Scarecrow Press
Pages: 560
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-8108-4670-8 • Paperback • March 2003 • $26.00 • (£19.99)
James Gunn is Emeritus Professor of English at University of Kansas.
Part 1 INTRODUCTION
Part 2 Born of Skill and Money
Chapter 3 Born of Man and Woman
Part 4 Heart of Darkness
Chapter 5 The Luckiest Man in Denv
Part 6 A Clash of Symbols
Chapter 7 Common Time
Part 8 Word Magic
Chapter 9 My Boy Friend's Name is Jello
Part 10 A Canticle for the Fifties
Chapter 11 The First Canticle
Part 12 The Lodestone Genre
Chapter 13 Nobody Bothers Gus
Part 14 Inferiority: The Complex Problem
Chapter 15 Flowers for Algernon
Part 16 A Question of Identity
Chapter 17 The Moon Moth
Part 18 The View From the Outside
Chapter 19 The Library of Babel
Part 20 Inner Concerns in Outer Space
Chapter 21 From Dune
Part 22 The Vigor of Traditional SF
Chapter 23 Light of Other Days
Part 24 Ambiguities and Inscrutabilities
Chapter 25 The First Sally (A), or Trurl's Electronic Bard
Part 26 Entropy and the World War
Chapter 27 The Heart and Death of the Universe
Part 28 Speculations on Speculative Fiction
Chapter 29 The Planners
Part 30 The Alienness of the Alien
Chapter 31 The Dance of the Changer and the Three
Part 32 The Virtues of Indirection
Chapter 33 The Last Flight of Dr. Ain
Part 34 Radical Sensibility
Chapter 35 Where No Sun Shines
Part 36 Escape Reading
Chapter 37 The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
Part 38 Understanding Reader Reaction
Chapter 39 Angouleme
Part 40 The Postwar Generation
Chapter 41 Gather Blue Roses
Part 42 The Star Trek Syndrome
Chapter 43 With a Finger in My I
Part 44 Of Men, and Women, and Society
Chapter 45 Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand
Part 46 Of Novas and Other Stars
Chapter 47 Air Raid
Part 48 Science Fiction, Aliens, and Alienation
Chapter 49 Uncoupling
Part 50 Exotic Parables
Chapter 51 Rogue Tomato
Part 52 The Labor Day Group
Chapter 53 This Tower of Ashes
Part 54 Fiction and Science
Chapter 55 Particle Theory
Part 56 The Anthropology of the Future
Chapter 57 View from a Height
Part 58 Form and Content
Chapter 59 The Word Sweep
Part 60 Dialectic of History and Transcendence
Chapter 61 The World Science Fiction Convention of 2080
Part 62 Estranging the Everyday
Chapter 63 Abominable
Part 64 Science and Fiction
Chapter 65 Exposures
Part 66 The Real and the Surreal
Chapter 67 Schrödinger's Kitten
The best series, historically arranged, of SF anthologies ever assembled...All six volumes belong in the library of every university, school, and teacher and reader of science fiction. Gunn has gathered stories of importance to the development of SF and stories that represent the best writing of the genre.
— Anatomy of Wonder, 5th Edition
...provides one of the most comprehensive views of the field and should be required reading for all students of sf. It has withstood the test of time, with classic stories....Gunn's headnotes and introductions remain provocative, even years later. The Road to Science Fiction can be read as an historical document, one that says much about Gunn, his mind, and his take on sf as it does about the state of sf from its roots to its full maturity as a genre.
— Science Fiction Studies