Issue 1 - Malzberg, Kaveney, Hajdu and Priest
EDITORIAL :
Welcome to the first official issue of Fruitless Recursion. For this issue we are spreading our nets a little wider to bring you four different pieces of writing about criticism. We begin with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's piece on Barry Malzberg's critical collection Breakfast in the Ruins (not to be confused with the 1972 novel by Michael Moorcock). Malzberg recently picked up the Locus award for this collection and also seems to be a decent bet for the 2008 Best Related Book Hugo. From awards fodder we move back in time to 2005 for Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kaveney's From Alien to the Matrix. Martin seemed somewhat indifferent about it but despite being three years old, it was noticed by your editor on sale at the British Film Institute shop. This either suggests that someone somewhere rates the book or that customers rated a lot of other books a lot higher, leaving the poor book languishing on their shelves. Having not read the book, I could not possibly comment as to which this might have been. However, Martin does also raise an excellent issue in his review and that is the need for a collection of Nick Lowe's Mutant Popcorn Interzone columns. I write a lot about film and I read a lot of genre film criticism and I think that Lowe is easily the equal of media darlings such as Kermode and Newman. I think that his review of the last Pirates of the Caribbean film was arguably the finest piece of criticism I read last year. Our final review is from one of last issue's reviewees and that is Paul Kincaid reviewing David Hajdu's Ten Cent Plague. At first glance this is somewhat outside of our purview here at Fruitless Recursion but as it is often said that modern genre fans draw their understandings of genre more from visual media such as games, films and comics, I thought a piece about the history of comic books was more than appropriate and liable to interest our readers. The final piece is something I would definitely like to see more of here and that is field reports from conventions and live interviews. Criticism does not need to be written, it can also be done live and Kincaid's interview of Christopher Priest is a great example of the medium.
As usual, if you have read anything interesting that you would like to write about then please let me know. Alternately if you have a book out and would like us to cover it then please get in touch too.
THIS ISSUE'S PIECES :
INTERESTING LINKS :
As ever, if there are any reviews or pieces of news that I have missed, please let me know and I shall include them next time an issue goes up. Thanks for reading Issue One of Fruitless Recursion.
Welcome to the first official issue of Fruitless Recursion. For this issue we are spreading our nets a little wider to bring you four different pieces of writing about criticism. We begin with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's piece on Barry Malzberg's critical collection Breakfast in the Ruins (not to be confused with the 1972 novel by Michael Moorcock). Malzberg recently picked up the Locus award for this collection and also seems to be a decent bet for the 2008 Best Related Book Hugo. From awards fodder we move back in time to 2005 for Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kaveney's From Alien to the Matrix. Martin seemed somewhat indifferent about it but despite being three years old, it was noticed by your editor on sale at the British Film Institute shop. This either suggests that someone somewhere rates the book or that customers rated a lot of other books a lot higher, leaving the poor book languishing on their shelves. Having not read the book, I could not possibly comment as to which this might have been. However, Martin does also raise an excellent issue in his review and that is the need for a collection of Nick Lowe's Mutant Popcorn Interzone columns. I write a lot about film and I read a lot of genre film criticism and I think that Lowe is easily the equal of media darlings such as Kermode and Newman. I think that his review of the last Pirates of the Caribbean film was arguably the finest piece of criticism I read last year. Our final review is from one of last issue's reviewees and that is Paul Kincaid reviewing David Hajdu's Ten Cent Plague. At first glance this is somewhat outside of our purview here at Fruitless Recursion but as it is often said that modern genre fans draw their understandings of genre more from visual media such as games, films and comics, I thought a piece about the history of comic books was more than appropriate and liable to interest our readers. The final piece is something I would definitely like to see more of here and that is field reports from conventions and live interviews. Criticism does not need to be written, it can also be done live and Kincaid's interview of Christopher Priest is a great example of the medium.
As usual, if you have read anything interesting that you would like to write about then please let me know. Alternately if you have a book out and would like us to cover it then please get in touch too.
THIS ISSUE'S PIECES :
- Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's review of Barry N. Malzberg's Breakfast in the Ruins.
- Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kaveney's From Alien to the Matrix.
- Paul Kincaid's review of David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague.
- Jonathan McCalmont's field report on Paul Kincaid interviewing Christopher Priest.
INTERESTING LINKS :
- Galactic Suburbia - Recovering Women's Science Fiction by Lisa Yaszek (link) has been reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller at Strange Horizons
- Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction - Utopias and Dystopias by Judith A. Little (link) has been reviewed by Nancy Jane Moore at SFRevu
- Brave New Words - The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (link) has been reviewed by Paul Kincaid at The SFSite, John at SF Signal
- Gateways to Forever - The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980 by Mike Ashley (link) has been reviewed by William Mingin at Strange Horizons
- There's also an old review of Ashley at Infinity Plus
- Gwyneth Jones has won the 2008 SFRA Pilgrim Award for her criticism
As ever, if there are any reviews or pieces of news that I have missed, please let me know and I shall include them next time an issue goes up. Thanks for reading Issue One of Fruitless Recursion.
- Jonathan McCalmont
(Editor)
(Editor)
Good luck with this. Brilliant stuff.
Posted by: Will Humphreys | July 30, 2008 at 03:52 AM
Thanks you :-) Glad you enjoyed Issue 1
Posted by: Jonathan M | July 30, 2008 at 07:24 AM