Rating: 
Summary: Very Useful
Review: This is not a guide to the best science-fiction books! This novel is a brutally honest, although somewhat opinionated at times, look at the most american of genres- Science Fiction. These reviews by newspapers are right for the most part, a lot of people and ideas really get slammed- femminist SF especially. Heinlein gets criticized for being sexist and racist. Disch asks a very good question: why isn't science-fiction taken as serious literature? I've seen it said that it's because people read SF for fun. That doesn't make any sense. By that logic you could say any fiction shouldn't be taken seriously. After all, people read John Grisham and Nora Roberts for fun, right? And besides, as Theodore Sturgeon put it, it's not just that 90% of science fiction is crap, "90% of everything is crap." Maybe it's because people are too arrogant to believe that something they looked down on has become something with true virtues and unbelievable quality. Regardl! ess, this is a must in any SF fan's collection, but it's not the first critical book I'd read first.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative discussion of the history of SF
Review: Thomas Disch's "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of" is an intensely personal and opinionated exploration of the SF genre and its connection with popular culture. Its scope is enormous; Disch begins at the historical roots of the genre, moves on through the Golden Age of the 40s and 50s, travels towards mainstream literature on the New Wave of the 60s, visits the feminist movement of the 70s, and finally arrives at a bleak, unhappy present- remaining entertaining throughout, an applaudable feat.Disch's unorthodoxy manifests early, when he proclaims Edgar Allan Poe the founder of SF, rather than the usual honorand Mary Shelley. His justifications for this decision are not compelling; his claim that Shelley's "Frankenstein" is unread is not proven, and his complaint that Shelley dodges providing a scientific rationale for Frankenstein's creation could be equally applied to the hypotheses of many acclaimed New Wave novels of the 60s, notably those of Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny. A great degree of scientific fuzziness is present in all but the hardest SF. Disch's bias surfaces elsewhere. His politics lean to the left, as do those of many SF writers, and help shape the list of authors he chooses to condemn. He cannot resist indulging in the occasional Heinlein bashing, although he usually keeps a tight leash on the savagery of his attacks. He devotes an entire chapter to the "military SF" subgenre of Jerry Pournelle and associates, relegating it, unfairly, to the same trash bin he reserves for right-wing milita literature of the sort publicized by Timothy McVeigh. To his credit, however, he also rebukes those leftist SF authors whose writings serve as thin masks for the promotion of their particular utopias. His exposition of how Ursula K. LeGuin abuses the editorial responsibilities her fame has garnered for her, of how she uses the anthologies she compiles to revise the history of SF to promote her PC matriarchal vision of the future, is as dead-on target as a critique can possibly be. (...) One final thought. Disch paints a morbid picture of the current and future status of the SF genre, unveiling a landscape of Star Trek serializations and Tolkien-clone trilogies resembling Huxley's legions of Gammas and Epsilons. Whether the past was as rosy as he claims is debatable; my local used bookstore is filled to the brim with Edgar Rice Burroughs clones, Asimov imitators, and similar chaff from the supposed Golden Age. Time will sift through the current crop and find the classics, as it as always done. Or so those who love SF hope.
Rating:
Summary: Provocative discussion of the history of SF
Review: Thomas Disch's "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of" is an intensely personal and opinionated exploration of the SF genre and its connection with popular culture. Its scope is enormous; Disch begins at the historical roots of the genre, moves on through the Golden Age of the 40s and 50s, travels towards mainstream literature on the New Wave of the 60s, visits the feminist movement of the 70s, and finally arrives at a bleak, unhappy present- remaining entertaining throughout, an applaudable feat. Disch's unorthodoxy manifests early, when he proclaims Edgar Allan Poe the founder of SF, rather than the usual honorand Mary Shelley. His justifications for this decision are not compelling; his claim that Shelley's "Frankenstein" is unread is not proven, and his complaint that Shelley dodges providing a scientific rationale for Frankenstein's creation could be equally applied to the hypotheses of many acclaimed New Wave novels of the 60s, notably those of Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny. A great degree of scientific fuzziness is present in all but the hardest SF. Disch's bias surfaces elsewhere. His politics lean to the left, as do those of many SF writers, and help shape the list of authors he chooses to condemn. He cannot resist indulging in the occasional Heinlein bashing, although he usually keeps a tight leash on the savagery of his attacks. He devotes an entire chapter to the "military SF" subgenre of Jerry Pournelle and associates, relegating it, unfairly, to the same trash bin he reserves for right-wing milita literature of the sort publicized by Timothy McVeigh. To his credit, however, he also rebukes those leftist SF authors whose writings serve as thin masks for the promotion of their particular utopias. His exposition of how Ursula K. LeGuin abuses the editorial responsibilities her fame has garnered for her, of how she uses the anthologies she compiles to revise the history of SF to promote her PC matriarchal vision of the future, is as dead-on target as a critique can possibly be. (...) One final thought. Disch paints a morbid picture of the current and future status of the SF genre, unveiling a landscape of Star Trek serializations and Tolkien-clone trilogies resembling Huxley's legions of Gammas and Epsilons. Whether the past was as rosy as he claims is debatable; my local used bookstore is filled to the brim with Edgar Rice Burroughs clones, Asimov imitators, and similar chaff from the supposed Golden Age. Time will sift through the current crop and find the classics, as it as always done. Or so those who love SF hope.
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