Friday, December 01, 2006

Nerds rising

SF already has a huge stake in the popular culture, so it is nice to see that high culture is accepting it as well. The closest thing the United States has to a canon is the Library of America and Philip K Dick is joining the likes of Hawthorne, Melville and Roth with his own volume. This isn't the first genre author inducted, as Chandler, Hammett and Lovecraft have their own books, but it is the first scifi. SF Signal links to other possible additions.

John Scalzi mentions both Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut who are good choices. So much of the early sf is as poor in writing quality as it is rich in ideas, so I suspect more recent works will do better. In genre terms, James Ellroy would make a lot of sense. His way with words is as excellent as his storycraft.

1 comment:

meika said...

about bloody time