Across the Wounded Galaxies

Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers
Author: Conducted and edited by Larry McCaffery
Probing, insightful discussions with a who's who of SF legends
Paper – $22
978-0-252-06140-0
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/1991
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About the Book

Modern science fiction writers have long inhabited a dimension far removed from the comfortable realms of filmic space opera franchises and Dr. Who. Too often lurking along the margins of literature are some of the most intelligent, imaginative, and outrageous writing talents of our day. These interviews by legendary critic and SF proponent Larry McCaffery journeys into the minds and psyches of ten iconic writers whose works influenced the evolution of science fiction. Authors like Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Thomas Disch, Ursula Le Guin, and Bruce Sterling discuss New Wave, hard versus soft SF, and the viability of the genre as a means of suggesting political, radical, and sexual agendas. As these writers speak candidly about their works, backgrounds, and aesthetic impulses, it becomes clear that the issues on their minds and in their fiction are central to contemporary life and art.

About the Author

Larry McCaffery is a literary critic and editor, and a retired professor of English and comparative literature. His many books include Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction and Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors.

Reviews

"Both the general reader and the academic can learn a great deal here about cyberpunk, the function in SF of sexuality, the roots of the Urth of the New Sun, and much, much more."--Analog"Across the Wounded Galaxies includes the most in-depth and comprehensive series of interviews with SF authors ever published."--Mississippi Review

Unlike those narcoleptic cryptics who nod through the motions of pomo in a prose sterile and besmirched with jargon as that of the most tedious scholarship, McCaffery is locked in a crazy love affair with the contemporary. . . . These interviews are plain fun to read."--American Book Review

"A must for the serious student of the genre."--ALA Booklist