Astounding Science Fiction’s editor, John W. Campbell, once said that mystery and science fiction were incompatible genres. He stated that science fiction writers could invent convenient facts and technologies in an imaginary future to circumvent the deductive process. Hal Clement’s Needle (1950), Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man (1952), and Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1953), among other early works, demonstrate that science and mystery fiction mash-ups are not only possible, they’re amazing. Bester’s futuristic police procedural won the very…
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