Orion Books, under their Gollancz SF imprint, have put out a selection of top science fiction works; I’ve been reading my way through the some of them, since they’re mostly novels I haven’t read. They’re nicely bound, well-presented, and have some reasonable shorts essays in the preface. Note some of these may be spoilerish.
Cities in Flight
James Blish
Really four novels, written out of order (like the Chronicles of Narnia, the internal chronology and the appearance of the novels are quite different, and there are divergent opinions on which order to read them; I opted for the order of events in the world of the cities). I found these a bit of a mixed bag. Like Heinlenn, especially in his juvenilia, the author is prone to having characters offer long discourse, complete with diagrams and equations, on the science driving their world. When I was a 12 year old reading Heinlenn I was captivated, but as an adult I tend to find such diversions a bit tedious. I’m not sure this is because I’ve got dumber about science, or, more likely, because it seems kind of pointless to the work at hand. This is best handled in the second and fourth books, I think; it’s mostly absent from the second, and the fourth is told from the point of view of a character who is generally impatient with such.
Cities is, as the introduction notes, obviously heavily influenced by the era it was started in and the long shadow of Great Depression America; there’s a certain touch of Grapes of Wrath about it sometimes. It’s strongest when the author is ruminating at two extremes; the lives of characters uprooted and dislocated into a nomad’s existence, and contemplating the grand sweep of historical trends - the first book’s discussions about the way the West has, in the name of security, become steadily more like it’s freedom-hating, frozen, beauraucratic enemy in the Soviet Union is an observation made some time ago, but it has a certain resonance today; the enemy has changed, but the need to save freedom by destroying it doesn’t sound very unfamiliar, does it?
The real strength of Cities, though, is when the author lets go and writes freely; the image of New York as a giant Hobo city, plying the space lanes under it’s new motto (“Mow your lawns, lady?”), the tales of Mayor Amalfi outwitting his enemies, these are exhilarating and enjoyable, and they’re what drives the series forward. Without them the series would be turgid; with them, it sets a fine pace and is a bloody good read.
Note these editions have been run over by Blish, who has corrected some internal errors around dates and the like within the series.
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
Charley is a moron. He wants to be clever; this is the story of his chance at genius, told through the journal he keeps as he starts his journey as an experiment candidate, and through his operation and subsequent life.
A brilliant piece, light on the science, and heavy on the character development and exploration of humanity. It really is a perfectly told story; the language, the relentless, ruthless movement toward the conclusion.
In one word: heartbreaking.
I am Legend
Richard Matheson
I’m not sure why this is in the science fiction classics; sure, it offers a psuedo-scientific explanation for vampirism, but it’s fundamentally a horror novel. Alien doesn’t attribute any supernatural qualities to the eponymous villain (if villain is the right term for an animal), but most people regard it as a horror, rather than sci-fi.
Of course, in mentioning Alien, I’m also cast back to the first time I read a movie critic assert Alien was, in fact, sci-fi; said critic was generally dismissive of horror as an inherintly juvenile, stupid field of endeavour; faced with evidence to the contrary he simply recategorised good horror as “something else”, rather than change his stance. One wonders if the same is true for I am Legend.
Categorisation quibbles aside, it’s a good, well-written piece; it’s primarily a psychological portrait of being the last human in a world of vampires; while the protaganist does kick vampire arse, it’s about as anti-Buffy as you can get, and has a nice twist at the tail-end of the story, asking what it is to be the human, the good guy, and what it is to be the monster. Winners write history, after all.
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
This one… didn’t really grab me, actually. I can’t really put my finger on why, either; yes, it may be acclaimed as one of the great classics, and many writers whose work I enjoy can’t parise it highly enough. It’s a good, interesting read, but brilliant? It just didn’t feel that way.
It’s a revenge fantasy; it’s not especially wedded to any of the science fiction elements; the key elements could just as easily be magic (and, indeed, the finale would be more convincing as such); the strength is the exploration of the characters involved. Some of it rings true, but I find the ending for the protagonist undermined the interesting ending he engineered for the run of humanity; the fact that both are Deus Ex Machina doesn’t help (I’ve plotted myself into a corner and I can’t get out!).
Perhaps it suffers from being too influential; perhaps so many elements have leaked into other authors thinking that it seems less than original to someone coming at it almost a half-century later, whem compared to the impact it obviously made at the time. But I’ve re-read it a couple of times, and it just feels… thin, somehow.
