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START HERE IF YOU KNOW WHAT SUBGENRE CATEGORY YOU LIKE
ALIENS ON EARTH: they came from outer space
ALTERNATE WORLDS: history might have happened differently
ANTIGRAVITY: what goes up may not come down
BAMBI'S CHILDREN: animals who speak, think, or act human
BEAM ME UP: matter transmission, techno-teleportation
BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW: magical world unconnected to ours
CITIES OF THE FUTURE: bigger, better, and more astonishing urban visions
CLONES: stories of genetic engineering, especially of people
CYBER PUNK: 239 gritty near-future tales of hackers and cyberspace
DEFINITIONS: what is science fiction?
DEFINITIONS: what is fantasy?
DYSTOPIA: really, really bad futures (opposite of "Utopia")
ECOLOGY: books, stories, and films about Ecology and Biology
EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION: telepathy, psi, other paths to the mind
FASTER THAN LIGHT: impossibly fast travel, beyond the Einstein barrier
FEMINIST: science fiction and fantasy of, by, or for women
HARD SCIENCE FICTION: based on real science & engineering
HEROIC FANTASY: also known as "Swords & Sorcery"
HORROR: that old black magic, the really scary stuff
IMMORTALITY: Those who live forever, or try to
INVISIBILITY: Mostly about people who can't be seen
LOST LANDS/LOST RACE: neoprimitive place/people discovered
MATHEMATICS: Fantasy and Science Fiction about Mathematics NEW! [5 Feb 04]
MYTHOLOGY: Mythology and Science Fiction or Fantasy about Religion
POLITICS: science fiction about social and political concerns
SEX: science fiction authors who also write erotica
SPACE OPERA: battles between planets and stars
SPACE TRAVEL: rockets to asteroids, moons, planets, stars
SUPERMEN: extra powers make characters more than human
THEOLOGY: Science Fiction or Fantasy about Religion [NEW: 12 Aug 98]
THERE AND BACK AGAIN: leave our world for a more magical one
TIME TRAVEL: time machines, travel to the past or the future: NEW LINKS!
TV and MOVIE: books spun-off from television series or sc-fi films
UNDER THE SEA: submarines, undersea cities, underwater living
UNICORNS IN THE GARDEN: magic events within our mundane world
UTOPIA: Fictional and Nonfictional glimpses of an ideal future
WORLD COMES TO AN END: no more civilization, or people, or worse...
YOU CAN TELL A BOOK BY ITS COVER: science fiction, fantasy, horror

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START HERE IF YOU ONLY REMEMBER WHAT THE BOOK COVER LOOKED LIKE
David Hartwell supplied the quotations here, Your Humble Webmaster did the rest...

"Futuristic Mechanical Devices?" Try HARD SCIENCE FICTION, but it might be a trick to
get you to read any kind of science fiction.
"Humans Against a Futuristic Setting, With or Without Machines?" Try SPACE OPERA,
but it might be some related Adventure science fiction.
"Humans Carrying Swords or Other Anachronistic Weapons?" Try THERE AND BACK AGAIN or
UNICORNS IN THE GARDEN, but it might be any kind of
"fantasy or fantastic adventure against a cardboard or cliched SF background."
"Hypermuscled Males Carrying Big Swords and Adorned with Hyperzaftig
Females, Both Scant-Clad Against a Threatening Monstrous background?"
Almost certainly HEROIC FANTASY, also known as "Swords & Sorcery".
Skulls, Discolored Flesh, Sharp Teeth? Try HORROR: that old black magic, the really scary stuff.
Flying Saucers, Ray Guns, Tentacles, or Bug Eyed Monsters? Try ALIENS ON EARTH:.
Historical Figures in Strange Combinations, Such as Elvis With Hitler,
or Civil War Soldiers Carrying Machine Guns? Try ALTERNATE WORLDS.
Cute Furry Animals, No Humans? Try BAMBI'S CHILDREN.
Exotic Flowery Landscape, Perhaps with Castles? Try BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW.
Futuristic Buildings, Weirdly Dressed People Looking Scared or Furtive?
Try CYBER PUNK, DYSTOPIA, or CITIES OF THE FUTURE.
Several Identical People, or Emphasis on Glowing Eyes?
Try CLONES or EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION.

Definitions of "Science Fiction"

And what do we even mean by "science fiction" anyway? In one sense, the
first article to define the field was published over 150 years ago, before
the field was widely ackonwledged to exist:

New Species of Literature

"We learn that Mr. R. A. Locke, the ingenious author of the late
'Moon Story' or 'Astronomical Hoax,' is putting on the stocks the
frame of a new novel on a subject similar to that of his recent able
invention in astronomy.... His style is nearly as original as his
conception. It is ornamented and highly imaginative. He may be said
to be the inventor of an entirely new species of literature, which we
may call the 'scientific novel'.... We have had crowds of 'fashionable
novels'; but fictitious history, founded on the discoveries and
scientific hypotheses of the day has seldom been attempted until
Mr.Locke did so. In fact, Mr.Locke has opened a new vein, as
original, as curious, as beautiful, as any of the greatest geniuses
who ever wrote. He looks forward into futurity, and adapts his
characters to the light of science." [New York Herald, 5 September 1835]

Two websites of definitions are:

Definitions of "Science Fiction" @panix.com
Definitions of "Science Fiction" @webco.com

Some particularly good definitions are:

"By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe
type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific
fact and prophetic vision."
-- Hugo Gernsback, in "Amazing Stories" (April 1926)
"Science Fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that
it eases the 'willing suspension of disbelief' on the part of its readers
by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative
speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and
philosophy."
-- Sam Moskowitz, in "Explorers of the Infinite" (1963)
"We might try to define science fiction in this broader sense as
fiction based upon scientific or pseudo-scientific assumptions
(space-travel, robots, telepathy, earthly immortality, and so forth) or
laid in any patently unreal though non-supernatural setting (the future,
or another world, and so forth)."
-- L. Sprague de Camp, in "Science Fiction Handbook" (1953)
"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a
human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all
without its speculative scientific content."
-- Theodore Sturgeon, as amended by Damon Knight, in "A Century of
Science Fiction" (1962)
"Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with
the impact of scientific advance upon human beings."
-- Isaac Asimov, in "Modern Science Fiction", edited by
Reginald Bretnor (1953)
"Science fiction is that branch of literature wthat deals with human
responses to changes in the level of science and technology."
-- Isaac Asimov, in "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" (Mar-Apr 1978)
"Science fiction is that class of prose narrative wtreating of a
situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is
hypothesized on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or
pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extraterrestrial in
origin."
-- Kingsley Amis, in "New Maps of Hell" (1961)
"Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status
in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of
knowledge (science), and is cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould."
-- Brian W. Aldiss, in "Billion Year Spree" (1973)
"A literary genre developed principally in the 20th Century, dealing
with scientific discovery or development that, whether set in the future,
or the fictitious present, or in the putative past, is superior to or
simply other than that known to exist."
-- Fred Saberhagen, in "Encyclopedia Britannica" 15th edition (1979)
"The branch of fiction that deals with the possible effects of an
altered technology or social system on mankind in an imagined future, an
altered present, or an alternative past."
-- Barry M. Malzberg, in "Collier's Encyclopedia" (1981)
"Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with
plausible impossibilities."
-- Miriam Allen deFord, in "Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow" (1971)
"A piece of science fiction is a narrative of an imaginary invention or
discovery in the natural sciences and consequent adventures and
experience."
-- J. O. Bailey, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.256, ed. Malcolm Edwards &
Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"[Fiction] in which the author shows awareness of the nature and
importance of the human activity known as the scientific method, and shows
equal awareness of the great body of knowledge already collected through
that activity, and takes into account in his stories the effect and
possible future effects on human beings of scientific methods and
scientific fact."
-- Reginald Bretnor, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards &
Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its
application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers."
-- John Clute & Peter Nichols, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read:
realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on
adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough
understanding of the scientific method. To make the definition cover all
science fiction (instead of 'almost all') it is necessary only to strike
out the word 'future'."
-- Robert Heinlein, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"Speculative fiction: stories whose objective is to explore, to
discover, to learn, by means of projection, extrapolation,
analogue, hypothesis-and-paper-experimentation, something about the
nature of the universe, of man, of 'reality'."
-- Judith Merrill, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"It is that thing that people who understand science fiction point to,
when they point to something and say 'That's science fiction!"
-- Frederik Pohl, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of
change and it changes while you are trying to define it."
-- Tom Shippey, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.258,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make
pragmatic sense: 'Science fiction is anything published as science fiction'."
-- Norman Spinrad, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"A literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the
presence and interaction of estrangement and congnition, and whose main
formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's
empirical environment."
-- Darko Suvin, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.258,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982);
this is a particularly often-cited definition in the academic study of
science fiction
"Science fiction is that branch of fantasy which, while not true of
present-day knowledge, is rendered plausible by the reader's recognition of
the scientific possibilities of it being possible at some future date or
at some uncertain period in the past."
-- Donald A. Wollheim, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.258,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
"Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its
application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers."
-- John Clute & Peter Nichols, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
xxxx, in "yyyy" (19zz)

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Definitions of "Fantasy"

And what do we even mean by "Fantasy" anyway?

First of all, we distinguish between "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" in
that "Science Fiction", as defined elsewhere in this page (DEFINITIONS:
what is science fiction?) involves strangeness extrapolated from
science and technology, rather than contrary to natural law.
Fantasy, according to Callois, presumes the unbreakable laws of
nature, as anlyzed by human reason, to be un-naturally or uncannily
violated. "It should be particularly stressed that the fantastic
makes no sense in an out-and-out strange world. To imagine the
fantastic in it is even impossible. In a world full of marvels the
extraordinary loses its power."
-- Roger Callois, "Au couer du fantastique" (Paris: 1965);
"Images, images... Essais sur le role et les pouvoirs de l'imagination"
(Paris: 1966)
"The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of
the inadmissable within the changeless everyday legality."
-- Roger Callois, "Au couer du fantastique" (1965); "Images, images" (1966)
To Callois, the presence of a unicorn in a garden, or something else strange
into the familiar world, causes "the impression of irreducible strangeness."
The fantastic in literature doesn't exist as a challenge to what is
probable, but only there where it can be increased to a challenge of
reason itself: the fantastic in literature consists, when all has
been said, essentially in showing the world as opaque, as
inaccessible to reason on principle. This happens when [the artist] Piranesi
in his imagine prisons [Carceri] depicts a world peopled by other
beings than those for which it was created."
-- Lars Gustafsson "On the Fantastic in Literature", in "Utopier och
andra essaer om 'dikt' och 'Liv'", [Stockholm: 1969]
Alternatively, the fantastic is in the text itself, and depends upon the degree to
which the characters in the story are themselves in doubt as to
whether they have experienced the supernatural, or merely an illusion
of their imaginations: "The fantastic occupies the duration of this
uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the
fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvellous. The
fantastic is the hesitation experienced by a person who knows only
the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event."
-- Tzvetan Todorov, in "The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a
Literary Genre", translated by Richard Howard, Ithaca NY: 1975, p.25
"A fiction evoking wonder and containing a substantial and irreducible
element of supernatural or impossible worlds, beings, or objects with
which the reader or the characters within the story become on at
least familiar terms."
-- C. N. Manlove, "Modern Fantasy: Five Studies", London: 1975, pp.10-11
"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or
even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for,
nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary:
the keener and clearer is the reason, the better fantasy it will
make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know
or could not perceive the truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy
would languish until they were cured. If they ever got into that
state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and
become Morbid Delusion."
-- J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", in "Tree and Leaf", [London:
1964, New York: 1965]
{to be done}
xxxxxxxx

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ALIENS ON EARTH: they came from outer space

The actual title "Aliens on Earth" was first used by John Tayne, as a
nonfiction article, in "Authentic Science Fiction" #55, March 1955 -- but
this subgenre has long been a popular one.

Arguably the first novel of aliens visiting Earth was "Micromegas", by
Voltaire (1750). A giant from Sirius and a giant from Saturn come to our
home planet, make satirical obervations, and humble our puny philosphy and
mental capacity.

Peter Nichols, in "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction," asserts that the
first story of hostile aliens invading Earth was "The Germ Growers", by
the Australian clergyman Robert Potter (1892). It wasn't until 6 years
later that H. G. Wells published the vastly more popular and influential
"The War of the Worlds."

ALIENS: list of 32 movies/TV movies with Aliens, last updated 2 March 1997

Some recommended books on Aliens on Earth include, by order of publication:

"Auf Zwei Planeten", by Kurd Lasswitz (1897)
Perhaps the first modern science fiction novel to describe first contact
between human and ET, with some concern for linguistic problems, was "Two
Planets" by Kurd Lasswitz, published in German in 1897 ["Two Planets",
Kurd Lasswitz, published in German under the original title "Auf Zwei
Planeten", Lepzig: Verlag B. Elischer Nachfolger, 1897; translated in English
Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1971]
The human protagonists (Saltner and Grunthe) meet Martians ("Nume") who
have colonized Earth's North and South Poles. The Martians look very
human, and Saltner saves and falls in love with the female Martian "La."
Lasswitz' "Two Planets"
"The War of the Worlds", by H. G. Wells (1898)
"The Puppet Masters", by Robert A. Heinlein (1951)
"The Day of the Triffids", by John Wyndham (1951)
"Invaders of Earth", by Groff Conklin [editor] (1952)
(New York: Vanguard) Theme anthology of 22 aliens-on-Earth stories
(from late 1940s and early 1950s)
"Childhood's End", by Arthur C. Clarke (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1953)
In the classic novel Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke outlines a race
of beings superior to human beings, who effortlessly communicate with us,
but achieve their mysterious goals by educating human children to attain
super-human powers, until our children's behavior passes beyond that of
human and alien alike. On the same theme, Arthur C. Clarke's book
2001, and the film made in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick,
involve human-ET communication which results in one man transcending human
limits and human understanding.
The inverse of this occurs in the short story "The Children's Hour96" by
Kuttner and Moore, in which the apparently adult ET with whom the
protagonist falls in love is in fact a superchild:
A child can't completely comprehend an adult. But a child can more or
less understand another child--which is reduced to the same equation as
his own, or at least the same common denominator. A superman would have
to grow. He wouldn't start out mature...
Similarly, Ted Sturgeon's story "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff97"
has ETs on the verge of destroying the human race until they have fun with
a child, and understand us at last:
Throughout the continuum as we know it (and a good deal more as we
don't know it) there are cultures that fly
and cultures that swim; there are boron folk and
fluorine fellowships, cupro-copraphages and
(roughly speaking) immaterial lifeforms which swim and
swirl around each other in space like so many pelagic
shards of metaphysics. And some organize into super-
entities like a beehive or a slime-mold so that they
live plurally to become singular, and some have even
more singular ideas of plurality.... Prognosis [for
Earth] Positive. Their young are delightful.
"Shadows in the Sun", by Chad Oliver (1954)
(New York: Ballentine) Small town in Texas
is covert base of super-society of interstellar origin; man
who finds out must prepare humanity for galactic UN
membership; uses author's expertise as Anthropologist
"A Mirror for Observers", by Edgar Pangborn (1954)
(Garden City NY: Doubleday) Martians covertly on Earth plant the
seeds of moral enlightenment; philosophical examination of what it
means for a man to be "good"; I see this as a science
fictional equivalent of C. S. Lewis' theological fantasy
"The Screwtape Letters." Winner of 1954 International Fantasy Award.
"The Black Cloud", by Fred Hoyle (London: Heinemann, 1957;
New York: Harper, 1957)
A particularly important novel that almost makes it into this subgenre
(the alien comes between Sun and Earth, not strickly to Earth) is
"The Black Cloud", by prominent Astronomer-Author Sir Fred Hoyle. He
explores the communications problems between humans and a very intelligent
and powerful, but very alien, creature made up of organic life distributed
on particles within an ultra-cold "molecular cloud" in space. This novel
also lays out (for the 1950s) a good summary of the kind of logistics
needed to assemble and support a Science Team.
"The Wanderer", by Fritz Leiber (New York: Ballantine, 1964)
"The Wanderer" by Fritz Leiber is also a detailed and thoughtful
examination of First Contact, in which a planet-sized UFO (The Wanderer)
pulverizes our Moon for fuel and raises deadly tides on Earth. "Then a
voice, strangely sweet and cajoling, called to him [astronaut Don Merriam]
in only slightly slurred English: 'Come! Unsuit yourself and come down!'"
[p.138]. The felinoid ET Tigerishka is offended that humans keep cats as
pets, and on meeting her, Merriam ponders "It was unreasonable to think of
an alien being being able to speak English without any preliminary
parleying. Or was it?" [p.143].
It turns out that these ETs are telepathic, and disdain humans:
"Monkeys! Cowardly, chattering, swarming -- no individuality, no
flair!... We think he smells. Makes smells with his mind, too" [p.170].
They have a fabulous technology, though: "I come superior galactic
culture. Read minds, throw thoughts, sail hyperspace, live forever if
want, blow up suns, all that sort stuff. Look like animal -- resume
ancestral shapes. Make brain small but really large
(psychophysiosubmicrominiaturization)! We stay superior. You not
believe?" [pp.192-3].
The story then gives an explanation for why we haven't seen ETs before,
despite their being prevalent:
"Because mankind is young, you think the universe is, too.
But it is old, old, old.... You think that space is empty,
but it's full. Your own solar system is one of the few
primeval spots left, like a small, weed-grown lot overlooked
by builders in the heart of a vast but ancient city that has
overgrown all the countryside.... There is the drama of
meeting other life forms -- shocks, moments of poignent
wonder.... The universe is full.... Intelligent life is
everywhere, its planets darkening the stars" [pp.255-256].
"Nightwings", by Robert Silverberg (1969)
"Contact", by Carl Sagan (1985) [Contact, Carl Sagan, New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1985; grown out of a film treatment by
Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, assisted by Gentry Lee & Lynda Obst]
"Contact" by Carl Sagan was a remarkable first novel by the
well-known scientist and author. It tells of signals being received from
near the star Vega, consisting initially of "the first few hundred prime
numbers in order," consistent with our "Rosetta Stone" theory of
mathematics in common. The aliens also send a copy of the 1936 Berlin
Olympic Games TV broadcast, and an enormous encrypted "Message" which
turns out to be blueprints and assembly instructions for a space-warp
spaceship to carry a five-human crew to the center of the galaxy, so that
superior aliens can gather our "feelings, memories, instincts, learned
behaviors, insights, madness, dreams, love" for a sort of "Office of the
Galactic Census."

For an entire book on how to communicate with extraterrestrials, click on:
How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial

Weinbaum's "Martian Odyssey"
The first time this idea was explored in science fiction was in 1934,
when chemical engineer Stanley Weinbaum's story "A Martian Odyssey"
["A Martian Odyssey," Stanley G. Weinbaum, Wonder Stories, July 1934]
introduced a fascinatingly different alien named Tweel, who, for the first
time in literature, was as smart as a human but did not think remotely
like a human. This birdlike Martian, who jumped into the air and landed
on his beak as a mode of travel, was able to learn the human protagonist's
name, and the human learn his name, but then their communications bogged
down in mutual incomprehension: "I couldn't get the hang of his talk.
Either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't think alike--and I
rather believe the latter view."
Weinbaum then solved the problem in a way that forms the basis of our
Handbook:
"After a while I gave up the language business, and
tried mathematics. I scratched two plus two equals four
on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles. Again
Tweel caught the idea, and informed me that three plus
three equals six."
This first step -- communicating about elementary arithmetic, and then
working up to more and more advanced mathematics -- is the recommended
technique, as many scientists today agree.

2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke, New York: New American
Library, 1968;
Stanley Kubrick's 1968 MGM film

Leinster's "First Contact"
Another classic story of human-ET communications, indeed the one that
gave the name to this whole genre of fiction, was "First Contact" by
Murray Leinster in 1945 ["First Contact," Murray Leinster (pseudonym of
W.F. Jenkins), Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945]. A human-crewed spaceship
and an alien-crewed spaceship encounter each other thousands of light years away,
in the Crab Nebula. They communicate by radio, again beginning with mathematics,
and accumulate a vocabulary of words that they can both agree upon. They find
that they, broadly speaking, think in the same way. Unfortunately, that
means that they both realize that if either of them returned to their home
planet, the other might follow and begin an interstellar war.

"I'd like to say," said the skipper heavily,
"the appropriate things about this first
contact of two dissimilar civilized races, and of my
hopes that a friendly intercourse between the two
peoples will result."
Tommy Dort, the radio operator, sends this message, and receives a
response from the ET captain:
"He says, sir, 'That is all very well, but is there any
way for us to let each other go home alive? I would be
happy to hear of such a way if you can contrive one.
At the moment it seems to me that one of us must be
killed.'"
Rather than destroy each other on the spot, they have a clever idea:
"Swap ships!.... We can fix our instruments so they'll
do no trailing, and he can do the same with his.
We'll each remove our star maps and records. We'll each
dismantle our weapons. The air will serve, and we'll
take their ship and they'll take ours, and neither one
can harm or trail the other, and each will carry home
more information than can be taken otherwise."
They communicate so well that, by the end of the story, they are telling
each other dirty jokes!

Piper's "Omnilingual"
Further confirmation of our basic strategy was intelligently presented in
the story "Omnilingual" by H. Beam Piper in 1957.
["Omnilingual", H. Beam Piper, Astounding Science Fiction, February 1957].
Human archeologists on an alien planet try to understand a vanished
civilization. They succeed, based on the discovery of an alien "Rosetta Stone"
which permits translation of the alien language. The key to recognition of
shared knowledge is the Periodic Table of the Elements. Both humans and ETs have
found the same inevitable pattern of the elements Hydrogen, Helium,
Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and so forth. From
that pattern, on the "Rosetta Stone," the alien arithmetic and technology
become quickly able to be decoded.

Katherine MacLean's "Pictures Don't Lie"
["Pictures Don't Lie," Katherine MacLean, Galaxy Science Fiction, August
1951; reprinted in The Diploids, New York: Avon, 1962]

other fiction on the subject:

Dec 1934 Raymond Z. Gallun's "Old Faithful" in "Astounding", a famous
story of a Martian astronomer who travels to Earth, a fatal trip but one
that fulfills him with the joy of finally being able to study humans close
up.

Delany's "Babel-17"
"Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delany [New York: Ace, 1968] is another novel which
about communication with extraterrestrials. This complex study of alien
language is strongly based on Delany's careful study of Semiotic and linguistic
theory.

Vance's "Languages of Pao" and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Another essential idea is fictionally explored in "The Language of Pao"
by Jack Vance [The Language of Pao, Jack Vance, Satellite Science Fiction,
December 1957].

Lem's "Solaris"
"Solaris" by Polish author Stanislaw Lem [Solaris, Stanislaw Lem, 1961;
translation London: Faber, 1970] was made into an outstanding
film [Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, xxxx, yyyy] which some critics
praised and others found impossible to understand.
An entire ocean planet seems to be a single alien lifeform,
with intelligence and power so far beyond the human level that our
scientists are absolutely incapable of comprehending it. "We think of
ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact," says the scientist
character Snow. Eventually, after a century of study is reviewed, the
character Giese concludes "no semantic system is as yet available to
illustrate the behavior of the ocean."

Pohl's JEM
Frederik Pohl, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, wrote expertly about communication with ETs in his novel
JEM.
["JEM", Frederik Pohl, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978; New York Baen, 1994].

Moffitt's "Jupiter Theft"
In Donald Moffitt's fine novel "The Jupiter Theft"
[The Jupiter Theft, Donald Moffitt, New York: Del Rey, 1977
we have a closer examination of the notion that ET language may be
musical in nature.

Clement's "Mission of Gravity"
"Mission of Gravity" [Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement, Garden City NJ:
Doubleday, 1954] has one of the most vividly rendered alien planets
with ETs ever written.

White's "All Judgment Fled"
The book "All Judgment Fled", by James White, [All Judgment Fled,
James White, New York: Walker, 1969] is a novel of first contact
by human astronauts who board an extraterrestrial spaceship which has
entered the solar system, and is in orbit near Jupiter.

Farmer's "Mother"
Philip Jos� Farmer's famous short story "Mother"
["Mother", Philip Jos� Farmer, Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1953,
reprinted in Strange Relations, Philip Jos� Farmer, New York: Avon, 1974]
has a notoriously Oedipal relationship between human and alien.

Oliver's "Unearthly Neighbors"
Chad Oliver, an Anthropologist, wrote particularly plausible novels of
First Contact -- a term, after all, which originated in the field of
Anthropology. The first of his masterpieces. "Unearthly Neighbors"
["Unearthly Neighbors", Chad Oliver, New York: Ballentine, 1960; revised
(first hardcover) edition, New York: Crown, 1984] in 1960 later had a sequel,
"The Shores of Another Sea."

{to be done}

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ALTERNATE WORLDS: history might have happened differently

The "Alternate History" or "Allohistory" novels are those in which some one
moment in time produced an event different from what we know in our
history, and things went off in a different track ever since. Other terms
for this popular genre include: "counterfactuals", "uchronias", and
"what-ifs."

Benjamin Disraeli's "The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, and the Rise of Iskander" [1833]
is about a Jew who founds a global empire in 12th Century Baghdad, after which
history takes on a different flavor. This novelist/Prime Minister can be
assumed to have had a profound understanding of History and how it might
have been different... since he was, of course, himself Jewish.

Edmund Lawrence may have invented the modern form of this genre in 1899 with
his novel "It May Happen Yet", where Napoleon invaded Great Britain. Others cite
Castello Holford's novel "Aristopia: A Romance-History of the New World"
(1895) or the French Louis-Napoleon Geoffroy-Chateu's "Napoleon et la
conquete du monde: 1812-1823, Histoire de la Monarchie Universelle."

In 1907, the historian/essayist G. M. Trevelyan published a nominally
nonfictional article about what might have happened if Napoleon had won at
Waterloo. Had he read Edmund Lawrence's 1899 novel "It May Happen Yet"?
Alfred Toynbee, in his "A Study of History" tried the same sort of academic
experiments in allohistory.

One of the most common sub-subgenres involve World War II having been won by
the Axis (as in Philip K. Dick's 1962 masterpiece "The Man in the High Castle")
or the American Civil War having been won by the South ("Guns of the South") by
Harry Turtledove.

Some other splendid examples are:

"P.'s Correspondance", by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1845),
the earliest such short story?
"Of a History of Events Which Have Not Happened", by Isaac Disraeli (1849)
"The Blind Spot" by Homer Eon Flint and A. Hall [originally serialized in
Argosy All-Story Weekly, starting 14 May 1921; New York: Ace, 1964??]
"The most famous fantastic novel of all time. Fabulous!"
-- Forrest J. Ackerman
Ace blurb: "The Blind Spot is surely the great classic novel of
parallel worlds.
It is one of the most enthralling science-fiction books ever
written. At once a fantasy adventure, an exceptional mystery,
it is a new concept that touches the very framework of reality.
What was 'The Blind Spot?' A room in San Francisco where
strange things happened -- or a doorway into another cosmos, a
different world, or perhaps the key to past or future?
The fantastic events that follow from its deceptively simple
opening are the sort of stuff from which Charles Fort wove his
world-shaking books and A. Merritt wrought fabulous novels. 'The
Blind Spot' is an experience in science-fiction imagination not
to be missed."
"If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History",
edited by J. C. Squires, London: Longmans Green (1931) which included
"If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg", by Winston Churchill (1931), short story
"If Booth Had Missed: A Drama of the Reconstruction Period",
by Arthur Goodman (1932),
"Ancestral Voices", by Nat Schachner (1933),
flawed time-travel change-the-past story, in which the accidental
consequence is the passage into never-beingness of tens of thousands
of descendants of one killed ancestor
"Sideways in Time", by Murray Leinster (1934),
gives a four-dimensional view of alternate timelines, and a
protagonist who switches from one to another, some in which humans
never evolved. The breakthrough into explicitly science-fictional
allohistory.
"The Curfew Tolls", by Stephen Vincent Benet (1935)
"If the South Had Won the War", by Virginia Dabney (1936)
"Victoire a Waterloo", by Robert Aron (1937)
"Lest Darkness Fall", by L. Sprague de Camp, in "Unknown" (1939),
6th Century time traveler tries to forestall the Dark Ages
"The Wheels of If", by L. Sprague de Camp, in "Unknown" (1940),
10th Century Norsemen colonize America
"Horsesense Hank in the Parallel Worlds" by Nelson S. Bond [Amazing, Aug 1942]
"Police Operation" by H. Beam Piper, in "Astounding" (July 1948), starting a
series of stories about an infinity of alternate time-lines in "paratime"
"The Sound of His Horn", by "Sarban" (1952), Germany wins WW II
"Bring the Jubilee", by Ward Moore (1953), South beats North in America
"The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick (1962),
Germany and Japan conquer and split the U.S.
"Pavane", by Keith Roberts (1966), Spanish Armada beats England,
Queen Elizabeth assassinated
"Moon of Ice", by Brad Linaweaver (1968), Nazis won WWII
"The Alteration", by Kingsley Amis (1976), Spanish Armada beats England,
no Reformation
"The Anubis Gates", by Tim Powers (1983), Victorian London a nexus of evil
"West of Eden", by Harry Harrison (1984), Dinosaurs survived, two sequels
"A Different Flesh", by Harry Turtledove (1988), non-extinct non-homo-sapiens hominids
"The Difference Engine", by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling (1990),
Charles Babbage completed computer, English Empire automated
"A Troubling Along the Border", by Donald Aamodt [AvoNova, Dec 1991]
sword & sorcery humor, sequel to "A Name to Conjure With" [Avon, Aug 1989],
"Fatherland", by Robert Harris (1992), Nazis won WWII
"Pasquale's Angel", by Paul McAuley (1994), da Vinci sparks Industrial Revolution
"Pathways to Otherwhere", by James P. Hogan (1997): introduction
and hotlinks to novel chapters
"The Dog King", by Christoph Ransmayr (1997), America thoroughly
deindustrializes Germany after WWII, war in Japan ends in 1965
reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, 22 June 1997, by
Gabriele Annan

Perhaps the first website you should look at, specializing in this genre:
Jim Rittenhouse's Alternate History

and a fascinating inside look by a professional science fiction author:
Stephen Baxter's "Branches in Time:
Alternate Histories Are True SF"

Fairly thorough search results, including anthologies, references, and
listings by author may be found in:
The 'Net Alternate History List
by Robert B. Schmunk

also check out:
Chris Blakely's Alternate Histories

and
Chris Palmer's Alternate Histories

and
Dan Goodman's Alternate Histories

and
David Johnson's Alternate Histories @ Geocities
Evelyn C. Leeper's Alternate Histories @ Geocities

and
Eric Dunkleberger's Alternate Histories
{to be done}

A definition that seems to take allohistory into account is:
"A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read:
realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on
adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough
understanding of the scientific method. To make the definition cover all
science fiction (instead of 'almost all') it is necessary only to strike
out the word 'future'."
-- Robert Heinlein, in "The SF Book of Lists", p.257,
ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)

There is a scientific basis for such speculations, namely the "Many Worlds"
interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. The notion is that each time a
subatomic particle can one of several things, it actually does all them,
splitting the universe into multiple copies which differ only in that one
micro-event. The universe splits, splits again, and ramifies into an
astonishing tree of alternative realities, a quintillion times a second.
This theory was developed by Hugh Everett in 1957, but he had philosophical
predecessors.

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake (1600 A.D.) for suggesting that there
were an infinite number of worlds in the universe, and that any possible
world must thus exist. What really got him in trouble was his specific
example that there must be a world identical to ours, except that the Mass
was spoken in the vernacular instead of in Latin. Small differences can
be a matter of life or death.

Rudjer Josip Boscovich [1711-1787] gave a qualitative description of
alternate universe theory in "Theoria Philsophiae Naturalis" [1758]. See
"New Scientist", 24 May 1997, p.53 for a letter to the editor summarizing
Boscovich's idea. Each possible universe is a single point in a much
larger (infinite?) superubiverse, which is itself a single point in an an
even larger super-super-universe...

There is some evidence (see the Doug Jones and James Hogan sites hotlinked
below) that a majority of informed physicists actually believe the Hugh Everett
"Many Worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but won't tell the
public because it just sounds too weird. Well, we Science Fiction folks
can handle the idea!

For more on the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,
particularly as it related to consciousness, extraterrestrials, philosphy,
and immortality, see:

Are We Alone? Doug Jones'
fascinating and unique metaphysical inquiry, presented as a socratic
dialogue between himself and an on-line alien, with hotlinks (and
which is the source of the hotlinks listed below)

Many Worlds FAQ

Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Doug Jones

Quantum Indeterminacy:
is it possible that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is
due to uncertainty as to which alternate universe we're in?

Quantum Future Physics

Omega Point Theory:
comments on Frank Tipler's theory that everyone who ever
lived will be resurrected at the end of the universe, according to Physics

Stapp's Quantum Theory of Consciousness, Part 2

Ontology:
summary, references, and hotlinks relating to Ontology, the Philosphy
of the nature of Being, similar to Metaphysics, i.e. the Theory of
The Multiverse as a whole, whether Realist or Nominalist in nature

Metascience, or
Science and Spirituality

Metatechnology

James P. Hogan's "Pathways to Otherwhere": introduction
and hotlinks to novel chapters

Alternate View Column #16: by Prof. John Cramer?

Alcor's Page on Many-Worlds, Immortality, and Cryonics

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ANTIGRAVITY: what goes up may not come down

"We may learn to deprive large masses of their gravity,
and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport."
-- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Joseph Priestley, 8 February 1780

Cyrano de Bergerac, in "A Voyage to the Moon" (1650) had the protagonist
devise several ways to reach Luna. One involved building an iron vehicle,
then throwing a lodestone (natural magnet) into the air, which pulls the
vehicle upwards, at which point the adventurer throws the lodestone higher,
and thereby hoists himself up by his own bootstraps.

This was adapted by Jonathan Swift for his floating Island of Laputa, in
"Gulliver's Travels."

In 1827, the novel "A Voyage to the Moone" was published in New York by
George Tucker, under the pseudonym "Joseph Atterly." The spaceship is
coated with an antigravity chemical, similar to the "Cavorite" used by
H. G. Wells in "The First Men in the Moon" (1901), almost three-quarters of a
century later.

John Ames Mitchell's "Drowsy" (1917) is one of several novels which link
antigravity to the discovery of an ultimate source of energy.

The field has developed considerably, since Albert Einstein's General
Theory of Relativity has changed our concept of gravity far beyond the
Universal Law of Gravitation by Isaac Newton.

All we need to build a working antigravity machine, according to
Einstein's theory, is to make a hollow donut shape with a cross-section
about the size of a football field, and fill it with a few trillion tons of
neutronium circulating at a good fraction of the speed of light. The
"frame dragging" effect of General Relativity would reduce gravity in the
donut's hole to zero, or a little bit less...

We have built actual Gravity Wave detectors, perhaps the
first of which was constructed by Dr. Robert Forward, now a full-time
science fiction author. We believe that gravity has caused
the existence of "Black Holes", which I tend to lump into this category.

According to Sam Moskowitz, in "Fantasy Commentator", Vol.VIII, No.4, Fall
1995, p.281, "Willy Ley had an article in the third (1939) issue of the
British professional magazine Fantasy titled
"Impossibilities.' Among those he included anti-gravity devices. As a
follow-up to this, The Satellite for February 1940 carried
an article by George Medhurst loquaciously titled 'The Life Story,
Together with Some Account of the Reputed Death, of the Anti-Gravitational
Screen." This reviewed devices authors had employed to defeat gravity,
starting with Francis Godwin's 'The Man in the Moone' (1638) and citing
worls by Cyrano de Bergerac (1657), Joseph Atterly (1827), Achille Eyraud
(1864), Chrystotum Trueman (1864) and modern authors. For that time in
fan history, it was an impressive effort."

Some antigravity theories (in science and fiction) relate to FASTER THAN LIGHT.

There have been some recent reports of purported antigravity in the
laboratory, including...

Antigravity hotlinks
Antigravity Research Website
Antigravity, Contragravity: Mainstream and Fringe Websites

{to be done}

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BAMBI'S CHILDREN: animals who speak, think, or act human

[Revised: 4 July 1998]

Felix Salten actually used this title for the sequel to his better-known
"Bambi." This is (as Baird Searles, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin point out
["A Reader's Guide to Fantasy", New York: Avon, 1982] a fine description
of tales in which animals speak, think, or act human.

Hugh Lofting's "Dr. Dolittle" stories are so captivatingly charming and yet
realistic that they make us forget that talking animals are Fantasy. Some
such tales are designed to show how humans fit into a world that contains
many more species of beings, all deserving our compassion. Other stories
are designed to make people look bad by comparison. Still others scarcely
have people in the background, and are self-contained stories from the
point of view of creatures with somewhat different perceptions and social
structures.

Aesop's Fables are based directly or indirectly on Greek tradition. It is
said that Soctrates, on "death row" in 399 B.C. whiled away his time
turning Aesop stories into verse. Herodotus records that Aesop was a
slave who lived around 550 B.C., probably not Greek, possibly from Sardis
(in asia). The moralized beast tale associated with Aesop is common
worldwide, surely not his invention, typical of 7th century B.C. Greek
poetry and the oldest parts of the Old Testament. Still, we are stuck
with his name when we discuss "Bambi's Children."

Similarly, Jean de La Fontaine's "Fables in Verse" (1668) comes to mind
through classics such as "The Grasshopper and the Ant" or "The Fox and the
Cheese." His Fables were turned, by demanding readers and moneyed
publishers, into a trilogy, with volume II in 1679 and Volume III in
1693. Few today recall his prose works ("Contes") of the genre of
Boccacchio and Marguerite de Navarre, yet they were the works he cared for
most.

There are many novels and stories about intelligent animals, either as
straight fantasy, or (if science fiction), often
resulting from genetic engineering:

Apes
* Pierre Boulle's novel Monkey Planet, later
adapted into the "Planet of the Apes" films
* Richard Cowper's novel Clone
* Peter van Greenaway's novel Manrissa Man
* James Fenimore Cooper's 1835 novel: "The Monikins" (monkey society near the North Pole)
Birds
* Dick King-Smith, pseudonym of Ronald Gordon King-Smith (1922- ):
novel Godhanger [Doubleday UK, Sep 1996] ISBN 0-385-40778-5,
�9.99, 172pp, hardcover, Young Adult Animal Fantasy/Bird
[Corgi, Oct 1997] ISBN 0-552-54501-5, �3.99, 172pp, paperback
Bears
* Richard Adams' novel Shardik (Macmillan, 1975; Avon)
Cats
* Fritz Leiber's story "Space-Time for Springers",
and his novel The Wanderer
* Cordwainer Smith's story "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", part of
his "Instrumentality of Man" series in which various animals
have been raised to human intelligence, and fight for civil
rights millennia from now.
* Gabriel King's The Wild Road
[Century, Nov 1997] ISBN 0-7126-7870-0, �16.99, hardcover
[Arrow, Nov 1997] ISBN 0-09-924252-4, �5.99, 463pp, paperback
kitten must rescue the Queen and King of Cats
* Robert Lawson's (1892-1957) Captain Kidd's Cat [1956]
cat sidekick of pirate captain
Dogs
* Harlan Ellison's novel A Boy and His Dog, later
adapted into a very fine and faithful film
* Clifford Simak's novel City
* Olaf Stapledon's novel Sirius, as mentioned
in the thumbnail description of "Man's Best Friend")
Dolphins or Whales
* Arthur C. Clarke's novel Dolphin Island
* Robert Merle's novel Day of the Dolphins
* Roy Meyers' novel Dolphin Boy (and sequels)
* Joe Poyer's novel Operation Malacca
* Robert Silverberg's story "Ishmael in Love"
* Leo Szilard's story "The Voice of the Dolphins", in his story
collection of the same name (one of the few science fiction story
collections by a Nobel laureate scientist)
* AIan Watson's novel The Jonah Kit
* Roger Zelazny's story "Kjwalll'kje'k'koothailll'kej'k" (no,
that's not a typo)
Hares
* Gary Kilworth's novel Frost Dancers
[HarperCollins UK, Aug 1992] ISBN 0-246-13915-3, �14.99, 381pp, hardcover
[HarperCollins UK, Nov 1993] ISBN 0-586-21463-1, �4.99, 381pp, paperback
* see "Rabbits", below
Foxes
* Gary Kilworth's novel The Foxes of First Dark
[Unwin Hyman, 1989, as "Hunter's Moon";
[Doubleday, May 1990] ISBN 0-385-26427-5, $18.95, 371pp, hardcover
Mice
* Douglas Adam's novel The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
reveals that Mice have been secretly running our planet for
a long time...
* Gary Kilworth's novel House of Tribes [Bantam UK, Nov 1995]
ISBN 0-593-03376-0, �12.99, 430pp, hardcover
[Corgi, Sep 1996] ISBN 0-552-14111-9, �5.99, 430pp, paperback
* Robert Lawson's (1892-1957):
* Ben and Me [1939] mouse sidekick of Benjamin Franklin
filmed animation [Disney, 1953]
* I Discover Columbus [1941] mouse sidekick of Columbus
* Mr. Revere and I [1953] mouse sidekick of Paul Revere
Moles
* Robert Lawson's (1892-1957): Mr. Twigg's Mistake (Boston: Little Brown, 1947)
is a sort of rewrite of H.G. Wells' "Food of the Gods"
about a mole the size of a Bear
Newts
* Karel Capek's novel War With the Newts, not in
any way related to Newt Gingrich, has these amphibians used as
slaves, until they overhtrow their masters and begin reshaping
the planet to their desires. Capek introduced the word "robot"
into literature in his play "R.U.R.", which is closer to cloning
than to metal robots in subject matter.
Pigs
* Charlotte's Web
* Dick King-Smith, pseudonym of Ronald Gordon King-Smith (1922- ):
"Babe" books:
* The Sheep-Pig [Gollancz, 1983]
Young Adult Animal Fantasy/Pig
adapted to the film "Babe" {hotlink to be done}
* Ace [Gollancz, 1990] sequel to "The Sheep-Pig"
* The Sheep-Pig and Ace [Puffin, Oct 1996]
ISBN 0-14-038503-7, �4.99, 242pp, trade paperback,
Young Adult Animal Fantasy omnibus
edition of "The Sheep-Pig" and its sequel
Rabbits
* Richard Adams' novel Watership Down
[Macmillan, 1974; Avon]
* Robert Lawson (1892-1957): Fantasy illustrator/author
* the "Rabbit Hill" series about talking rabbits
* Rabbit Hill [1944]
* Robbut, a Tale of Tales [1948]
* Edward, Hoppy, and Joe [1952]
* The Tough Winter [1954]
* see "Hares", above
Rats
* A. Bertram Chandler's novel Giant Killer,
about smart rats infesting a spaceship. The author told me that
he wrote this abord a ship in Sydney Harbor, Australia, which
was infested with ordinary rats.
Skunks
* Clifford Simak's story "Operation Stinky"
Spiders
* Charlotte's Web
Weasels
* Gary Kilworth's novel The Welkin Weasels: Thunder Oak
[Corgi, July 1997] ISBN 0-552-54546-5, �4.99, 382pp, paperback
Wolves
* Gary Kilworth's novel Midnight's Sun
[Unwin Hyman, Sep 1990] ISBN 0-04-440683-5, �12.95, 317pp, hardcover
[Grafton, Mar 1992] ISBN 0-586-21495-X, �4.99, 317pp, paperback

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BEAM ME UP:
matter transmission, techno-teleportation

If you do it be mental means, it's called "teleportation", if it's done by
science and engineering, it's called "matter transmission."

Star Trek's "Beam Me Up, Scottie" is far from the first use of this device
in science fiction. Earlier examples include:

Poul Anderson's "The Enemy Stars" (Lippincott, 1959)
John Brunner's "Web of Everywhere" (Bantam, 1974)
Algis Budrys' "Rogue Moon" (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960): the protagonist with a death
wish is again and again transmitted to the Moon to explore a deadly
alien maze
Thomas M. Disch's "Echo Round His Bones" (Berkley, 1967): but after you are
transmitted, a ghost of you is left behind
Joe Haldeman's "Mindbridge" (St.Martins, 1976)
Harry Harrison's "One Step from Earth" (Macmillan, 1970)
Fred T. Jane's "To Venus in Five Seconds" (1897 !)
Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd" (19zz) and later stories
Bob Shaw's "Who Goes Here?" (19zz)
Clifford Simak's "Way Station" (Doubleday, 1963)
Roger Zelazny's "Today We Choose Faces" (Signet, 1973)

The earliest of all, according to Sam Moskowitz, was "The Man Without a Body"
by Edward Page Mitchell [New York Sun, 25 March 1877]. Sam Moskowitz calls
this "the first fictional exposition yet discovered of breaking matter down
into energy scientifically and transmitting it to a receiver where it may
be reformed."

The adverb "scientifically" is used by Moskowitz, one presumes, to
eliminate the earlier but more fantasy-oriented "Helionde" by Sidney
Whiting (1855) where the protagonist dreams that he is dissolved into vapor and
transmitted to an inhabited Sun.

Quantum Teleportation
by
Dafydd ab Hugh
(c) 1997 by DaH & Associates

Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the
feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while
a perfect replica appears somewhere else.

How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail,
but the general idea seems to be that the original object is
scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it,
then this information is transmitted to the receiving location
and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the
actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the
same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original.

A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that
it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents,
it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile,
and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it.

A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve
the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and
teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common
kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super
transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.

Two years ago an international group of six scientists, including
IBM Fellow Charles H. Bennett, confirmed the intuitions of the majority
of science fiction writers by showing that perfect teleportation is
indeed possible in principle, but only if the original is destroyed.

Meanwhile, other scientists are planning experiments to demonstrate
teleportation in microscopic objects, such as single atoms or photons,
in the next few years. But science fiction fans will be disappointed
to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other
macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of
engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental
law to do so.

Until recently, teleportation was not taken seriously by scientists,
because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of
quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process
from extracting all the information in an atom or other object.

According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object
is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until
one reaches a point where the object's original state has been
completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information
to make a perfect replica.

This sounds like a solid argument against teleportation: if one cannot
extract enough information from an object to make a perfect copy,
it would seem that a perfect copy cannot be made.

But the six scientists found a way to make an end-run around this logic,
using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as
the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. In brief, they found a way to scan
out part of the information from an object A, which one wishes to teleport,
while causing the remaining, unscanned, part of the information to pass,
via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, into another object C which has
never been in contact with A. Later, by applying to C a treatment
depending on the scanned-out information, it is possible to maneuver C
into exactly the same state as A was in before it was scanned. A itself
is no longer in that state, having been thoroughly disrupted by the
scanning, so what has been achieved is teleportation, not replication.

The unscanned part of the information is conveyed from A to C by
an intermediary object B, which interacts first with C and then with A.
What? Can it really be correct to say "first with C and then with A"?
Surely, in order to convey something from A to C, the delivery vehicle
must visit A before C, not the other way around. But there is a subtle,
unscannable kind of information that, unlike any material cargo, and
even unlike ordinary information, can indeed be delivered in such a
backward fashion.

This subtle kind of information, also called "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen
(EPR) correlation" or "entanglement", has been at least partly understood
since the 1930s when it was discussed in a famous paper by Albert Einstein,
Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. In the 1960s John Bell showed that a
pair of entangled particles, which were once in contact but later move
too far apart to interact directly, can exhibit individually random
behavior that is too strongly correlated to be explained by classical
statistics.

Experiments on photons and other particles have repeatedly confirmed
these correlations, thereby providing strong evidence for the validity of
quantum mechanics, which neatly explains them. Another well-known fact
about EPR correlations is that they cannot by themselves deliver a meaningful
and controllable message. It was thought that their only usefulness was
in proving the validity of quantum mechanics. But now it is known that,
through the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, they can deliver exactly
that part of the information in an object which is too delicate to
be scanned out and delivered by conventional methods.

Compare conventional facsimile transmission with quantum teleportation.
In conventional facsimile transmission the original is scanned, extracting
partial information about it, but remains more or less intact after the
scanning process. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station,
where it is imprinted on some raw material (e.g. paper) to produce an
approximate copy of the original.

In quantum teleportation two objects B and C are first brought into contact
and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C
is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned
together with the original object A which one wishes to teleport, yielding
some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned
information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one
of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting C into an
exact replica of the former state of A.

To learn more about quantum teleportation,
see the following articles:

* C.H. Bennett, G. Brassard, C. Crepeau, R. Jozsa, A. Peres, and W. Wootters,
"Teleporting an Unknown Quantum State via Dual Classical and EPR Channels",
Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 70, pp 1895-1899
(1993) (the original 6-author research article)

* Tony Sudbury, "Instant Teleportation", Nature vol.362, pp 586-587 (1993)
(a semipopular account).

* Ivars Peterson, Science News, April 10, 1993, p.
229. (another semipopular account).

* Samuel Braunstein, A fun talk on teleportation

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BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW: magical world unconnected to ours

"Beyond the Fields We Know" is a haunting phrase by Lord Dunsany.
This is (as Baird Searles, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin point out
["A Reader's Guide to Fantasy", New York: Avon, 1982] a fine description
of tales in which all the action happens in a magical world unconnected to
our own by space or time. "The Lord of the Rings", by J. R. R. Tolkein,
is a superb example. Tolkein said that the author of such fiction is
engaged in "subcreation" of the other world, with an inner consistency and
conviction:

"To experience directly a Secondary World, the potion is too strong, and
you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. You are
deluded -- whether that is the intention of the elves (always or at any
time) is another question. They at any rate are not deluded. This is for
them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so
called" [J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", in "Tree and Leaf", 1964].

David Hartwell [Age of Wonders, New York: Walker, 1984, p.14] summarizes
this genre as "Tolkienesque fantasy, in the manner of Lord of the Rings --
carefully constructed worlds as the setting for a heroic quest."

Here we mean tales of a world sufficient unto itself, with its own history,
geography, cultures, races, and nonhuman beings. There is a greater or
lesser degree of magic, sometimes central to the action, sometimes part of
the taken-for-granted background, but always as something distinguishing
this world from our technological one.

When we read such fiction, we feel ourselves drawn into the other world,
and taking it as real, so that when we close the book, it is hard to wrench
ourselves away from that world and reluctantly return to home. To capture
the dream, we read the book again, or perhaps look for others that will
produce the same magical emotion. Here are some places you might start
your search.

93 Excellent "Beyond the Fields We Know" Books
(alphabetically by last name of author):

Lynn Abbey's "Daughter of the Bright Moon"
Richard Adams' "Shardik"
Joan Aiken's Alternate England series
Lloyd Alexander's "The Cat Who Wanted to Be a Man"
Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain"
Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword"
Piers Anthony's The Magic of Xanth series
Piers Anthony's Proton/Phaze trilogy
L. Frank Baum's The Oz Books
Peter S. Beagle's "Come, Lady Death"
Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn"
John Bellairs' "The Face in the Frost"
Terry Brooks' "The Sword of Shanara"
John Brunner's "The Traveler in Black"
James Branch Cabell's The Biography of Manuel of Poictesme series
Lin Carter's The Thongor Series
Lin Carter's The World's End Series
Joy Chant's "The Grey Mane of Morning"
B. J. Chute's "Greenwillow"
Juanita Coulsen's "The Death God's Citadel"
Juanita Coulsen's "The Web of Wizardry"
Avram Davidson's "Island Under the Earth"
Avram Davidson's "Peregrine: Primus"
Avram Davidson's "The Phoenix and the Mirror"
Avram Davidson's "Ursus of Ultima Thule"
L. Sprague de Camp's "The Clocks of Iraz"
L. Sprague de Camp's "The Goblin Tower"
L. Sprague de Camp's "The Tritonian Ring"
Samuel Delany's "Tales of Neveryon"
Peter Dickenson's "The Blue Hawk"
E. R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros"
Phyllis Eisenstein's "Born to Exile"
Phyllis Eisenstein's "Sorcerer's Son"
Gardner F. Fox's The Kothar Series
Gardner F. Fox's The Kyrik Series
Jane Gaskell's The Atlan saga
Jane Gaskell's "King's Daughter"
Roland Green's The Wandor Series
Isidore Haiblum's "The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders"
Paul Hazel's The Finnbranch series
Robert E. Howard and others' The Conan series
Robert E. Howard's "King Kull"
Dahlov Ipcar's "The Warlock of Night"
Eric Iverson's "Wereblood"
Eric Iverson's "Werenight"
John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian series
John Jakes' "Mention My Name in Atlantis"
Tove Jansson's The Moomin books
Diana Wynne Jones's "Charmed Life"
Diana Wynne Jones's The Dalemark Sequence
Diana Wynne Jones's "The Magicians of Caprona"
Carol Kendall's "The Gammage Cup"
Carol Kendall's "The Whisper of Glocken"
Katherine Kurtz's Chronicles of Deryni
Katherine Kurtz's The Legends of Camber of Culdi
Henry Kuttner's "The Dark World"
Tanith Lee's "Death's Master"
Tanith Lee's "Night's Master"
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Earthsea Trilogy
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series
Astrid Lindgren's "Ronja Rvardotter" ["Ronja, the Robber's Daughter"] [1981]
George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Curdie"
George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin"
George MacDonald's "The Wise Woman"
Patricia McKillip's "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld"
Patricia McKillip's The Riddlemaster trilogy
Hope Mirrlees's "Lud-in-the-Mist"
Michael Moorcock's The Chronicles of Corum
Michael Moorcock's The Elric series
Michael Moorcock's "Gloriana"
C. L. Moore's "The Black God's Shadow"
William Morris' "The Water of the Wondrous Isles"
William Morris' "The Well at the World's End"
William Morris' "The Wood Beyond the World"
Andre Norton's The Witch World series
Andrew Offutt's Tiana's trilogy
Alexei & Cory Panshin's "Earthmagic"
Mervyn Peake's The Gormengast Trilogy
Fletcher Pratt's "The Blue Star"
Fletcher Pratt's "The Well of the Unicorn"
Joanna Russ' The Alyx stories
Nancy Springer's The Chronicles of Isle
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Chronicles of Middle-Earth
J.R.R. Tolkien's "Farmer Giles of Ham"
J.R.R. Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle"
Karl Edward Wagner's The Kane Series
Karl Edward Wagner's "Legion from the Shadows"
Hugh Walker's The Magira series
Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Stories"
Roger Zelazny's "The Changing Land"
Roger Zelazny's "Isle of the Dead"
Roger Zelazny's "Jack of Shadows"
xxx's "yyy"

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CITIES OF THE FUTURE: bigger, better, and more astonishing urban visions

Then they fared on without ceasing
till they drew near the city and behold,
it was as if it were a piece of a mountain
or a mass of iron cast in a mold
and impenetrable for the height of its walls and bulwarks;
while nothing could be more beautiful than its buildings
and its ordinance
-- The City of Brass (date unknown)
translated by Sir Richard Burton

In Genesis we are told that the first city was built by Cain...
Other cities in the Bible are not uniformy praised. Babylon, for example,
is called "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of
the earth" [Revelation 17:15]. One final biblical citation:

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
how is she become a widow! she that was great among the nations, and
princess among the provinces, how she has become tributary!
-- Jeremiah 1:1 (605 B.C.)

Another company owned by the Webmaster of Magic Dragon Multimedia is
Emerald City Publishing.
The Emerald City is, of course, L. Frank Baum's "Oz", but
also Seattle, Washington, where your humble webmaster founded the company
in 1979. OZ is the prototype of the modern fantasy city -- but we want to
take a closer look at the Science Fiction city right now.

The French playwright Louis-Sebastien Mercier wrote "L'An 2440", later
translated as "Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred" in 1771,
about a utopian future Paris. Ever since, writers have been practicing
urban renewal on a vast scale.

Jonathan Swift's "Laputa" in "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) floated, as if by
Antigravity, true, but it was first and foremost a
future city, inhabited by scientists.

The future city may be UTOPIA:, better in every way than what we have
encountered in the present. It may be a Dystopia, carrying trends to a
dark and terrifying horror. Or it may attempt to blend the two into a
complex vision of an urban complexity that embraces good and bad alike in
a distinct style and setting that makes us view our home in a new light.

The case can be made that science fiction began in the 19th Century in France,
with Jules Verne. Verne was born in Nantes, France, on 8 February 1828.
He died in Amiens, France, on 24 March 1905. In between these dates, he was surely, as Isaac
Asimov says, "the first writer to specialize in science fiction and to
make a living at it, too." [Asimov on Science Fiction, p.158]
Verne plumbed planetary depths -- "Journey to the Center of the
Earth" (1864); fired people to the Moon from Florida -- "From the Earth to
the Moon" (1865); and had a mad scientist conquer the oceans -- "20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea" (1869).
Verne had a mad scientist orbit the earth atmospherically in "Robur the
Conqueror" and "Master of the World"; create a Utopia -- "The Mysterious
Island"; explore conflicts between supercities -- "The Begum's Fortune";
and make cities fly -- "Propellor Island."

19 examples of Future Cities...

"Propellor Island", by H. G. Wells (1895)
"When the Sleeper Wakes", by H. G. Wells (1899)
"Metropolis", by Thea von Harbou (1926): {film hotlink to be done}
"The Caves of Steel", by Isaac Asimov (1954)
(Garden City NY: Doubleday) Murder mystery starring human detective
Elijah Baley and robot sidekick R. Daneel Olivaw, fascinatingly effective
speculation on utopian sociology of automated future. The action is
mostly in a future New York City. In Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy,
the galactic capital is a planet entirely covered by a single city" "Trantor."
"The City and the Stars", by Arthur C. Clarke (1956)
(New York: Gnome Press, 1953) alienated immortal Alvin in
billion-year-old city "Diaspar" seeks freedom, wisdom, and the stars
(expanded to "The City and the Stars" in 1956)
"Space Merchants", by Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth (Ballentine, 1953) New York City
"Some Will Not Die", by Algis Budrys (as "False Night", Lion, 1954;
Regency, 1961) New York City
"Super City", by Richard Wilson, Science Fiction #33 (Feb 1959)
"Dhalgren", by Samuel R. Delany (Bantam, 1975): the city is named "Bellona"
"The Cities in Flight" trilogy, by James Blish (1955-1962) : cities
acquire antigravity by the "spindizzy", and lift off to interstellar
space. The city we follow is New York.
"Make Room! Make Room!", by Harry Harrison (Doubleday, 1966) New York City
"The Year 2000", by Herman Kahn & A. J. Weiner (1968) nonfiction
"Cities in Flight", by James Blish (1970) the "hero" is New York City
"Vermillion Sands", by J. G. Ballard (Berkley, 1971): city named Vermillion Sands
"The Pastel City", by M. John Harrison (Doubleday, 1972): city named Viriconium
in this and the related novel "A Storm of Wings"
"334", by Thomas M. Disch (Avon, 1974): New York City
"Cinnabar", by Edward Bryant (Macmillan, 1976): city named Cinnabar
"Oath of Fealty", by Larry Niven (19??): city named Todos Santos
"The World Inside", by Robert Silverberg (1971): the city is named Urbmon 116

Some good short stories about future cities may be found in "Cities of Wonder",
edited by Damon Knight (uncredited: published by Samuel H. Post),
New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1967:

J. G. Ballard's "Billennium", originally in his collection of the same name
(1952): the characters don't see the overcrowding from population
as grimly as we readers do
Stephen Vincent Benet's "By the Waters of Babylon", originally in
"Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benet" (1937):
classic story of a great city after a great war
James Blish's "Okie", originally in Astounding (1950)
E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", originally in "The Eternal Moment
and Other Stories", New York: Harcourt Brace & World (1928):
classic tale of the entire future world subsumed into one great city,
with people sealed away from birth in solitary cells, fed through
tubes, distracted by TV, until they lose the ability to adapt to
change, let alone disaster...
Robert Heinlein's "It's Great to be Back!", originally in Saturday Evening Post (1947):
great profile of Luna City, on the moon
C. M. Kornbluth's "The Luckiest Man in Denv", originally in
"The Marching Morons" New York: Ballentine (1959):
conspiracy and conflict between future Denver and Los Angeles
Henry Kuttner's "Jesting Pilot", originally in Astounding (1947):
"The city screamed. It had been screaming for six hundred years..."
Walter M. Miller's "Dumb Waiter", originally in Astounding (1952):
how to reprogram the automated city after World War III?
Don A. Stuart's [John Campbell, Jr.] "Forgetfulness",
originally in Astounding Stories (1937): classic tale of the
city millions of years from now, after the age of galactic travel,
and what we do and do not remember about technology

Some science fiction stories with "City" in the title:

"The City", by Sydney J. Bounds, novella, in Other Worlds (May 1951)
"City at Random", by Philip E. High, in Nebula #19 (Dec 1956)
"The City Calls", by Kenneth Bulmer, novella, in New Worlds #52 (Oct 1956)
"A City Near Centaurus", by Bill Doede, in Galaxy (Oct 1962)
"The City of Brass", by Robert F. Young, novelette, in Amazing (Aug 1965)
"The City of Force", by Daniel F. Galouye, novelette, in Galaxy (Apr 1959)
"The City of Ind", by Arthur J. Burks, in Spaceway (Dec 1954)
"City of the Phoenix", by M. C. Pease, novella, in Astounding (Aug 1951)
"City of the Tiger", by John Brunner, novelette, in Science Fiction #32 (Dec 1958)
"The City That Grew in the Sea", by Keith Laumer, novella, in If (Mar 1964)

{to be done}

There is the sometimes darker and usually more magical (Fantasy as opposed
to Science Fiction) related theme of strange cities or, in some cases, vast
buildings or castles which are virtual cities, or imaginary versions of real cities,
all lumped under the term: Urban Fantasy:

"Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem", by Peter Ackroyd (1994): London
"The Great Fire of London", by Peter Ackroyd (1982)
"La Peau de chagrin", by Honore de Balzac (1831): Paris
"Ariel", by Stephen Boyett (1983): New York
"Animal Planet", by Scott Bradfield (1995)
: New York, BAMBI'S CHILDREN
various works, by Jonathan Carroll (???): Vienna
"The Passion of New Eve", by Angela Carter (1977): New York
several novels, by Jerome Charyn: New York
"Little, Big", by John Crowley (1981): New York
"Funny Papers", by Tom de Haven (1985): New York
the "Borribles" novels, by Michael de Larrabeiti (19??): the secret parts of London
various works, by Charles de Lint (???): Toronto
"A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens (1843): technically not Fantasy,
but a vividly recreated London
"Oliver Twist", by Charles Dickens (1839): technically not Fantasy,
but a vividly recreated London
"On Wings of Song", by Thomas M. Disch (1979): New York
"The Waterworks", by E. L. Doctorow (1994): New York
"Sherlock Holmes", stories and novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1839):
technically not Fantasy, but a vividly recreated London
"So, You Want to Be a Wizard", by Dianne Duane (1983): New York
"The Count of Monte Cristo", by Alexander Dumas (1846): technically not Fantasy,
but a vividly recreated Paris (see Victor Hugo and Eugene Sue, below)
"Venice", by Daphne du Maurier (???): Venice, also in the film
adaptation of "Don't Look Now"
"Deathbird Stories", by Harlan Ellison (1975): New York
"Time and Again", by Jack Finney (1970)
: New York, TIME TRAVEL
"Roofworld", by Christopher Fowler (1994): the secret parts of London
the "New York" series, by Esther M. Friesner (19??): New York
"Rats and Gargoyles", by Mary Gentle (1990)
the "Hawk & Fisher" novels, by Simon R. Green (19??)
"Fantastic Chicago", ed. by Martin H. Greenberg (1991): Chicago anthology
"The Wizard of 4th Street", by Simon Hawke (1987): New York
"Winter's Tale", by Mark Helprin (1993): New York
"The Medusa Frequency", by Russell Hoban (1987): London's Soho as
influenced by Piranesi (see below)
"Falling Angel", by William Hjortsberg (1978): New York
"Notre-Dame de Paris", by Victor Hugo (1831): Cathedral and Paris romanticized
"The Werewolf's Tale", by Richard Jaccoma (1988): New York
"The Castle", by Franz Kafka (????): based on Prague
"Down Town: A Fantasy", by Tappan King & Viido Polikarpus (1985): New York
"The Game of Thirty", by William Kotzwinkle (1994): New York
various works, by Fritz Leiber (???): San Francisco
the "Lankhmar" stories, by Fritz Leiber (???): imaginary city
"Freddie the Piegeon", by Seymour Leichman (1972)
: New York, BAMBI'S CHILDREN
"The Wizard of the Pigeons", by Megan Lindholm (1986): Seattle
"The Phantom of the Opera", by Gaston Leroux (1910): Paris
"The Confession", by Harry Matthews (1962): New York
"The Last American", by John Ames Mitchell (1889): New York
"Mother London", by Michael Moorcock (1988): London
"Where the Blue Begins", by Christopher Morley (1922)
: New York, BAMBI'S CHILDREN
"The Golem", by Gustav Meyrink (1988): Prague
"Carceri d'Invenzione", by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1749-1750): intricate drawings
of vast underground dungeons, suggesting a dark infinite shadow city
"Vedute", by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1745-1778): drawings
which extrapolate from both modern and ancient Rome
the "Ankh-Morpork" stories, by Terry Pratchett (???): imaginary city
"V", by Thomas Pynchon (1963)
"The Cricket in Times Square", by George Selden (1960)
: New York, BAMBI'S CHILDREN
"The Golden", by Lucius Shepard (1990): Pirtanesian "Castle Banat"
"Les mysteres de Paris", by Eugene Sue (1844)
"The Castle of Otranto", by Horace Walpole (1765): and many Gothic imitations
"Newer York: Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy About the World's
Greatest City", ed. by Lawrence Watt-Evans (1991): anthology
"Stuart Little", by E. B. White (1945)
: New York, BAMBI'S CHILDREN
"There Are Doors", by Gene Wolfe (1988): imaginary city
{list updated 9 July 1998}
Many Fantasies are set in a fabulous alternative London (Robert Louis
Stevenson, G. K. Chesterson, the art of Gustave Dore), New York (as
Superman's "Metropolis" and Batman's "Gotham City"), Baghdad or Cairo, but the
City as such is rarely the theme in these cases. The above analysis draws
significantly from "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy" by John Clute & John
Grant, New York: St.Martins, 1997, pp.975-976.

{This genre essay most recently updated: 4 April 1998}

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CLONES stories of genetic engineering, especially of people

CLONE: NEW: 14 hotlinks to films about clones, genetic engineering, and human duplication

also has lists of novels and stories on this and
related topics (such as "intelligent animals" and "mutants") and hotlinks
to sites that separate cloning fact from fiction.

A tiny example of nonfiction is below:

CLONING BAN ADOPTED:

Hours after French President Jacques Chirac
called for an international ban on human cloning,
19 European nations signed an agreement to
prohibit the genetic replication of human beings.
The actions came two days after President
Clinton repeated his call for a ban on human
cloning.

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CYBER PUNK 239 gritty near-future tales of hackers and cyberspace

The word "cyberpunk" was coined by Bruce Bethke, and made wildly popular by
William Gibson, who coined the term "cyberspace" and popularized it in
"Neuromancer" and its sequel novels.

A startling new look at the underbelly of the computerized corporate
culture of tomorrow, a distinct and new subgenre with an attitude and an
agenda, Cyberpunk was soon copied, distorted, and parodied until it sank
back into the ur-Culture. Soon, the best-known Cyberpunks themselves
declared that Cyberpunk was dead. Some said that it had never existed,
except in as "Novels of a Gibsonian Sensibility."

Former journalist Bruce Sterling became the propagandist for Cyberpunk, and
it soon became a wider cultural phenomenon than merely science fiction,
with an impact on films, television, pop music, clothing style, and the
counter-cultural scene of "Rolling Stone" and "Spin" magazine.

Some 239 Cyberpunk novels (and we cast our net wide here, based on theme,
computer/cyberspace/cyborg centrality, dystopian/utopian ambiguity,
style, and social affiliation) include:

Kathy Acker's "Blood and Guts in High School"
Brian Aldiss' "Enemy of the System"
Roger Allen's "The Modular Man" [Bantam, 1992] Cyborgs and Politics in Washington
Janet Asimov's "Mind Transfer" [Ace, 1988] Hans Moravec downloading
Richard Bachman's (Stephen King's) "The Running Man" {film hotlink to be done}
J. G. Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition" {film hotlink to be done}
J. G. Ballard's "Crash" {film hotlink to be done}
Steve Barnes' "Gorgon Child"
Steve Barnes' "Street Lethal"
Greg Bear's "Blood Music" [Ace, 1985] First nanotechnology novel
Greg Bear's "Eon"
Greg Bear's "Eternity"
Greg Bear's "The Forge of God": Your Humble Webmaster and his
wife both appear in this novel under their own names
Gregory Benford's "Great Sky River" and its sequels
Alfred Bester's "Computer Connection"
Alfred Bester's "Golem 100"
Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man"
Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination"
G. Betancourt's "Johnny Zed"
Bruce Bethke's "Cyberpunk"
Bruce Bethke's "Elimination Round"
Bruce Bethke's "Headcrash"
Ben Bova's "Exiled From Earth"
Ben Bova's "The Dueling Machine" [Holt Rinehart, 1969] Virtual War escalates
Ray Bradbury's "Farenhiet 451" {film hotlink to be done}
David Brin's "Earth"
John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar"
John Brunner's "The Jagged Orbit"
John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up"
John Brunner's "The Shockwaver Rider" [Ace, 1975]: computer viruses described in 1975!
John Brunner's "The Stone That Never Came Down"
Algis Budrys' "Michaelmas"
Algis Budrys' "Who?" [Ballentine, 1958] Cyborg identity crisis
Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange"
William Burroughs's "Naked Lunch"
William Burroughs's "Nova Express"
Jack Butler's "Nightshade"
Pat Cadigan's "Indigo"
Pat Cadigan's "Mindplayers"
Pat Cadigan's "Patterns"
Pat Cadigan's "Pretty Boy Crossover", in 4th Annual Year's Best SF,
ed. G. Dozois [St.Martins, 1987]
Pat Cadigan's "Synners" [Bantam, 1991]
Martin Caidin's "Cyborg" [Ballentine, 1972] became TV's "Six Million Dollar Man"
Martin Caidin's "Manfac" [Baen, 1981] harder-edged cyborg novel
Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" [Tor, 1985] Simulations escalate to war
Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" [Tor, 1986?] Ender is cyborged
Orson Scott Card's "Xenocide" [Tor, 1987?] end of trilogy
Anne Carlisle's "Liquid Sky" {film hotlink to be done}
Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" for the style and language
C. J. Cherryh's "Cyteen" [Popular Library, 1988] clones and space colonies
Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man" [Avon, 1972] brain-stimulation murder
Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" [Ballantine, 1990] DNA, Dinos, Chaos
Ronald Anthony Cross's "Prisoners of Paradise"
Samuel Delany's "Babel-17"
Samuel Delany's "Nova"
Don DeLillo's "White Noise"
Bradley Denton's "Wrack'n'Roll"
Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly"
Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" [Doubleday, 1968]
became "Blade Runner" {film hotlink to be done}
Philip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said"
Gordon Dickson's "The R-Master"
William Dietz's "Matrix Man" [Penguin, 1990]
George Alec Effinger's "A Fire in the Sun"
George Alec Effinger's "The Exile Kiss"
George Alec Effinger's "When Gravity Fails"
Mick Farren's "The Feelies"
Mick Farren's "The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys"
Mick Farren's "The Long Orbit"
Clifford Faust's "The Death of Honor"
Clifford Faust's "The Company Man"
Grant Fjermedal's "The Tomorrow Makers": nonfiction
E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" [1909!] hived humans in
soulless mechanical civilization
Alan Dean Foster's "Cyber Way"
Daniel Galouye's "Conterfeit World" [Bantam, 1969] Simulated man wants body
William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" [Ace, 1987]
William Gibson's "Count Zero" [London: Gollancz, 1986]
William Gibson's "Mona Lisa Overdrive" [Bantam, 1988]
William Gibson's "Neuromancer" [Ace, 1984]
William Gibson's "Virtual Light" [Bantam, 1994]
William Gibson's "The Difference Engine" with Bruce Stirling
Ron Goulart's "Barking Dogs"
Ron Goulart's "Cowboy Heaven"
Ron Goulart's "Crackpot"
Joseph Green's "The Mind Behind the Eye" [Daw, 1961] Humans parasitically
spy on aliens
Isidore Haiblum's "The Mutants are Coming"
Joe Haldeman's "Buying Time" [Avon, 1989] medical cyborg plots conquest
Karl Hansen's "War Games" [Playboy, 1981] android warriors
Harry Harrisons's "Make Room! Make Room!" became "Soylent Green"
Simon Hawke's "Psychodrome"
Robert Heinlein's "Waldo, Genius in Orbit" in "Waldo and Magic, Inc." [Avon, 1950]
First telemanipulator fiction
Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" [Signet, 1959] interstellar
exoskeleton soldiers {film hotlink to be done}
Christopher Heinz's "Ash Ock"
Christopher Heinz's "Leigh Killer"
William Hjortsberg's "Gray Matters" [Bantam, 1971] "cerebromorph"
brains-without-bodies as solution to overpopulation
L. Ron Hubbard's "Eulogy for Lisa"
Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"
Karie Jacobson's "Simulations: 15 Tales of Virtual Reality" [Citadel Twilight, 1993]
K. W. Jeter's "Death Arms"
K. W. Jeter's "Dr. Adder"
K. W. Jeter's "Farewell Horizontal"
K. W. Jeter's "Infernal Devices"
K. W. Jeter's "The Glass Hammer"
Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"
James Kunetka's "Nature's End"
Marc Laidlaw's "Dad's Nuke"
Marc Laidlaw's "Nutrimancer": parody of the genre
Stanislaw Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub"
S. N. Lewitt's "Cybernetic Jungle"
S. N. Lewitt's "Cyberstealth"
S. N. Lewitt's "Dancing Vac"
Mark Leyner's "American Made"
Mark Leyner's "I Was an Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot"
Mark Leyner's "My Cousin My Gastroenterologist"
Charles de Lint's "Svaha"
Jonathan Littell's "Bad Voltage"
Tom Maddox's "Halo"
George R. R. Martin's "The Armageddon Rag"
Larry McCaffery's "Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and
Postmodernist Fiction": critical review of the genre
Anne McCaffrey's "The Ship Who Sang" [Bantam, 1969] brain-spaceship cyborgs
Ian McDonald's "Out on Blue Six"
Maureen McHugh's "China Mountain Zhang" [Tor, 1992] Gay/Cyborg/Chinese future
Vonda McIntyre's "Starfarers" [Bantam, 1987] gene computers
Vonda McIntyre's "Transition" [Bantam, 1990] sequel to "Starfarers"
Vonda McIntyre's "???" [Bantam, 1993?] 3rd book of trilogy
John McLoughlin's "The Helix and the Sword"
Victor Milan's "The Cybernetic Samurai" [Arbor, 1985]
Victor Milan's "The Cybernetic Shogun"
Michael Moorcock's "The Cornelius Chronicles], Vols. 1,2,3
C. L. Moore's "No Woman Born", short story [1941] early cyborg fiction
Daniel Keys Moran's "Armageddon Blues"
Daniel Keys Moran's "Emerald Eyes"
Daniel Keys Moran's "The Long Run"
Ed Naha's "Robocop 2" [Jove, 1990] novelization {film hotlink to be done}
Larry Niven's "Becalmed in Hell" short story [Astounding, date??]
Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes' "Dream Park" [Phantasia Press, 1981] VR themepark muder
Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes' "The Barsoom Project" [Ace, 1989] sequel to "Dream Park"
Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes' "California Voodoo Game" [Ballentine, 1992]
3rd of "Dream Park" trilogy
Rebecca Ore's "The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid" [Tor, 1991] clone/class war
George Orwell's "1984"
David Osborn's "Heads" [Bantam, 1985] cyborg thriller
Dennis Paoli's "Robot Jox" [Avon, 1989] gladiator exoskeleton {film hotlink to be done}
Marge Piercy's "He, She, and It" [Fawcett, 1991] Feminist Cyberpunk
Frederik Pohl's "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon"
Frederik Pohl's "Gateway"
Frederik Pohl's "Heechee Rendezvous"
Frederik Pohl's "Man Plus" [Bantam, 1976] AI/Cyborg
Frederik Pohl's "The Annals of the Heechee"
Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth's "Wolfbane" [Bantam, 1976; expanded from Galaxy, 1957]
Extraterrestrials abduct humans to use their brains in computer network
M. C. Poyer's "The Stepfather Bank"
Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"
Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"
Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland"
W. T. Quick's "Dreams of Flesh"
W. T. Quick's "Dreams of God"
W. T. Quick's "Singularities"
W. T. Quick's "Systems"
W. T. Quick's "Dreams of Flesh"
W. T. Quick's "Yesterday's Pawn"
Robert Reed's "The Hormone Jungle"
Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Gold Coast"
Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Memory of Whiteness"
Spider Robinson's "Mindkiller"
Rudy Rucker's "Masters of Space and Time"
Rudy Rucker's "SoftWare" [Avon, 1982] Lunar AI robots abduct
humans, slice their brains, download into robots, wonder why people don't
appreciate this
Rudy Rucker's "Spacetime Donuts"
Rudy Rucker's "The 57th Franz Kafka"
Rudy Rucker's "The Secret of Life"
Rudy Rucker's "WetWare" [Avon, 1988] sequel to "SoftWare"
Rudy Rucker's "White Light"
Richard Paul Russo's "Destroying Angel"
Fred Saberhagen's "The Frankenstein Papers" [Baen, 1986]
ingenious deconstruction of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein"
from the monster's point of view
Thomas N. Scortia & George Zebrowski's "Human-Machines: An Anthology
of Stories About Cyborgs" [Vintage, 1975] essential anthology
William Shatner [& Ron Goulart]'s "TekWar" [Ace, 1991] and two sequels
{TV hotlink to be done}
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Lucius Shepard's "Green Eyes"
Lucius Shepard's "Life During wartime"
Joe Henry Sherman's "Corpsman" [Ballentine, 1988] Interplanetary
cyborg astronaut-pilots, in some sense a modernization of "Scanners
Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith
Lewis Shiner's "Deserted Cities of the Heart"
Lewis Shiner's "Frontera"
John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth 1: Eclipse"
John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth 2: Eclipse Penumbra"
John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth 1: Eclipse Corona"
John Shirley's "Heatseeker"
John Shirley's "Total Eclipse"
John Shirley's "Transmaniacon"
Susan Shwartz's "Heritage of Flight" [Tor, 1989]
Robert Silverberg's "Shadrach in the Furnace"
Robert Silverberg's "The World Inside"
John Sladek's "The Muller-Fokker Effect" [Morrow, 1971] absurd
self-reproducing machines
Norman Spinrad's "Agent of Chaos"
Norman Spinrad's "Little Heroes"
Norman Spinrad's "Other Americas"
Norman Spinrad's "Riding the Torch"
Norman Spinrad's "Streetman"
Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men"
Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker"
Neil Stephenson's "Snowcrash" [Bantam, 1992]
Neil Stephenson's "Diamond Age" [Bantam, 1995] nanotechnology/hypermedia
Bruce Stirling's "Crystal Express" [Ace, 1990] bio-cyborgs (Shapers) versus
electro-cyborgs (Mechanists) as humanity splits into two "clades" as
start of speciation
Bruce Stirling's "Involution Ocean"
Bruce Stirling's "Islands in the Net" [Arbor, 1988] cyberculture
meets international crime, and the protagonists have to change the baby's
diapers in mid-adventure
Bruce Stirling's "Mirrorshades": definitive anthology
Bruce Stirling's "Schismatrix" [Ace, 1985] bio-cyborgs (Shapers) versus
electro-cyborgs (Mechanists) as humanity splits into two "clades" as
start of speciation
Bruce Stirling's "The Artificial Kid"
Bruce Stirling's "The Difference Engine" (with William Gibson)
Robert Stone's "Dog Soldiers"
Whitley Streiber's "Nature's End"
Michael Swanwick's "In the Drift"
Michael Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide"
Michael Swanwick's "Vacuum Flowers"
Craig Thomas's "Firefox" [Bantam, 1977] technothriller about
theft of brain-reading aircraft {film hotlink to be done}
Thomas T. Thomas's "Me"
Thomas T. Thomas's "Crygender" [Baen, 1992] cyborg/transexual/murder
James Tiptree Jr.'s "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" [1973; Tor, 1989]
Michael Swanwick's "In the Drift"
John Varley's "Blue Champagne" short story collection
John Varley's "Millennium" time-travel, post-apocalypse,
human/robot sex
John Varley's "The Persistence of Vision" short story collection
John Varley's "Steel Beach" [Ace, 1992] Lunar cyborgs
Joan Vinge's "Catspaw"
Joan Vinge's "Psion"
Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Real Time"
Vernor Vinge's "The Peace War"
Vernor Vinge's "Threats and Other Promises"
Vernor Vinge's "True Names and Other Stories" [Bluejay, 1984]
title story is early VR/cyberspace/hacker fiction
Michael D. Weaver's "Mercedes Nights"
Michael D. Weaver's "My Father Immortal"
Walter John Williams' "Angel Station" [Tor, 1989]
Walter John Williams' "Facets"
Walter John Williams' "Hardwired" [Tor, 1986]
Walter John Williams' "Solip System"
Walter John Williams' "Voice of the Whirlwind" [Tor, 1987]
Jack Williamson's "Manseed" [Del Rey, 1982] cyborg panspermia
Robert C. Wilson's "Memory Wire"
Bernard Wolfe's "Limbo" [Ace, 1956] postapocalypse prosthetics
Dave Wolverton's "On My Way to Paradise"
Jack Womack's "Ambient"
Jack Womack's "Terraplane"
Chelsea Quinn Yarbo's "Hyacinths"

the above based on (1) an on-line list compiled by James Harrison; (2) the
Bibliography by Chris Hables Gray and Steven Mentor in "The Cyborg
Handbook", New York/London: Routledge, 1995

Hotlinks to the most cyberpunk-central of these writers include:
William Gibson Finnish site about his works
Bruce R. Bethke -- who invented the very word "cyberpunk" and authored the
award-winning novel "Headcrash" : no known personal home page, but CompuServe e-mail
Bruce R. Bethke @ AlphaRalpha
e-mail Bruce R. Bethke @ Compuserve
Bruce Sterling

For a list of Cyberpunk books, with summaries, see:
Cyberpunk Book List

Four of the best Cyberpunk web sites are:
Unofficial Cyberpunk Home Page
Mirrorshades on the Well
Lysator's Searchable Cyberpunk Authors Archive
Zeta Tanuki's Cyberpunk page
a very individualistic student at Kapi'olani Community College in
Hawaii probes deeply into:
"Near Future Films"
"Near Future TV/Videos"
"Near Future Printed Material"
"Other Things of Interest"

Another short definition of Cyberpunk is in:
"What Is Cyberpunk?"
{to be done}

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DYSTOPIA:Really, really bad futures (opposite of "Utopia")

Science fiction, in its extremes, presents us with a menu of extremely
dreadful futures ("Dystopias") and absolutely wonderful futures ("Utopia").

David Hartwell [Age of Wonders, New York: Walker, 1984, p.108] says:

"The earliest SF that had any significant impact was the body of
nineteenth century uropian writings.... Then quite suddenly, H. G. Wells
in England, Kurt Lasswitz in Germany, and a host of minor writers in
the U.S. and elsewhere began to write of futures altered by
scientific and technological innovations. And not all these visions
were optimistic. Whereas the utopian visions were undoubtedly
influential, it was the anti-utopian visions of E. M. Forster, Aldous
Huxley, Yevgeniy Zamyatin, Orwell, Jack London, M. P. Shiel, and, of
course, H. G. Wells that really made us conscious of the future by
basically making us scared of it in a new way." [Webmaster's emphasis]

Some notable DYSTOPIAS in fiction, in chronological order:

H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" (1895)
Yevgeny Zamiatin's "We" (1929)
Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) (London: Chatto & Windus)
classic dystopia with emphasis on, for example,
genetic engineering, brainwashing, censorship, destruction of
the family. Science Fiction about Genetic Engineering
Reproduction is done in the laboratory, with people
systematically conditioned for various strata of life. Sex
and all the senses are the bases of media exploitation.
Literature, art, and philosophy are suppressed, production
and consumption are glorified, and the god is Ford (or
Freud). Workers are kept content through the drug "soma",
and a "savage" is kept on an Indian reservation as a museum
exhibit. Bernard Marx, of the Psychological Bureau (one of
the ruling Alphas) feels isolated, his Alpha Plus friend
Helmholtz Watson is creatively restless, large-breasted
Lenina Crowne disgusts Bernard and bores Helmholtz, so they
bring the savage John onstage, protest against soma, and are
summoned by Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller
for Western Europe. The controller is an ex-radical
himself, who now loves science most. Bernard is drugged,
Helmholtz exiled, and John (ambivalent over Lenina) commits
suicide. Harsh, ironic, fantastic, and unforgettable.
Murray Constantine's [Katharine Burdekin] "Swastika Night"
[London: Victor Gollancz, 1937; Old Westbury NY: The Feminist Press, 1985]
anti-nazi dystopia
George Orwell's "1984" (1948)
David Karp's "One" [New York: Vanguard, 1953] which was a bestseller
a.k.a "Escape to Nowhere" [Lion, 1955; Universal]
Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" (1970)
Edward W. Ludwig's "The Mask of John Culon" (1970)
Brian Aldiss' "Enemies of the System" (1978)
Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985)
Ian McDonald's "Out on Blue Six" (1989)
Russell Hoban's "Fremder" (1996)
Terry Bisson's "Pirates of the Universe" (1996)
xxx's "yyyy" (zzzz)

Important critical studies and bibliographies of Dystopia include:

"Science Fiction and the New Dark Age", by Howard L. Berger
[Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press,
1976]: examines the anti-utopian genre in a dozen thematic
sub-categories
"The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians",
by Mark R. Hillegas [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967;
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974]
"From Utopia to Nightmare" by Chad Walsh [New York and Evanston:
Harper & Row, 1962; Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1972]:
traces the replacement of Utopian fiction by Dystopian or
"inverted utopia" fiction.
"Voices Prophecying War 1763-1984", by I. F. Clarke, [London:
Oxford University Press, 1966]: first, and still definitive
study and index to future war/imaginary war/military technology
fiction, which sometimes takes on a distinctly dystopian flavor

J. B. S. Haldane, who warns in his 1928 reprint in
"Possible Worlds" of his even older essay "Man's Destiny":
"Unless [Mankind] can control his own evolution as he is learning to
control that of domesticated plants and animals, man and all his works
will go down into oblivion and darkness."

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ECOLOGY: environmental science and biology

Your Humble Webmaster did Ph.D. research in biology (Artificial Life
and Nanotechnology) in the mid-1970s, and taught Ecology at the
experimental college of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

His newest page in The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide may be
found at: Ecology and Science Fiction

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EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION: telepathy, psi, other paths to the mind

Remembrance and reflection, how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought divide.
--Alexander Pope

Where to start? Well, there were telepathic aliens in "Fifteen Months in
the Moon", by G. H. Ryan (1880). Published in 1885, there was a
super-perceptive girl -- when she was hypnotized -- in "The Bohemian" by
Fitz-James O'Brien, but he wrote it some time before 1862.

20 Good book-length examples since then include:

Jim Aikin's [James Douglas Aikin] "The Wall at the Edge of the World"
[Ace, 1993] telepathy and utopia
"The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester (1952)
"Jack of Eagles", by James Blish [Greenberg, 1952; Avon, 1958, as "ESP-er"
"Psionic Menace" by John Brunner [Ace, 1963]
"Telepathist" by John Brunner (19??)
Algis Budrys' "Rogue Moon" (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960): the protagonist with a death
wish is again and again transmitted to the Moon to explore a deadly
alien maze, and is in telepathic contact with his earth-based
"original" version
"Out of Sight, Out of Mind" by Chester Aaron [Lippincott, Sep 1985;
Bantam Spectra, 1986] juvenile, telepathic twins vs.
international terrorists
"Pstalemate", by Lester del Rey, New York: G.P. Putam's (1971)
"Time for the Stars" by Robert Heinlein [Scribners, 1956] telepathy between twins,
one of whom stays on Earth, one of whom rockets to the stars and ages
more slowly. Telepathy is shown to be inheritable.
"The Dead Zone" by Stephen King (1979): precognition affects
political candidate
"Mutant" by Henry Kuttner [Gnome, 1953, as Lewis Padgett; Ballentine
Books; Garland, 1976]: telepathy
"The ESP Worlds", by J. T. M'Intosh, New Worlds #16-18, (Nov 1952)
"The Inner Wheel" by Keith Roberts [Doubleday, 1970]: telepathy
"And Chaos Died" by Joanna Russ [Ace, 1970]: telepathy
"Three to Conquer" by Eric Frank Russell [Avalon, 1956; Ace]: telepathy
"Dying Inside" by Robert Silverberg (1972)
"The Espers" by Steven M. Souza [Lenox Hill, 1972]
"More than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon (1953)
"Wild Talent" by Wilson Tucker [Rinehart, 1954; Avon; Bantam, 1955, as
"Man from Tomorrow"]: telepathy
"Slan" by A. E. Van Vogt (1940)
"The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham [19??]: telepathy

13 short fictions and one "factual article" about E.S.P. may be found in
"14 Great Tales of ESP", edited by Idella Purnell Stone, with an Introduction
by John W. Campbell [London: Hodder Fawcett, 1969]
[magazines and dates added by Magic Dragon Multimedia]:

Isaac Asimov's "Belief" [Astounding, Oct 1953]: Physics versus levitation
Reginald Bretnor's "The Man On Top" [F&SF, Sep 1960]: Mountain climbing, or is it?
Fredric Brown's "Preposterous": what is balderdash, and what is not?
Walter Bupp's "Modus Vivendi" [Astounding, Sep 1961] unethical telepaths and crime
Mark Clifton & Alex Apostolides' "What Thin Partitions"
[Astounding, Sep 1953]: industrial psychokinesis
Randall Garrett's "The Foreign Hand Tie" [Astounding, Dec 1961]:
espionage via telepathy between identical twins
Robert A. Heinlein's "Project Nightmare" [Amazing, Apr/May 1953]:
clairvoyance and A-bombs
Zenna Henderson's "Ararat" [F&SF, Oct 1952]: the first of "The People" stories,
about psi-gifted aliens who live on Earth
Murray Leinster's "The Leader" [Astounding, Feb 1960]: long-distance mass-hypnotism
Mack Reynolds' "I'm A Stranger Here Myself" [Thrilling Wonder Stories, Apr 1951]:
kinship in a foreign city
Eric Frank Russell's "And Still It Moves": "factual article"
James H. Schmitz's "These Are The Arts" [F&SF, Sep 1962]:
telepathic masters, we're slaves
Jay Williams' "False Image" [Astounding, Oct 1958]: noise disorts telepathy?
Robert F. Young's "The Garden in the Forest" [Astounding, Feb 1953]:
psi perception of symbols

and some other fine short stories about E.S.P. are:

Manly Bannister's "Psi for Psurvival" [Saturn, July 1957]
Walter Bupp's "Psi for Sale" [Astounding, Sep 1965]
Philip K. Dick's "Psi-Man Heal My Child!" [Imaginative Tales, Nov 1955]
Kenneth Bulmer's "Psi No More" [Science Fiction #14, June 1955]
Philip E. High's "The Psi Squad" [New Worlds #114, Jan 1962]
Darrell T. Langhart's (Randall Garrett) "Psichopath" [Astounding, Oct 1960]
John Victor Peterson & Edward S. Staub's "The Psilent Partner"
[Fantastic Universe, Mar 1954]
John A. Sentry's (A. J. Budrys) "Psioid Charley" [Astounding, May 1956]
Murray Leinster's "The Psionic Mousetrap" [Amazing, Mar 1955]
Vance Simonds's "Telempathy" [Amazing, Jun 1963]
Leigh Brackett's "Teleportress of Alpha C" [Planet Stories, Winter 1954-55]

Science fiction magazines delight in printing nonfiction articles on the
subject, such as:

H. M. Mack, "Are You Telepathic", Science Fiction Digest, #2, Fall 1954

What do we mean by E.S.P.? We mean ways other than sight, smell, sound,
taste, and touch by which knowledge of the outside world (or the interior
world of other beings) is apprehended and becomes directly known. This
category overlaps that vague one of "psychic phenomena."

Some say that everyone has a touch of E.S.P. and that, for example, anyone
can be taught to dowse for undergound water or treasure. Some say that
E.S.P. was once common to humanity, but has almost died out. "The
Inheritors" by William Golding, for instance, has kindly telepathic
empathetic Neanderthals gradually displaced by the quarrelsome Cro
Magnons -- us -- who have to substitute language for the genetically
missing gift of mind-to-mind contact.

E.S.P. has also been called "parapsychology" and has been abbreviated by
the Greek letter "Psi." As a result, E.S.P. is sometimes simply called
"Psi" and some science fiction authors use the term "psionics."

Besides telepathy (mind-reading) and telempathy (emotion-reading), experts
talk about psychokinesis (PK for short) or "mind over matter" -- moving
objects by mental powers alone. Precognition is the hypothetical ability
to sense future evenbts before they occur. "Remote Viewing"
or Clairvoyance or Scrying is the talent for seeing things not actually before your
eyes, and similarly Clairaudience is the ability to hear impossibly faint
or far away sounds. Fictional characters sometimes have the ability to knw
where they are, or where their goal is, without compass or map. Psychometry
is the ability to sense what has touched some physical object being touched
by the ESP-sensitive person. Bilocation is the putative ability to be in
two places at the same time. Pyrokinesis is the capability to start fires
by mental action alone. Apportation is the subset of teleportation
consisting of mentally bringing an object to the empowered person. I have
experimented in my fiction with new forms of ESP, such as Precognitive Smell,
but only as a joke, as ESP-type magical talents have so proliferated
in recent attempting-to-be-original Fantasy.

There have been many studies, and no firm conclusion can be made from
their data. Some nonfiction references include:

R. Broughton's "Parapsychology: The Controversial Science", New York:
Ballentine (1991)
Ciba Foundation's "ESP--Extrasensory Perception", Boston: Little Brown (1956)
H. L. Edge, R. L. Morris, J. H. Rush, & J. palmer, "Foundations of
Parapsychology: Exploring the Boundaries of Human Capability", London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul (1986)
H. J. Eysenck & C. Sargent's "Explaining the Unexplained: Mysteies of
the Paranormal", London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1982)
H. J. Irwin's "An Introduction to Parapsychology", London: McFarland
(1989)
S. Krippner's [editor] "Advances in Parapsychological Research
(Volumes 1-6)", New York: Plenum Press (1977, 1978, 1982); London:
McFarland (1984, 1987, 1991)
J. Gaither Pratt's "Parapsychology: An Insider's View of E.S.P.",
New York: Doubleday (1964)
J. B. Rhine, J. G. Pratt, C. C. Thomas's "Parapsychology: Frontier
Science of the Mind" Springfield, Illinois (1964?)
G. R. Schmeidler & R. A. McConnell's "ESP and Personality Patterns"
Yale University Press (1958)
G. R. Schmeidler's "Parapsychology and Psychology", London: McFarland (1988)
B. Shapin & L. Coly's [editors] "Psi and States of Awareness", New
York: Parapsychology Foundation (1978)
B. B. Wolman's (editor): "Handbook of Parapsychology", New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold

Some books which debunk, refute, or question claims of ESP include:

J. E. Alcock's "Parapsychology: Science or Magic?
A Psychological Perspective", Oxford: Pergamon (1981)
{to be done}
xxxx

Some recommended Journals on ESP are:

Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research, published quarterly by the American Society for Psychical
Research
European Journal of Parapsychology, published annually by the Koestler Chair of Parasychology,
University of Edinburgh
Journal of Parapsychology, published quarterly by Parapsychology Press
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, published quarterly by the Society for Psychical Resarch
The Skeptical Inquirer, published quarterly by SCICOP

See the Authors' page in the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide for more
on these E.S.P. authors:

M. Bernstein
H. Carrington
E. J. Dingwall
E. J. Garrett
R. Heywood
R. Lindner
A. Pukarich
J. B. Rhine
S. G. Soal
xxx

Here's a wonderful quotation, over 300 years old, setting forth the goal of
neuroscience:

"Since the brain is a machine [Descartes, 1664] we need not hope to discover
its artifice by methods other than those that are used to find for other
machines. There remains to be done, therefore, only what would be done
for all other machines. I mean the dismantling of all its components,
piece by piece, and consideration of what they can do separately and as a
whole." -- Steno, 1669.

See Science, 11 July 2003, p.170

Telepathy and Extraterrestrials.
While there is no clear evidence that people
can ever "read" each others' minds, we are socially familiar with the notion
of telepathy, and many cultures have such a notion.
There are South American natives who believe that the drug Yage
allows people to read minds in religious ceremonies, and J.B. Rhine and others
at Duke University have performed experiments which tantalized some scientists
for decades.
It may be that telepathy would give such a Darwinian advantage
to any creature that evolves it that the very lack of such creatures
on Earth means that telepathy is impossible. But we can't be sure.
After all, in one of the few science fiction novels written by a
Nobel Prize winner, William Golding's The Inheritors {11},
telepathic Neanderthals are displaced by non-telepathic Homo Sapiens who,
without the mental advantage of telepathy, are forced to develop language
and technology.
The suggestion here is that telepathy is actually an evolutionary
DISadvantage.
If the ET is telepathic, there are several possibilities.
Maybe we can "hear" its thoughts, and it can't hear ours.
This gives our Science Team an advantage to exploit.
Maybe it can "hear" our thoughts, but cannot project messages
back into our minds. If so, it