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Reading a really good science fiction story I sometimes find myself in a state of intellectual excitation that in an odd way resembles that of making a scientific discovery. Maybe it is not all that strange, considering the common denominator of experiencing new perspectives on life in this universe, be it scientific aspects of nature or the impact of technology on society. Anyhow, this "sense of wonder" is clearly distinct from the satisfaction I feel after having read a piece of good mainstream literature. My first real acquaintance with the genre (not counting the obvious Verne novels) was Robert Heinlein's "Have space suit, will travel" (Swedish translation "Egen rymddräkt finnes"), which struck me as lightning from a clear blue sky in third grade of primary school. Amazingly, I found out that an unproportionally large fraction of Swedish science fiction fans in my generation were captured by the very same novel. Not surprisingly, I am very fond of the works of Robert Silverberg and Philip K. Dick. Finnish author Leena Krohn is a particular favourite of mine, while Peter Nilsson keeps the position as the most interesting Swedish author in my bookshelf. I have an almost pervert addiction to the romances of Tanith Lee. My favourite novel, all categories, is "Watership Down" by Richard Adams (which of course should be denoted as fantasy, rather than science fiction). When living in Estonia in the early ninities, I started a publishing company devoted to science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendes-vouz with Rama", Philip K. Dick's "The man in the high castle", and Lena Krohn's "Tainaron" were translated into Estonian and received a fairly positive response in the Estonian press. Each book sold about 2000 copies, which should be compared with the size of the potential readership, being about one million Estonian speaking people in the country. These books are still available from me, if anyone should be interested. Some links to science fiction related pages around the web:
Last update 2002-03-20 by Janne Wallenius |