George Edgar Slusser

George Edgar Slusser (July 14, 1939 – November 4, 2014) was an American scholar, professor and writer. Slusser was a well-known science fiction critic. A professor emeritus of comparative literature at University of California, Riverside, he was the first curator of the Eaton collection.

Background Slusser was born in San Francisco in 1939, the son of salesman Raymond Leroy Slusser and Edlo Mildred Raerth. Slusser attended Harvard University, afterward taking a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany as well as serving as a Harvard traveling fellow in France. Slusser helped publish an annual journal, Bridges to Science Fiction to publish the outcomes of each conference. With the help of UCR head librarian Eleanor Montague and Cal State San Bernardino librarian Michael Burgess, Slusser became curator of the Eaton collection and Slusser took it upon himself to radically expand the collection's holdings. Slusser had pushed for the establishment of both a science fiction studies center and a graduate program for science fiction at the university but the plan died with university chancellor Tomás Rivera.

Slusser continued to teach comparative literature at UCR until his retirement in 2005. A host of science fiction writers and scholars have studied under Slusser, including Howard V. Hendrix, David Leiby, Bradford M. Lyau, and Daryl F. Mallett.

Writing

Slusser wrote dozens of books and journal articles. Much of his work was critical analysis of science fiction. He listed Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, James Blish, Ray Bradbury, David Brin, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, and Theodore Sturgeon alongside golden age authors J.-H. Rosny, Olaf Stapledon, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells as the best science fiction writers primarily because of their focus on science in their writings. Slusser praised Bradbury saying "Bradbury just exuded this kind of folksiness that made his works extremely visual... A lot of science fiction writing came out of that Midwestern, iconic American experience that Bradbury defined." Slusser mentioned that Bradbury's technophobia was evident in his works: "to Bradbury, science is the forbidden fruit, destroyer of Eden." Of Arthur C. Clark, Slusser said that "Clarke, along with Asimov and [Robert A.] Heinlein, is unique in that his human dramas are determined by advances in science and technology... Clarke incarnates the essence of [science fiction], which is to blend two otherwise opposite activities into a single story, that of the advancement of mankind." Although Slusser considered Robert A. Heinlein the "epitome of science fiction writers" his criticism of the author was far more pointed. Slusser dismissed Heinlein's later work as "self-indulgent." Slusser points out that stories like Heinlein's Have Space Suit—Will Travel draw students because it's "like 'Huckleberry Finn' redone." In Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in His Own Land Slusser condemned the secular sort of Unconditional election philosophy Heinlein propounded in his books: "Heinlein is a writer who represents a certain strain in our culture, a kind of secular Calvinist vision of the world of the elect and the damned." Slusser labeled both Heinlein and author Frank Herbert as "potboilers." In 2012, Slusser and his wife translated the works of J.-H. Rosny into Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind.

Published works