I don’t know why exactly I forsook reading science-fiction—although admittedly I did not have much of a literary foundation to spring from. I did read the Dune saga and A Canticle for Lebowitz and enjoyed them immensely—especially as the later was partially set in a post-apocalyptic Texarkana, where I was living at the time, per-apocalypse.
And although I did see the film adaptation of the former first, the story was so big and so well detailed, there was plenty of material left to explore in order to fully limn that universe. I suppose my mistake was in repairing to movies and franchise books that chronicled different aspects of a canon that was no so rich and immersive to begin with. Myth sometimes acquiesces to being frozen in carbonate—and I suppose it was a terribly snobbish attitude to take, not being willing to delve more into the genre, good or mediocre, but I harboured a dislike for the ilk I presumed to read science-fiction, and so probably condemned the whole parnassus, unfairly perceiving a tediousness like I felt for those who subscribed to the whole Che Guevara, peacenik or taoist iconography—movements that surely do not merit the disdain of a bumper-sticker. In fact, I felt a little embarassed to share some of my own proclivities as a loyal watcher of
Star Trek, in all its incarnations, or the
X-Files. I had, not long ago, a sort of belated wakening, however, when I was introduced to the author
Jo Walton, who took my hand with allegory and direct-references through a grand gallery of sympathetic and imaginative writers. I realise that I have a lot of catching up to down, like staring down the exciting abyss of what’s undone and what’s giddily awaiting to be discovered, and began with Ursula K. Le Guin, a godmother of the genre who’s unfailing with her keen philosophic ideas and guarded allegory that’s us—but also something quite elevating.
