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The Truth a Poet Can Tell

Monique Roussel is a producer, writer, and sometime radio talk-show panelist on SiriusXM and WBAI 99.5 fm. She holds a master’s in creative writing and English literature from New York University. Her work has appeared in Conclave Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, the Tulane Review, and the Labletter Annual Journal of Art and Literature, among others. She also has work upcoming in Like a Fat Gold Watch, an anthology celebrating the life and work of Sylvia Plath. She is the recipient of a 2010 Conclave Literary Journal Award for Poetry. Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction (2d ed., 1995), is chockablock with mini-essays on around 3,500 books (!). Anyone who isn’t seduced by at least a few dozen of Pringle’s entries should probably seek literary sustenance beyond the fields of sf. The importance of novels notwithstanding, sf authors have always introduced and refined new ideas, themes, and ways of telling stories in shorter forms. Since 1953 readers have voted Hugo awards to fiction they consider the year’s best, and the series of anthologies The Hugo Winners (1962, 1971, 1994, 1997) represent their view of the finest short fiction the field has produced. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a professional organization, began voting the similarly intended Nebula awards in 1966, and annual collections of nominated and Nebula-winning fiction have appeared ever since. To complement these, SFWA members chose the best short stories and novellas published before 1965 and have generated the multivolume Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1971, 1974, 1982, 1986). But the best of all possible ways into sf is to read it in the company of a savvy, lucid expert. In 1970 sf author Robert Silverberg organized a cadre of commentators (mostly, other sf writers) to elucidate thirteen first-rate stories from 1897 through the late 1960s. Silverberg’s The Mirror of Infinity was, for me, a revelation; it changed forever how I thought about sf. In 2010 a worthy successor finally appeared: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (see WLT, Sept. 2011, 68). Editors Arthur B. Evans, Istvan CsicseryRonay Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk provide insights into the nature, history, and reading of sf via commentary on fifty-two exemplary stories. Now that’s a companion to cherish.