Reading the classics

An older post by Cat Rambo, at Clarksworld: On Reading, Writing, and the Classics

The point I want to make about my perspective on the “classics” is that I’ve read a substantial portion, both of the F&SF variety and the larger set, and made some of them the focus of study in grad school. (Again from both sets, since that focus was an uneasy combination of late 19th/early 20th American lit and cultural studies with a stress on comics/animation. You can see me here pontificating on The Virtual Sublime or here on Tank Girl. I’m not sure I could manage that depth of theory-speak again, at least without some sort of crash course to bring me back up to speed. But I digress.)

So here’s the question that brought me here: should fantasy and science fiction readers read the F&SF classics? And the answer is a resounding, unqualified yes, because they are missing out on some great reading in two ways if they don’t. 

I’m pleased to see that her list of classic authors includes CJ Cherryh, and entertained that it included Lois McMaster Bujold. The former pleases me for obvious reasons and the latter is amusing because I still sort of feel that LMB is a new, modern, contemporary, non-classic writer. I suppose I will still feel that way in another twenty years.

Anyway, the list of classic authors:

Isaac Asimov, Lois McMaster Bujold, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Octavia Butler, C.J. Cherryh, Samuel R. Delany, Carol Emshwiller, P.K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Zenna Henderson, Robert E. Howard, Ursula Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Joanna Russ, Cordwainer Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Vance….

So much more balanced a list than you sometimes see, I think. Not that there is any pretense that this list is at all complete.

But! The real reason you should click through and read the post: Cat Rambo quotes what is possibly the longest sentence ever written in English. She makes no such claim for it, so maybe not. But, wow.

I admit the antiquated style and spelling would indeed put me off. But I have read old editions of books that did weird things like “was n’t” and you do get more or less used to it, I guess.

I count 13 semicolons in that sentence. But I wouldn’t swear that I got them all.

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