The Detached Retina: Science Fiction and Fantasy

In this fascinating collection of essays, one of the world’s preeminent science fiction writers explores a wide range of science fiction and fantasy writers and writings. The contents and themes include a letter to Salvador Dali . . . Mary Shelley and Frankenstein . . . the Immanent Will and Olaf Stapledon . . . the work of Philip K. Dick . . . Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon . . . Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four . . . James Blish . . . Culture: Is it Worth Losing Your Balls
For? . . . Wells and the Leopard Lady . . . H.P. Lovecraft’s ’The Music of Erich Zann’ . . . Jekyll . . . the differences between United States and United Kingdom fantasy . . . Anna Kavan as ’Kafka’s Sister’ . . . Campbell’s Soup (Astounding Science Fiction under the editorship of John Wood Campbell) . . . science fiction’s relationship to science and literature in general.

Brian Aldiss is that rare phenomenon among writers, a critic as well as a major creative force, whose contemporary novels as well as his science fiction have met with great success. This present volume may be considered as a continuation of the discourse presented in Billion Year Spree and Trillion Year Spree (written with David Wingrove). Its scope is wide, its tone humane rather than academic.