Re: Mainstream Writers who dabbled in SF

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ron Henry 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote a list from which I
excerpt:
 
> Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger; A Connecticut Yankee in King
> Arthur's Court
> Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
> Kingsley Amis, The Alteration
> William Golding, The Inheritors (some might consider this historical, I
> suppose)
> Doris Lessing, Shikasta (a little slow perhaps to be called a classic
> maybe)

I'm not sure any of these count as dabblers.  (I don't know for sure
about the others you cited, either, but these are the ones for whom
I have arguments of varying levels of strength.  Unless otherwise
noted, these arguments are *not* based on having read the works in
question.)

Amis wrote a famous book about science fiction; I don't know if he
wrote other actual science fiction himself, but he surely must've
known his way around.

Golding was several times published within the science fiction ghetto.
I presume this was with his consent.  So I have a hard time seeing him
as a dabbler.  Several of his books are commonly regarded as sf,
though I don't have my references handy, so don't want to cite titles
right now; give me a day or two.

As noted elsewhere, Lessing wrote a whole series that's unequivocally
sf; what's less well known in the sf community is that her previous
series, the one that made her name to all intents and purposes,
the <Children of Violence> series, actually contains a near-future 
novel or two.  To a first approximation, Lessing *is* a mainstream
writer who specialises in science fiction, the way Alice Hoffman is
a mainstream writer who specialises in fantasy.

Twain wrote a fair amount of fantasy, and his hoax writing is
sometimes considered ancestral to science fiction in some ways.

I'm least sure of Burgess.  The only novel of his I've actually
read, whose title I'm suddenly blanking on, definitely includes a
non-mundane element in an otherwise entirely mundane book.  (<Earthly
Pleasures>, I think.)  The element in question is crucial to both
plot and theme, though it doesn't figure on a majority of the pages.
So this, unlike the others, is an argument from reading the author,
rather than from reading about the author.

Joe Bernstein

-- 
Joe Bernstein, writer                                  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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