10 Great Books You Didn’t Know Were Science Fiction or Fantasy
Posted in Fantasy, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 7 July 2013
So it says here.
The ten are:-
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Stories by Karen Russell
Smilla’s Sense of Snow* by Peter Høeg
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
Golden Days by Carolyn See
I’ll perhaps look out for some of these now.
*I have read this as Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow and as I recall the SF elements were the least convincing thing about it.
The others I haven’t read at all – but I’ve seen the film of The Tin Drum** and would have no problem with its inclusion in this list. I have read another by Bulgakov – though a glimpse of the cover of Heart of a Dog in the link would suggest that it is fantastical – and a short story by Kobo Abe.
The link shows Stories by Karen Russell variously involve girls raised by wolves, and vampires so where is the difficulty in categorisation there?
**I have since read The Tin Drum. See my review here.
Tags: Carolyn See, Fantasy, Günter Grass, Italo Calvino, Karen Russell, Katherine Dunn, Kobo Abe, Mikhail Bulgakov, Peter Høeg, Richard Brautigan, Science Fiction, Toni Morrison
Bobby
13 July 2013 at 09:52
The dog in Heart of a Dog is fantastical. It is a dog that develops human characteristics after a experiment. The canine star apart, the rest of the settings and characters are ordinary enough. It is a fairly short book and is very funny. It is more direct in it’s criticism of Communism than his other works.
I went to see an adaptation of the story by a Zimbabwean theatre group at the Edinburgh festival 8 years ago. Set in present day Zimbabwe, it served as a reminder that whilst Stalinism may be something of a historical curiousity for some of us, versions of it still flourish in the modern world.
jackdeighton
13 July 2013 at 19:23
Thanks for this, Bobby.
I’ll keep an eye out for the book.
Bobby
13 July 2013 at 09:54
*an experiment