The Language of the Night - what is good fantasy?

In my attempt to get to 56 books this month, I have picked up some books that I left undone earlier this year. One of them is Ursula K Le Guin's The Language of the Night. I didn't put it down because I was bored with it; on the contrary, I had to think about what I had read already, before I could go on. The Language of the Night has so many essays about why fantasy is good to read! Every essay I read, I find myself thinking through, nodding my head, agreeing! It's like having a course of study on fantasy and what makes it work, and why we need it. This is such an invaluable book, not the least because Le Guin herself (as most of us know) writes fantasy and science fiction, so she lives and breathes what she is telling us. She has thought a great deal about fantasy, and science fiction, and her essays are clear and direct - she doesn't hesitate to say why a book doesn't work, or that many writers write for money or to the marketplace, and not for the dream one has in one's head.

The essay I read today, 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie', is one that every reader of fantasy should read. This essay explains why fantasy can be brilliant, and why there is so much drivel in the fantasy world, and what the difference is.

One point to keep in mind is that Elfland is a true fantasy world; Poughkeepsie is a place that exists in the real world, and stands for safe fantasy. This is not to say that all elves are true fantasy, and no fantasy can be set in the modern world! Far from it. What Le Guin means is that Elfland is fully imagined by Lord Dunsany; when we read his books, we know the world in the story exists, even if it is only in his mind. Poughkeepsie, unless one writes about it in a powerful way, remains the same in the story as it is for you and me to see in the real world. We don't see anything differently, in ordinary fantasy - in fantasy written to make money, to tell a story, with anything but true imagination.

Think about that for a moment. Think about some of our greatest writers, and what they created - Shakespeare, Milton, Tolkien, Hemingway, Austen, (put in the name of a writer you love, here). We see the world through their eyes, through their imagination. We know the world a little more clearly because they wrote. We understand ourselves better, and the world. They wrote, each of them, in their own voices, and by doing that, they somehow give us the world back. Le Guin is saying this applies to fantasy, and to science fiction, but particularly to fantasy because it's base is archetypes.

"Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe." Doesn't that give you a little chill? Because it's true.

"Real fantasy writing 'is exact, clear, powerful.....Nothing in it is fake or blurred; it is all seen, heard, felt."

Now, can you think of any examples of fantasy books that you can pick up, read, and then instantly forget in a few week's time? Can you remember the characters' names, what happens, a month after reading the book? Did the characters come alive, so that later, you find stray thoughts of them occurring long after the book is done? I have to say that reading this essay made what I like and don't like about fantasy make sense to me. I think she's right. Real fantasy is clear, it can be seen, felt, tasted, experienced. That is what makes it so dangerous. It's real, and yet it's not. How many of us have wanted, desperately at one time or another, for Middle Earth to be real? A place we could go to! I know I did!!

Good fantasy is written in a style that is the author's own. I would argue that this applies to all acts of writing, painting, dancing, anything that involves creating. When we have learned to let what is inside of us out, we are changed, and so is the world. Le Guin says: "We learn to hear and speak, as children, primarily by imitation. The artist is merely the one who goes on learning after he grows up. If he is a good learner, he will finally learn the hardest thing: how to see his own world, how to speak in his own words." The best fantasy books are like any work of art: they are created from the artist, and not a copy of what someone else has done before.

"A fantasy is a journey. It is a journey into the subconscious mind, just as psychoanalysis is. Like psychoanalysis, it can be dangerous; and it will change you." Yes, those are her italics! I love this quote. Why will fantasy change us? Because we meet the dragon, and the dragon is us. Because we encounter what lies beneath, the shadows and shapes that linger and lurk, the archetypes that we all respond to, and the author - if it's good fantasy - shows us a new way to understand the archetype, what we have to do to survive an encounter with an archetype. Not all fiction has this gift; this is what fantasy has to offer.

So what do you think, Gentle Reader? Is there a fantasy world you particularly love, that you wish was real? Is there a fantasy author, or fantasy books, that have particularly moved you, that resonated with you? What do you think good fantasy is? Do you like it?

I have always wanted to go to Middle-Earth. The spirit world of Charles de Lint is fascinating. And Alice in Wonderland always scared me and I could hardly wait for Alice to get home again! It's late, I'll think up a list of fantasy authors that I think are worth considering as good, who are a little bit dangerous to read. Angela Carter, anyone?

myth in science fiction and fantasy

I have spent the last week reading and re-reading various parts of the essay "Myth and Archtype in Science Fiction", from Ursula K Le Guin's The Language of the Night. I was trying to read the entire book for Carl's Sci Fi Experience, but I've decided that there is too much food for thought in this book to rush it.

For me, there is so much to think about, about how science fiction and fantasy is serious literature. I think it has been wrongly judged from its very inception with Lord Dunsany last century, as children's literature, or just stuff about dragons and witches and magic, and therefore to read lightly, with no serious intent. Le Guin challenges that notion in her essays. Each one is thought-provoking, and passionate. It makes me realize how little even today science fiction is thought of. It is still relegated to the realm of geeks and science nerds, of people who can't quite make it in the real world. Yet that is a myth that we can only change when all of us who love it start proudly saying, "read this", or "look at the ideas in this", to people who've never thought of reading it. I don't mean we have to get on a soap box and declare it serious literature, because plenty of it is not, plenty of it is written for fun, and that's good. I just think it's time that we who love science fiction and fantasy, should be able to stop apologizing, as if we've made a mistake and will shortly correct ourselves by reading only the NY Times bestseller list. Personally, I think alot of serious literature is written, as Nick Hornby says in his collection of essays The Pollysyllabic Spree, only for other serious critics of literature. No one else is going to read it! Science fiction and fantasy can be darn good, satisfying as nothing else can be, when it's done right.

And what is good science fiction? Well, in this essay, Le Guin says it's 'the writer who draws not upon the works and thoughts of others, but upon his own thoughts and his own deep being, will inevitably hit upon common material. The more original his work, the more imperiously recognizable {her quote} it will be.........
"The artist who works from the center of his own being will find archetypal images and release them into consciousness. The first science fiction writer to do so was Mary Shelley. She let Frankenstein's monster loose. Nobody has been able to shut him out again, either. There he is, sitting in the corner of our lovely modern glass and plastic living room, right on the tubular steel contour chair, big as life and twice as ugly."

Isn't that a great quote? Frankenstein as myth. And he is. In her nightmare, Mary Shelley somehow plugged into the future where we could literally sew parts of other bodies together, which we do with our surgeries and operations. It's an awesome power, terrible and wonderful, and we haven't quite come to terms with it yet as a society. So there he sits, waiting for someone to tell him - or us - about the mysterious power of Spirit that is the animating force of the universe, which thank heavens we can't control. Waiting for us to recognize him as ourselves, which not even Frankenstein could do. For a long time as a child I was afraid of the monster because he couldn't be reasoned with, but as I became an adult, I began to feel sorry for him because his master, the one who made him, who he wants to love him, rejects him instead. It's an awful, powerful story, and touches a raw nerve that has become a modern myth. That's the power of true science fiction.

This could be said of all literature, of all good books. Le Guin says that (I'm paraphrasing here) the artist who is able to bring back something personal, something out of his or her own experience, brings back something for the rest of the world to discover themselves in. This is something I've come across in all my how-to-write books; that the only things worth writing about is what's inside me, because it's my interpretation that gives the world another insight or view. It doesn't mean I can't write what's around me - that's the stuff we use to create with, but we create out of our dreams and nightmares. That's where myths lie, I think.

I still don't quite understand why fantasy is as neglected in the literature reviews as it has been all these long years it has existed. Books keep getting taken out of the fantasy area and put into classics - The Iliad, and The Odyssey, are both great fantasy stories! - Beowulf, and if The Lord of the Rings didn't have Gandalf the Wizard, I'm sure that somehow that would find it's way onto the best books ever written, instead of getting left off all the time.

I like how she explains the danger of the fantasy archetypes: "Beyond and beneath the great living mythologies of religion and power there is another region into which science fiction enters. I would call it the area of the Sub-myth." She goes on to explain that these are motifs and characters which are alive, but have no deeper meaning associated with them; " - the blond hero of sword and sorcery, mad scientists, detectives who find who done it, brave starship captains.....They have no element of the true myth except its emotive, irrational "thereness". The artist who deliberately submits his work to them has forfeited the right to call his work science fiction; he's just a populist cashing in.
True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond hero - really look - and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Opollo, and he looks back at you.
The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Opollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said.
When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life."

Isn't that a powerful interpretation of how myths still work on us? Now how many bestsellers on the NY Times book list would matter? Not many.

I read fantasy because it talks to me. Somewhere in me I must have a dragon curled up, and a black cat skulking in the light. I must have a sword that still needs to be claimed, and a unicorn still wanders. Ghosts inhabit my dreams, and so I reach for books that contain them, whether it's ghost stories or fantasy stories, to better understand what ghosts have to say.

I think fantasy reaches that place that ordinary books can't reach, the place that believes that things can be different. I'm not saying fairies exist! Maybe they do, because they were in folklore long before fantasy books ever existed! I think it's a need to explain the unexplainable, the acts of mystery and wonder, the synchronicities and timings that change our lives when they happen. There is also the idea of a calling, which I think the myth of King Arthur captures perfectly - he lifts that sword out so easily - all the hard work of doing what he is called to do, is still to come. Fantasy is all about the call, and the answer, and how the world is changed or righted, by answering that call. So most of it would be sub-myth, easily. So my question to you, my dear readers, is: can you think of a fantasy that might have a touch of myth about it? Is there a fantasy book that has worked on you, so that some element in its story has become part of you? Because that's how myth works, as Le Guin and Rilke show. I may joke about having dragons and cats inside me, but I don't think it is just a joke. I do dream of ghosts, very often. My fantasy story I wrote last year is about reclaiming a power my heroine thought she was forbidden to use. I am not saying it will even be published! I haven't done the second draft yet. In the writing of it, though, and in the 25 years or so that I've been reading fantasy, I've come to know that fantasy tells a story in a way that no other genre can. So, if we need myth to live by, is there a fantasy that you would recommend to someone - other than The Lord of the Rings! - to start with? Is there a fantasy you are passionate about? I'd like to know what fantasy moves you, what book makes you really respond to it.

Being an artist is not easy. As I cruise my way among the fantasy shelves, there have been times when I have walked away with nothing in my hands, depressed because nothing new has been written. What I really mean when I say that to myself, is that nothing meaningful has been written. The danger of fantasy and science fiction is that we as readers will settle for the Submyth, the endless fantasy trilogies and wars that threaten the world, the endless inventing of worlds, without the story bringing something new into being.

The best of fantasy and science fiction? Ah, that has the power to change the world. Look at Fahrenheit 451, which I read last year, and how we are still wrestling with the idea of banning books. Look at The Lord of the Rings, which still towers over almost everything written in fantasy since. Even though not everyone can get through the three books, what the books are about is seeping through our skins into our minds, so we know even if we've never read the books, who Frodo Baggins is, and Gandalf the Wizard. They, and the ring, are moving deeper down culture's unconscious, touching the area of Myth. Le Guin is convinced fantasy and science fiction is a serious subject. She says of Tolkien, "Tolkien did it; he found a ring, a ring which we keep trying to lose...." The story of the ring is something more than itself. There's something there.

I especially like this description she gives of a living image of myth that reaches out to touch all of us through the artist's work, and why it touches us:
"A dragon, not a dragon cleverly copied or mass-produced, but a creature of evil who crawls up, threatening and inexplicable, out of the artist's own unconscious, is alive: terribly alive. It frightens little children, and the artist, and the rest of us. It frightens us because it is part of us, and the artist forces us to admit it."

And that's why I read fantasy, and keep coming back to it.

another essay, and Dark is Rising and Greenwitch

This is The Language of the Night, the book of essays by Ursula K Le Guin that many of you have been asking me about. I have the 1979 edition, which is trade paperback. I'm not sure if it is still available, I don't think so, at least according to Amazon.com, it is only available used. This book has a collection of essays and speeches given by Le Guin over her early career as a writer, because of course she has continued to write these past 30 years since this book came out!

I have been reviewing - or rather, writing about - the essays in her book, in some of my posts this month, because each one is so important to understanding why we all (or most of us in the book blogging community that I have met) read fantasy. In the wider world, of course, we are reading a genre that is treated as only slightly above horror, and barely tolerated as literate, never mind as great literature. This despite the efforts to recognize within the fantasy and science fiction book world excellence in writing. She extends this to children's literature as well. Le Guin addresses all of these concerns in her essays. She also talks about the act of writing. She writes about writing, and reading, and what we find when we go on a voyage into these books. Because I love fantasy first and foremost, her books seem to talk directly to me, affirming to me what I have long ago thought in my heart about fantasy, and what I discover in my soul every time I venture into a fantasy book.

Here is what I discovered in today's essay, "The Child and the Shadow". I read this over a toasted bagel with cream cheese, and a cup of tea, and about half-way through the essay I realized I had eaten most of the bagel without tasting it, because there was so much other food for my mind in the essay.
She opens with a quick retelling of one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, about a man and his shadow. The essay asks, Is it appropriate for children to read? Because society - parents,school boards, etc, are always asking what is 'good' or 'appropriate' for children.
She writes about the Andersen story: "I don't know. I hated it when I was a kid. I hated all the Andersen stories with unhappy endings. That didn;t stop me from reading them, and rereading them. Or from remembering them.....so that after a gap of thirty years, when I was pondering this talk, a little voice suddenly said in my left ear, "You'd better dig out that Andersen story, you know, about the shadow.
At age ten I certainly wouldn't have gone on about reason and repression and all that. I had no critical equipment, no detachment, and even less power of sustained thought than I have now. I had somewhat less conscious mind than I have now. But I had as much, or more, of an unconscious mind, and was perhaps in better touch with it than I am now. And it was to that, to the unknown depths in me, that the story spoke; and it was the depths which responded to it and, nonverbally, irrationally, understood it, and learned from it.
The great fantasies, myths, and tales are indeed like dreams: they speak from the unconscious to the unconscious, in the language of the unconscious - symbol and archetype."
Isn't that somehow perfectly said? As if Le Guin herself had bypassed all the reasons why we should read fantasy, and said why we do read it - because it speaks to something deep inside us, the place in our hearts and souls that other books that are 'reasonable' and 'good' for us don't reach. I think the idea of morality is very important, and Le Guin goes on to make a much deeper connection between fantasy and morality in this essay: she says that instead of dividing good from evil, that we must learn, what our souls know, that good and evil are intertwined. Not mixed, but rather, in order to live a whole life, we must face the darkness in ourselves, in order to contain that darkness. If we don't face it, we become lonely, because we are cut off from our deepest source of creativity and understanding about the world. If we do face it, we show the world that evil can be contained in ourselves, and we show the way for others - for children, in our stories, how to do this. How to face our shadow, and win. She also makes the important statement that we can't cut off the shadow, we can't forget about it, or ignore it; it just grows stronger, until we, the conscious self, becomes the shadow of the Shadow, which is now corrupted with the evil we wouldn't admit to. It's not easy to say, I can be like her - the worst crimes committed, but if we can find a way to acknowledge the seed of the idea might possibly exist in us, no matter how dark, we are saved.

So how do we find our way to our shadow? "How do you get there? How do you find your own private entrance to the collective unconscious? Well, the first step is often the most important, and Jung says that the first step is to turn around and follow your own shadow."

And children, I believe, instinctively know this. Le Guin makes this point again and again: they see with an uncluttered mind, uncluttered with reason, logic, all the ways adults use to stop themselves from seeing. Even if the child doesn't understand all the facets of the story, they instinctively know it's true in its depths. Not just the battle between good and evil, which we all face every day as adults, but how we live our lives. They know if someone or something is true. So my favourite Andersen tale,

is one that I have both feared, dreaded and loved dearly. All at the same time. As an adult, I can acknowledge that the Snow Queen lives in me, that I have the fearsome and awesome capability to freeze my emotions if I have to, in order to survive. If I am in danger of doing this, my dreams tell me - I'll dream I'm in the arctic, or ice or snow is all around me. And the way home for me is to love, is to feel again, to be passionate. So, fairy tales are true. How did my child-self know all those years ago? The fairy tale is my guide and my instruction home again. So is The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, so is Beauty and the Beast, so are the best fantasy books and fairy tale books and our cultural myths we tell. Le Guin says fairy tales give children the chance to see yes, the world is full of danger, and yes, there is a way to survive. We do have to be careful with children, to not shatter them with too much knowledge too early. What we can show them, she says, is this: "And it seems to me that the way you can speak absolutely honestly and factually to a child about both good and evil is to talk about himself. Himself, his inner self, his deep, the deepest Self. That is something he can cope with; indeed, his job in growing up is to become himself.....He needs to see himself and the shadow he casts. That is something he can face, his own shadow, and he can learn to control it and be guided by it......
Fantasy is the language of the inner self."

Anyway, that's why I forgot what I was eating for breakfast, because her essay swooped me away into my deeper self, where I remembered that going within is the most important journey each person makes, and necessary to the well-being of the world. So, what is your favourite Andersen, or other, fairy tale? Is there a relation between that story and you?


So, with all that in mind, how does a classic children's fantasy series measure up?


The Dark is Rising and Greenwitch, books 2 and 3 in the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. This is a fantasy series written for children, and won two Newbery Awards - for The Dark is Rising volume, and The Grey King.
I read Over Sea, Under Stone last year, and my review is here. The next two volumes are even better.

Dark in Rising introduces Will Stanton, and what happens to him on his 11th birthday. It is a true fantasy story, filled with Old Ones, magic, items to find, protecting the world from Evil, and in this book, the wonder of a Christmas with the Stanton family with their 10 children. This is a classic book of good vs evil, with a delicious sense of danger and malevolence that I love: 'And then in a dreadful furious moment, horror seized him like a nightmare made real; there came a wrenching crash, with the howling of the wind suddenly much louder and closer, and a great blast of cold; and the Feeling came hurtling against him with such force of dread that it flung him cowering away.'
I love this bit, which Cooper does in all the books: weave in a bit of local lore, that grounds the books in Cornwall (Over Sea) or The Thames Valley (The Dark is Rising), using existing magical lore to deepen the connection of how to find your way in the land of magic and dream:
"Here," Old George said, appearing suddenly at Will's side as they all pushed the cart out of the gate. "You should have some of this." He thrust forward a great bunch of holly, heavy with berries.
"Very good of you, George," said Mr. Stanton."But we do have that big holly tree by the front door, you know. If you know anyone who hasn't -"
"No, no, you take it." The old man wagged his finger. "Not half so many berries on that bush o'yours. Partic'lar holly, this is." He laid it carefully in the cart; then quickly broke off a sprig and slipped it into the top buttonhole of Will's coat. "And a good protection against the Dark," the old voice said low in Will's ear, "if pinned over the window, and over the door." Then the pink-gummed grin split his creased brown face in a squawk of ancient laughter, and the Old One was Old George again, waving them away. "Happy Christmas!"

This book is filled with danger, and evil, and goodness, and light, and those that stand eternal guard against the dark. It's a wonderful story, and I really enjoyed it. I also really wanted to go and put some holly and berries over my doors and windows!!

Greenwitch brings together the children - Jane, Barney and Simon Drew from Over Sea, Under Stone, with Will from The Dark is Rising. They are again in Cornwall, and they are brought there under the guise of a week's holiday in April (a school break time in England). Really, they are looking for the Grail, which at the end of Over Sea, Under Stone had been placed in a museum. It has been stolen, and Merriman, the Old One who is the Merlin-like figure of aid to Will in the stories, knows they have a small window of time to find it before it is lost forever. Being the Grail, it is indispensible in the fight against evil. This story took a while to find a balance; it read more like an adventure in the Enid Blyton style, then when it was involving Merriman and Will, suddenly it had the more mythic overtones that The Dark is Rising contains. Over Sea, Under Stone had the same juxtaposition of adventure fun with mythic overtones. Cooper is a good enough writer that she in the end pulls it off, and Greenwitch works on a much deeper and better level than Over Sea, Under Stone does.

I think this is because Greenwitch is based on a Cornwall ritual of making an offering to the sea. Whether this is based on a real Cornwall ritual, I couldn't say, but it feels like once upon a time, it could very well have been done. It is very simple, the creation of statue of branches - for those who know their trees, rowan and hawthorn especially are used. How the Greenwitch figures in the story, I don't want to give away, but I do want to say that this is again a magical story, with old magic and Wild Magic, which are two different things. I like this too, that there are different kinds of magic in the world. It works especially because what Jane does crosses the divide between the Wild Magic and Old Magic, something no one else is able to do because it doesn't come from knowledge, but understanding, and sympathy. So often, the greatest fantasy stories are about this act of sympathy - remember, Bilbo doesn't slay Gollum when he has the chance, and so he saves the world. What Jane,Simon, and Barney do, make up the bulk of the story, and it is believable in the way adventure stories must be for children, as well as full of wonder, as magical stories must be. Will and Merriman are more watchers, seeking the Grail specifically; I think their story is the whole of the 5 books put together. I think Cooper put ordinary children into a mythic story to see what would happen, and it is fun, exciting, and dangerous, just like the best stories for children are.
"Barney felt again the power and the nastiness that had leapt at him from the canvas he had seen the man painting in the harbour; up on this ceiling too he saw the particular unnerving shade of green he had found so unpleasant out there. He said suddenly to Simon, "Let's go home."
"Not yet," said the dark man. He spoke softly, without moving, and Barney felt a chill awareness of the Dark reaching out to control him."

Very highly recommended. I have to buy the last two in the series, and that will be later this month. I have to know how it ends!

Sunday Salon - Guardian Unlimited's 124 science fiction and fantasy books to read....

So, for this week's Sunday Salon, I thought I would continue with the science fiction and fantasy theme, especially as I discovered yesterday that Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings has a wonderful post on Jan 22, '124 Science fiction and fantasy novels you must read before you die' list, that was published by Guardian Books also on the 22: you can find their list here: Guardian part one, for those who want to go see why the books were chosen. From there, you can find your way to part two and three. Please note that fantasy and horror are part of their criteria, and this is part of their greater '1000 novels everyone must read before they die' list.

So, here is the list, with the ones I've read in bold, the ones I have on my TBR pile italicized, and ones I've read other books by the author marked by an asterick (this is so I don't look quite so ill-read!):

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)

3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)*

4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)*

5. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)

6. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)

7. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)

8. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)*

9. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)

10. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)

11. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)

12. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)

13. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)

14. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)

15. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)

16. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)

17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)

18. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)

19. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)

20. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)

21. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)

22. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)

23. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)

24. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)*

25. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

26. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)

27. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)*

28. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)

29. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)

30. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)*

31. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)

32. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)

33. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

34. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) * I hated this. I tried it, and will not ever finish it.

35. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)

36. Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)

37. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

38. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

39. Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) *

40. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)

41. John Fowles: The Magus (1966) *

42. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)

43. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973) *

44. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)

45. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915) *

46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)

47. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)

48. M John Harrison: Light (2002)

49. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) *

50. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)

51. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943) *

52. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)

53. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

54. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)

55. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)

56. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)

57. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959) *

58. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)

59. PD James: The Children of Men (1992) *

60. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)

61. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)

62. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)

63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

64. Stephen King: The Shining (1977) *

65. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)

66. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)

67. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)

68. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)

69. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

70. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)

71. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)

72. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)

73. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954) *

74. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)

75. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)

76. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)

77. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)

78. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)

79. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)

80. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

81. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)

82. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)

83. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)

84. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)

85. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)

86. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)

87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)

88. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)

89. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)

90. Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)

91. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)

92. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)

93. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)

94. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)

95. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)

96. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)

97. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)

98. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

99. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)

100. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) *

101. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

102. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)

103. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)

104. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)

105. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)

106. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)

107. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989) *

108. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)

109. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)

110. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

111. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)

112. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)

113. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889) *

114. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)

115. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)

116. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)

117. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999) *

118. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)

119. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)

120. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)

121. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) *

122. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)

123. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

124. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)


Apparently, I am reading all the wrong books by authors! Several authors I've read other works by, but the Guardian editors chose books that were representative of the author's influence, and on the field the book is published in. It's actually an interesting read in itself, for instance, for Douglas Adams, they write:
"Originating as a BBC radio series in 1978, Douglas Adams's inspired melding of hippy-trail guidebook and sci-fi comedy turned its novelisations into a publishing phenomenon. Douglas wrote five parts from 1979 onwards (the first sold 250,000 in three months), introducing the world to Marvin the Paranoid Android, the computer Deep Thought, space guitarist Hotblack Desiato (named after Adams's local estate agent) and the Guide itself, a remarkably prescient forerunner to the internet.
Andrew Pulver".

There are several books on the list I have been meaning to read, without getting around to buying the book yet: Foundation, Lost Souls, The Stars My Destination, Foucault's Pendulum, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Red Shift, Revelation Space, Snowcrash....

Now, I did and I do disagree with this list. There is nowhere near the amount of fantasy authors that have shaped it, that should be on this list: no Tolkien, no Lewis, no Jane Yolen, no no Lord Dunsany or William Morris (Wood at World's End), no Jack Vance (Lyonesse), which I consider essential fantasy reading. How can the 124 novels to read not have The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, which shaped the fantasy field? So, read the list and let me know how many you have read! If you post about it, please let me know and I'll add your link below.

One thing I am rediscovering is my love of science fiction. I had moved away from reading it over the years, and I'm not sure why. I started with Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein, but hard science fiction never interested me. I was more interested in space opera, in the theme of people exploring the stars. There has also been such an explosion in books available in every genre in the last 20 or 30 years, that it is hard to keep up with new books every year. One thing I have been considering is taking some time to read only in one genre for a while - say, catch up on my fantasy reading for several months, and then move to mystery, and then science fiction. I don't know. I do know I seem to be falling further behind in my reading, even though I am beginning to read more books per year now!

I have taken some time with making my lists of what I want to read here, and challenges I want to join, because I'm not sure what I want to read. I have been pulling books from my shelves in the past few weeks, and suddenly have two huge piles of fantasy and mystery books to read, plus some science fiction for Carl's ongoing mini Sci-fi Experience. I envy, sometimes, people who are happy to read in one genre only, because they aren't worried about books in other areas to read and have a chance to read all the really good ones all the time. Then, I think, what they are missing - I wouldn't have missed reading Middlemarch for anything, and I'm glad I read Dune and Farmer in the Sky (still one of my favourite scifi books ever), even though I don't read as much science fiction or classics as I do other areas. I love books. I love books in almost all areas, and I don't want to limit myself to one genre, as much as i think I want to. Because then suddenly there's great mysteries being published, and then all the great ghost stories, and there are so many good stories being told!

If you follow Carl's link to Sci-fi Signal, this is a fabulous site to discover everything new in the science fiction universe on all mediums - tv, movies, books, etc. Well worth checking out, if you enjoy science fiction.

I leave you now with final thoughts from Ursula K Le Guin, from her book of essays, The Language of the Night, Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. She defines science fiction as Outer Space, and fantasy as Inner Lands, in her A Citizen of Mondath essay. "I don't entirely understand why Dunsany came to me as a revelation, why that moment was so decisive....Whatever the reason, the moment was decisive. I had discovered my native country." p 26. Isn't that a beautiful moment of finding a kind of book that one belongs to? That is how I felt when I first read The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings: I had come home. There was, and is, nothing I love so much as a well-told, fully imagined fantasy novel. Something magical happens in exploring that Inner Land. Le Guin links fantasy and science fiction in an unusual way: 'The book [Lord Dunsany's A Dreamer's Tales,] belonged to my father, a scientist, and was a favourite of his; in fact he had a large appetite for fantasy. I have wondered if there isn't some real connection between a certain kind of scientific-mindedness (the exporative, synthesizing kind) and fantasy-mindedness. Perhaps 'science fiction' really isn't a such bad name for our genre after all. Those who dislike fantasy are often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars; they don't feel at home with them, they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one.
"The limits, and the great spaces of fantasy and science fiction are precisely what my imagination needs. Outer space, and the Inner Lands, are still, and always will be, my country."
Isn't that a beautiful way of expressing why so many of us read both fantasy and science fiction? And I also use that as my definition of science fiction and fantasy now: science fiction is Outer Space, and fantasy is Inner Lands.

Carl
Nymeth
Daphne