Rob Latham is the author of Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago, 2002), co-editor of the Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (2010), and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014) and Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings (2017). A senior editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies for two decades, he is currently an editor-at-large for LARB.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
A Revisionist Mythos: Frankenstein Versus Cthulhu
New novels by Kim Newman and Michael Shea illustrate the power of popular myth....
Stephen King’s Mind Crimes
The celebrated horror novelist is rapidly becoming one of our best contemporary crime writers....
A Remembered World: On Russell Banks’s “Foregone”
Russell Banks’s new novel “Foregone” is his most metafictional work to date....
Febrile Magic
A superb collection of short and long (mostly long) stories by an award-winning fantasy author....
The Ineluctable Agon of Desire: Joyce Carol Oates’s Suspense Fiction
The prolific author has produced, sometimes under pseudonyms, a rich harvest of taut, stylish thrillers....
Man in the Maze: A Conversation with Robert Silverberg
A Grand Master talks about his career and the evolution of the SF marketplace since the 1950s....
The News They Wanted Not to Hear: On Robert Stone
Three new books offer an embarrassment of riches for fans of Robert Stone....
Zones of Possibility: Science Fiction and the Coronavirus
George R. Stewart’s 1949 novel “Earth Abides” offers an eerie augury our COVID-19 crisis....
An Ersatz Wonderland: On Stephen Wright’s “Processed Cheese”
Stephen Wright’s new novel is a scathingly funny satire of an ad-saturated, media-distracted, money-dominated society....
Kim Newman’s Dazzling Genre Multiverse
Rob Latham reviews the latest novel in Kim Newman’s “Anno Dracula” series....
Anatomy of a Neo-Noir Masterpiece
A richly detailed new study of the best movie ever made about Los Angeles....
An Uneven Showcase of 1960s SF
Rob Latham reviews the new Library of America set of 1960s SF novels....
The Ravages of Revelation
How three “garage philosophers” fought off a divine invasion in early 1970s California....
Grim Hints and Nervous Portents: On Dennis Etchison
The late horror author’s vivid snapshots of bleak Southern California suburbia....
Temporal Turmoil: The Time Travel Stories of Robert Silverberg
A Grand Master curates his finest time travel stories....
Magic Carpet Rides: Rock Music and the Fantastic
The long and complex relationship between fantastic fiction and rock music....
“We Are Looking in a Mirror”: Ramsey Campbell Curates the History of Horror
Surveying the history of horror fiction....
An Ode to New-Metal Man: David R. Bunch’s “Moderan”
Rob Latham sings the praises of “Moderan,” a neglected classic about a false utopia by David R. Bunch....
In Which Lou Norton Takes on a Mega-Church
Rob Latham reviews “City of Saviors” by Rachel Howzell Hall....
Eerie, Exalted Fantasy
On the career of a brilliant, neglected fabulist....
Webs of Desire and Power
Rob Latham reviews “Safe” by Ryan Gattis....
An Unkempt Jeremiad
Rob Latham on Norman Spinrad's latest novel, "The People's Police."...
Southern-Fried Noir
Rob Latham reviews “The Dime,” by Kathleen Kent....
The Ghost of Punk
A review of Elizabeth Hand’s new “Cass Neary” novel, “Hard Light”....
Pulp Metaphysics
Rob Latham reviews Michael Moorcock's "The Whispering Swarm."...
Lifestyles of the Nerdy and Perverted
JAKE ARNOTT’S The House of Rumour, published in 2012 in the UK and released last March in the US by ...
Mass-Market Surrealism
WHEN I INTRODUCED Rudy Rucker at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in March 2005, a scholarly gathering ...
Salvage Operations
Reprint publications are crucial to maintaining an institutional memory for these popular genres....
Nightmarish Glimpses of Our Inner Selves
“He was afraid neither of overripe sentimentality nor of despairing bleakness.”...
The Exegete
Crazy people generally don’t know they’re crazy and Dick’s abiding awareness of the dubious nature of his visions makes him at worst a pathetic figure...
A Malaise Deeper Than Shopping
Until the end of his life, Ballard insisted that science fiction was the most important form of literature to emerge during the twentieth century....
