"'THE TIME MACHINE...THAT LITTLE MASTERPIECE' J. B. Priestly
-quoted on the back cover of HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973).
I agree and apply the same description to CS Lewis' The Great Divorce. These two works address Time and Eternity respectively and raise the same philosophical problem because they treat consciousness as detachable from bodies.
To qualify as a little masterpiece, a novel must first be short. Poul Anderson's The Avatar, The Boat Of A Million Years and The Shield Of Time are masterpieces but not short. Secondly, the novel must present a sense of completeness. When I first read James Blish's "Beep," I thought that it should be novelized and it was as The Quincunx Of Time. It also addresses Time and presents consciousness as detachable.
Candidate "Little Masterpieces" By Poul Anderson
There Will Be Time
Tau Zero
Genesis
World Without Stars
After Doomsday
Pete Pinto, the former Lancaster sf bookseller, said that there was something about After Doomsday that made it a complete novel. James Blish said that Lewis' That Hideous Strength contained every kind of character and was a complete novel but it is not short. Lewis' The Great Divorce, Anderson's Operation Chaos and SM Stirling's Emberverse series present some feeling of what a Heavenly realm might be like.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I thought of three others of Anderson's works that might classified as little masterpieces: THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS (which was also a response to Wells' work), THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS, and HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE. All of them short novels, not long ones.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I would argue TAU ZERO, THERE WILL BE TIME, and GENESIS are too long to be called "little."
Ad astra! Sean
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