by Ted Gioia
India celebrated its independence from the
British Empire shortly after midnight on
August 15, 1947. No, Salman Rushdie
wasn’t born on that precise day and hour—
he arrived on the scene 57 days earlier, the
son of a middle-class Muslim
family in Mumbai. But
Rushdie's most famous
protagonist, Saleem Sinai
takes his first breath at the
very moment of his nation's
release from colonial control.
As a result, Saleem’s photo is
featured in the Times of India,
and the infant receives a con-
gratulatory letter from Prime
Minister Nehru:
"Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations
on the happy accident of your moment of birth!
You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of
India which is also eternally young. We shall be
watching over your life with the closest
attention; it will be, in a sense, a mirror of our
own."
Nehru’s words come true with a vengeance—not
just for Saleem, but for his whole cohort of
"midnight’s children," those hundreds of others
also born on August 15, 1947. In a strange quirk
of fate, each of these youngsters was given some
magical power, and the closer their time of birth
approached the midnight moment of
independence, the more impressive the ability.
Saleem learns during his adolescence that he
has been given the power of telepathy. Others
who share his birthday, can turn base metals
into gold, travel in time, enchant strangers with
their preternatural beauty, and perform a host
of other miracles. This remarkable cadre
includes "Kerala, a boy who had the ability of
stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through
any reflective surface—through lakes and (with
greater difficulty) the polished metal bodies of
automobiles…and a Goanese girl with the gift of
multiplying fish…and children with the powers
of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri
Hills, and from the great watershed of the
Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce
his size at will…."
We have now entered the realm of so-called
magical realism, and Rushdie doesn't hold back
in infusing his novel with the mystical, the
implausible and the wholly impossible. Our
author is clearly indebted to Gabriel García
Márquez, whose influence hovers over almost
every aspect of this work. (And I would have
hoped for one further step of emulation—the
inclusion of a family tree as a frontispiece would
have been a great aid in this novel with almost
100 significant characters, around half of them
related by blood or marriage.) But Rushdie
incorporates, if anything, even more magic into
his novel than does his Colombian role model.
That said, he does not stint on the realism, and
stuffs his novel full of the historical and political
events of India and Pakistan during the first
several decades of independence.
We encounter the optimism of the early days of
Indian statehood, the assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi the following year, the Five Year Plan of
the early 1950s, the conflicts with Pakistan and
China, the rise to power of Indira Gandhi, the
Bangladesh liberation war, India’s development
of nuclear weapons, the Indian state of
emergency and suppression of political
opposition of 1975-1977, and other incidents,
minor and major, of the era.
Scholars and critics typically take on the task of
drawing the symbolic connections between
world-historical events and the quirky personal
exploits of the characters who inhabit a work of
fiction. But Rushdie has already done this work
for us—in almost laborious detail. A significant
portion of Midnight’s Children reads like the
mutterings of a fastidious literary critic, as the
narrator expounds on the many linkages
between characters, symbols and events. "As a
people we are obsessed with correspondences,"
Rushdie writes at one point in this novel.
"Similarities between this and that, between
apparently unconnected things, make us clap
our hands delightedly when we find them out. It
is a sort of national longing for form—or perhaps
simply an expression of our deep belief that
forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning
reveals itself only in flashes." Certainly Rushdie
shares this fixation with connections, and never
lets the opportunity to pass in this work of
pointing out the similarities, repetitions and
other linkages—both metaphorical and real—
that figure so prominently in Midnight’s
Children.
Even while admiring the imaginative riches of
this bountiful novel, I couldn't repress the
tedium caused by many of these lengthy
digressions. Readers must navigate through an
interminable account of the symbolic
resonances of snakes and ladders, recurring
speculations on noses and knees, and—worst of
all—Rushdie drones on at length about the four
kinds of connection between characters and
historical events in his novel, namely, the
passive-literal, the passive-metaphorical, the
active-literal and the active-metaphorical. I
would like to think that this digression was
intended as a parody of bad literary criticism,
but I suspect that Rushdie was merely, once
again, exhibiting the "obsession with
correspondences" described above. No, I did
not clap my hands delightedly.
But if I dream of a revised Midnight’s Children,
vastly improved by the excision of a hundred or
so pages—ah, that would be the true
masterpiece!—I also recognize that Rushdie is
intentionally imparting a long-windedness to his
magnum opus. His narrator often apologizes for
his meandering accounts, and Rushdie invents
the character of Padma, who is listening to the
story as it is recounted, and constantly trying to
keep Saleem on track and concise—hopelessly,
because Rushdie has channeled this story
through the voice of a storyteller who hates to
come to the point. At times, Midnight’s
Children even resembles Tristram Shandy,
Laurence Sterne’s extended exercise in
thwarting readers’ expectations about plot and
pacing. As with Tristram Shandy, Midnight’s
Children deliberately delays the birth of its main
character for chapter after chapter after chapter,
and takes a sardonic delight in not coming to the
point.
Then again, I can hardly blame Saleem Sinai for
not wanting to get on with a story in which so
many things go badly for the narrator. Let
others write about rags-to-riches, Rushdie
prefers to tell us about riches-to-rags. Even
Saleem’s face, body and internal organs take a
severe beating during the course of these pages,
and not all of his constituent parts survive to the
end of the book. His hopes and dreams face
equally daunting obstacles—but in a book in
which the main character represents
(metaphorically, literally, actively, passively) the
fate of a nation during a time of turmoil, we
should expect no less.
Saleem's destiny is also shared by those other
children of midnight. Can their magic overcome
the banalities, the crudities, the indiscretions,
the corrupt failings that surround them? Or are
the exigencies of history too powerful for even
those who can transmute lead into gold, read
minds, multiply fish, and travel through time?
In the final analysis, Rushdie has achieved
something fresh and original in this novel: he
has crafted a magical realism in which ultimately
the magic and the realism match up in
confrontation—the fanciful and pragmatic go to
war, so to speak—and that is a battle with, yes,
meaning for India, but also with a few
connections outside of Rushdie’s native land. I
am happy to say that our author—in a rare
concession—allows us to make some of those
connections on our own.
India celebrated its independence from the
British Empire shortly after midnight on
August 15, 1947. No, Salman Rushdie
wasn’t born on that precise day and hour—
he arrived on the scene 57 days earlier, the
son of a middle-class Muslim
family in Mumbai. But
Rushdie's most famous
protagonist, Saleem Sinai
takes his first breath at the
very moment of his nation's
release from colonial control.
As a result, Saleem’s photo is
featured in the Times of India,
and the infant receives a con-
gratulatory letter from Prime
Minister Nehru:
"Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations
on the happy accident of your moment of birth!
You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of
India which is also eternally young. We shall be
watching over your life with the closest
attention; it will be, in a sense, a mirror of our
own."
Nehru’s words come true with a vengeance—not
just for Saleem, but for his whole cohort of
"midnight’s children," those hundreds of others
also born on August 15, 1947. In a strange quirk
of fate, each of these youngsters was given some
magical power, and the closer their time of birth
approached the midnight moment of
independence, the more impressive the ability.
Saleem learns during his adolescence that he
has been given the power of telepathy. Others
who share his birthday, can turn base metals
into gold, travel in time, enchant strangers with
their preternatural beauty, and perform a host
of other miracles. This remarkable cadre
includes "Kerala, a boy who had the ability of
stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through
any reflective surface—through lakes and (with
greater difficulty) the polished metal bodies of
automobiles…and a Goanese girl with the gift of
multiplying fish…and children with the powers
of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri
Hills, and from the great watershed of the
Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce
his size at will…."
We have now entered the realm of so-called
magical realism, and Rushdie doesn't hold back
in infusing his novel with the mystical, the
implausible and the wholly impossible. Our
author is clearly indebted to Gabriel García
Márquez, whose influence hovers over almost
every aspect of this work. (And I would have
hoped for one further step of emulation—the
inclusion of a family tree as a frontispiece would
have been a great aid in this novel with almost
100 significant characters, around half of them
related by blood or marriage.) But Rushdie
incorporates, if anything, even more magic into
his novel than does his Colombian role model.
That said, he does not stint on the realism, and
stuffs his novel full of the historical and political
events of India and Pakistan during the first
several decades of independence.
We encounter the optimism of the early days of
Indian statehood, the assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi the following year, the Five Year Plan of
the early 1950s, the conflicts with Pakistan and
China, the rise to power of Indira Gandhi, the
Bangladesh liberation war, India’s development
of nuclear weapons, the Indian state of
emergency and suppression of political
opposition of 1975-1977, and other incidents,
minor and major, of the era.
Scholars and critics typically take on the task of
drawing the symbolic connections between
world-historical events and the quirky personal
exploits of the characters who inhabit a work of
fiction. But Rushdie has already done this work
for us—in almost laborious detail. A significant
portion of Midnight’s Children reads like the
mutterings of a fastidious literary critic, as the
narrator expounds on the many linkages
between characters, symbols and events. "As a
people we are obsessed with correspondences,"
Rushdie writes at one point in this novel.
"Similarities between this and that, between
apparently unconnected things, make us clap
our hands delightedly when we find them out. It
is a sort of national longing for form—or perhaps
simply an expression of our deep belief that
forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning
reveals itself only in flashes." Certainly Rushdie
shares this fixation with connections, and never
lets the opportunity to pass in this work of
pointing out the similarities, repetitions and
other linkages—both metaphorical and real—
that figure so prominently in Midnight’s
Children.
Even while admiring the imaginative riches of
this bountiful novel, I couldn't repress the
tedium caused by many of these lengthy
digressions. Readers must navigate through an
interminable account of the symbolic
resonances of snakes and ladders, recurring
speculations on noses and knees, and—worst of
all—Rushdie drones on at length about the four
kinds of connection between characters and
historical events in his novel, namely, the
passive-literal, the passive-metaphorical, the
active-literal and the active-metaphorical. I
would like to think that this digression was
intended as a parody of bad literary criticism,
but I suspect that Rushdie was merely, once
again, exhibiting the "obsession with
correspondences" described above. No, I did
not clap my hands delightedly.
But if I dream of a revised Midnight’s Children,
vastly improved by the excision of a hundred or
so pages—ah, that would be the true
masterpiece!—I also recognize that Rushdie is
intentionally imparting a long-windedness to his
magnum opus. His narrator often apologizes for
his meandering accounts, and Rushdie invents
the character of Padma, who is listening to the
story as it is recounted, and constantly trying to
keep Saleem on track and concise—hopelessly,
because Rushdie has channeled this story
through the voice of a storyteller who hates to
come to the point. At times, Midnight’s
Children even resembles Tristram Shandy,
Laurence Sterne’s extended exercise in
thwarting readers’ expectations about plot and
pacing. As with Tristram Shandy, Midnight’s
Children deliberately delays the birth of its main
character for chapter after chapter after chapter,
and takes a sardonic delight in not coming to the
point.
Then again, I can hardly blame Saleem Sinai for
not wanting to get on with a story in which so
many things go badly for the narrator. Let
others write about rags-to-riches, Rushdie
prefers to tell us about riches-to-rags. Even
Saleem’s face, body and internal organs take a
severe beating during the course of these pages,
and not all of his constituent parts survive to the
end of the book. His hopes and dreams face
equally daunting obstacles—but in a book in
which the main character represents
(metaphorically, literally, actively, passively) the
fate of a nation during a time of turmoil, we
should expect no less.
Saleem's destiny is also shared by those other
children of midnight. Can their magic overcome
the banalities, the crudities, the indiscretions,
the corrupt failings that surround them? Or are
the exigencies of history too powerful for even
those who can transmute lead into gold, read
minds, multiply fish, and travel through time?
In the final analysis, Rushdie has achieved
something fresh and original in this novel: he
has crafted a magical realism in which ultimately
the magic and the realism match up in
confrontation—the fanciful and pragmatic go to
war, so to speak—and that is a battle with, yes,
meaning for India, but also with a few
connections outside of Rushdie’s native land. I
am happy to say that our author—in a rare
concession—allows us to make some of those
connections on our own.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie |
Click on image to purchase
| The Year of Magical Reading (click here) |
| conceptual fiction Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction |
Welcome to my year of magical
reading. Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed,
one of my intentions in this project is
to show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and
misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These labels
are not without their value, but too
often they have blinded us to the rich
and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very few
retain into adulthood this sense of the
kind of enchantment possible only
through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and
Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia
Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John
Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni
Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim
Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
reading. Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed,
one of my intentions in this project is
to show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and
misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These labels
are not without their value, but too
often they have blinded us to the rich
and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very few
retain into adulthood this sense of the
kind of enchantment possible only
through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and
Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia
Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John
Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni
Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim
Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas
Camp Concentration
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Saramago, José
Blindness
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and
its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.
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Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas
Camp Concentration
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Saramago, José
Blindness
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and
its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.