I've just glanced through the section of the Guardian's 1000 novels everyone should read devoted to science fiction. I was thoroughly unsurprised to find that I have read at least fifty of them, possibly more as there were a few that sounded familiar that I probably read when I was a schoolboy.
I was however interested to discover that both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were in there. I think that there is little doubt about my love of the books, and the section is actually "Science Fiction and Fantasy" but I wouldn't have put it there.
It isn't the only odd choice. Others that had me puzzled were Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory (he does write Science Fiction but this isn't it), Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Golding's Lord of the Flies, and Kafka's The Trial, and those are just some of the ones I've read.
I was however interested to discover that both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were in there. I think that there is little doubt about my love of the books, and the section is actually "Science Fiction and Fantasy" but I wouldn't have put it there.
It isn't the only odd choice. Others that had me puzzled were Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory (he does write Science Fiction but this isn't it), Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Golding's Lord of the Flies, and Kafka's The Trial, and those are just some of the ones I've read.
4 comments:
According to the Grauniad: "Every truly original writer must, by definition, create a new world". That's true about the Alice books, but probably not for some of the other books they list as SF.
And not just in that section were the category selected a little strange...
I think the Banks one was there because (presumably) unable to find sufficient sci-fi and fantasy books (not looking hard enough methinks), the full title of this section included horror...
I wouldn't call The Wasp Factory "horror" either. I feel about it the same way I feel about the movie Seven (which we've talked about in the pub before). i.e. There is nothing quite as terrible as doing well something that shouldn't be done at all. It's an extremely well written and thoroughly nasty book.
Personal opinion only there. You should feel free to disagree.
Only meant in the sense that it is more "horror" than "sci-fi".
hmmm "horror" v "nasty" - discuss
I also looked askance at the Alice categorisation
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