FIEDLER, Leslie A(aron)

(1917-)

   US critic whose piercing and mythopoeic views on the relationship between US culture and literature were first expressed in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), where he describes sf as a"typically Anglo-Saxon" form, although later, in Waiting for the End (coll 1964), he states that "Even in its particulars, the universe of science fiction is Jewish". He has long espoused the work of such sf writers as Samuel R. DELANY. In Dreams Awake (anth 1975) assembles material ofinterest, and Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided (1983) is an invigorating if sometimes eccentric examination of STAPLEDON. His fiction, like The Messengers will Come no More (1974), tends to FABULATION.

   JC

   See also: DEFINITIONS OF SF.