By Ted Gioia
One late night in 1986, Neil Gaiman described to
editor Richard Evans a new kind of fantasy fiction
built around the concept of a magical city. He pointed
to recent novels such as Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale
and John Crowley's Little,
Big as examples of the
emerging genre—works
that turned New York into
a kind of Narnia with sky-
scrapers and noisy traffic.
He wondered aloud why
no one had written a story
of this sort about London.
Evans looked at him and
said: "Well, why don't you
do it?"
A decade later, Gaiman got
his chance. The BBC
financed six 30-minute episodes
of Neverwhere, a fantasy miniseries set in "London
Below," an alternative reality domain located beneath
the existing city. His collaborator actor/comedian
Lenny Henry had suggested that the plot focus on
"tribes of homeless people in London," but Gaiman
was resistant to any attempt to glamorize poverty
and neglect. When the story finally crystallized, the
homeless still figured in the plot, but the tale was
infused with a gritty and dark-magic noir ambiance,
more like Oz the prison (of HBO fame) than Oz over
the rainbow (of Wizardly fame).
"I could talk about homelessness, mental illness, being
lost in a big city but also talk about the power that
cities have," Gaiman later commented, "and I could do
all of that while, at the same time, telling something
that is a fantasy series." Although the production
was compromised by some ill-advised cost-
cutting measures—including a decision to shoot it
with videotape rather than film—the show has
continued to enjoy a cult following, and stands out
for a number of distinctive touches, from set design
to music by Brian Eno.
The television series also served as a springboard for a
flexible narrative that could morph into a novel, a
comic book series, a film script (still in development),
even a stage play. Gaiman's 1996 novelization stands
out as the best known of these various instantiations of
Neverwhere. It became an international bestseller and
has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Although the book follows closely the script of the
miniseries, it gave Gaiman a chance to expand on
elements of the story and also bring back scenes
eliminated from the screen version, notably a colorful
interlude where inhabitants of London Below take over
Harrod's for a night and turn in into a magical
marketplace—which failed to make it into the BBC
series when owners of Harrod's changed their mind
about the use of their store as a TV set.
Richard Mayhew, the hero of our story, is a m
id-level employee for an investment firm in London.
His life revolves around his office cubicle, his ho-hum
apartment, and his attractive fiancée Jessica, a pushy
young lady who has more ambitions for her future
husband than he can muster for himself. But Richard
stumbles out of this familiar orbit one evening, when
he helps a mysterious young woman named Door
escape from her pursuers. Door comes from
London Below, and has some dangerous enemies.
By befriending her, Mayhew finds he has also cut
himself off from his past life—the residents of
'real' London no longer see or recognize him. He
has become a non-person, one of those individuals
who falls through the cracks of everyday London
and ends up in the netherworld beneath the city.
Gaiman's story follows the familiar meme of the
heroic vision quest. In order to regain his old life,
Richard must join forces with Door and her
colleagues—the taciturn bodyguard Hunter and the
enigmatic Marquis de Carabas—in overcoming a
series of adversaries and obstacles in pursuit of an
angel, a magic key, and the door that it unlocks. The
ingredients here are familiar from countless adventure
and fantasy stories: hired assassins, monstrous
creatures, a fortuneteller, talking animals, a maze,
hidden passageways and other time-honored elements
of speculative fiction. But Gaiman infuses these
staples of the genre with such color and panache
that, in his hands, even a labyrinth gets some new
twists and turns. He has a sure touch for comedy
and satire, but never lets it take control of the plot
—in the manner, say, of Douglas Adams or Terry
Pratchett. And his smart and smart-alecky dialogue
reminds you why the BBC sought him out in the first
place to create a TV miniseries.
Here, for example, is a sampling of the repartee of his
two leading thugs, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar—
wisecracking and Shakespeare-quoting criminals who
seem to enjoy some magical protection against bodily
harm:
"So, Mister Vandemar, shall we not also hire ourselves
a bodyguard?"
"We don’t need a bodyguard, Mister Croup.
We hurt people. We don’t get hurt."
"Oh, Mister Vandemar, if you cut us, do we not bleed?"
Mr. Vandemar pondered this for moment, in the dark.
Then he said, with perfect accuracy, "No."
Mayhew seems overmatched at every turn in the
underworld, and not just by Vandemar and Croup,
who present him with some unusual threats, ( "Do
you know what your own liver tastes like? You'll find
out, won’t you."), but also by an assortment of other
enemies and challenges. He meets up with the
Blackfriars at the Blackfriars Underground station
—part of an alternative mythology of the London
subway system contrived by Gaiman, which also
includes an Earl in Earls Court and shepherds at
Shepherd's Bush—who force him to undergo an
"ordeal" in a locked room. He deals with a pesky
underworld girlfriend who hopes to suck the
lifeblood out of him. And, finally, in the midst of
the maze he encounters Gaiman's stand-in for the
minotaur, but with no Ariadne to help him in his
struggle.
And, for all this, the stakes are so low—the most
Mayhew can hope for is a return trip back to a desk
job and his nagging girlfriend. Thus our hero is the
mirror image of Gaiman's readers—the latter want
escapism from the everyday, the former wants to
return to the daily grind. I won't be a spoiler, so
you will need to read Neverwhere to see if Richard gets
his wish. But as for the readers: they, I assure you,
are in safe hands.
One late night in 1986, Neil Gaiman described to
editor Richard Evans a new kind of fantasy fiction
built around the concept of a magical city. He pointed
to recent novels such as Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale
and John Crowley's Little,
Big as examples of the
emerging genre—works
that turned New York into
a kind of Narnia with sky-
scrapers and noisy traffic.
He wondered aloud why
no one had written a story
of this sort about London.
Evans looked at him and
said: "Well, why don't you
do it?"
A decade later, Gaiman got
his chance. The BBC
financed six 30-minute episodes
of Neverwhere, a fantasy miniseries set in "London
Below," an alternative reality domain located beneath
the existing city. His collaborator actor/comedian
Lenny Henry had suggested that the plot focus on
"tribes of homeless people in London," but Gaiman
was resistant to any attempt to glamorize poverty
and neglect. When the story finally crystallized, the
homeless still figured in the plot, but the tale was
infused with a gritty and dark-magic noir ambiance,
more like Oz the prison (of HBO fame) than Oz over
the rainbow (of Wizardly fame).
"I could talk about homelessness, mental illness, being
lost in a big city but also talk about the power that
cities have," Gaiman later commented, "and I could do
all of that while, at the same time, telling something
that is a fantasy series." Although the production
was compromised by some ill-advised cost-
cutting measures—including a decision to shoot it
with videotape rather than film—the show has
continued to enjoy a cult following, and stands out
for a number of distinctive touches, from set design
to music by Brian Eno.
The television series also served as a springboard for a
flexible narrative that could morph into a novel, a
comic book series, a film script (still in development),
even a stage play. Gaiman's 1996 novelization stands
out as the best known of these various instantiations of
Neverwhere. It became an international bestseller and
has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Although the book follows closely the script of the
miniseries, it gave Gaiman a chance to expand on
elements of the story and also bring back scenes
eliminated from the screen version, notably a colorful
interlude where inhabitants of London Below take over
Harrod's for a night and turn in into a magical
marketplace—which failed to make it into the BBC
series when owners of Harrod's changed their mind
about the use of their store as a TV set.
Richard Mayhew, the hero of our story, is a m
id-level employee for an investment firm in London.
His life revolves around his office cubicle, his ho-hum
apartment, and his attractive fiancée Jessica, a pushy
young lady who has more ambitions for her future
husband than he can muster for himself. But Richard
stumbles out of this familiar orbit one evening, when
he helps a mysterious young woman named Door
escape from her pursuers. Door comes from
London Below, and has some dangerous enemies.
By befriending her, Mayhew finds he has also cut
himself off from his past life—the residents of
'real' London no longer see or recognize him. He
has become a non-person, one of those individuals
who falls through the cracks of everyday London
and ends up in the netherworld beneath the city.
Gaiman's story follows the familiar meme of the
heroic vision quest. In order to regain his old life,
Richard must join forces with Door and her
colleagues—the taciturn bodyguard Hunter and the
enigmatic Marquis de Carabas—in overcoming a
series of adversaries and obstacles in pursuit of an
angel, a magic key, and the door that it unlocks. The
ingredients here are familiar from countless adventure
and fantasy stories: hired assassins, monstrous
creatures, a fortuneteller, talking animals, a maze,
hidden passageways and other time-honored elements
of speculative fiction. But Gaiman infuses these
staples of the genre with such color and panache
that, in his hands, even a labyrinth gets some new
twists and turns. He has a sure touch for comedy
and satire, but never lets it take control of the plot
—in the manner, say, of Douglas Adams or Terry
Pratchett. And his smart and smart-alecky dialogue
reminds you why the BBC sought him out in the first
place to create a TV miniseries.
Here, for example, is a sampling of the repartee of his
two leading thugs, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar—
wisecracking and Shakespeare-quoting criminals who
seem to enjoy some magical protection against bodily
harm:
"So, Mister Vandemar, shall we not also hire ourselves
a bodyguard?"
"We don’t need a bodyguard, Mister Croup.
We hurt people. We don’t get hurt."
"Oh, Mister Vandemar, if you cut us, do we not bleed?"
Mr. Vandemar pondered this for moment, in the dark.
Then he said, with perfect accuracy, "No."
Mayhew seems overmatched at every turn in the
underworld, and not just by Vandemar and Croup,
who present him with some unusual threats, ( "Do
you know what your own liver tastes like? You'll find
out, won’t you."), but also by an assortment of other
enemies and challenges. He meets up with the
Blackfriars at the Blackfriars Underground station
—part of an alternative mythology of the London
subway system contrived by Gaiman, which also
includes an Earl in Earls Court and shepherds at
Shepherd's Bush—who force him to undergo an
"ordeal" in a locked room. He deals with a pesky
underworld girlfriend who hopes to suck the
lifeblood out of him. And, finally, in the midst of
the maze he encounters Gaiman's stand-in for the
minotaur, but with no Ariadne to help him in his
struggle.
And, for all this, the stakes are so low—the most
Mayhew can hope for is a return trip back to a desk
job and his nagging girlfriend. Thus our hero is the
mirror image of Gaiman's readers—the latter want
escapism from the everyday, the former wants to
return to the daily grind. I won't be a spoiler, so
you will need to read Neverwhere to see if Richard gets
his wish. But as for the readers: they, I assure you,
are in safe hands.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman |
Click on image to purchase
| The Year of Magical Reading (click here) |
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
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
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
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.
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
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Time's Arrow
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I, Robot
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Dandelion Wine
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Fahrenheit 451
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
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The View from the Seventh Layer
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A Clockwork Orange
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Ender's Game
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The Kingdom of This World
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
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Stories of Your Life and Others
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Childhood's End
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A Fall of Moondust
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2001: A Space Odyssey
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
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Little, Big
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The Fifty Year Sword
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House of Leaves
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Fifth Business
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Babel-17
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Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
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Ubik
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VALIS
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Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
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The Obscene Bird of Night
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I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
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Like Water for Chocolate
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Aura
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Burning Chrome
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Light
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Time Enough for Love
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Winter's Tale
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Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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Gods Without Men
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Conjure Wife
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His Master's Voice
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Magic for Beginners
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
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Dangerous Laughter
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At Swim-Two-Birds
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Gateway
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The Color of Magic
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More Than Human
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Cat's Cradle
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Lord of Light
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