Lists like this are always a bit odd. I got dressed down last night
(gently but firmly) by a professor of English who couldn't believe
that I thought Brothers K. was the most tedious thing I've ever read
half of (couldn't drive myself to read the second half). I like other
Dostoevsky--just not Bros. K.
I can't even name my own top ten favorites. It's such a fluid list .
There are books I admire without loving, and books I love without
being able to argue for their admirability. I deeply admire "Ulysses"
by James Joyce, but love only parts of it (the parts that remind me of
my Irish grandpa, plus a few other parts).
But certainly "Moby-Dick" (George Duncan and I re-read it this summer
in a small group); certainly George Eliot's "Middlemarch," Anthony
Trollope's "The Way We Live Now," and on the admirable-even-if-I-
didn't-love-it list, "War and Peace," which I re-read last summer, and
realized that Tolstoy was trying desperately to capture complexity as
we know it now, but he didn't have the vocabulary nor the scientific
insights to be able to understand that. But he knew *something* was
afoot in the Napoleonic Wars, and it wasn't just Napoleon on the
warpath.
Pamela
On Oct 8, 2010, at 7:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Doug -
Geeze, doesn't anybody like good science fiction any more? Larry
Nivin's Ringworld. Poul Anderson's Gateway series.
I love that shit (much of SF)... but don't quite want to call most
of it literature... great storytelling and exposition of esoteric
scientific concepts... but not quite always what I want to call
literature...
It is a good question... in this crowd, naturally sympathetic (I
presume) to Science Fiction. "What can pass as literature?" I know
a few SF authors and many are great at what I said above of your
suggestions (storytelling exposition)... and some of these works may
be remembered *as* literary... with enough perspective of time.
Jack Williamson was a friend and a prolific writer from the golden
age of SF and beyond (Scientifiction he first called it in 1927 and
was still cranking things out through the rest of his 100+ lifespan)
but I know he didn't claim to have been writing literature. The
closest might be his post WWII novel "the Humanoid Touch". It was
what rescued him from a long writer's block after realizing the
horrors that technology had wrought (in war) when they had been
promised as a panacea. Including by himself. It was not his normal
pulp-SF adventure/space-opera.
Until the 60's I don't think I can call out any other SF as
Literature (though the Pre-SF Scientific Romance period with Verne
and Doyle has some good entries). London and Twain dabbled in that
realm successfully too.
Maybe I'm looking for more/deeper social significance than most SF
even aspires to (much less achieves)?
Some with literary talent/style:
Heinlein (only with Stranger and maybe a couple of others)
Samuel Delaney
Maybe Clarke and Asimov... barely?
Tolkien (Fantasy, not SF though)
Sterling and Gibson (barely).
Stephenson (barely... maybe if he can nail what he was trying to do
with his Baroque Cycle)
King (though not so much his SF/Horror)
In our own neighborhood, I might want to nominate (some of) the
works of Walter Jon Williams, J R R Martin, Laura Mixon-Gould and
Sage Walker as candidates for having literary qualities. Steve (SM)
Stirling gets a "maybe"... I think he has the talent as a writer and
a storyteller and there is significance woven through his works but
he somehow gets caught up more in juvenile/egoist stuff before he
gets down to the important cool, adult issues.
Margaret Atwood is assumed to be literary while her content is SF.
Ursula LeGuin is sometimes credited with the same.
Vonnegut is almost pure SF and yet he is usually considered
contemporary Am Lit. and I grant him (most of) that categorization.
I love the works of the Hard SF folks (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein,
Niven, Benson, Bear, Benford, Forward .........) and especially
those with a good solid social message/question (Stranger, Dune,
2001, ...) But a lot of it is mostly escapist (albeit into deep
scientific curiosities)...
I personally do not snub SF as literature because of it's
subject... I'm sure some do. And I think good storytelling is key
to literature (and I find much of SF to be good examples of that).
And some SF authors are very good writers in the technical sense
(though many are not).
I guess the final key for me is the social relevance. Is the story
saying something important... not just interesting and not just well
written. That is where (by volume) SF (and most popular fiction)
falls short. Romances, westerns, crime, mystery, espionage, etc.
all have good storytellers and some good writers... but the deeper
social significance seems too often missing or at least thin.
Maybe I read too much SF at a young age and missed the social
significance of (much of) it, or maybe I developed a taste for it
from the few examples I did encounter young... I'd love to be
reminded of the many authors and stories I read "back when" that may
very well have carried more than grand ideas and fun adventures in
space and time (and the inner space of scientific ideas).
On re-evaluation (reflection?) I do realize that parts of Anderson's
Gateway series probably do deserve a literary nod... and maybe
Niven's FootFall (though I read it for my love of dystopianism) too.
Among contemporary popular writers, Martin Cruz Smith's work
(Stallion Gate, Red Square, Gorky Park, Stalin's Ghost, Rising Sun)
are exceptions to this generality (I'm waay over my 10 sorry). He
tells a good story, with good imagery, dialog, exposition and the
stories he tells and the characters he builds are not just
interesting but important to the human experience. I'm not big on
"character" novels but his Arkady Renko actually works for me on
repitition... the crazy Russian bastard actually makes sense.
Just because I'm not a liberal arts major doesn't mean I don't read
critically (as well as for informational, educational, informational
and escapist) reasons.
Damn, I'm having a ramble-y day... sorry to expose all of you to all
of this... glad you have a "delete" key and the ability to skim
lightly over such. I do hope someone (else) has some strong
opinions and ideas about what makes literature and how does that fit
with SF (and other usually escapist/popular genres) and that they
read far enough to take the challenge here.
- Steve
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