A Political History of SF

[David Casseres]

I grew up reading post-Hiroshima science fiction, and most of it is an
embarrassment to me now.  Not all, though.

Alfred Bester stands out, for me, as the very best writer in the genre.
Both of his great novels, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination,
stand out from the rest of science fiction and can really stand to be
mentioned in a discussion of Pynchon.  His other stuff is also great.

Delaney's Dhalgren may not be as much "fun to read" as many of his other
fine works, but it, too, stands apart from the sci-fi canon and truly
belongs in a Pynchon discussion.  It's difficult, sometimes repellent, but
you really can't get away from it once you're in its presence.

Regarding Heinlein: I wallowed in Heinlein's works from grade school right
up into late adolescence, climaxing with Stranger In a Strange Land, which
my pals and I imagined we were living out. Oy veh.  Years later, I tried
reading Heinlein's juvenile novels to my kid, who loves sci-fi, but found
them embarrassing in exactly the same measure as they were brilliant.

On 2/7/07, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mike Bailey sez:
>
> >I came out as Alfred Bester...
> >with whose work I have absolutely no familiarity (yet)
>
> Then you should definitely read this test-result as a sign from above and
> give Alfred Bester a spin. I'd particularly recommend the two brilliant
> novels "The Demolished Man" (1953) and "The Stars My Destination" (1956).
> I
> have a strong feeling that Pynchon had Bester in mind when he wrote his
> defense of the science fiction genre in the Luddite essay. Pynchon says of
> science fiction, romance novels and whodunits that:
>
> These genres, by insisting on what is contrary to fact, fail to be Serious
> enough, and so they get redlined under the label "escapist fare."
> This is especially unfortunate in the case of science fiction, in which
> the
> decade after Hiroshima saw one of the most remarkable flowerings of
> literary
> talent and, quite often, genius, in our history. It was just as important
> as
> the Beat movement going on at the same time, certainly more important than
> mainstream fiction, which with only a few exceptions had been paralyzed by
> the political climate of the cold war and McCarthy years. Besides being a
> nearly ideal synthesis of the Two Cultures, science fiction also happens
> to
> have been one of the principal refuges, in our time, for those of Luddite
> persuasion.
>
> That first sentence reads like an apt description of AtD, doesn't it?....
> But as I said above, I'm pretty sure Pynchon was thinking of Bester (among
> others) as he wrote those words: We know from his application to the Ford
> Foundation that Pynchon at one point considered adapting Bester's "The
> Demolished Man" into an opera -- which sorta gives the term 'space opera'
> a
> whole new meaning.
>
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