[SFRA-L] Fwd: Nasa hopes novel mission will take science fiction to new frontiers

[Gunn, James E]

We'll have to wait and see.  Ideally, NASA could provide some data and maybe some ideas, and the writers could turn them into good, hard-science narratives.  Of course it could go toward your suggested outcome as well.   If NASA is not providing subsidies, Tor and the writers both have incentives to make the novels as good as possible.  Jim
________________________________________
From: sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu [sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] on behalf of Williams, Nathaniel [natew59 at ku.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:03 PM
To: John Pierce; De Witt Douglas Kilgore
Cc: sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu List
Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] Fwd: Nasa hopes novel mission will take   science fiction to new frontiers

It's interesting that Tom Doherty's quote near the end notes 20th-century writers, but 19th-century U.S. inventors.  And, as a dime-novel SF guy, I can't help but note how much it resembles the rhapsodic comments about Fulton in Ellis's Steam Man of the Prairies (1869).



So, I wonder, is this type of literary endeavor potentially taking a step back (beyond Heinlein, beyond Asimov) even further into SF's past?  Will it encourage Edisonade-type SF that is wildly optimistic, but also a bit defensive in its assertion of the U.S.'s primary place in the technological order of things?



Nathaniel Williams

________________________________
From: sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu [sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] on behalf of John Pierce [pierceqfpl at ewwpi.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 9:19 AM
To: De Witt Douglas Kilgore
Cc: sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu List
Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] Fwd: Nasa hopes novel mission will take science fiction to new frontiers

I wonder if this will do either NASA or sf any good. It's too obviously PR, and it might go over like J.W. Campbell's pipeline fiction from the late 50s and 60s.

--J.J.P.



On Aug 31, 2011, at 10:12 AM, De Witt Douglas Kilgore wrote:

Hey everyone:

An interesting item from the Guardian.

Cheers,
De Witt

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/25/nasa-novel-mission-science-fiction

Sent via the Guardian's iPhone application.

Get it here<http://www.guardian.co.uk/iphone>


Sent from my iPod



--
De Witt Douglas Kilgore
Associate Professor of English, American Studies and Cultural Studies
Indiana University
812-855-4148

" ... remind people of reality, which is that we are all stuck in a big SF [science fiction] novel now, and there's no escape; might as well accept it and dive in."
-- Kim Stanley Robinson



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