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| of popularising ideas to people who would not
read the academic non-fiction works in which the ideas are presented
to university people. Doris Lessing, a literary writer, has also written a series of SF novels - Canopus in Argos (Shikasta, The Sirian Experiments, The Making of the Representative of Planet 8 and others). She defines SF as Space Fiction. She uses them as a vehicle to discuss philosophical, political and psychological matters, such as the nature of patriotism, belief, consciousness and colonialism, and especially how much of what people think they are doing is really done for motives or purposes they may be unaware of. Ursula le Guin is another SF writer whose work discusses and illustrates ecological and political ideas. In The Word for World is Forest she imagines the arrival of a colonising force from earth on to a planet where the inhabitants live in ecological harmony with the forest - much as people in some parts of Africa, South America and Asia may have done before European colonialism on earth. This novel may also be thought of as an attempt to understand and also to criticise the attitudes of the American military during the war in Vietnam - and, by extension, of the military in all countries. In Always Coming Home this writer has imagined a future in which people have learned how not to damage the earth. Another of her political SF novels is The Dispossessed in which she imagines a revolutionary society exiled to a moon of a rich but corrupt planet. Many people probably get their first opportunity to think about political and philosophical questions by reading this kind of fiction. Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibovitz discusses what the world might be like if there were a major nuclear war. He imagines the history of the several thousand years which might well be necessary to restore civilised life, as well as the responsibilities of scientists for the effects of what they discover. It includes a religious commentary on the effects of science. Keith Roberts in Pavane has imagined that history had been different. Suppose England had not become Protestant in the sixteenth century, how might the world be now? He assumes that science and technology would have developed more slowly. This theme has also been used by Kingsley Amis in The Alteration. Both of these books are critical of some aspects of organised religion. Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky can be read as a fable similar to Plato's image of the cave (in the Republic) in which he discusses the idea |
that the world of ordinary life may not be as
real as we think it is. Heinlein's novel imagines a spaceship
carrying a whole community to another star system (a common theme
of SF). However, they have forgotten the purpose of their journey
because the men of knowledge, the officers and scientists, were
killed in a revolt. The story describes how some individuals
explore their world and rediscover the true purpose of the voyage. Some literary critics have refused to read or discuss SF, thinking it unworthy of consideration. They may despise it because much of it originally appeared in badly printed magazines with strange pictures on the cover. But a jewel may be found in a dung heap (as well as quantities of dung). Music critics behaved the same way when Jazz first appeared. Readers of SF sometimes meet together in Conventions and clubs to discuss it. To some extent SF, especially the worst kind, forms the basis of a cult in which people dress up in space suits or dress like "aliens" from other planets. I have included this rather long section because SF is not usually discussed in school literature guides. 2. Fantasy This too is a genre in which anything at all can be invented and can perhaps be thought of as a development of SF. The most famous writer of this genre was J.R.R.Tolkien whose best known books are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Writing in this genre includes Magic, Imaginary worlds, talking animals among the things possible. C.S.Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) is another well-known writer in this field. Both of these writers started by writing for children and Lewis's Fantasy books are usually classified as children's fiction. Both writers have a strong religious theme (though not specifically Christian). Camara Laye, a citizen of Guinea, is the best known African writer of this genre with The Radiance of the King. Ben Okri, a Nigerian writer, has also contributed. Some books in this genre appear to illustrate religious or philosophical ideas. More recent writers in this genre do not seem as well-written as the earlier examples. As with SF there are many imitative writers who do not seem to have the originality of Tolkien and Lewis. Some Latin American writers, especially Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have contributed books which may be classified with this group, though they are usually classified as Magical Realism. Some ancient Latin books, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Apuleius' The Golden Ass, may also belong to this genre. |
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