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The World of Science Fiction, by Lester Del Rey

Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 10:54 pm
by Omphalos
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Despite its limiting title, Lester Del Rey's The World of Science Fiction: 1926-1976, The History of a Subculture gives a pretty detailed history of at least the magazine driven side of the genre from the late nineteenth century to 1976, the year of the book's publication by Del Rey Books. Although it was intended to be a general history, Del Rey spent the majority of his time detailing the ups and downs of the magazine markets and the publications that made it up. Personally I think that it was an excellent choice to do so, and by doing it that way Del Rey managed to differentiate his book from Gunn's Alternate Worlds, and Pohl's The Way the Future Was, the former of which was more personality driven in that it focused on individual authors and was much broader in scope because it described the early history of European literature for examples of fantastic texts - and was thus academic in voice - and the latter of which was a more personal account of Pohl's own experiences as a publisher, writer, agent, etc., and therefore read like an autobiography...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..