Deconstructing the Iliad
I only recently read Homer’s Iliad in full. Like many people, as a child I became fascinated by Greek and Roman stories of gods, heroes, and monsters. But the translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey I picked up were so awkward and off-putting I quickly lost patience and put them aside.
A few years ago, my wife and I bought the new translation by Emily Wilson of the Odyssey, and over the course of many nights read it aloud to each other. (Early in our marriage we picked up the habit of reaching aloud to each other in the evenings, and keep an eye out for suitable texts.) More recently Wilson has translated the Iliad, and I decided to finally read it—though silently, to myself.
What is Science Fiction?
We separate fiction into categories, or genres: romance, mystery, historical, and of course science fiction and fantasy. Such categorization is useful as we may prefer romance over science fiction, or fantasy over mystery.
But the mechanism of categorization can be puzzling. How do we delineate what is and is not science fiction?