Policeman's Union, many saw this as an established author returning to his first love with considerable success but, as Niall suggests, while Chabon may indeed love genre, his interest in it may not be the kind of interest that turns him permanently into a genre author.

Gabriel McKee's The Gospel According the Science Fiction is put out by a publisher who specialises in Christian texts, but Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's examination of the book treats McKee's christianity as just another critical lens through which to examine SF and, just as one can enjoy Marxist or psychoanalytical SF criticism without buying into either of those ideas, Alvaro considers what a Christian world view can bring to SF even if one is not a Christian.

The final piece is my review of NGChristakos' journal Studies in Modern Horror. Given that this is a collection of pieces by different authors, I decided to examine the entire series from the stand-point of the editorial vision laid out in the first issue. I think that my review demonstrates some of the difficulties involved in adopting a strong but rather narrow editorial voice.

Thank you all for reading.

- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)

THIS ISSUE'S PIECES:

Paul Kincaid's review of Mike Ashley's Gateways to Forever: The Story of Science Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980.
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's review of Gabriel McKee's The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier.
Niall Harrison's review of Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends.
Jonathan McCalmont's review of Studies in Modern Horror, edited by NGChristakos.

INTERESTING LINKS:

Chabon's Maps and Legends reviewed by Mark Kamine at the New York Times. See also Andrew Wheeler at ComixMix.
Kincaid's What it is We do When We Read Science Fiction is reviewed by Steven H Silver at The SF Site.
Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy and Weese's Feminist Narrative and the Supernatural are both reviewed by Georges T. Dodds at The SF Site.
Russ' The Country You Have Never Seen is reviewed by Karen Burnham at Spiral Galaxy Reviewing Laboratory.
Broderick's Year Million is reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro at Strange Horizons.

Issue 1 - Malzberg, Kaveney, Hajdu and Priest

Jonathan McCalmont — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:50:28 +0100

EDITORIAL :
Welcome to the first official issue of Fruitless Recursion. For this issue we are spreading our nets a little wider to bring you four different pieces of writing about criticism. We begin with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's piece on Barry Malzberg's critical collection Breakfast in the Ruins (not to be confused with the 1972 novel by Michael Moorcock). Malzberg recently picked up the Locus award for this collection and also seems to be a decent bet for the 2008 Best Related Book Hugo. From awards fodder we move back in time to 2005 for Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kaveney's From Alien to the Matrix. Martin seemed somewhat indifferent about it but despite being three years old, it was noticed by your editor on sale at the British Film Institute shop. This either suggests that someone somewhere rates the book or that customers rated a lot of other books a lot higher, leaving the poor book languishing on their shelves. Having not read the book, I could not possibly comment as to which this might have been. However, Martin does also raise an excellent issue in his review and that is the need for a collection of Nick Lowe's Mutant Popcorn Interzone columns. I write a lot about film and I read a lot of genre film criticism and I think that Lowe is easily the equal of media darlings such as Kermode and Newman. I think that his review of the last Pirates of the Caribbean film was arguably the finest piece of criticism I read last year. Our final review is from one of last issue's reviewees and that is Paul Kincaid reviewing David Hajdu's Ten Cent Plague. At first glance this is somewhat outside of our purview here at Fruitless Recursion but as it is often said that modern genre fans draw their understandings of genre more from visual media such as games, films and comics, I thought a piece about the history of comic books was more than appropriate and liable to interest our readers. The final piece is something I would definitely like to see more of here and that is field reports from conventions and live interviews. Criticism does not need to be written, it can also be done live and Kincaid's interview of Christopher Priest is a great example of the medium.

As usual, if you have read anything interesting that you would like to write about then please let me know. Alternately if you have a book out and would like us to cover it then please get in touch too.

THIS ISSUE'S PIECES :

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's review of Barry N. Malzberg's Breakfast in the Ruins.
Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kaveney's From Alien to the Matrix.
Paul Kincaid's review of David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague.
Jonathan McCalmont's field report on Paul Kincaid interviewing Christopher Priest.

INTERESTING LINKS :

Galactic Suburbia - Recovering Women's Science Fiction by Lisa Yaszek (link) has been reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller at Strange Horizons
Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction - Utopias and Dystopias by Judith A. Little (link) has been reviewed by Nancy Jane Moore at SFRevu
Brave New Words - The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (link) has been reviewed by Paul Kincaid at The SFSite, John at SF Signal
Gateways to Forever - The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980 by Mike Ashley (link) has been reviewed by William Mingin at Strange Horizons
There's also an old review of Ashley at Infinity Plus
Gwyneth Jones has won the 2008 SFRA Pilgrim Award for her criticism

As ever, if there are any reviews or pieces of news that I have missed, please let me know and I shall include them next time an issue goes up. Thanks for reading Issue One of Fruitless Recursion.

- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)

Issue 0 - Russ and Kincaid

Jonathan McCalmont — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:37:20 +0100

Welcome to the launch issue of Fruitless Recursion!

*

Having only just launched, we do not yet have enough material for a full issue. However, rather than wait, I have decided to put out some material as an indication of the kind of things that Fruitless Recursion will be doing once it is up to speed.

Firstly, we have a review of Paul Kincaid's collection What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont.

Secondly, we have a review of Joanna Russ's collection The Country You Have Never Seen, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont.

We also have our round-up of interesting links, which tries to draw your attention not only to alternate points of view on the books we have reviewed, but also to reviews and discussion surrounding books that we have not yet gotten round to writing about. Obviously, this section is limited by what we know to be out there, which is why we want to hear from any publishers that have any relevant works in the pipeline.

Kincaid's What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction (link) has also been reviewed by : Martin Lewis at Strange Horizons, Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen,

Russ's The Country You Have Never Seen (link) has also been reviewed by : Sarah Monette at Strange Horizons,

Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn (link) has been reviewed by : John Clute at Strange Horizons, Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen,

Palgrave's The History of Science Fiction by Adam Roberts (link) has been reviewed by : PD Smith in the Guardian, Jayme Lynn Blaschke at The Green Man Review, Paul Raven at Velcro City Tourist Board, Dan Hartland at Strange Horizons

Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction by John Rieder (link) has been reviewed by : Henry Berry at Gather.com

Revish has an interview with Stacie Hanes, one of the contributors to Andrew M. Butler's An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett (link)

There is also a Livejournal Community devoted to the discussion of SF-related non-fiction.

If I have missed out any reviews then please let me know and I'll add them in. Similarly, if there are any books that have been generating online discussion then please let me know and I shall look into them.

Hope that you have all enjoyed the first (non) Issue of Fruitless Recursion. Next time it will be for real.

- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)

Technorati Tags: SF, Fantasy, Horror, Criticism, Paul Kincaid, Joanna Russ, Farah Mendlesohn, Adam Roberts, John Rieder, Andrew M Butler, Jonathan McCalmont

Launch of Fruitless Recursion

Jonathan McCalmont — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:06:40 +0100

Fruitless Recursion is an online journal devoted to discussing works of criticism and non-fiction relating to the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres. It will cover biographies, substantial works of critical theory, collections of reviews as well as any interviews, profiles or examinations of any other works that are deemed to be fitting.

The aim of FR is to stimulate discussion of these kinds of works, raise the profiles of the people producing them and to help inform the purchasing decisions of people who might otherwise have to turn to journals to find reviews.

Fruitless Recursion will be a paying market and it will publish collections of pieces whenever the editor deems that there are enough to warrant another issue.

We are currently looking for content for our first proper issue, so please contact us if :

You have anything you would like to write for us - be it review, interview or profile
You have written anything from anywhere else that is likely to interest us
You have a book that you would like us to review
You are about to publish a book that is likely to interest us

Technorati Tags: SF, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Criticism, Journal