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So (yes it's another post beginning with so, so standards are steadily slipping) I get home and all over my friends list is news of a well-regarded (and, for once, unashamed) former writer of science fiction winning the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.
I'm sure there must be other SF fans I know who, like me, have read Doris Lessing's entire Canopus series and not fallen at the first hurdle, as so many have done. It was a brave, worthy and well-considered attempt at anti-colonialist science fiction, and I actually still rate the last of the five novels, The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, to be one of the funniest, most erudite and self-knowing SF novels I've ever read (did I really say 'funniest'? Yes I did). Not a commonly heard opinion I would reckon, mostly because there is that small obstacle of having to first get through four volumes of often difficult and dense prose, patchy quality and a variety of styles before reaching this ironic gem that awaits you at the end. But the entire series does all hang together (just) and is a memorably unique science fictional vision, one that also falls properly on the right side of Not Being Fantasy.
I would actually love to see a new reprint of these books... they are still available from the UK publisher Flamingo, though are getting harder to find. And I wonder what they will be making of this news in Zimbabwe. Congratulations, I'm very pleased for her.
I'm sure there must be other SF fans I know who, like me, have read Doris Lessing's entire Canopus series and not fallen at the first hurdle, as so many have done. It was a brave, worthy and well-considered attempt at anti-colonialist science fiction, and I actually still rate the last of the five novels, The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, to be one of the funniest, most erudite and self-knowing SF novels I've ever read (did I really say 'funniest'? Yes I did). Not a commonly heard opinion I would reckon, mostly because there is that small obstacle of having to first get through four volumes of often difficult and dense prose, patchy quality and a variety of styles before reaching this ironic gem that awaits you at the end. But the entire series does all hang together (just) and is a memorably unique science fictional vision, one that also falls properly on the right side of Not Being Fantasy.
I would actually love to see a new reprint of these books... they are still available from the UK publisher Flamingo, though are getting harder to find. And I wonder what they will be making of this news in Zimbabwe. Congratulations, I'm very pleased for her.
