IDW's New Classics of the Fantastic
IDW's New Classics of the Fantastic
Oct 07I have a tumultuous, difficult relationship with literary science fiction.
I feel some strange obligation to read and enjoy literary SF, because I’m a full-on media SF geek, and have never read the vast majority of the books one would consider SF “canon.” Asimov, Bradbury, Verne, Clarke, Heinlein, Dick, Le Guin–they’re all just empty names to me. I know they’re great; I know I probably SHOULD read them all. I just haven’t…I guess because I’m busy?
I finally sorta stumbled into some kind of tiny foothold on great literary SF, thanks to IDW’s new series of paperback reprints, New Classics of the Fantastic, described as “an essential science fiction library. It will bring back Hugo and Nebula Award winning books that have fallen out of print.”
Sweet. The first title, Robert Silverberg’s Nightwings, sorta shocked me last night with its beauty–it’s very delicate but vivid too. Silverberg captures this pitch-perfect tone early on and maintains it easily throughout (or at least, through the first fifty pages, which is as far as I got).
It’s great stuff. I fully confess to fundamental laziness, so if someone else is going to pick through science fiction’s storied past and reprint some lost classics, I will happily follow their lead and explore the nooks and crannies of the genre’s past with them.
