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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Canopus in Argos - Doris Lessing
Message-ID: <1818@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-Oct-85 18:20:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1818
Posted: Fri Oct 11 18:20:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 07:33:07 EDT
References: <6060@cbscc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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In article <6060@cbscc.UUCP> trb@cbscc.UUCP (Tom Balent) writes:

>	I am looking for an opinion (or review) of the
>	five book series by Doris Lessing "Canopus in
>	Argos: Archives".

>	Has anyone out there read any or all of these books?
>	Are they worth the time (and money)? 

I've read the first three (possibly the fourth, too; don't remember too
well).  Of the first three, the second is VERY different from the other two,
and of the three, is the one that most bears reading.  The first is a very
strange book.  Anyone who is the least bit familiar with the mythopoeic
fiction knows what is going to happen in the end.  Everything runs downhill
until it is all fixed in the last chapter.  What you get in the meantime is
an extended dissertation on the sins of man, culminating with a long-winded
and rather contrived (even within the character's point of view)
confrontation.  This resolves nothing; in fact, nothing resolves anything.
I can't recommend this book, I'm afraid, although it's somewhat hard to pin
a reason down as to why.  The third book is similar, talking about the same
time frame in a different region from a different point of view.  Both of
these books present a dualistic sort of competition for the earth which
reads strikingly like a way to reinvent the Judaic view of man, but without
the deity.  

  The second book, as I said earlier, is quite different.  It's sort of a
Beren-and-Luthien Men-and-Fairies sort of sort, except that there are
neither men nor fairies.  The oppressive sense of "I am telling an Important
Story" is much muted, and the cosmic forces all go away (after they set the
ball in motion.  This book is perhaps worth checking out of the library.

There are two things that the whole of this has going against it:

  Doris Lessing is basically a mainstream novelist.  Her "science fiction"
  is more mythopoeic fantasy; there's a strong kinship in that regard to the
  book _Out of the Silent Planet_.  If you didn't like that book, you will
  not like any of these books (well, *maybe* the second).

  The books are simply too self-important.  I continually through the first
  and third books had this feeling of the author having this vision of how
  she was going to change the world throught these books, the dreaded "I am
  telling an Important Story" sense.  The fact is that both the themes and
  the form of their presentation aren't new.  The first book is in
  particular marred by this sense of mission, leading to a lot of contrived
  settings and conflicts.

Charley Wingate