That 20-year-old, newly arrived from the rural South and innocent of all politics, sitting in the rathskeller at Tulane with "Pale Fire," and that 50-year-old, having lived in New York, Boston, and London and written a few books of his own, sitting with "Pale Fire" at an outdoor Paris cafe -- these are different people. They and the book exist in a different world.
Of late I've been rereading Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, both of them writers I grew up on.
Bradbury, of course, as author of "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles," "The October Country," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," and dozens of other books, is well known. He's an acknowledged master, one we take for granted.
Sheckley's another matter. Revered by science fiction readers and writers, author of 60-plus books, he never broke out of the field as did Bradbury, and among general readers, I suspect, remains poorly known.
Sheckley's forte is humor, satire, and general wackiness. He's the original wild man of science fiction. (Telling you that Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide" series was modeled on Sheckley's books should give you some idea.) He's fascinated by our inability to communicate, by the shoddy conventions and shabby pretentions of social order, by the infinite mutability of the universe and our perceptions of it.
Of late I've been rereading Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, both of them writers I grew up on.
Bradbury, of course, as author of "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles," "The October Country," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," and dozens of other books, is well known. He's an acknowledged master, one we take for granted.
Sheckley's another matter. Revered by science fiction readers and writers, author of 60-plus books, he never broke out of the field as did Bradbury, and among general readers, I suspect, remains poorly known.
Sheckley's forte is humor, satire, and general wackiness. He's the original wild man of science fiction. (Telling you that Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide" series was modeled on Sheckley's books should give you some idea.) He's fascinated by our inability to communicate, by the shoddy conventions and shabby pretentions of social order, by the infinite mutability of the universe and our perceptions of it.
