Iain McIntyre

This anthology of essays covers "radical science fiction" from 1950 to 1985. The definition of "radical" is seemingly broad: it takes in sf radical in form, in content, and in politics. Some essays thematically cover certain ideas (e.g., apocalypse, sex, nuclear war, homosexuality, animals), others focus on specific authors or even texts (e.g., Judith Merril, R. A. Lafferty, the Strugatsky brothers, Philip K. Dick). Despite its seemingly broad mandate, it actually feels very coherent: one gets an impression of sf responding in a variety of way to a time of social change, and that it was a time when almost anything was possible in the genre. It does a great job of creating a coherent portrait without feeling repetitive; I never would have thought of putting some of this stuff together, but it really does fit. The essays are also generally of a very high quality, in-depth and analytical without feeling too academic. There were really just two I didn't like (one felt too much like a journal article, another a summary), and there were some obvious errors occasionally. I have some new works to seek out, and I think it would be fun to teach a course using this to organize.… (more)

Fascinating collection of essays on Australian music and related youth culture from 1966-1970. However because of a production error some of the articles are miscredited.

The Easybeats essay credited to Paul Culnane and Iain McIntyre is largely sourced from an article entirely written by Duncan Kimball for his Milesago website (http://www.milesago.com/). Credit to Glenn A Baker in Kimball's article is also missing from the new essay.

The essay on 'The Real Thing' is also taken from Milesago and is credited to Paul Culnane alone, omitting credit for additional research by Kimball.… (more)