Eclectic editing

From Patrick S. Tomlinson's book "In the Black", an actual published book edited by an actual editor and published by an actual publisher (namely Macmillan):

The Citogenesis of Adam Roberts

A while back I noticed that the Amazon listing for "The Compelled" by Adam Roberts and François Schuiten had something of an oddity in the "About the authors" section, in reference to Mr Roberts:

His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.

[Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid were some of the many pen-names used by super-prolific British author Lionel Fanthorpe for his 1950s pulp sci-fi novels, some of which were famously churned out at a high rate, sometimes one per week... someone was clearly having a laugh at Adam Roberts' expense - but who, and how did it make it on to Amazon?]

A little research (read: Googling) revealed that the text seemed to have been copied and pasted from an earlier version of Wikipedia's Adam Roberts page, which bizarrely enough had a genuine citation.

Delving into the history of the Wikipedia page, it appeared that the text was first inserted by a mischevious Wikipedian in December 2017, naturally without any citation. It lingered until November 2018 when it was removed by a passing editor who recognised it for the limp attempt at humour that it was.

However, the offending sentence was later reinstated in September 2019, this time with an actual citation from a real book, the Portuguese Verdadeira História Da Ficção Científica (The True History of Science Fiction). However, the book in question appears to have merely copied & pasted the original sentence from the mischevious earlier Wikipedia entry.... Needless to say there's a name for this sort of circular reference generation, and that is citogenesis. Wikipedia naturally has a list of such incidents.

Edit: It received a mention in the April 2023 edition of Dave Langford's Ansible newsletter:

Adam Roberts’s Amazon blurb for Stealing for the Sky has an ‘About the author’ coda that after the mention of his being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature ends: ‘His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.’ [JB]

"Sci-Fi" : a definition

 As seen in the Guardian's comment section:

Steampunkopedia

 From the Steampunkopedia (link to PDF), my entire bibliography (click to embiggen):

"The Best of All Possible Worlds" is a stand-alone alternate history SF story which isn't part of the "Barrington Smythe" series. But then again, there's nothing to rule it out being set in the future of the Smythe sequence.... hmm!

Also, The Great Race, The Great Airship Scare, and The Man Who Knew Too Much, while set in the same sort-of steampunk Edwardian milieu as the Barrington Smythe stories, do not actually feature Mr Smythe; they are a series of connected stories featuring one Dr Kilmarnock and Bart Smythe, Barrington Smythe's smarter brother (or is he?). The Man Who Knew Too Much ended on something of a cliffhanger, and the projected sequel, The Mancunian Candidate, was never published.

Gnostic SF?

So basically, all carbon-based life is satanic. Very Gnostic, which made me think of the vanishingly small handful of science fiction stories with Gnostic themes/tropes. Such as"The Final Equation" by Adrian Vonner, where the ending has God being revealed as Satan. I remember it as being as Gnostic as a bag full of Cathars.

And of course Mitch Greig's comical short story "Madame Zuleika Goes to Hell", which only appeared in a couple of small press 'zines in the 90s before sinking without trace. It features Charles Lubbock's notorious erotic character ending up in Hell, discovering that Satan is the Creator, and receiving a heartfelt apology from God.

Poe's Law

The Secret History of Science Fiction

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
- Keats

---

WHAT IS SCIENCE FICTION?
By Dr. Marco Bitetto

In the total cumulative genre of fiction there exist five other genres. These genres are the hard science fiction, soft science fiction, speculative science, historic fiction and finally fantasy.

The term speculative science was originally coined by Mr. Hugo Gernsbach back in the early 1930's in his fiction magazine called "Amazing Stories" and his other subsequent fiction magazine called "Amazing Science Stories" that were sold during the 1930's up until the name of these two magazines changed to "ANALOG SCIENCE FACT AND FICTION" magazine.

In the 1950's, Mr. Hugo Gernsbach gave the editorial control over to Mr. Joseph Campbell. After Mr. Joseph Campbell died the editorial control of ANALOG magazine transferred over to Dr. Stanley Schmidt and was under his control until for a brief time Dr. Ben Bova was the editor in charge. Then Dr. Stanley Schmidt once again was the editor. Presently, Dr. Stanley Schmidt has been replaced as editor of ANALOG.

During the time of Dr. Schmidt's editorial control of ANALOG magazine, he termed the phrase "historical fiction" to define a newly emerging genre of fiction that was historically based.

It should be noted that during the reign of Mr. Joseph Campbell, the term hard science fiction replaced the old term speculative science and also the term soft science fiction came to define the genre of science fiction that dealt with all things relating to psychology and sociology in fiction as a whole.

In all manner of science fiction stories there exist three parts. The first part is the introduction this is followed by the plot and then the ending of the story.

In the story introduction, there reader is introduced to the characters in the story, the brief backgrounds of the characters and the problem that the characters must soft during the entire story.

The plot on the other hand consist of a brief synopsis of what the story is all about.

The ending of the story tells the reader both that the characters in the story have solved the problem and how they solved the problem.

The best fictional stories of all kind make use of a twist in the ending of the story. This technique is used to provide the reader with a surprise ending that they could not have imagined by reading the previous parts to the story.

These above detailed parts of all manner of fictional story writing are what you should know as a new writer of fiction of any sort.

Link