CORRESPONDENCE ET CETERA
An SFS Special Issue on Hard SF
SFS is looking for articles suitable for a special issue on on ``Hard Science Fiction.'' Preference will be given to essays concerned with the aesthetic and/or rhetoric of hard SF applied to post-1950 authors and texts, but other topics will be considered and early inquiries welcomed. Proposals should be sent by February 1, 1992, and the essays proper by September 1, 1992, to Professor David N. Samuelson, English Department, California State University, Long Beach, CA 90840.
On the Completeness of Bleiler's Bibliography of Early SF.
In my review in our July issue of Science-Fiction: The Early Years, I noted that no claims were made in its preface or introduction as to completeness and remarked that one puzzling omission was Garret Smith's ``You've Killed Privacy''—puzzling because its omission could hardly have been through oversight. Mr Bleiler has written me that ``In last minute haste to get the book out I forgot to say in the preface that I was not covering the Munsey/ Blue Book/etc. material in toto, but in selection,'' and that ``You've Killed Privacy'' was omitted as ``too similar in idea to Smith's other work.'' I should have recognized and commented on the necessity of some degree of selectivity even in such a massive work, for I had been aware of its presence (though I failed to mention it) in the treatment of H. Rider Haggard: having defined SF as including lost-race romances, Bleiler could have added a number of articles to the five he does include on books by Haggard, but he wisely chose to limit himself to the most representative.—RDM
Errata
Richard Terra has called my attention to an error on pp. 219-20 of our bibliography of English translations of Russian/Soviet SF (SFS #54). The last two titles attributed there to Alexander Khlebnikov (i.e., The King of Time and The Snake Train) are in fact translations of works by the Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922).
Just for the record, there is also an error in the quotation from Triton on page 229 of SFS #52. In the second sentence of that (block) quotation, ``What must pass from System-A to system-B...'' should have read, ``What must pass from system-B to system-A...''
The error in the bibliography was the result of an oversight on my part; the other was a collaborative effort, in effect, between me and Chip Delany.—RMP
A Journal in Reader-Oriented Theory
Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy is a semiannual publication addressing reading, readers, and reader-oriented approaches to texts including literature, visual images, and student writing. Recent titles include the following: ``Women Reading/Reading Women'' and ``Reading the Image.'' Future essays will address such topics as reading early 19th-century American fiction; theories, stories, and conversations of literature; defining the profession by our pracrice of response; and reading Dürer's Melencolia I. Reader is published in the fall and spring at yearly subscription rates of $8.00 for individuals ($10.00 outside the US) and $10.00 for institutions ($12.00 outside the US). Address inquiries to Elizabeth A. Flynn, Editor, Department of Humanities, Michigan Technological University University, Houghton, MI 49931.
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