"spike the canon"
ursula k le guin's norton book of science fiction, reactions to
Back in June—remember June? I sure don’t—I mentioned discovering a review calling Ursula K. Le Guin’s Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960–1990 “a masterpiece of totalitarian propaganda.” This reaction was intriguingly over-the-top. But the review, published in the British zine Foundation, took a bit of effort to track down. Eventually I found the right copy of Foundation for sale in New Zealand and after the now usual nail-biting about tarrifs, it got through. So here’s a little bit about it. What follows is probably going to be quite niche even for people interested in this subject. Given that it is going to mostly be talking about a review that’s not online of a book that’s out of print, I’ve done my best to keep it comprehensible.
Some notes before we get into it, though. First, Slusser mentions at the beginning of the review that he unsuccessfully pitched a Norton Anthology of science fiction four years be…