Discover Magazine Demonstrates Its Uselessness by “Discovering” Facts About Science Fiction

It remove THREE mass at Discover magazine publisher ( two writer and one “ research worker ” ) to add up up with a list of “ 20 Things You Did n’t Know About Science Fiction . ” The whole package is full of facts YOU likely did n’t know . For instance , there are science fable writers named Ray Bradbury , Philip K. Dick , Isaac Asimov , and Robert Heinlein ( Facts # 5 , # 11 - 12 , # 15 and # 18 - 30 ) . Seven of the 20 facts tell us that ? Yeah , I ’m irrationally pass water about this and I ’m just getting start out .

Who the hell are these people that Discover cartridge clip thinks want to know these allegedly unknown facts ? People who ’ve never take science fable ? In which case , they ’ll be left in ignorance with the ( wrong ) Fact # 2 that Hugo Gernsback invented “ true ” skill fabrication with his pulp magazine — actually , fry , it was Mary Shelley who created the first scientific discipline fable with her sore scientist in Frankenstein about 100 years before our pal Hugo . If they ’re direct at non - SF readers , riddle me this : what non - science fabrication lecturer would care about the fact Heinlein invented the waterbed ( Fact # 14 ) ?

But allow ’s say charitably that they ’re aim at people like me , regular readers of SF who want a little trivia : Should I be startled at the astonishing fact that there is a lot of gender in Heinlein books ( Fact # 15 ) ? Also , will we be crystallise by the plain unknown fact that woman can compose science fable ( but only if they are named James Tiptree — Fact # 9 ) ? Also , gay people can publish SF too ( Fact # 10 ) ! Whoa , no way ! And all this time I thought Ursula Le Guin was a man , and Samuel Delany and Joanna Russ were raving heterosexual .

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And what kind of “ fact ” is it that most science fiction is base on mythology ( Fact # 1 ) ? There ’s deal of hard SF that ’s based purely on scientific venture . Also the THREE writers got so lazy that they actually use the integrality of Fact # 17 to channelise out that PanAm does n’t fly to the moon like it did in 2001 because — wait for it — PanAm close down 17 twelvemonth ago ! Now THERE is a fact about science fiction you probably did n’t know .

Here ’s another one of the awful “ facts ” you ’ll get from Discover : apparently genuine science fable fans do n’t like the epithet “ scifi ” and prefer the abbreviation “ SF ” ( Fact # 6 ) . Um , yeah . There are like ten guys with jumbo beards who have never say anything written past 1960 who care about that distinction . The rest of us just like effective authorship , and we do n’t wish if it ’s label scifi or SF or scientific discipline fiction or risky whoozit or floop or Jimmy Jam Jam . Seriously , people , we ’re not an persecute radical ; we do n’t want a special , microcomputer label for our textual preference , OK ?

But I do n’t want to be too uncharitable . There was actually one utile fact on the list . Apparently Gene Wolfe helped invent the machine that cook Pringles . I did n’t bed that ! Good going , Gene .

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