{"id":417,"date":"2011-02-07T13:48:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-07T13:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/?p=417"},"modified":"2011-02-07T17:18:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-07T17:18:39","slug":"brought-to-booker-can-science-fiction-ever-make-the-prize-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2011\/02\/07\/brought-to-booker-can-science-fiction-ever-make-the-prize-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Brought to Booker: can science fiction ever make the prize list ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article in last week’s Guardian<\/em> <\/a>laments the lack of speculative fiction – that’s science fiction and fantasy in common parlance – novels making the Booker prize list.<\/p>\n

\"\"Science fiction and fantasy, traditionally viewed with grave suspicion by the supposedly more ‘serious’ of the mainstream fiction genres, have together been a flourishing literary canon for years; Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings<\/em> regularly polls in high places as ‘Most Read,’ whilst writers like China Mieville, Alistair Reynolds and Peter F Hamilton have been patiently carving out successful careers with epic science fiction and fantasy novels for many years.<\/p>\n

Perhaps part of the difficulty lies in the boundary-defying nature of some of the novels associated with sci-fi and fantasy. Alistair Reynolds and China Mieville include a luxurious element of the gothic in their novels; Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell<\/em> offered an alternative history take on fantasy, where magic is commonplace and is used in the Napoleonic Wars. Similary, Mary Gentle’s sprawling Ash<\/em>: A Secret History<\/em> follows the same character across centuries. Perhaps it’s simply the scope of the novels that causes them to be dismissed: Peter F Hamilton’s epic space-opera sagas, Michael Moorcock’s long-running Elric<\/em> or Hawkmoon<\/em> tales stride across whole volumes.<\/p>\n

But with writers such as Philip K Dick, John Brunner and Michael Moorcock all a part of the canon, it’s hard to ignore the impact of science fiction and fantasy literature.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this year will change all that.<\/p>\n

Posted by Dan Harding<\/strong>, Deputy Director of Music at the University of Kent<\/a>. Click here<\/a> to read his music blog, \u2018Music Matters<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in last week’s Guardian laments the lack of speculative fiction – that’s science fiction and fantasy in common parlance – novels making the Booker prize list. Science fiction and fantasy, traditionally viewed with grave suspicion by the supposedly more ‘serious’ of the mainstream fiction genres, have together been a flourishing literary canon for … Continue reading “Brought to Booker: can science fiction ever make the prize list ?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":620,"featured_media":418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1138],"tags":[5157,1202,1260,25246],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}