Tag: Robert Heinlein

Ed Park (the author of the novel “Personal Days“) recently reviewed  “The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction” for the Los Angeles Times. Here’s an excerpt… If you’re still looking for a reading strategy for the new year, might I suggest reading a science fiction story a week? The best way to do this is to get “The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction” ( Wesleyan University Press: 767 pp., $39.95 paper), which conveniently offers 52 stories for your 2011 self-improvement regimen. It’s more than just an ideal survey of the genre, reaching from the 19th century (Hawthorne, Verne, Wells) through the pulps, new wave, cyberpunk and the too-soon-to-classify morsels of the decade that just ended. This big book is both a thrilling entertainment and a convincing argument for the way SF can refresh the mind, play boldly with form and reflect ...

Author Ed Park recently reviewed “Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century” for the Los Angeles Times. Here’s an excerpt of the review… “I am submitting the enclosed short story ‘LIFE-LINE‘ for either ‘Astounding’ or ‘Unknown,’” Robert A. Heinlein wrote to editor John Campbell in 1939, “because I am not sure which policy it fits the better.” The former magazine published science fiction, the latter fantasy. Heinlein’s short story — the first he had attempted professionally, at age 31 — concerns a machine that can predict when a person will die. That he sold this neophyte production, on first submission, to a top pulp editor (kicking off an intense friendship and correspondence) is exciting in and of itself. Heinlein’s uncertainty about to which slice of genre this story belonged is an ironic and humanizing detail, given what a titan ...