Literature
I mostly made this account at the behest olivia_circe in order to stop annoying her by saying I couldn't read something on twitter and she would roll her eyes and tell me to make an LJ so I could read the post in full.
I had no idea I would think of something to write here.
When I was an adolescent, and just graduating from childhood fiction (The Hardy Boys figured prominently) to more adult fiction, I was in the middle of a big Star Trek binge. Saturday mornings for me consisted of cartoons all morning and finishing with TOS at noon on the CBC. TNG was just starting up in prime time, and I started reading a lot of Star Trek novels. Some good, some less good. Mostly TOS universe.
Unfortunately, this coloured my view of Science Fiction as a literary genre. I never read past Star Trek, and switched over exclusively to fantasy. I've read many of the "great works" in fantasy, like Tolkien and Lewis, and my favourite author remains Tad Williams, and his extensive epics.
Due to an intervening bout of undergraduate engineering, I never got the chance to re-examine my literary proclivities until recently. One thing I decided I wanted to do, was read more classics. Things like Doestieveky and Salinger and Dickens. There is so much great literature to read, that I'll never read it all (I'm a bit of a slow reader to boot) so I am easily distracted.
On this short list of classics, was Fahrenheit 451. Unlike many people, I never had to read it in school, and never got around to it. I asked for it for Christmas one year, and was given a copy. I like it quite a lot, much more than my older brother lead me to believe I would. This led to a swarm of classic science fiction (A Scanner Darkly, Starship Troopers, etc.) I finally made it over to Slaughterhouse Five this past winter. There is a lot in common with that novel and F451. I remembered then, that my older brother, who didn't like F451, had given me a book for Christmas a few years back that he thought was much better, and I went digging around for it when I was home, found it, and started reading it.
I like it so much, it prompted this post. In fact it's now on my short list of very favourite books. The publication I have has a foreword that states "Once you read it, your world will have changed". I think you can make that argument for anything you read, but A Canticle For Leibowitz really makes you think. In particular, I think it has aged better than other dystopian cautionary tales, like 1984 or Starship Troopers, because I feel the author strikes more closely to the root causes that bring about the end of the world. A particular political ideology isn't the problem, merely another symptom of the problem.
I mentioned those three books (F451, S5, and Canticle) for a particular reason. I think they all mesh well with one another. There are a lot of similar themes (War, Religion, Fear of Knowledge) and in some ways, I almost think of them as a trilogy. Of them, I connected most with Canticle, and if you haven't had the chance to read it, I very highly recommend it.
I had no idea I would think of something to write here.
When I was an adolescent, and just graduating from childhood fiction (The Hardy Boys figured prominently) to more adult fiction, I was in the middle of a big Star Trek binge. Saturday mornings for me consisted of cartoons all morning and finishing with TOS at noon on the CBC. TNG was just starting up in prime time, and I started reading a lot of Star Trek novels. Some good, some less good. Mostly TOS universe.
Unfortunately, this coloured my view of Science Fiction as a literary genre. I never read past Star Trek, and switched over exclusively to fantasy. I've read many of the "great works" in fantasy, like Tolkien and Lewis, and my favourite author remains Tad Williams, and his extensive epics.
Due to an intervening bout of undergraduate engineering, I never got the chance to re-examine my literary proclivities until recently. One thing I decided I wanted to do, was read more classics. Things like Doestieveky and Salinger and Dickens. There is so much great literature to read, that I'll never read it all (I'm a bit of a slow reader to boot) so I am easily distracted.
On this short list of classics, was Fahrenheit 451. Unlike many people, I never had to read it in school, and never got around to it. I asked for it for Christmas one year, and was given a copy. I like it quite a lot, much more than my older brother lead me to believe I would. This led to a swarm of classic science fiction (A Scanner Darkly, Starship Troopers, etc.) I finally made it over to Slaughterhouse Five this past winter. There is a lot in common with that novel and F451. I remembered then, that my older brother, who didn't like F451, had given me a book for Christmas a few years back that he thought was much better, and I went digging around for it when I was home, found it, and started reading it.
I like it so much, it prompted this post. In fact it's now on my short list of very favourite books. The publication I have has a foreword that states "Once you read it, your world will have changed". I think you can make that argument for anything you read, but A Canticle For Leibowitz really makes you think. In particular, I think it has aged better than other dystopian cautionary tales, like 1984 or Starship Troopers, because I feel the author strikes more closely to the root causes that bring about the end of the world. A particular political ideology isn't the problem, merely another symptom of the problem.
I mentioned those three books (F451, S5, and Canticle) for a particular reason. I think they all mesh well with one another. There are a lot of similar themes (War, Religion, Fear of Knowledge) and in some ways, I almost think of them as a trilogy. Of them, I connected most with Canticle, and if you haven't had the chance to read it, I very highly recommend it.