The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Science Fiction and Fantasy  weren’t respected literary genres when I was little.  That’s hard to believe in the age of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games but the fiction welcomed on the best-seller lists and the book award nominations tended to fall in the “could-be-true-but-isn’t” category.  These were heavy tomes with heavy ideas by heavy hitters in the writing game: Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Bill Styron.  (In those days, it was good to be a Southern Writer).  Liking SF and Fantasy were almost considered the hallmark of an immature intellect.  By the mid 1970’s the stigma was starting to lift but it was still heavy enough to obscure a brilliant novel.  If you are looking for an intelligent, fascinating, often humorous trip through hell, I suggest you find a copy of Inferno by Niven and Pournelle. Inferno is dedicated to Dante Alighieri and is an homage to the first part of his Divine Comedy but the authors updated the structure.  Instead of Dante himself, the hero of Inferno is Alan Carpentier, a minor SF writer who managed to fall from an eight story window while showing off at a Science Fiction convention.  He returns to consciousness trapped in a bottle,…