EXPLORERS OF THE INFINITE: Shapers of Science Fiction

by Sam Moskowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Many a man is now alive who would never remember Amazing Stories, the great i-fi pulp mag of the Thirties, which author Moskowitz here apostrophizes as an American efflorescence of the scientific imagination. On a typical Amazing cover superbly rendered), huge metal bug-monsters stalked a metropolis, with green eyes that luridated heat rays to melt walls and send buildings toppling. Silly as these metal enances seemed then, Strategic Air Command would welcome such simple problems today. They were, however, linear descendants of wily Odysseus' Trojan horse and such devices Arthur's incredibly able sword Excalibur, the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's Travels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the historical Cyrano de ergerac's A Voyage to the Moon (1650), Robinson Crusoe, and even--greatest of them all--oby Dick. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells get whole chapters, but a fantastically vast up-literature of sci-fi exists from the turn of this century and before Amazing started n 1926 (all of it composed by authors less than amazingly memorable to many a living librarian). All of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, Martian and Venusian novels are discussed with warmth. Also fondly remembered are A. Merritt, Karel Kapek, interplanetary orror-lorist H. P. Lovecraft, Olaf Stapledon, Philip Wylie, Ray Bradbury, Heinlein, larke, Walter Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz), and others!

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963

Categories: NONFICTION