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From: jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (Tears) The Way The Future Was by Frederik Pohl
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2025 13:16:13 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Public Access Networks Corp.
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In article <pan$3f3b$800c6118$9324144d$920328b3@cpacker.org>,
Charles Packer  <mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:
>On Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:20:58 -0000 (UTC), James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> The Way The Future Was by Frederik Pohl
>> 
>> The good-natured autobiography of an amiable SF author.
>> 
>> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/strange-things-happen
>
>You said "Future was one of a number of autobiographies and 
>historical accounts of SF that came out around this time."
>Could that activity account for the broad bump in the frequency
>of occurrence of "science fiction" in published literature
>from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s?
>https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?
>content=science+fiction%2C%28spirituality+*+.
>5%29&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-US&smoothing=0
>( or https://tinyurl.com/bddmcn5n )
>"spirituality" included for comparison with other zeitgeist-y
>phenomena.

I think it's the other way around. SF went through a boom and 
there was a market for books about SF creators as a side effect. 
-- 
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