I’m thrilled to announce that I’m up for two Aurora Awards this year! Fireboy is on the ballot for Best Young Adult Novel, and The Worldshapers is once again on the ballot for Best Fan …
I spent a good chunk of today at Wordbridge, the annual writers’ conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. My main reason for coming was to launch a Shadowpaw Press title (Broken Realm by Jenna Greene, a Lethbridge …
This is Easter weekend; last weekend, I sang in the Easter concert of First Baptist Church here in Regina as a guest soloist and chorister. The whole concert is worth listening to, but if you’d …
I put a link to this in the previous post on my Aurora-eligible work for 2025, but wanted to highlight it. This was my contribution to the Shapers of Worlds Volume V anthology, and it …
The Aurora Awards are Canada’s best-known science fiction and fantasy awards, voted on by fans every year. I’ve been fortunate enough to win twice, for Marseguro (DAW Books) (soon coming out in a new edition from Tuscany …
Put this under the category of “things I’ve meant to do for a long time”: I finally published (under my Endless Sky Books imprint) a new edition of The Haunted Horn, a modern-day middle-grade ghost …
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What is science fiction?" A definitive answer at last!
John C. Wright* nails down the ever-pesky definition of science fiction:
Science Fiction is that genre of cognitive estrangement in a post-Gothic mode, utilizing a willing suspension of disbelief, transcending anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, where spacemen, raygun in fist, soar through outer space with a glamorous brunette Space-Babes in their brawny arms.
He offers extensive pictorial proof. And I’m pleased to say the cover of Marseguro, with a brunette Space-Babe (OK, she has gills, but still) on the cover (in a skin-tight wetsuit!) being at least peripherally menaced by a giant robot (it’s on the back of the book, but close enough), definitely qualifies it as science fiction.
Whew. That’s a relief!
*Founder of the Space Princess Movement, of which I am an official member
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2008/06/what-is-science-fiction-a-definitive-answer-at-last-3/
