The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction

'''Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction.''' Middletown. CT: Wesleyan UP, 2008. Rev. D. Harlan Wilson, Extrapolation 52.3 (Fall 2011): 392-98, upon which Erlich depends (with e-mail exchange with Csicsery-Ronay and reviewing his Introduction).

The "seven beauties" as listed in the Introduction are "fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade." Under these categories, Csicsery-Ronay deals mostly with written SF in English — mostly well-known works but others as well — and to a large extent cinema. The section on Future History "single[s] out" William "Gibson and [Bruce] Sterling's The Difference Engine (1989) in a subchapter" on "steampunk" (HDW 395). Wilson notes here four paradigms, "Technorevolutionary, Evolutionary. Unified Evolutionary Field, and Techno-Evolutionary" (HDW p. 395): Technorevolutionary: Nature dominated by civilization, associated with utopias. Techno-evolution, according to Wilson, embedding a brief quotation from Csicsery-Ronay, "essentially combines [the … Technorevolutionary] with [the … Evolutionary] showing how '[v]ia evolution, technology has gained its own history analogous to natures' (91)."

The final part of Seven Beauties is on "The Technologiade" which Wilson has as SF "that attempts to colonize the universe via technological aggression" and quotes Csicsery-Ronay as "'the epic of the struggle surrounding the transformation of the cosmos into a technological regime'", seen in "'the expansive space opera and the intensive techno-Robinsonade (217), i.e., works on the model of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719).

CAUTION: The Wilson review misspells "Csicsery" in "Csicsery-Ronay"; Erlich has copied and pasted the name from an e-mail signature, so the spelling here should be correct.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 23, 25Aug18