Quanta is Copyright(c)1994 Daniel K. Appelquist.
From here, you can go to the contents by issue, or go to the Quanta home page.
Looking Ahead
Daniel K. Appelquist
Well, here we are at Quanta number three. After a close brush with death over the winter break, I found myself back at CMU attempting to deal with an overwhelming number of Quanta submissions and subscription requests which had piled up in my mailbox. I'm now proud to say that Quanta is reaching over eight-hundred addresses world-wide (some of which are re-distribution sites).
Speaking of distribution sites, one of the largest is the distribution for the United Kingdom (comprising twenty-seven subscribers). Michael Green had volunteered to take care of this job at around the time that Quanta was first conceptualized. Sadly, he's no longer going to be able to do so. However, the job has been taken over by Lindsay Marshall (lindsay.marshall@uk.ac.newcastle.edu). If you're a subscriber in the United Kingdom, and you'd like to receive back issues or change the status of your subscription, contact Lindsay. For all other matters, contact me directly (such as for submissions or letters to the editor.)
We have three recurring authors this issue, Faye Levine (Dinner at Nestrosa's), Christopher Kempke (Rules of the Game, Going Places) and William Racicot (Infernal Repast). I'm sure you'll enjoy their new works. We have a story by Matthew Sorrels (Quanta Assistant Editor) as well as an article by our other assistant editor, Norman Murray.
I'm very excited about the amount of fiction which is being distributed over the net. Of course, there are magazines such as Athene, Dargonzine, and this one. These seem to be only the beginning of a revolution in net-distributed fiction. The newsgroup alt.prose is a continual source of creativity. We are also seeing entire books posted to newsgroups part by part. Particularly, I'm excited about the amount of Science Fiction being distributed in this manner. Science Fiction and technology have a symbiotic relationship, each feeding off of the other's creations, so I find it especially appropriate that Science Fiction has found such a friendly home on the net.
Jason Snell (Into Grey) has given us an article entitled ``Cyberpunk's a Label Like Any Other'' for this issue. In it, he makes some comments on the categorization of fiction and more specifically the generalization of Science Fiction. In that context, I'd like to devote the rest of this article to that topic. (You may wish to read his article before continuing.)
I think Science Fiction should hold a special place among the realms of fiction because it is different. Science Fiction asks ``What if?'' in a way that no other realm of fiction really does. It is the fiction of ideas, of concepts. It has the unique ability to examine mankind from an extra-terrestrial perspective. Indeed, I would argue that Science Fiction has played a role in humankind's growing concept of itself as a race.
To say that Science Fiction should hold a special place is not to say that it should be set apart from ``conventional'' fiction, however. To a certain extent, the decategorization of Science Fiction has already begun. My own high-school English curriculum included Clarke's _Childhood's End_, Miller's _A Canticle for Liebowitz_ and Burgess's _A Clockwork Orange_. There are Cliff's Notes for Herbert's _Dune_ and for Orwell's _1984_. Of course, the widespread popularity of the latter novel should be some indication of the way in which Science Fiction is slowly being integrated into mainstream. _1984_ is a great novel, and it is most definitely Science Fiction, but if it were written today, would it instantly be praised as a classic?
There's a great deal of new fiction being written in the genre of Science Fiction which deserves just as much adulation as novels such as _1984_ or _A Clockwork Orange_ have received, but this fiction simply hasn't been around long enough. It's only when we gain some historical perspective that we can truly call a work of fiction a work of genius. Perhaps William Gibson's works be taught in the schools of the future.
To sum up, I largely agree with Jason's statements on categorization. It can be a very bad thing. However, I don't think that genres can or should be completely eliminated from fiction. The stigma they can sometimes carry, however, should be.
da1n+@andrew.cmu.edu
Quanta is Copyright(c)1994 Daniel K. Appelquist.
From here, you can go to the contents by issue,
or go to the Quanta home page.