SF in one's life

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Joe Varo writes:

> So let's have it, all of you lapsed SF fans -- what SF works were
> important to you?

Well, I have only read a little conventional sci-fi - Bradbury,
Heinlein, Aldiss, Asimov etc. but I did read a lot of fringe sci-fi
stuff up to the age of 20 and woudl still recommend some of it to
others.

> A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle)
>      This is the book that got me started reading SF in the first place.

I read this when I was 8 and have never even seen copy since (let
alone recall what it is about) but I remember it well because it
inspired me more than any other book to read read read like fury as a
child

The Lord of the Rings

Read this at age 11 and repeated the dose 9 times until age 16. I
loathe this book and almost all the fantasy genre. The Hobbit is ok
apart from the boring bloody ending. I still really like Farmer Giles
of Ham, mostly for its wit and *brevity*.

John Christopher - Tripods series

These were great for a 13 year old to read. Nothing much to interest
an adult, though.

Michael Moorcock - The (Early) Works

Ok, I think I read 40 of them, all published pre-1978. Most of his
stuff is pretty dull but he has written some classic sci-fi short
stories and the Cornelius books have flashes of inspiration. I still
quite enjoy t em. I gave Moorcock up when I read his first Col Pyatt
story at the same time as I started Ada. No contest. But Moorcock did
lead me to read . . .

Mervyn Peake - Ghormenghast Trilogy

Yes, I read all three of them when I was 16! Incredibly imaginative,
utterly bizarre and full of beautifully rich language and images. I
would happily reread them if only I could spare a few months. I
remember trying to explain what this was about to a teacher at school
and the nearest thing he could come up with as a follow-up to it was
. . . Tristram Shandy! I shite you not (mind you it was a good
follow-up, all the same).

Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker, Kleinzeit

Read these pretty much when they came out in paperback. The first of
these definitely qualifies as sci-fi - future world after nuclear
holocaust, primitive people uncovering te ancient wisdom which enabled
their ancestros to blow everything up in the first place. But it's the
most incredible turn-around of this theme into a beautiful,
philosophical and spiritual discourse, full of mythology (most of it
based on C20th mundane transformed by distance and ignorance into
something splendid). So, in fact it qualifies as sci-fi not because of
its trad plot but for much the same reasons as Ballard's work - it's a
distorting mirror held up to C20th US/English culture.

Kleinzeit by contrast is a bizarre tale set in an almost recognisable
version of modern day but with some really bizarre touches. Not trad
sci-fi but there's some great twists. Also, like Riddley Walker and
our boy Tom's magnum opus Death figures large in the story (he appears
knocking at the door in a gorilla suit in Kleinzeit).

Richard Brautigan - Sombrero Fallout, The Hawkline Monster, Dreaming
of Babylon

Well, are these sci-fi or aren't they? Don't know but they take place
in an only mildly but still jarringly unreal world. Well worth reading
if you can get a copy. I have not seem Sombrero Fallout in print since
I loaned my copy to an (ex-)friend. Nor Dreaming of Babylon since I
got it out of the library 18 years ago.

Nabokov - Ada

This really does have all the ingredients of a sci-fi novel, strange
worlds, alternative scientific laws (no lectrickery) and metaphysical
speculations on the nature of time and reality. But there is so much
else in the book that the sci-fi elements get somewhat lost in all the
other literary and cultural i/allusions.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.