The following bibliography of science fiction
criticism does not claim to be exhaustive. It does,
however, gather together a large number of critical
materials on sf that the editors of SFS deem
to be important, influential, or historically
noteworthy. We have listed the entries in
reverse chronological order since such a format, we feel,
affords a useful glimpse of the evolution of sf
criticism from 1634 to the present. In those cases
where items listed on the bibliography have either
been reviewed in SFS or featured in our
Documents in the History of SF series, we have
inserted links to the relevant pages.
In consulting this collective bibliography,
our readers should be aware of certain
methodological and editorial assumptions we made in
compiling it. First, there are very few references
herein to critical works that focus primarily on
utopias; these are treated quite extensively in
scholarly journals like Utopian Studies and
in books by Lyman Tower Sargent and others. Second,
rather than citing numerous individual reviews and
essays by well-known critics or authors, as a rule
we have preferred to list relevant compendia--e.g.,
John Clute's Strokes (1988) or his Look
at the Evidence (1995)--even though, in many
cases, the material gathered in these volumes was
written much earlier. Third, we have excluded from
this list most anthologies of sf, author
biographies and interviews, works of theory that do
not focus primarily on sf, and general
bibliographies of sf (which tend to date rapidly
from the moment they are published).
The original version of this
critical
bibliography appeared in the special issue of SFS
"A History of Science Fiction
Criticism" (26.2 [July 1999]: 263-83), where it
served as the collective Works Cited for survey
articles on the topic by Arthur B. Evans, Gary
Westfahl, Donald M. Hassler, and Veronica
Hollinger.
