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Booker, M. Keith, and Anne-Marie Thomas. The Science Fiction Handbook. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. xviii + 348 pp. Paperback. ISBN 9781-4051-6206-7. $29.95.
I find it difficult to conceive the scholarly niche this curious little book is designed to fill. It is billed as a "handbook," perhaps the most nebulous term that can be applied to a reference volume, lacking both the scope of an encyclopedia and the analytic rigor of an anatomy - and certainly, if you already own the latest editions of the Clute/Nicholls Encylopedia (2nd ed., 1993) and Neil Barren's Anatomy of Wonder 5th ed., 2004), you don't need this book too. It is closer in spirit to the various sf "Companions" that have appeared in recent years from Cambridge, Blackwell, and Routledge, yet it is considerably thinner in its coverage, frankly Mattempt[ing] no overall history of science fiction" but merely offering "overviews of the development of a number of important subgenres" (12), supplemented by brief bio-critical sketches of nineteen major authors and detailed readings of twenty of their books (H. G. Wells getting two). The volume might potentially be useful in an sf course that focused on (some of) these particular themes, authors, and texts, but as a general guide to the genre, it is of rather limited value.
The ten "subgenres" covered are: the Time-Travel Narrative; the Alien Invasion Narrative; the Space Opera; Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction; Dystopian Science Fiction; Utopian Fiction; Feminism, Science Fiction, and Gender; Science Fiction and Satire; Cyberpunk and Posthuman Science Fiction; and Multicultural Science Fiction. As one can see from this list, calling all of these topics "subgenres" is rather misleading: some of them (e.g., the first five) clearly are, while others (e.g., Gender, Satire, Posthumanism) designate themes, issues, or styles that may be found in any number of s f subgenres, while Utopian Fiction is a genre in its own right. The most curious chapter is the one on multicultural sf, which is basically an omnibus gathering work by non-white and non-Western authors alongside sf treating themes of "Otherness" or difference, resulting in a rather uneasy assortment of texts ranging from Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (1975) to Amithav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) to Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga (1998). Each chapter begins with a basic definition...