. . . but is it Science Fiction ?

Paul_C

Paul_C

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Gravity's Rainbow ?

I've had this for ages but only read the first bit - should I add it to my Sci-Fi classics to be read pile ? (It might encourage me to read it a little sooner).

I only ask as it's never turned up on any Top 10/50/100 lists.

Follow up question - are there other books you'd consider as Sci-Fi that generally aren't defined as such ?

I recently read The Time Traveler's Wife and Dying Earth which were both only tangentially Sci-Fi despite appearing on lots of Best Of Sci-Fi lists, so there must be a number that have been mis-described the opposite way.
 
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ah, er, um. . . well in this instance I'm using other people's definition/s (various Top this and Best Of that lists).

:)
 
1984 is also defined as "SF" because of its future predictions, yet is not considered the single most sold SF book, despite sales in excess of Dune. While I think an argument could be made that certain literary works use the veneer of SF to tell their stories and they really aren't intended to please genre readers, it is hard to say that they aren't SF.
 
There are best selling adventure novels that have science fiction elements, but that don't make them science fiction. :unsure:
 
They're not classified as Science fiction otherwise they be in the category of science action.
 
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Okay guys, we've been all over this genre thing before, and what have we got? Zip! --- Let's take a book like Coma, or The Man with a Golden Gun, or Frankenstein, all depend heavily on science not available (yet). But only Frankenstein is ever considered S.F. -- But nearly everyone first thinks of it as a horror novel.

In the end a novel is S.F. if the author/publisher declares it so (Anne McCaffery's Dragons of Pern series), or if the reader declares it so. Any other definition is bound to run afoul of the exception to your rule.
 
Parson said:
Okay guys, we've been all over this genre thing before, and what have we got? Zip!
In the end a novel is S.F. if the author/publisher declares it so (Anne McCaffery's Dragons of Pern series), or if the reader declares it so. Any other definition is bound to run afoul of the exception to your rule.
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I saw Damon Knight on a panel at Norwescon and remember him saying "Science fiction is whatever you point your finger at and say that's science fiction." Ain't gonna argue with him.
 
dask said:
I saw Damon Knight on a panel at Norwescon and remember him saying "Science fiction is whatever you point your finger at and say that's science fiction." Ain't gonna argue with him.
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I agree, but with my standard objection that fantasy is on the opposite end of the rationality spectrum from SF. It could be said there is a line in fiction between the improbable and the impossible.
 
The opening post asks a specific question about a specific title, and asks for specific recommendations - it would be great if we could focus on those specifics, instead of ignoring them to drag in wider genre questions in.
 
Gravity's Rainbow is science fiction. 1984 is also science fiction, though not always categorized that way. Bradbury is almost always said to be SF, but Fahrenheit 451, like 1984, leverages the future to make a social commentary. In a sense, they are SF of convenience, but still SF.
 
I've spent enough time on numerous forums to know that there's always a risk of a thread veering off topic, or of opening a big can of worms ;)

I shall add Gravity's Rainbow to the Sci-Fi pile.

:)
 
Since the entire novel reads much like this tiny excerpt I've taken::

With a clattering of chairs, upended shell cases, benches, and ottomans, Pirate’s mob gather at the shores of the great refractory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill Corydon Throsp’s mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut upland with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded in the shape of British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la querre (attributed to a French observer during the Charge of the Light Brigade.) which Pirate has appropriated as his motto...tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead...banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter...
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This one sentence; which again stands in a crowd of equally dense groups of sentences and seem to be ceaseless throughout the 700 and more odd pages of narrative page, would stand as excellent demonstration as how such, with or without a grand scheme of science and fiction mixed will-nilly in some fashion or not, could possibly be overlooked and pegged into the category of modern literature, even lauded by many and then kept trapped in that genre out of fear perhaps of unleashing it to the rest of the world so that ever more readers and types of readers and even some less than reader types might enjoy the singular wonder of such a vast novel that can at once contain such a legion of ponderous rows of long and suffering sentences drawing the readers mind though a veritable minefield of words that sometimes seem to drone on until the poor sod of reader's mind almost shuts down and becomes mesmerized by words and forgets to look for a story and plot and sometimes even the vestige of some tiny bit of character where I have to come out at the other end and wonder...no...try to figure out how he could sustain such a style for that many pages.
 
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