[ecrea] The Perversity of Things - Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction

A new publication from University of Minnesota Press

Free postage to UK customers

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-perversity-of-things

**

*The Perversity of Things***

*Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction***

/Hugo Gernsback/

/Edited by Grant Wythoff///

"Grant Wythoff's splendid work of scholarship dispels the dank, historic 
mists of a literary subculture with starkly factual archival research. 
An amazing vista of electronic media struggle is revealed here, every 
bit as colorful and cranky as Hugo Gernsback's pulp magazines—even the 
illustrations and footnotes are fascinating. I'm truly grateful for this 
work and will never think of American science fiction in the same way 
again."—Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, and critic

"Hugo Gernsback was one of the strangest and most weirdly influential 
minds of the twentieth century, and his story has never before been 
fully told. Grant Wythoff’s /The Perversity of Things/ is brilliant and 
beautiful—indispensible for anyone who wants to understand the collision 
of technology and culture in which science fiction was born."—James 
Gleick, author of /Time Travel/

"The quality of Wythoff's editorial work is outstanding, and it is well 
served by the clever typographical presentation of the book, pleasant to 
read, well indexed, and nicely illustrated. Thanks to this work, it 
should be possible to reframe the figure of Gernsback."—/Leonardo Reviews/

"Wythoff's indispensable account of Gernsback's understanding of the 
power of media is remarkable in many ways and is expected to reset 
people's understanding of SF. Wythoff uses examples of Gernsback's 
writing – fiction stories, essays, articles, editorials…even the 
inventor's own blueprints – to show how a tinkerer launched a new era in 
written science fiction."—/Kirkus Reviews/

"Each page is a small feast for the intellect."—/Paul Levinson’s 
Infinite Regress///

In 1905, a young Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg founded an electrical 
supply shop in New York. This inventor, writer, and publisher Hugo 
Gernsback would later become famous for launching the first science 
fiction magazine, /Amazing Stories/, in 1926. But while science 
fiction’s annual Hugo Awards were named in his honor, there has been 
surprisingly little understanding of how the genre began among a 
community of tinkerers all drawn to Gernsback’s vision of comprehending 
the future of media through making. In /The Perversity of Things/, Grant 
Wythoff makes available texts by Hugo Gernsback that were foundational 
both for science fiction and the emergence of media studies.

Wythoff argues that Gernsback developed a means of describing and 
assessing the cultural impact of emerging media long before media 
studies became an academic discipline. From editorials and blueprints to 
media histories, critical essays, and short fiction, Wythoff has 
collected a wide range of Gernsback’s writings that have been out of 
print since their magazine debut in the early 1900s. These articles 
cover such topics as television; the regulation of wireless/radio; war 
and technology; speculative futures; media-archaeological curiosities 
like the dynamophone and hypnobioscope; and more. All together, this 
collection shows how Gernsback’s publications evolved from an electrical 
parts catalog to a full-fledged literary genre.

/The Perversity of Things/aims to reverse the widespread 
misunderstanding of Gernsback within the history of science fiction 
criticism. Through painstaking research and extensive annotations and 
commentary, Wythoff reintroduces us to Gernsback and the origins of 
science fiction.

*Hugo Gernsback*(1884–1967) was a Luxembourgish-American inventor, 
writer, editor, and magazine publisher who founded the first science 
fiction magazine, /Amazing Stories/, in 1926. The annual Hugo Awards for 
the best works of science fiction and fantasy are named in his honor.

*Grant Wythoff*is a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the 
Humanities and a lecturer in the department of English and comparative 
literature at Columbia University.


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