Brian Doherty on Science Fiction Author Barry Malzberg

A handful of science fiction writers have achieved canonical literary recognition—J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula Le Guin most prominently. Barry N. Malzberg has been little noted nor long remembered as an artist producing estimable, serious literary work within the genre's confines. Yet he campaigned all his life toward that goal. In 1991 Malzberg wrote of his ambition to "bring science fiction to full literary respectability, get science fiction with me at the head of it into the literary and academic canon." He knew he'd failed, writes Senior Editor Brian Doherty, and his failure is regrettable.