Sterling on Lovecraft

Hat tip, Bobby:

“Effective science fiction always has some kind of burning, subterranean agenda, on the verge of bursting out of control. With Jules Verne, it’s a frustrated sailor stuck in a bourgeois attic. With H.G Wells, it’s a leftist revolutionary writing thrillers to make his rent; with H.P. Lovecraft, it’s mind-blowing cosmic vistas from a put-upon shabby gentility. Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It’s about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.” – Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things.

“a put-upon shabby gentility” (*lol*)