One Prize, One Pleasure

However, Kingsley Amis remarked that the public attitude is simply: That can’t be science fiction; it’s good! And: That can’t be good: it’s science fiction! (I began this with “however” because it is the only time I have ever agreed with Kingsley Amis.) And it does indeed seem that the very best of science fiction can never enter the lists with its contemporaries, to be judged by whatever excellences it may intrinsically possess, while inferior science fiction (like On the Beach or Fail-Safe) can reach everywhere provided the reader isn’t told it’s science fiction.

Davy is a lovely book, a rollicking book, a cadenced, surprising, provocative and musical book. Like life itself, it is plotted not with contrivances, but mercilessly with things which can happen. The structure of the novel is astonishing, moving as it does on the periphery of a (future) historical event, not less than the establishment and fall of an American continental empire, describing it in terms of characterizations of the people who accomplished and lost it —and thereby describing it extremely well.

TS

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Theodore Sturgeon

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However, Kingsley Amis remarked that the public attitude is simply: That can’t be science fiction; it’s good! And: That can’t be good: it’s science fiction! (I began this with “however” because it is the only time I have ever agreed with Kingsley Amis.) And it does indeed seem that the very best of science fiction can never enter the lists with its contemporaries, to be judged by whatever excellences it may intrinsically possess, while inferior science fiction (like On the Beach or Fail-Safe) can reach everywhere provided the reader isn’t told it’s science fiction.

Davy is a lovely book, a rollicking book, a cadenced, surprising, provocative and musical book. Like life itself, it is plotted not with contrivances, but mercilessly with things which can happen. The structure of the novel is astonishing, moving as it does on the periphery of a (future) historical event, not less than the establishment and fall of an American continental empire, describing it in terms of characterizations of the people who accomplished and lost it —and thereby describing it extremely well.