[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]
[NB. This post
originally aired in 2012, and I’m sure some of the details of Tad’s career are
long outdated—check out his site for
current updates!]
Why you
should read an epic four-volume sci fi series on the beach this summer.
If you’re
a fan of science fiction already, I probably won’t have to work very hard to
convince you to give Tad
Williams’ Otherland series—all four
800-page volumes of it—a shot. Williams
has had a long and impressively varied career in sci fi, fantasy, and related
genres, in print and in numerous other media (Otherland is in fact currently being developed into an online gaming system and also
has been optioned
as a film which Williams is set to script), and to my mind this series
remains his most significant achievement; I’d put it alongside Dan
Simmons’ Hyperion novels as the
best sci fi series of the last couple decades. So if you’re a fan of the genre
and haven’t read Williams’ series yet, feel free to stop reading now and go
pick ‘em up; I promise you won’t be disappointed.
But if
you’re not a fan, I know that much of that paragraph—and especially the part
about 3200 pages of epic science fiction—is more likely to send you running in
the other direction than to scream “beach read!” to you. Moreover, Williams’
series is set in numerous places, real and virtual, and if I’m remembering
correctly only two of its many central plot threads take place in the United
States; hardly an obvious fit for a series on American Studies beach reads. Yet
I am including Williams’ series in my own, and there are a couple of pretty
good reasons why. For one thing, Williams sets his series in a near-future in
which numerous early 21st century American and world
trends—historical, cultural, technological, and more—have been extended and
amplified; as with
all of the best sci fi, then, his works allow us to consider and analyze our
own moment and society from that distance. It doesn’t hurt, for the beach
reading and for helping that socially critical medicine go down more smoothly,
that Williams’ touch in these areas is both wry and funny; each chapter begins
with a brief glimpse into one or another of these futuristic trends, and taken
together they comprise a dark satirical vision on par with the kinds of black
comedy I referenced in yesterday’s post.
That’s one
good reason for any American Studier to engage with science fiction, and
particularly with a series as pitch-perfect in its futuristic world-building
and social commentary as Williams’. But I would argue that the series’ central
theme is even more salient for any and all 21st century American
Studiers. I’m not going to spoil the specifics of how Williams develops this
theme, as it’s central to the series’ mysteries and arcs, but will say that his
characters and his books are concerned, on multiple key levels, with questions
of story-telling: how we create and tell stories; what stories mean for individuals
and communities; how stories can be put to the worst as well as the best uses; what
the oldest and most enduring stories have to offer all of us in a 21st
century, technologically driven society; and many more such questions. As I’ve
argued many times in this space, I think few questions matter more to
American politics, culture, society, and Studies than that of our national
narratives, the stories we tell about our past, our community, our identity. Williams’
series makes for a hugely imaginative and entertaining way in to thinking about
such narratives, and about the deepest human questions to which they connect.
Definitely worth your suntanning time!
Next Beach Read
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know
what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!
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