Forgotten Science Fiction Novels Listed by Science Fiction Writers and Critics #SciFiSunday
Do you like to read science fiction? If so, have you heard of the stories “Scanners Live in Vain,” “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?,” The Absolute at Large, or Living in Ether? If not, the Science Fiction Studies department at DePauw University offers an amazing resource on lesser-known science fiction.
In the spring of 1993, DePauw scholars reached out to 63 science fiction writers and critics, asking them the following question” “Please list the 5-10 (or whatever) works of SF and/or authors that you feel are the most unjustly ignored or unknown by SF critics and scholars. Works can mean anything—novels, films, story collections, individual stories, real-world SF phenomena, etc.” The lists they recieved contain a treatsure trove of under-read sciencei fiction from the 20th Century. Here’s more from DePauw University:
One of the functions of SF criticism should be to alert educated readers to the works that are most worth reading, especially ones that have been unjustly ignored or kept from the public eye. The anarchic, brazenly ad hoc lists of this survey do just this. There are almost as many different kinds of responses here as there are critics. It is a sign of the maturity of SF criticism and SF itself that it inspires so many agendas, ranging from recuperation of pulp classicists, to feminist or national traditions, to consideration of the SF base in widely divergent fields. Because so many different names and titles have been cited in the survey, there isn’t much point in identifying any patterns and trends. But for what it’s worth, we’ll note that the names of a very few authors were listed by four or more respondents: Cordwainer Smith (7), Poul Anderson (6) Joanna Russ (6), Brian Aldiss (5), Samuel Delany (5), Robert Silverberg (5), Theodore Sturgeon (5), The Strugatsky Brothers (5), Alfred Bester (4), Carol Emshwiller (4), William Tenn (4), R.A. Lafferty (4), Robert Sheckley (4), A.E. van Vogt (4), Clifford Simak (4). The two works most often cited were David R. Bunch’s Moderan (3) and Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo (3).
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