Bradfield reviews the two-volume American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe, and says these books are enjoyable precisely because they got everything wrong.
Thomas More to the rescue.Credit:Frick Collection
They didnt accurately predict the future of space travel, or what a postnuclear landscape would look like, or how to end intergalactic fascism, he writes. They didnt warn us against the roads we shouldnt travel, since they probably suspected we were going to take those roads anyway But what 60s science fiction did do was establish one of the wildest, widest, most stylistically and conceptually various commercial spaces for writing (and reading) fiction in the history of fictional genres.
The novels in this collection are by Poul Anderson, Clifford D. Simak, Daniel Keyes, Roger Zelazny, R.A. Lafferty, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany and Jack Vance. Some are set so impossibly far in the future that the question of whether they are prophetic becomes entirely irrelevant.
And some are just darn cheeky. I like the sound of Andersons The High Crusade, where a bunch of medieval crusading knights demolish some alien tyrants, ride their horses onto their spaceship and quickly figure out how to set the controls for the stars. Or Laffertys Past Master, where Sir Thomas More is summoned from the past to do the right thing in a future war between mankind and machines. (Sir Thomas More is a villain in Hilary Mantels Thomas Cromwell trilogy: I wonder what she would make of this.)
The best science fiction thrives on such wild invention, but somewhere along the line holds to a concept of basic human nature, even if the characters are non-human.
In Ray Bradburys dystopian 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451, the zombified citizens gaze mesmerised at their giant flat-screen televisions, or listen to earbuds, or talk through something called the digital wall. Sound familiar? Thank God we havent got around to burning the books.
Jane Sullivans latest book, Storytime, is published by Ventura Press at $26.99.Janesullivan.sullivan9@gmail.com
Link:
Turning Pages: The joy of wild invention - Sydney Morning Herald
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
