Second paragraph of third section (which is the third of three introductions, this one by the editor Glyn Morgan):

The book that you hold in your hands was created as a companion project to the ‘Science Fiction’ exhibition that opened at the Science Museum in London in October 2022. This book is an extension of the themes and topics covered there, but stands alone as a collection of essays and images across five different topics, each exploring different aspects of the global genre of science fiction and its relationship with scientific enquiry, history and culture.

I got this book at the ‘Science Fiction’ exhibition in the Science Museum in London in December 2022. I didn’t bother writing up the exhibition itself at the time – to be honest, I did not find it very exciting at all, but could not work up the energy to be mean about it.

However, this lavishly illustrated book of short essays and interviews is a good souvenir. The interviews are with Stanley Chen / Chen Qiufan, Charlie Jane Anders, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson and Kim Stanley Robinson. The five individual sections are on machines / robots, space travel, communication and translation, aliens and millennial despair. The essay that I enjoyed most was Rachel Cordasco’s on science fiction in translation, which is not to say that any of the others were bad. The illustrations are relevant and well chosen. I think I got more enjoyment from the content of the book than from the content of the exhibition, and probably spent more time reading it than I did in the Science Museum that day three and a half years ago. Worth looking out for. You can get Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination here.

This was my shortest unread book acquired in 2022, and the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my shelves. Next on both of those piles was An Emotional Dictionary: Real Words for How You Feel, from Angst to Zwodder, by Susie Dent, but I didn’t finish that and can’t be bothered to write it up; likewise the very last book I acquired in 2022 other than Doctor Who comics, Blood Libel: Anti-Americanism and Genocide in the Kosovo War by Bardhyl Mahmuti.