The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF
Introduction '''''The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF''''' is a definitive 1994 anthology of hard science fiction (sf) short stories compiled by the award-winning editing team of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. This 990-page book includes 68 stories, each prefaced by a brief note to describe facts about the author, related works, or the logic of the story's inclusion in the genre. In addition, the book opens with three essays about the meaning and the boundaries of hard science fiction. The editors further explored these issues in ''The Hard SF Renaissance'' (2002).
Contents *"Real Science, Imaginary Worlds" by Gregory Benford. This essay discusses diverse connections between hard science fiction and science fact, and with scientists, extremes of scale, postmodernism, fantasy, as well as others. Citing numerous hard SF works, he illuminates the type of far-ranging notions that can be explored while still operating within a reasonably believable framework. Benford points out that similar to the endeavor of science, hard SF authors tend to share ideas and build immense discussions over time with newer works developing concepts further upon those that came before. * "On Science and Science Fiction" by Kathryn Cramer* "Hard Science Fiction" by David G. HartwellAuthorStory TitleYear of first publicationPart IUrsula K. Le Guin"Nine Lives"1969Bob Shaw"Light of Other Days"1966Nathaniel Hawthorne"Rappaccini's Daughter"1844Arthur C. Clarke"The Star"1955Hal Clement"Proof"1942Robert A. Heinlein"It's Great to Be Back"1947Gene Wolfe"Procreation"1984Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore"Mimsy Were the Borogoves"1943Raymond Z. Gallun"Davy Jones' Ambassador"1935Isaac Asimov"The Life and Times of Multivac"1975Robert L. Forward"The Singing Diamond"1979Dean Ing"Down & Out on Ellfive Prime"1979Hilbert Schenck"Send Me a Kiss by Wire"1984Philip Latham"The Xi Effect"1950Edgar Allan Poe"A Descent into the Maelström"1841Gregory Benford"Exposures"1982Kate Wilhelm"The Planners"1968James Blish"Beep"1954Richard Grant"Drode's Equations"1981Theodore L. Thomas"The Weather Man"1962Part IIArthur C. Clarke"Transit of Earth"1971J. G. Ballard"Prima Belladonna"1971Donald M. Kingsbury"To Bring in the Steel"1978C.M. Kornbluth"Gomez"1954Isaac Asimov"Waterclap"1970Anne McCaffrey"Weyr Search"1967Rudy Rucker"Message Found in a Copy of Flatland"1983Tom Godwin"The Cold Equations"1954H.G. Wells"The Land Ironclads"1903Larry Niven"The Hole Man"1973John W. Campbell"Atomic Power"1934John T. Sladek"Stop Evolution in Its Tracks! "1988Miles J. Breuer, M.D. "The Hungry Guinea Pig"1930Ian Watson"The Very Slow Time Machine"1978Bruce Sterling"The Beautiful and the Sublime"1986Ursula K. Le Guin"The Author of the Acacia Seeds"1974John M. Ford"Heat of Fusion"1984Gordon R. Dickson"Dolphin's Way"1964Gene Wolfe"All the Hues of Hell"1987Theodore Sturgeon"Occam's Scalpel"1971Edward Bryant"giANTS"1979Randall Garrett"Time Fuse"1954Clifford D. Simak"Desertion"1944Part IIIPoul Anderson"Kyrie"1969Raymond F. Jones"The Person from Porlock"1947Frederik Pohl"Day Million"1966J. G. Ballard"Cage of Sand"1963James Tiptree, Jr."The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats"1976Jules Verne'In the Year 2889"1889James Blish"Surface Tension"1952Cordwainer Smith"No, No, Not Rogov! "1959George Turner"In a Petri Dish Upstairs"1978Rudyard Kipling"With the Night Mail"1905Arthur C. Clarke"The Longest Science Fiction Story Ever Told"1965Alfred Bester"The Pi Man"1959Gregory Benford"Relativistic Effects"1982James P. Hogan"Making Light"1981Isaac Asimov"The Last Question"1956Philip K. Dick"The Indefatigable Frog"1953John M. Ford"Chromatic Aberration"1994Katherine Maclean"The Snowball Effect"1952Hilbert Schenck"The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck"1978Greg Bear"Tangents"1986William Gibson"Johnny Mnemonic"1981David Brin"What Continues, What Fails..."1991Michael F. Flynn"Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum"1990Vernor Vinge"Bookworm, Run! "1966
Reception Alex Anderson wrote in a positive review that Hartwell and Cramer have avoided the problems "behind the failure of the various other previous collections ... that have attempted to quantify the genre. These publications all failed for the same reason: omission. ... But not here. Here you'll find Gibson, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wells, Bear, Dick, Clement, Simak, Poe, Niven, Ballard and, yes, Blish. All the greats, and more. Sixty-nine names that are worth reading, and worth knowing. "Brian Attebery praised the volume as "a substantial (huge, actually) collection of classic and contemporary sf" and analyzes the introductions as well as the stories. Of the essays, he writes, "Yet at the same time the editors are valorizing hard sf, they are also planting doubts." On the one hand, hard science fiction produces pleasure and wonder and, as Cramer writes, it is "the core and center of the sf field," and Hartwell claims that it is "'about the emotional experience of describing and confronting what is scientifically true,' or more concisely, 'the Eureka.'" On the other, "It is this focus on what the editors frequently refer to as the 'hard sf affect' that allows them to pay lip service to conventional formulations of the hard/soft division while dramatically reconstructing our sense of the subgenre." Attebery finds, reading the stories, both "'soft' qualities as characterization, irony, and eloquence" and that a "'harder' underlying design emerges, something about the way technology reinvents human nature." Attebery identifies stories with "the pioneer mythos" and "an impatience with social systems which runs through virtually all of the stories in the book." Overall, Attebery writes,Brian Stableford would find disagreement with the review by Anderson, for he finds significant omissions and he quarrels with some inclusions. After comparing the volume with Groff Conklin's ''The Best of Science Fiction'' (1946) and Attebery's and Ursula K. Le Guin's ''The Norton Book of Science Fiction'' (1993) ("there is a definite continuity of enterprise"), Stableford wonders why Hawthorne would be presented as a proto-hard-sf writer,Gary K. Wolfe did praise the anthology as "very readable" and thinks that as "both a reading and a teaching anthology," this book is preferable to the Norton anthology. "Those who believe that hard sf can be defined historically by the period of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s editorship of ''Astounding'' will find that ''Ascent of Wonder'' contains a pretty good selection of classically Campbell-era stories and authors ... of the sort you would expect in an anthology of this scope. "Like Attebery and Stableford, Wolfe thought the subtitle misleading ("With all the special exceptions and counter-examples, the book's argument is less a theory of sf 'evolution' than a kind of literary creationism") and likely to leave readers new to science fiction feeling unsure what, precisely, hard science fiction is. He wrote that the volume might "confuse the issue more than it clarifies it. ... Most sf readers are likely to come away, as I did, convinced more than ever that hard sf is a fuzzy set—but that it's not ''this'' fuzzy." Wolfe finds the story introductions to "sometimes seem directed toward the general reader, sometimes toward the aficionado, and sometimes toward no one at all," which "is almost certain to leave the non-fan feeling like an outsider." He objects to some inclusions (Flynn's is "a ''ghost story'', for heaven's sake!" and Sturgeon's is "arguably not even an sf story") as well as to some themes and modes (Sladek's parody, Tiptree's fantasy). He concludes,David N. Samuelson shared reservations, too, judging that "this collection of stories is disorderly and diffuse, trying to serve not only the announced purpose, but others as well, among them a history lesson, a pleading for literary quality which may imply terms antithetical to sf "hardness," and a questioning of the very bases outlined in the introductions that supposedly constitute the subject at hand. Superficially ''laissez-faire'', allowing room for each claimant to hard sf status, its scatter-shot methods of selection and presentation in fact deprecate the real thing, watering it down so much as to virtually destroy any generic consistency." He observed, "Scientists as major characters are not common," that scientists "as victims appear more often," and that the "hard sf 'affect' may be evinced by an authoritative quasi-documentary tone and a hefty dose of didacticism (often turned against science in these stories). Sometimes, however, the 'hard man against the universe' pose is confused with the hardheaded intellectual honesty and accuracy science demands." Like Wolfe, he thought the story introductions problematic: "some suffer from vapidity, others dip into specialized literary jargon." Samuelson concludes,Thomas Easton of ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' gave a rave review: "If I had received this book for Christmas when I was fifteen, I would have vanished from all human ken for a month, unless I surfaced periodically to scream my delight at the world. I am confident that it would have a similar effect on modern youngsters, so rush out and buy six copies ... And insist that your town and school libraries buy copies, for without this book they can no longer claim an adequate ability to introduce young or old readers to SF. This one is essential."
See also *Hard science*Hard science fiction*Soft science fiction*Hard fantasy
References
External links * The Ascent of Wonder by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer. Story notes and introductions.