boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (08/10/84)
> I also really was impressed with Amis' "The Alteration", which is a really > marvelous "Alternative History" book from someone you wouldn't think would > be fooling around with the genre. It really all depends on your point of view. I remember being very surprised when I first found out that Kingsley Amis, a science fiction writer, actually wrote a "modern classic" (LUCKY JIM). This, of course, was in those dark days when a "true scholar" wouldn't touch sf with a ten-foot pole. In addition to writing a critical work on the field, NEW MAPS OF HELL, Amis has written several sf short stories, two full-fledged genre novels, THE GREEN MAN and THE ALTERA- TION, two thrillers with marginal sf elements, COLONEL SUN (the James Bond pas- tiche, under the name Robert Markham) and THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE, and co-edited (with Robert Conquest) the five SPECTRUM anthologies. So, as I said, it all depends on your point of view. Is he a mainstream writer who occasionally "dabbles" in sf, or an sf writer who extends into the mainstream? --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA