Lewis and Lovecraft.
Jul 22 '00
It's hard for me to what the best science fiction or fantasy series it. What do you mean by "best"? Best selling? Most influential? The one I enjoyed the most? Do you include horror -- is that a genre of it's own, or a subclass of the others?
The answers change as the questions change. My definition of "best" I'm going to try to make "best written" and "influential." By my estimation, of course.
With that said, the best fantasy series is . . . the Chronicles of Narnia. I was reading the other reviews and kept asking myself, "Is this really influential? Does it change people's lives?" Mostly, the answer was "no." Narnia does. It changes lives. You are not the same person at the end of the books as you were at the beginning.
The only series that comes close is Tolkien. While it's painfully obvious from a brief walk down the fantasy section in any book store that Tolkien's style and ideas have been more commonly emulated by fantasy writers -- dragons, elves and dwarfs abound -- I have never heard a person say how Tolkien changed their life.
Furthermore, while many fantasy writers include elements of mythology and folklore into their writing, few of them have symbolism on the scale that Lewis manages effortlessly. Whole doctoral theses have been written about the symbolism of just Aslan. To read the books is to be enriched in a dozen different ways. I can't say that about any other fantasy writer.
For science fiction, I'm going to go out on two limbs. First, the author is generally regarded as a horror writer. Second, he wasn't a novelist, really. For the best science fiction series, I have two words: Cthulhu Mythos, meaning those short stories and novellas by H. P. Lovecraft.
It is hard for me to describe the effect of these books on my own life, and I see his ideas emulated in a dozen different ways. What fantasy or horror writer, moviemaker, painter has not been influenced by Lovecraft? But what people often forget is that his Elder Gods and Great Old Ones aren't deities living in some astral heaven or hell, they're aliens from other worlds and dimensions. Even Lovecraft's "magic" is more a special kind of psychic technology, tapping into those other dimensions for power with arcane symbolism and insight which can only be approximated as mystical learning to us mere mortals. Plus, many of the stories are just flat out science fiction. Cool Air is about life extension through scientific means. The Herbert West: the Re-Animator is about bringing people back from the dead through technological means. The Whisperer in the Darkness is about aliens who remove people's brains through surgical techniques, put them in boxes, so they might visit strange worlds and dimensions for purely scientific purposes.
That's all science fiction. Okay, it's scary science fiction, but it's still science fiction.
And like I said, Lovecraft's influence is vast. Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, H. R. Giger, John Carpenter -- is there a major name in any modern artistic field who hasn't admitted Lovecraft's powerful influence? How many works of fiction over the years -- King's The Mist or Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness -- will be homages to Lovecraft before his influence is admitted? Have not these people influenced millions of others?
Lovecraft is one of the most underappreciated influences in all fields of modern science-fiction and fantasy. He is also one of the most powerful influences.
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Epinions.com ID:
CPXB
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Member: Christopher Bradley
Location: Bangor, ME
Reviews written: 54
Trusted by: 34 members
About Me:
Visionary epic anti-hero out to radically transform society through laziness.
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