CalMeacham,
In a number of threads, I’ve made…um…unkind…(heh) comments about Alexi Panshin.
In several of them, you’ve pointed me towards a book by Panshin (and wife) called The World Beyond the Hill.
On the strength of your recommendation, I picked up a copy and…
Damn you. I was perfectly happy thinking of Panshin as a no-talent hack who rode an “I Hate Heinlein” hobby-horse to fame and here you go recommending an incredibly good book of SF criticism.
I’m only up to Wells, but damn Panshin’s insightful. I think he’s overusing the “transcendence” stuff a bit too much, but I’ve learned a ton. Plus he has a very clean writing style that I’m enjoying a lot.
Plus I peeked ahead at one of the big Heinlein sections and he’s able to keep his rabid anti-Heinlein sentiments in check and made some excellent comments and critiques without spewing the kind of “Heinlein was a jerk who was mean to me” stuff he did in **Heinlein in Dimension"!
And it’s a hell of a lot more balanced a look at Science Fiction than
Brian (“Everything before the New Wave Sucked”) Aldiss’ Billion Year Spree or John (“I HATE Americans”) Clute’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
I’m really impressed that Panshin can accept books like Bellamy’s Looking Backwards on their own merits, regardless of how dreadful and appalling their ideas are to us and I loved the chapter on Verne and how Verne kept getting close to Science Fiction but backing away at the last second.
If the rest of this book is as good as the first few chapters (and the Heinlein one I peeked at) I’m in for some good reading!
Thanks for the recommendation! 
(and to anyone else out there, I second it!)
Fenris