Recently, shortly before awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a member of the Nobel committee, Horace Engdahl, caused no small controversy with the following remarks:
The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.
Many responded with a list of worthy American writers who disproved this charge: Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy.
Though it’s hard to disagree with that list, my first thought, actually, was that America’s greatest contribution to world literature may be its genre writing, and that it is in fact the Nobel committee that is “isolated, insular, ignorant”—in its continued refusal to acknowledge genre writers. This situation is unlikely to change, given that the committee’s record of judging even literary fiction is spotty at best. (To see some over the committee’s amazing omissions over the years, check out Ted Gioia’s “The Nobel Prize in an Alternate Universe.”) So like those other non-Nobelists, Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, science fiction and fantasy writers will have to settle for a different kind of prize: continuing to actually be read by readers all over the world for years to come.
Still, we can dream. After the jump, take a look at 10 sci-fi/fantasy novelists deserving of the honor. Note that posthumous nominations are included—this is, after all, the stuff of dreams. Add your own nominees in the comments!
Ursula K. Le Guin
One of the world's great minds. Not only an creator of astonishing, mind-expanding worlds, but a seeker of astonishing and mind-expanding truths.
J.R.R. Tolkien
![tolkien0416[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/tolkien0416%5B1%5D.jpg)
A forger of an original mythology that will stand alongside--and last as long--as the King Arthur stories, the Greek and Norse myths, the fairy tales of Europe, and the Arabian Nights. LOTR is the kind of story we've been telling as long as humans have been around to tell stories.
Philip K. Dick
![PhilipDick[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/PhilipDick%5B1%5D.jpg)
It seems highly improbable that so ferociously iconclastic a writer should achieve any level of literary respectability. But there is PKD (collected in LIbrary of America editions, no less), despite the stigma of genre. Genius like this is an unstoppable force.
Neil Gaiman
![NeilGaiman[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/NeilGaiman%5B1%5D.jpg)
If sheer storytelling ability--the power to make new worlds come alive with words--may be reckoned among the "literary" virtues, I can think of no writer more deserving of this honor.
Margaret Atwood
A warrior for genre, whose dystopias The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake have been happily praised even by those who would scorn to call themselves sci-fi fans.
Jonathan Lethem
![jonathan_lethem200[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/jonathan_lethem200%5B1%5D.jpg)
Crossing, blurring, and finally eradicating, that line between genre and literature--radical, awesomely original, the sole inhabitant of his own personal, self-created genre.
C.S. Lewis
![CS-Lewis[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/CS-Lewis%5B1%5D.jpg)
Not only are his most famous books a series of fantasy novels, they are (whisper it) for children--by Nobel standards, C.S. Lewis is doubly cursed. But it is only senseless prejudices like these could keep one from seeing the seriousness and beauty of the Narnia novels.
John Crowley
![Crowley[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/Crowley%5B1%5D.jpg)
Perhaps the least controversial nominee on this list, if only because it is impossible to argue against the otherworldly perfection of Crowley's prose.
Alan Moore
![alan_moore[1].jpg](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/alan_moore%5B1%5D.jpg)
If it is implausible to imagine an SF or fantasy novelist winning this prize, it is unthinkable that a comic book writer would. But if this were to ever, ever happen, it would surely happen to Alan Moore.
Ray Bradbury
![bradbury[1].gif](http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/bradbury%5B1%5D.gif)
He is still among us. Engdahl et. al: This is one literary injustice it's not too late to rectify.
Margaret Atwood may be a fine writer, and she may have written several novels that any unbiased observer would clearly call science fiction, but she's certainly not "a warrior for genre."
She's made it quite clear, over and over, that she hates SF, doesn't read or understand SF,and that her books that appear to be SF are actually something better and more suitable for a serious writer such as herself.
(None of that, of course, should diminish her chances of becoming a Nobel laureate. And she's Canadian, so the recent anti-American comments by the head of the Nobel panel probably don't apply here.)
I did not know that about Atwood. She sounds like Terry Goodkind! How absurd! haha
The first Atwood novel I read was The Handmaiden's Tale, a staple in high school and college literature classes, and the class was FEMINISM IN SCIENCE FICTION!
I'll trust the University of Washington Department of English before I'll trust the author, I guess. haha
As for the others, great list, Tricia. Love all of those writers and they are quite worthy!
I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification, Andrew. Also, I included more than a few admirable non-Americans on my list--in an attempt to make a larger point about the insularity and isolation of the prize committee's choices.
Another for whom it is too late: Stanislaw Lem.
Ira Levin.
atwood has already been nominated.
on the other hand, if we are to be rational and nominate living writers, then we should include samuel r. delany and j.g. ballard. i think ballard's nobel prize has been long due.
I think the problem here is that the same double standard exists for writing that exists for film and that is that 'genre' fiction isn't respected or regarded enough to ever be seriously considered for the mainstream awards and prizes.
Someone like Bradbury, or King, or odds are even Rowling will get the credit they deserve for the work they have done, and what a shame that is.
For me, it isn't that American writers are so insular and indifferent to the 'big dialogue' as much as a writer isn't deemed worthy of serious consideration unless they fall into a narrow band of literature, which gets foggier and less defined the older I get and the more I read.
I don't think anyone on this list deserves a Nobel Prize. The only scifi writer who I think does would be be Arthur C Clarke.
While the writers on this list are impressive and well loved, I still wish you would have mentioned Orson Scott Card. His brilliant works are ground breaking both for their scope and imagination as well as his amazingly well developed characters.
What about Madeleine l'Engle?
I couldn't agree with you more. In my opinion, Ursula K. Le Guin is the greatest SciFi writer. The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and her numerous short stories and poetry give a sometimes stark and insightful insight into human nature. Great post!!
Err... Robert Heinlein anyone? Arthur C. Clark?
*pouts that her favorites were not on the list*