beccon publications

Home
Page		 How to
Order		 List of
Publications		 SF Criticism
& History		 Fiction Reference
Works		 Filk
Books		 Quizzes &
Quizzing		 S.F. Fan
Publications


WhatItIs
Cover by Roger Robinson

WHAT IT IS WE DO
WHEN WE READ
SCIENCE FICTION

Paul Kincaid

 Kincaid
Photo by Roger Robinson


Paul Kincaid is a critic and reviewer - a regular contributor to a variety of magazines and journals, such as the BSFA's Vector, Foundation and the New York Review of Science Fiction. He has also contributed to many SF reference works, and was for 11 years the administrator of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He is the recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for services to science fiction. His essay "Blank Pages" (included in this collection) was on the Recommended Reading list for the BSFA Non-Fiction Award, as was The Arthur C. Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology which he co-edited with Andrew M. Butler.
This is his first collection of essays.


Paperback, vi + 365 pages.
230 x 150 mm, perfect bound.
Publication date 21 March 2008.

Price - UK£15.00
Postage and packing (p&p) to addresses in the UK - add UK£2.00
For US$ prices and p&p information see "How to Order"
ISBN 9781 - 870824 - 54 - 5



Contents list for WHAT IT IS WE DO WHEN WE READ SCIENCE FICTION

INTRODUCTION
iii - Acknowledgements
v - Introducing Paul Kincaid - by David Langford
I : THEORY
3 - What it is we do when we read Science Fiction
13 - On the Origins of Genre
II : PRACTICE
25 - Anatomising Science Fiction
29 - How Hard is SF?
41 - The New Hard Men of SF
49 - Mistah Kurtz, He Dead
61 - The North-South Continuum
75 - A Year at its Best?
III : CHRISTOPHER PRIEST
89 - Blank pages: Islands and Identity in the Fiction of Christopher Priest
107 - Mirrors, Doubles, Twins
129 - "The Discharge"
133 - 10/10 May/May: Singling Out the Duplication in The Separation
IV : BRITAIN ...
141 - Islomania? Insularity?: The Myth of the Island in Britiah Science Fiction
149 - Apres moi . . .
153 - Elegy
157 - Touching the Earth
165 - Inside Chris Evans
173 - The Furies
189 - Maps of a Curious Sort: Landscape in the Fiction of Keith Roberts
197 - In the Pickle Jar: Appleseed or Mimesis
V : ... AND THE WORLD
207 - Secret Maps
237 - Exhibits
255 - Entering the Labyrinth
267 - Emptiness Gets Into You
273 - Forever Haldeman
277 - A Mode of Head-on Collision: George Turner's Critical Relationship with Science Fiction
291 - Heterotopic Borders
VI : GENE WOLFE
297 - Images of the Fall
307 - We Joke for Gods
321 - False Dog
325 - Attending Daedalus
VII : 1 APRIL 1984
331 - By-ways of the Shining Path
VIII : NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
335 - Notes
339 - Sources
343 - Bibliography
IX : INDEX
351 - Index - compiled by Leigh Kennedy Priest