Article: Saving science fiction

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Since the 1950s, James Gunn has lived in the future.

Beginning in science fiction's "Golden Age," Gunn has written or edited almost 40 novels, short story collections and histories of the genre and is considered one of its "grand masters," a title he shares with such pioneers as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon.

"Science fiction is the literature of change," says Gunn, 81. "Occasionally, it's predictive, but that's not its purpose. (Editor) John Campbell used to say, 'Science fiction is practice in a no- practice zone.' "

Gunn is director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, an academic program at the University of Kansas that he started in ...

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