Sf, however futuristic, is always about the time at which it was written. When I had finished assessing the threats to humanity from Poul Anderson's Alori and Merseians and from Larry Niven's kzinti - their predecessors were HG Wells' Martians -, I concluded that we seemed to be threatened only by ourselves, a remark that pulls us right back to the present. We have projected ourselves onto alien aggressors. CS Lewis reversed this process when, replying to Wells, he presented a Terrestrial scientist exporting literally diabolical evil to the sinless Venus.
Contemporary novels can bring us almost to the present and can contain content that was sf: satellites, computers etc. We cannot read a novel about what is happening right now today although I once bought a novel and a newspaper in the same railway station newsagent and found that the former was ahead of the latter.
See:
A Newspaper And A Novel
We are pleased to accompany Anderson and others into the futures.
7 comments:
I'd call C.S. Lewis' stuff more fantasy than SF.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. Frankly, I like Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, etc., better than most of Lewis' fictions.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, I like the Narnia stuff, at least the original books.
Narnia is obviously fantasy.
Ransom is either soft sf or a curious sf/fantasy blend.
Lewis' decidely theological fiction is not like anyone else's.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Maybe the problem has been I came late to the Narnian books late, when already adult. THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE struck me as too "young" for my taste, esp. when compared to the much more mature works of Tolkien (THE SILMARILLION, even THE HOBBIT, and LOTR). And the posthumously pub. THE CHILDREN OF HURIN was unflinchingly grim and tragic, which appealed to me.
Also, I share Tolkien's dislike for allegories, and THE LION... was very allegorical, which didn't appeal to me.
Ad astra! Sean
I was raised without religion and when I read the Narnia books as a child the Christian allegory went right past me. I mostly enjoyed them and reread them quite a few times.
Once I found & read Tolkien's books I considered them superior, partly because they didn't have intrusive characters from our world.
I was disappointed by the "The Last Battle" largely because creating a world & then ending it after only a few millennia seemed wasteful.
Kaor, Jim!
That's probably the best age range for first reading the Narnia books, around age 12. Alas, I was probably being too critical when I came across them.
Tolkien did set his Middle Earth legendarium in the remote past of our real world. Yes, no characters from our times were intruded into it, which was good.
THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS was Tolkien's abortive attempt at writing an SF novel. Features characters who somehow got glimpses of the history of Middle Earth, esp. the downfall of Numenor, JRRT's version of the Atlantis legend (see the "Akallabeth" chapter in THE SILMARILLION).
Ad astra! Sean
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