"Science fiction is the characteristic literary genre of the century. It is the genre that stands in opposition to literary modernism." So says David G. Hartwell in his introduction to The Science Fiction Century, an anthology spanning a hundred years of
80,000 years ago, during the Ice Age in Paleolithic Europe, after a savage atack by a rival tribe, the people of Ulam are left without the flaming branch from the fire that the tribe keeps perpetually burning. Without knowledge of how to ignite fire on th