I’ve been thinking of including some videos of interviews, lectures, etc. relating to science fiction, and so here’s the first entry for my new video clips category. It’s a lecture on the early history of the genre by Damon Knight. Enjoy!
Part 1 (Lucian, Poe, Verne):
Part 2 (from Wells to the pulps):
Cool stuff. I have been reading Alexi Panshin’s The Wold Beyond the Hill this weekend. He spends a lot of time (all of it, it seems) relating modern SF back to Gernsbeck, Hamilton, Smith, Williamson and Stapledon through John Campbell. Its a really interesting book and probably the best written non-fiction/SF book I have ever read (and yes, Ive read lots of them so far;) ).
Sounds like I might wanna get this Panshin book.
Its a good one. Its big though. 700pp. If you are interested in Heinlein, here is a link to a book he wrote on Heinlein. He writes good fiction too:
http://www.enter.net/~torve/critics/Dimension/hdcontents.html#Contents