Yes I have read it. Although, if you're in the mood for millenarian depression why not just go with, "On the Beach" which just plain ends the world instead of putting it through some endless cycle of upreach followed by consuming disaster.
Hey, speaking of cyclical conflagration as a literary theme, have you ever read, "The Mote In God's Eye" by Niven/Pournelle? Now that is a great SF novel.
For my part I believe that SF has been the most profound literary genre of the 20th Century since it was uniquely formulated to provoke speculation into the causes and effects of scientific and technological innovation on humans and society. As a subtext of this general discussion, why don't we see if we can compile a list of the ten best SF novels of the last hundred years?
And, I would add, that in considering those art forms that have advanced significantly during the last hundred years, painting and other forms of traditional art are nowhere on the list while the engineers and research scientists have been dramatically undervalued. After all, during the last hundred years the scientists and engineers have succeeded in nearly doubling the average human life span. If you must accord an order in priority to their work then consider all the other human creativity that was permitted by a life that averaged 70 years instead of 40.
If you believe that you must consider "artists" in order to compose a balanced list, then let's at least compromise by looking to those arts that are unique to the 20th Century.
Here, I'll start. Let's replace Picasso with the director, John Ford. There, that was easy. Now tell me that you don't get more meaning from "Fort Apache" than from an art form made obsolete by photography and drawn by a misogynist whose own life was a missive for secular hedonism. You may be able to sense here that I have rejected nearly all "modern" art as value free nonsense. |
