Reviewed by Pawel Frelik

Science Fiction Studies 108
July 2009

What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction is a very eclectic collection. Sometimes this phrase is used to convey elegantly a sense of disconnection and haphazardness, but it is not the case here. Although individual essays in the volume have been culled from a variety of sources and almost all were originally published or presented elsewhere (the oldest piece dates back to 1985 and the latest is from 2006), there is a definite coherence at work, not only because of recurrent interests or themes but primarily thanks to the author’s uniform voice.

The book is neatly divided (the division tastefully marked in the text by a repeated table-of-contents page with a “moving” highlight) into six major sections of varying lengths and a seventh extremely short one, the acknowledgments, notes, and bibliography, and the index. The first section, "Theory," comprises only two essays: the eponymous one and “On the Origins of the Genre.” While the latter revisits the familiar ground of the definitional battles, or rather confusions, the titular essay is a wonderful attempt at describing the mechanics of reading science fiction, strongly reminiscent of Tom Shippey’s “Learning to Read Science Fiction,” which it beautifully complements rather than overlaps. The second section, "Practice", builds upon these theoretical musings and covers a wide spectrum of themes. Some of the essays are reviews: of Clute’s and Nicholls’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979), of two hard sf anthologies by Hartwell and Cramer, and of several “Year’s Best” anthologies. On the other hand, “Practice” also features an essay devoted to British sf and one on American Civil War alternate histories.

The third and sixth sections are author studies—Christopher Priest and Gene Wolfe respectively—each comprising four essays. The two longest sections are titled “Britain ...” and “... and the World.” The former features eight pieces: some of those thematic, including “Islomania? Insularity? The Myth of the Island in British Science Fiction”; others are author studies such as “Inside Christopher Evans”; and yet others are work-specific, including the article on Keith Roberts’s The Furies (1966). The global grouping, just as large, is even more eclectic, oscillating among discussions of Joe Haldeman, George Turner, and cyberpunk, on the one hand, and the writers who have exerted various degrees of influence on genre writers or have explored the same preoccupations from outside genre literature on the other—Steve Erickson, Jorge Luis Borges, Steven Millhauser, and Russell Hoban. A short review of the completely non-sf and astoundingly elusive novel, By-Ways on the Shining Path by Carlos Orfila Nunez (the Google search yields all of four results and the bibliography at the end of the volume does not list the text and its publication details), in itself constitutes a separate section cryptically entitled “1 April 1984,” a date that gives one pause—the review in question appeared in 1985 and is the earliest piece in the collection.

As becomes clear from the above, What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction is a diverse collection, which in itself can encourage many readers. As David Langford states in the short introduction, “an sf critic’s best work tends to be scattered haphazardly through space and time” (v). There are, however, two other qualities of this volume that make it a recommended addition to any selfrespecting sf library. The first of those is the range of themes and interests. With very few exceptions, such as Haldeman, Wolfe, or recent sf anthologies, Paul Kincaid covers the ground that most critics avoid—not necessarily because it does not deserve attention or because the writers are secondary and derivative. Given the number of texts published every year (something he alludes to in “A Year At Its Best”) and the number of earlier texts that have never received any critical attention, there is more work to be done than all researchers of the fantastic can humanly hope to accomplish in the foreseeable future. This does not, of course, mean that the umpteenth article on Gibson, Le Guin, or Tolkien is not needed, but very often the attention major writers attract indirectly entails diminished work on other, often equally interesting, writers. Kincaid’s reviewing and speaking interests (a number of the essays originated as conference presentations) clearly veer towards those less written about, such as Robert Holdstock, Christopher Evans, George Turner, or Keith Roberts. Such non-central exploration is even more evident when it comes to the non-genre writers covered—Steven Millhauser’s fiction is virtually unwritten about otherwise and Kincaid has been the only critic consistently writing about the criminally underestimated Steve Erickson (the American author not to be mistaken for Canada’s Steven Erikson). More importantly, in these explorations Kincaid does not merely remind the world that these authors are out there writing—he explores individual issues and engages various surfaces of their fiction.

Style is the other remarkable quality of What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction. One will not find multi-syllable “-isms” and “-ations” here—in fact, many pieces have the casual dynamic and informality of oral presentations, more often than not occasioned by precisely that origin. Clearly, Kincaid does not believe in the deployment of heavy theory as a necessary condition of scholarship, either. Instead, most of the essays are close readings of individual works and authors, at times perhaps leaning towards the formalist school but without any references to it.

This veneer of easy, occasionally chatty, style is very deceptive, though, and even a cursory reading uncovers disciplined and meticulous scholarship combined with a plethora of details and original thinking. Kincaid’s breadth and meticulousness are evident both in close readings of particular motifs, such as the presence of maps and topography in Erickson’s fiction, and wide-ranging overviews, such as the examination of Civil War alternate histories or the comparison of “Year’s Best” anthologies.

What is, however, most important about this collection is the author’s capacity for engaging readers. Good reviews (not that there are many venues that feature them) encourage reading; the same cannot generally be said about academic and literary criticism. Often, a thorough discussion of this or that angle of the text may impress intellectually but not necessarily compel one to go out and purchase the title. Paul Kincaid’s views, opinions, and analyses, no matter how detailed they can be, simply make one want to read the books he writes about. The perfect balance between incisive reading and accessible style results in what all critics—and especially those writing about authors that are not household names—could ultimately aspire to: involving their readers in the texts they are discussing. In this respect Paul Kincaid succeeds on all counts and in all departments.