J and K are embarking upon a longer term, slightly different type of doubletake project. The plan is to explore the (relatively recent) history of science fiction through the novels deemed ‘best’ of the year by the writers themselves — in other words, the winners of the Nebula Award for best novel.
Some of these are novels one or both of us have already read; some of these are novels we had not heard of aside from their being on this list. But we’ll be (re)reading each one of them in turn and then coming here to discuss our thoughts. Do these works stand the test of time? Are some of them now obscure for a good reason? Has there been a significant change over time in the type of novel that wins this award? We hope to find out.
Discussion of the first winner, Frank Herbert’s Dune, will be appearing later this week.
Go us! :)
Only two of the Nebula winners were books I had to read in science fiction and history of the future classes in college. Left Hand of Darkness and Dispossessed, both by Le Guin.
Hmm. Well, I only ever took two classes in college that required any fiction reading at all — the required freshman writing seminar, which I took on ‘women in mystery’ (so I read a bunch of mysteries by women/starring women) and Arthurian Legends, which mostly focused on the older canon up to Tennyson rather than modern and sometimes scifi interpretations of it.
Which in the end means the only one of these I had to read for school was Flowers for Algernon, and I bet if they’d thought it was science fiction and not some abstract issues book about the mentally disabled it would never have made the cut.
Cool project!
Join us when you can!
I did notice Flowers for Algernon got shelved in our ‘classics’ section. Few SF end up there.