Somebody wrote to the Wall Street Journal ’s playscript advice tower to ask how you go about convincing your 13 - yr - old nephew to intercept reading science fiction . Thank good the WSJ ’s in - house ledger nerd was smart enough to say : You do n’t .
Be glad that when you were a teenager , you did n’t have an aunt like the personwho compose to the Journal ’s “ Book Lover ” column to inquire this dubiousness :
My 13 - year - older nephew is a esurient reader , but he tend to limit his reading material to science fiction . He recently read “ Brave New World , ” because he thought it was sci - fi . Any suggestion on how to expand his skyline to include other genre ?
Anyone with half a lick of sense will know that a 13 - year - honest-to-goodness who ’s voluntarily reading Huxley is doing just finely and does not require an intercession . But the WSJ ’s book columnist , Cynthia Crossen , is a nicer person than I am , since she refrains from tell the aunt what an cretin she was being .
Instead , Crossen gives auntie a voguish ( if slightly muddled ) lecture on the incorrectness of misplaced snobbism , and admits that not all SF is as smashing . Then she recommends that instead of stopping the allegedly tripe - bang nephew from reading SF , the aunty should steer him towards the expert stuff :
So Aunt B. ’s mission is to bit by bit poke at the boy along the spectrum from Godzilla and 50 - foot woman to H. G. Wells , Mary Shelley , Jules Verne , Isaac Asimov , Philip K. Dick , Robert HeinleinandDouglas Adams .
Then he ’ll be quick for some great contemporary science - fiction writer : William Gibson , China Miéville , Neal Stephenson , Connie Willis , David Mitchell , Kazuo Ishiguroand Richard Powers .
Remembering an other encounter with scientific discipline fabrication , George Orwellwrote : “ Back in the 1900s , it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discoverH.G. Wells . There you were , in a world of pedants , man of the cloth and golfers … and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the dweller of the ocean , and who screw that the futurity was not going to be what sizable people imagined . ” That ’s a gift indeed .
Daily Newsletter
Get the ripe tech , skill , and culture news in your inbox day by day .
word from the futurity , deliver to your nowadays .
Please select your desired newssheet and reconcile your electronic mail to upgrade your inbox .
You May Also Like
