Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon, Eds., Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation (Book Review‪)‬

Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon, eds., Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 278 pp. In the brief time it has been before the world, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon's new anthology has already provoked some sharply conflicting critical responses. Science-Fiction Studies (vol. 29, #3) has published a rave review of unqualified praise by the eminent Katherine Hayles, while Utopian Studies (vol. 13, #2) has weighed in with a harshly (though not totally) negative judgment by the equally eminent Marleen Barr. Although there are, in general, few places I distrust more than the moderate middle between two opposed extremes, that does seem to be where I am on this particular issue. As I read it, Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation is neither the fountain of pure brilliance that dazzles Hayles nor the (almost) unmitigated disaster that dismays Barr.