[Warning: May contain sarcasm.]
Not to take a side in the struggle between Merril et al.’s New Wave and more traditional science fiction and fantasy, but…
One may admire the artistry of the stories in anthologies like
England Swings SF, even if one eventually tires of the pessimistic tone taken by such young scamps as Ellison, Spinrad, and Ballard. Why can’t these authors be more like their venerable predecessors? Here are five instances of the sunnily optimistic science fiction that exemplified the genre in the days before the younger set decided to indulge in such gloomy literary prose.
Pixabay Saumya Kalia 2020-12-28T12:34:20+05:30 2020 Bookmark: 5 Works of Fiction That Resonated During The Pandemic outlookindia.com 2020-12-29T17:53:35+05:30
One can always count on the literary gale to blow in the right direction. Such was the case when the pandemic turned the actual to absurd, and people turned to books to counter the strangeness of our times. A popular choice was to read about simulations of worlds and scenario that look eerily similar to ours.
We look at five titles that beamed with meaning upon revisiting in the interminable yet swift days of the pandemic. These are, in no way or measure, the ‘best’ five books about lockdown living. This curation is a subjective undertaking, and may live up to or disappoint one’s literary taste because when it comes to 2020, the truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
A little more than halfway into Jonathan Lethem’s
The Arrest comes a chapter titled “Postapocalyptic and Dystopian Stories”, in which the screenwriter protagonist and his movie-producer friend debate the appeal of such tales while name-checking a panoply of authors and titles – Vonnegut, King, Atwood, Walter Tevis, Philip K. Dick, George R. Stewart, Walter M. Miller, Emily St. John Mandel, Russell Hoban, and especially Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s
The Road “bugs the fuck out of me,” complains the producer, calling it “postapocalyptic comfort food” and arguing that, far from offering real cautionary tales, most of these writers “can’t help it, they like it there. They
Amazon has dominated the e-reader industry for so long that most of its competitors have either become niche products or faded out of existence entirely. I d forgive you for thinking Kindles were the only e-readers sold in the United States, but not only is Barnes & Noble still around, but the company continues to release new Nook readers. And I bought one.
The Nook lineup from Barnes & Noble had its best years in the early 2010s, when the company had more stores across the country to sell its wares. That s when I got my Nook Simple Touch, which I rooted and kept with me until its Android 2.1-based software could no longer run anything. After that, I joined the rest of humanity in purchasing a Kindle e-reader.