I finished “The Road” over the weekend, and discovered that trying to blog while reading isn’t going to work for me.  Sorry gentle reader, we are back to the a posteriori review.   Mr. McCarthy is a certified* (*MacArthur Award-winning) genius, and to say he writes Great Literature is like saying Shakespeare wrote a few sonnets.  He has hit the trifecta:  critics love him, the public loves him, and Hollywood hasn’t botched the movie adaptations of his work.  This novel deserves all its accolades- and more, I’m sure.  But is it even SF, and therefore deserve to be booted from the list?  The story is about a man and his son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  The ultimate cause of the disaster is vague, and the few clues suggest a natural cataclysm, such as an asteroid collision or supervolcanic eruption, and not a nuclear holocaust or anthropogenic virus.    There are no space ships, no aliens, no ray guns.  It’s barely set in the future: there are no indications in the novel that this is set in the future or alternate world, the present, or the past, although it is reasonably safe to rule out the latter two.   I do, though, think that this is plausibly called science fiction, although just by a whisker.  The severity of the destruction is simply too severe, and the consequences for the characters too intricately linked to their fates for this imagined world to be ignored as central to the plot.  After all, imagined worlds are as old as SF itself, and even though this one is very much like ours save for one small detail, that detail is, well, not so small after all.  And with regard to the quality of the writing, for his rich depictions, metaphor after simile after analogy, McCarthy has few modern rivals.  The moral dilemma facing the man torments him as well as us, as we feel his pain and struggle to decide what his best course of action is or should have been.  This tension persists throughout the novel and after, providing a veritable feast for cognition.  As for my personal ranking…although this one of the best novels I have ever read, I can’t put it at the top of all time science fiction bests.  Number three seems right for right now.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This novel certainly meets the condition for being classic SF: old, vintage, familiar…perhaps the story that many of us as well as non-SF folks would name as the defining work of our genre.  Well over a hundred years old (originally published in 1898), it is a story that has been retold in myriad ways, from lurid pulp magazine stories of alien bug invasions to Hollywood blockbusters that, well, have as much enduring cultural value as the pulps (make that less, since at least the former had interesting cover art).  It is difficult to read with a critical eye for two, diametrically opposed reasons.  On the one hand, it sits on a pedestal, a foundational document upon which layers – generations—of SF work rests.  Can you criticize the Bible, in church? (The New Testament is sooo derivative…).  On the other, it could be read with a purely cynical approach, without regard for the time and place of its origins, and easily shredded, dismissed as clique.  Now that I have set up two straw men, it should be easy to knock them both down by splitting the difference, finding the golden mean, etc.

Instead, I’m going with the foundation argument.  Even though I was intimately familiar with the narrative, from film and pop culture, from hearing Orson Wells’ version on the radio, I was struck by its originality.  While not the first invasion tale, or the when the great big scary monster attacks story– far from it, of course—it does smack of a new idea, aliens from space.  At first, the protagonist has the quintessential if it bleeds we can kill it notion of superiority.  Slowly, we feel the sense of impending doom build as he realizes that the aliens’ weak physical bodies are invincible due to their overwhelming technological advances.  It’s as though a Native American, looking at a Spanish Conquistador for the first time, thinks “I see gaps in his armor, I can take him”, and then the latter climbs into a jet fighter and starts launching missiles.    And the ending is brilliant, first for (again) the originality, microbes, barely known and understood by anyone, let alone being widely accepted (Koch’s postulates are more or less contemporaneous),  as well as the irony, of tiny things taking down big ones, not humanity but humanity’s diseases being the decisive factors, the historical reference to the white man’s pox devastating the New World.   Brilliant.

For these reasons, I am going to surprise even myself, and put this as #1 on my list of all time greats…for now.  What do you think?

“The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells

First, a word about my point of view:  I am, at least initially, going to be a bit circumspect about certain aspects of plot.  Until I get a feel for my audience (if any), I am going to do my best to avoid  spoilers.   If and when a discussion arises, and plots are discussed and therefore spoiled…so be it.

I think it’s fair to say that “Ender’s Game” is one of the most acclaimed science fiction novels of all time.  It is on virtually everyone’s short list and in the top spot of many.   It began as a short story of the same name, published in 1977; this version was a runner up for a Nebula award (one of the two most prestigious awards for science fiction, the other being a Hugo).   The full length novel won a Nebula in 1985 and a Hugo in 1986.

The story centers on the experience of young boy, Ender Wiggin, who is pushing six years old when the story begins.   A precociously intelligent but troubled boy, Ender is selected to train for a task, a simple task, really- to save Earth and the human race from destruction.  The bulk of the novel, and its greatest strength, is Ender’s experiences in a boot camp-like training school, where he is prepared for (and tested to see if he can become) command of a fleet poised to battle an alien race, to the death.   Ender’s siblings play minor but important roles, both in shaping Ender and in certain aspects of the plot; however, the book is mostly about the him.

Frankly, the plot summary that I first read sounded laughable.  I could not swallow the child-as-savior, the child-as-commander, etc.  But these major awards are not given out lightly, and many people I respected, loved it…so…I have to say that I would put in on my short list, too, just like everyone else.  However, I have trouble placing it at the top.  It is not without flaw.  As a consequence of being an expanded story, I believe that, despite a twist, the end fizzles compared with the rest of the story.  This is also, in part, due to the fact that what precedes it is so good.   I cannot recall feeling so compelled to keep reading a book as I felt during Ender’s training.   It’s as fascinating and suspenseful as a novel gets, and this is most of the book.

One observation – and this is not a criticism at all – is that this novel is not heavy science fiction.   The setting and some plot elements are superficially science fiction…we are talking about intelligent alien races and spaceships, and so forth.  But much like “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, these elements could have been written as say historical fiction, in a past war, and what remained would be brilliant literature.  In contrast, a novel like “Dune”, by Frank Herbert, is rife with science fiction elements essential to the story.

As the first entry, it now occupies the top spot in my new list of all time greats, and after reviewing 199 more, we’ll see how long it lasts there.  In all, I loved the book, and hope you did, too–or will, too.  In any case, I gave my opinion.  What’s yours?

-Peter

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

My reading list.

Welcome, and please do comment.  Your criticism will push me to write better, think better, share better, and very likely enjoy this endeavor in ways that I have not conceived.

-Peter