Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.'s The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction

have appeared so far this century. This is not to say that Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is always right and that I always agree with him: he isn't and I don't. But my disagreements are mostly in the way of the continuing dialogue that he calls for. What makes this book significant is that it marks a necessary, if belated, corrective to the orthodox Marxist view of science fiction that has been the more or less default academic response to the genre since at least the work of Darko Suvin. As such, The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction is likely to become the central text of SF criticism for some time to come.