THIS PLACE we’re standing now, it gets called a lot of things. Science fiction, fantastic or speculative fiction, a genre, the field. For the moment let’s just think of it as a sheltered bus stop. The bus can take you up the street to the mall or the hardware store. Or it can take you to a land you’ve never seen before. And whatever we call it, we’ve had from the first more than our fair share of mavericks, of mustangs, writers who think and write as no one else; this headstrong reach is built into who and what we are. So from Phil Farmer through Joanna Russ and Chip Delany to Tim Powers and Howard Waldrop, there’s often a singular particularity. Or to employ a word that in our day of hype and hyperbole I generally avoid: genius…
