Word: fictional
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...every succeeding generation, Frank Herbert's latest work, The Dosadi Experiment, owes its prominence more to its ancestry than any distinguishing strength of its own. Dune, with its meticulously laid-out setting and equally convincing set of characters, proved that Herbert is the ultimate practitioner of the fantasy-science fiction art. As the best fantasy sci-fi should, it ensnarls its readers; entrapping the unsuspecting alien in a coherent, make-believe world that he can escape only when the author permits it, with his final page...
Judith Rossner, the author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, clearly understood the appeal of this kind of masochistic allegory, as the best-seller success that greeted her pulp novel demonstrated. That Richard (In Cold Blood) Brooks-should decide to bring this trash-posing-as-fiction to the screen also shows at once a keen eye for the commercial and a readiness to pursue his art within the constraining framework of a depressing narrative. In taking on a character like Theresa Dunn as the focal point of his film, Brooks has confirmed an affinity for the dark underside of the individual...
...tongue-in-cheek query as to the current whereabouts of former colleague Ron Hubbard. "He was a damn good writer," Clarke says. "He could easily make ten cents a word today." For the uninitiated, L. Ron Hubbard was the man who casually remarked to a science fiction convention that writing for a penny a word was ridiculous. Anyone who really wanted to make a million bucks wouldn't waste his time writing science fiction, Hubbard contended, he'd start a religion. Hubbard then acted on his own advice, founding the Church of Scientology, which has grown to a multi-million...
...experiments on animals in vacuum chambers in an effort to disprove the old sci-fi truism that an astronaut would explode instantly in the vacuum of space. The book scintillates with such occasional tidbits, but otherwise the pickings are slim. Clarke reveals that he has decided to abandon non-fiction to concentrate on writing novels, and the overall mediocrity of the book inclines one to approve...
...Clarke is temporarily stalled as a writer, his literary critics are just beginning their Golden Age, as shown by the quality of the critical essays just released under the appropriate title Arthur C. Clarke. The book is the third in a series of collected critiques on science fiction authors, which has arleady covered Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein; books on Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. LeGuin are in preparation. For all its amateur wordiness, the book reflects the vitality of this literary genre today. While mainstream short stories can scarcely find a market, sci-fi anthologies have become...