Details Books Supposing Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1)
| Original Title: | Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta |
| ISBN: | 0224017675 (ISBN13: 9780224017671) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://www.dorislessing.org/shikastaby.html |
| Series: | Canopus in Argos #1 |
Doris Lessing
Hardcover | Pages: 365 pages Rating: 3.69 | 2105 Users | 239 Reviews
Point Out Of Books Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1)
| Title | : | Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1) |
| Author | : | Doris Lessing |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 365 pages |
| Published | : | 1979 by Jonathan Cape |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction. Fantasy |
Ilustration During Books Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1)
This is the first volume in the series of novels Doris Lessing calls collectively Canopus in Argos: Archives. Presented as a compilation of documents, reports, letters, speeches and journal entries, this purports to be a general study of the planet Shikasta, clearly the planet Earth, to be used by history students of the higher planet Canopus and to be stored in the Canopian archives. For eons, galactic empires have struggled against one another, and Shikasta is one of the main battlegrounds. Johar, an emissary from Canopus and the primary contributor to the archives, visits Shikasta over the millennia from the time of the giants and the biblical great flood up to the present. With every visit he tries to distract Shikastans from the evil influences of the planet Shammat but notes with dismay the ever-growing chaos and destruction of Shikasta as its people hurl themselves towards World War III and annihilation.Rating Out Of Books Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1)
Ratings: 3.69 From 2105 Users | 239 ReviewsAssess Out Of Books Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos #1)
I know that a book is exceptional if Ive read it more than once. More than twice, and it has to be extraordinary. Doris Lessings Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (the first in a series known as Canopus in Argos) is one of those. Known for her extensive corpus of mainstream, left-leaning fiction, Shikasta represents her first foray into science fiction., and into mysticism. Her die-hard fans hated her new direction and hoped it wouldnt last. Shed already tried their patience with Briefing for aDoris Lessing was first recommended to me by Karen Spilke, my next-door neighbor in the senior year at Union Theological Seminary, who read part of her Golden Notebook aloud while I was driving her car up to visit her parent's summer house near Leeds, New York. I had certainly heard of Lessing before and this reading put it back in my head to get down to reading her fiction.Then, Shikasta came out, a science fiction novel by the intended. Great! I bought it in hardcover and two of the subsequent
Wow. I am happily surprised how much I liked this book. My 1st try at D. Lessing was THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK, and I could not get myself into it, gave it up pretty quickly. When I was researching her work, I was curious to hear she had written a series of sci fi titles. The "sci" in this sci fi is on the light side. As is the case in much of the finest science fiction, distancing us from the known world can help an author frame a story the better to make points about that same world. The basic point
The first volume in Doris Lessings praised sci-fi quintet is a truly curious piece of literature. I almost hesitate to call Shikasta a novel, due to its erratic structure. Lessings style here brings to mind Virginia Woolf, early Jack Vance and most of all William S. Burroughs. Its much like The Naked Lunch, even though its sci-fi setting creates a bit more congruence between the individual stories, manifestos, apologies and philosophical as well as mythological deconstructions the whole of the
My favorite quotes from this book both come from the introduction:"Shikasta has as its starting point, like many others of the genre, the Old Testament. It is our habit to dismiss the Old Testament altogether because Jehovah, or Jahve, does not think or behave like a social worker.""I do think that there is something very wrong with an attitude that puts a 'serious' novel on one shelf and, let's say, First and Last Men on another."And, indeed, the overall effect is rather as though Olaf
i first read Shikasta fifteen years ago, and found it fantastic but very difficult. Rereading it now i felt differently, it was both a lot easier but also a lot less impressive.A white woman who grew up in Zimbabwe back when it was Rhodesia become a nobel laureate in literature last year. Amongst her reactions were something like "what took you so long" and "my science fiction was my most important work."Shikasta is the first book in Lessing's science fiction series, and it is very much a long,
They say North America is full of troubles but I said I didnt want to listen any longer. I have always admired Doris Lessings vision as a novelist and a humanist; The Golden Notebook was (as was The Diaries of Jane Somers, about which I wrote at length, and very personally, here) such an important book to me, and continues to be to this day, and I think its focus on our deep psychological and interpersonal rifts is still highly visionary, ominously prescient.With that said, and perhaps because
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