Frederick Andrew Lerner, D.L.S.
Library and Information Science

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Essays by Fred Lerner



"A Master of Our Art": Rudyard Kipling Considered as a Science Fiction Writer

Rudyard Kipling wrote of new inventions and future wars, and warned of the social consequences of technological change. And he exerted an immense influence on modern science fiction.


The Maid of Orleans

It was in A Book of Heroes that I first learned the story of Joan of Arc. But there's more to that story than can be found in a children's book.


Libraries and Their Impact on Fantasy

More than other kinds of fiction, fantasy depends upon a continuity with earlier literature. Fantasy writers get more than literary sustenance from libraries, The viability of writing fantasy professionally depends upon libraries.


Toward a Definition of Science Fiction: A Reply to James Gunn

There simply is no such thing as the definition of science fiction. How one defines it depends on what one intends to do with it. The reader, the writer, the editor, the publisher, the bibliographer, the historian, the teacher, the librarian, the critic -- each has his own concerns, and those concerns necessarily shape, not only his working definition of science fiction, but also his entire approach to the question of defining SF.