James Patrick Kelly

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The Secret History of Science Fiction is the third Tachyon anthology edited by John Kessel and me. It came out in the fall and has been selling fairly well, according to our publisher. But we have taken a lot of flack for it, mostly for the introductory essay. Here's how it starts: In 1998, the Village Voice published an essay by Jonathan Lethem titled “Close Encounters: The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction” which begins with an alternative history in which Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow was voted the 1973 Nebula Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In fact, though Pynchon’s landmark work of postmodern fiction was indeed nominated for the Nebula that year, the award went to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. Lethem called this moment “a tombstone marking the death of the hope that science fiction was about to merge with the mainstream.”

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