Lessing

[peteryoung]

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.

Comments

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

I am another sf fan who has read this entire series, and also found "Sentimental Agents" funny, quirky, and clever.

Also, "The Making of the Representative of Planet Eight" is one of the saddest SF novels written.

Maureen McHugh continues, I think, in the vein of this post-colonial SF, and laudably so. Early SF often has an appalling colonialism lurking right under the surface of the narrative.

Good on Lessing!

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I found The Making of the Representative of Planet Eight very hard going because it seemed doomed from the beginning with no reprieve. Sad indeed.

I've also seen The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five described as one of the most romatic SF novels ever written (and I actually have a signed first edition). I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that the horse Yori was probably another incarnation of Johor, as Yori was instrumental in the reconciliation between Zones Three and Four by bringing Ben Ata and Al*Ith together.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

That was actually my least favorite of them all; I'm ashamed to admit that I don't remember much about it...

[zeit.livejournal.com]

Canopus in Argus was a guilty pleasure of mine. Perhaps I should come out of the closet.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! That's another little wodge of books needing to find its place on my reread heap. There's also a great and ever growing need for a hospital for rhetorical diseases in our world.