Articles · Dispatch

The Dispatch: Welcome to the archive

A short note from Brian — what I've fallen back in love with this week.

Welcome to the Dispatch — a short note I'll send up from the archive now and again, about whatever I've fallen back in love with that week.

This week it's the openings. I've been reading first sentences, dozens of them, the way some people read the backs of cereal boxes. There's a particular kind of golden-age opening that grabs you by the collar and doesn't so much invite you in as drag you, grinning. First-contact stories are the worst offenders, in the best way. Try a handful. See how many you can start and put down. I'll wager it's fewer than you think.

That's the whole idea of this place, really: not a catalogue to be searched but a room to get lost in. Poke around. Fall for a writer nobody's mentioned to you in fifty years.

More soon.

More reading

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Where to Start with 1950s Science Fiction

The genre's golden decade is the perfect front door, here's how to walk through it.

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First Contact: The Stories That Still Unsettle

The moment we meet the other, for better or worse, is science fiction's oldest and sharpest thrill.

Guide

Vintage SF in Fifteen Minutes

No time? The short story is science fiction's native form, and its best gateway.

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