Author Archives: Claire L. Evans

The Jewels of Aptor

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

The Jewels of Aptor is Samuel Delany’s first book, written when he was just 19 and published a year later. His wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker (with whom he went on to edit the speculative fiction anthology/journal Quark) was an assistant editor … Continue reading →

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Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

Ray Bradbury always seemed out of synch with the contemporary science fiction milieu: he wrote on a typewriter until the end, was sentimental, loved circuses, dreams, toys, fantasies, myths, loathed technology to the point of never driving a car, and … Continue reading →

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The Drowned World

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

Epochs drifted. Giant waves, infinitely slow and enveloping, broke and fell across the sunless beaches of the time-sea, washing him helplessly in its shallows. He drifted from one pool to another, in the limbos of eternity, a thousand images of … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury’s Birthday, William Gibson, and Being Science-Fictional in Los Angeles

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

Los Angeles is arguably the science fiction capital of America. Blade Runner’s iconic sino-Futuristic downtown notwithstanding, there’s a strong historical lineage for science fiction in the Southland: the fan culture which took root here mid-century, the early conventions, the legacy … Continue reading →

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Patternmaster

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

I have an arcane personal system for reading. It’s basically a hierarchy of dog-earing: big folds at the top corners of the page when I put a book down, and precise little tucks on the bottom corners when a passage … Continue reading →

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In The Beginning…Was the Command Line

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

When Neal Stephenson penned In the Beginning…Was the Command Line in 1999, a book of technical essays had a short shelf life. Now, it’s almost inconceivable that a writer would dedicate as much time to lovingly detailing the essence of … Continue reading →

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Idoru

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

As a rule, I avoid judging the quality of a science fiction novel by the success of its predictions. For one, it’s too easy. And I inherently distrust any method of judging literature as cleanly qualitative as “did this invention … Continue reading →

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Ray Bradbury Was For The Humans

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

It was the summer of 1992 when I picked up my first Ray Bradbury novel at a yard sale. A paperback copy of The Martian Chronicles beat up beyond repair, it still surreptitiously toted the markings of a public library on its … Continue reading →

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What Happened to Cyberpunk?

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

Any regular reader of Space Canon knows my fondness for cyberpunk; Gibson, Rudy Rucker, and Bruce Sterling have all received breathless passes on these pages. Cyberpunk at its peak–before the movement was co-opted by 90s ‘netsploitation flicks and video games–was … Continue reading →

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The Day of the Triffids

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Claire L. Evans

Hi. This is about a deceptively stuffy British novel, The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham. I really like postwar British science fiction. There’s something richly strange and dissociative about the juxtaposition of pure fantasy and Britannic reasonableness; I suppose being … Continue reading →

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