The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction

Wythoff, Grant. editor. The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Reviewed by Cait Coker, SFRA Review #323 (Winter 2018): pp. 14-15, our source for this citation.[1]

Wythoff "collects nearly eighty essays and excerpts from Gernsback’s career, almost all of which are nonfiction (there are five fiction pieces included), and most of which revolve around the science and technology of radio and engineering." Coker finds "Wythoff’s emphasis throughout the collection [...] on media and technology rather than on literary history and analysis, a different perspective on science fiction history and studies when it seems we are often saturated with media criticism at the expense of literary criticism" — which might make Perversity ultimately a bit annoying to a literary critic such as the one writing this annotation, but of definite use for examining the theme of the Clockworks 2 wiki (Coker p. 14).

RDE, finishing, 11Oct21