Christians rearranged Hebrew scripture into Law books, historical books, poetic books and prophetic books.
Greek drama is tragedy or comedy.
Shakespearean drama is comedy, history or tragedy.
The novel, a new literary form, developed categories, including historical.
Mary Shelley's Gothic novel, Frankenstein, was also the first science fiction novel.
Poul Anderson wrote in half a dozen categories which we have enumerated several times before. More than some sf writers, he referred to earlier literary traditions, including sagas.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And many Catholics would include a further category in the OT called the Wisdom books, some of which overlaps with the poetical books: Proverbs, Sirach, Psalms. And Catholic Bibles used to call 1 and 2 Samuel 1 and 2 Kings, with the current 1 and 2 Kings being 3 and 4 Kings. I have one myself.
It's hard to define when we should date the beginning of the novel form and which work should be considered the first or one of the first novels. Some would go back as far as Petronius Arbiter's SATYRICON, or I've wondered if Medieval romances like AMADIS OF GAUL is a novel, or whether Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE is the first true novel
Yes, Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN is proto-SF. But some have argued for Jonathan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS also being proto-science fiction. But that is probably going too far back, realistically. SF as we understand it, began with the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Murasaki Shikibu wrote *The Tale of Genji* early in the 11th Century.
Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a 1657 novel in which the protagonist "travels to the moon using rockets powered by firecrackers (it may be the earliest description of a space flight by use of a vessel that has rockets attached) and meets the inhabitants. The moon-men have four legs, firearms that shoot game and cook it, and talking earrings used to educate children." (Wikipedia)
(Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov have both said categorically that this WAS the first use of rockets in SF. Asimov particularly pointed out that it was written BEFORE Newton's Laws of Motion made clear why rockets, and ONLY rockets, could take humans to the Moon.)
Kaor, DAVID!
Darn, I really should have remembered Murasaki Shikibu's THE TALE OF GENJI. And I think I heard of Cyrano de Bergerac's book somewhere. Cyrano de Bergerac must have noticed how gunpowder PROPELLED cannon balls and musket balls, and applied it to space flight. Not bad!
Sean
These days, a lot of categories are based on marketing. When I wrote my first novel in 1983, the editor liked it but wanted it to be more definitely fantasy... so I added an evil magician to the mix and another 15,000 words.
(I'd originally conceived it as post-apocalyptic, but what the hell, for a sale at that point I would have crawled to New York naked over broken glass, pulling myself along with my lips.)
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Was that your first published novel, SNOWBROTHER (1985)? I'll have to make sure I have a copy and reread it some time!
Ha, ha!!! Very amusing, your second, parenthetical pargraph. Yes, I have heard of how DESPERATE new authors can be!
Sean
Yes, that's SNOWBROTHER. It's a beginner's work, but I learned doing it -- and I had the sense to use only two viewpoint characters and limit the action to a week.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I checked, and I do have a copy of SNOWBROTHER. Very much a beginner's work? I'll keep that in mind when I read it.
Sean
Also I wrote in law school, which I detested (the school, not the writing) and hence it's rather dark.
Mr Stirling,
I am a (thankfully) failed Law student - among many other failures and failings!
Paul.
By the way, AMADIS OF GAUL and similar romances full of adventure and magic and wonders were wildly popular in Early Modern Spain -- Cervantes was mocking them in "Don Quixote".
When Cortez' men came over the pass and looked down on the Valley of Mexico with its wondrous cities and temples and lakes and causeways and pyramids, according to Diaz (who was there, and wrote his account of the conquest of Mexico in his retirement) they all turned to each other and exclaimed:
"This is like something out of AMADIS OF GAUL!"
Fanboys in armor... art imitates life imitates art...
Incidentally, in Robert E. Howard's story "Phoenix on the Sword", the attempted assassination of Conan (then King of Aquilonia) is taken almost verbatim from the actual assassination of Pizzaro when he was lord of Peru, and the Conquistadores fell out among themselves after they beat the locals.
Pizzaro killed four men with his sword and wounded several others, by the way... and he was in his 70's at the time. They made Spanish adventurers tough in those days!
I graduated and articled (a year's apprenticeship, compulsory in Canada) but never practiced. The pair I articled with were disbarred... and had 4 disbarment proceedings against them at the same time. It was disillusioning.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I'm sorry your experience with the law was so disillusioning. The lawyers you articled with would not be approved of by lawyers of such high quality as Sir William Blackstone, author of THE COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND.
Sean
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Most of what I know of AMADIS OF GAUL came from reading what Lin Carter said about it in his book TOLKIEN: A LOOK BEHIND THE LORD OF THE RIMGS (1969). And I have read Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE, and recall how he had the Barber and the Parish Priest spare AMADIS OF GAUL from the bonfire to which they consigned most of Don Quixote's books of derring do.
I wonder if anyone has translated AMADIS OF GAUL into English and whether it's worth reading. And I have read the Penguin Books translation of Bernal Diaz's HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF NEW SPAIN. Fan boys in armor? I can believe that! And besides the wonders of Tenochtitlan, the Conquistadors must have found the human sacrifices and cannibalism of the Aztecs far worse than any of the evil magicians in AMADIS.
I had not known Robert E. Howard modeled the attempted assassination of King Conan on the actual murder of Francisco Pizarro. I have read Prescott's dramatic account of how stoutly Pizarro fought his assassins despite his advanced age and killed four of them, no less!
Pizarro was a man of contradictory parts! Indomitably brave and indisputably immensely able, he was also, alas, capable of being cruel and ferocious. And Pizarro also had the touchingly naive, almost innocent piety of a soldier. As he finally lay dying, he drew a cross with his blood and kissed it.
Sean
And in our own era, men like Musk are inspired by science fiction.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I've read of that. I think Musk was inspired by Heinlein's D.D. Harriman. And Nicholas van Rijn and Anson Guthrie would also be appropriate!
Sean
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