Classic SF&F You Should Have Read

The idea started, as so many do, with good intentions. Life, the Universe and Everything, Utah’s annual symposium on science fiction and fantasy (previously held at BYU, though not for the last couple of years because BYU’s administration includes poopheads), is being chaired this year by my son. And it’s been a lot of years since I’ve gone. And my daughter wants to go too. And so I thought, why not? I can attend, catch up with friends, trade a Utah February for a Wisconsin February (not any real bargain there), heckle my son, get revved up on my sf&f writing — all that good stuff.

Well. That was before I looked at our bank balance and checked the price on airline tickets. Also before my creative writing juices ran out of steam last year, leaving me unsure that I can justify the expenditure on writerly grounds. And yet the idea, once entertained, was hard to dismiss. And so I am going next month (Feb. 14-16), with my daughter, and will be appearing on a panel on Tolkien with my old thesis advisor. And I’ll be doing a presentation on classic sf&f you should be reading, though honestly, I’m not exactly certain how I got into that one, except that I’m sure it involved incautious volunteering around people who were paying far too much attention.

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So why is it important to read classic sf&f? That’s the question I’ll be starting with. I’m under the impression that my presentation is under the writing track, so I’ll try to justify this on grounds that make sense to those who are planning to write sf&f: knowing the field, engaging in a dialogue with those who’ve gone before, that sort of thing. Not to mention that the classic stuff quite simply includes a lot of very good stories.

I did some Internet searching today (in between polishing up an overdue marketing report) on classic sf&f, best science fiction lists, etc. As you’d expect, there are quite a few such lists out there. I plan to reference the Locus list(s), Hugo and Nebula award winners (and nominees), and probably a list I found based on a poll conducted by NPR. And such other items as I may find between now and then, peppered (naturally) with my own opinions.

I plan to talk separately about science fiction and fantasy. Short fiction versus novels, too, if I can manage it. The lists are different, and the relationship between the “classic” tradition and stuff that’s currently being published is different for fantasy than for science fiction. In discussing fantasy, I plan to draw on my graduate school reading to talk not just about “classic” modern/contemporary works, but also the great older works of literature that connect to this tradition: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and All Those Guys. In the process, I’ll get a lick in for William Morris (the 19th century socialist/artist/writer, not my friend the Mormon arts blogger), Lord Dunsany, L. Frank Baum, and others not, perhaps, frequently enough read.

And I plan to have at least one “rate yourself” kind of interactive activity, where we award ourselves a point each for various names/titles we’ve read. Mutual embarrassment is, after all, a big part of the reason for the game. (And there will be plenty of embarrassment on my side of the podium as well, considering how many of the “classics” I have yet to read…)

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It’s amazing — in light of my many “more serious” projects (novel writing, paid work, etc.) — how much of my time gets spent on things that can’t possible contribute to the household budget and that no one has actually sat down and assigned to me as something I should be doing. You might think it would be better for me to focus my efforts on the more important things, and let those other things slide.

And yet. Consistently over the years, I seem not to find it possible to do that. The trade-off seems to be not between spending my time on core responsibilities versus side projects, but rather between spending my time on a mix of core and side projects versus not spending my time productively at all.

And so perhaps it’s better to embrace that side of my personality: face the reality that I will always need to be constantly pruning to rescue (inadequate) time for the things I have to do, while juggling a lot of other things that I merely want to do — or even (like my upcoming LTUE presentation) find myself somehow slated to do without really knowing how it happened. Provo, here we come!