“Here’s a door opening on a new world: what will I find there?”

Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘A Message About Messages’, full text here, illustration by Chris Riddell.

“All this is not to say that some difficult novels are not truly ghastly”

All this is not to say that some difficult novels are not truly ghastly. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, you could say that pretentiousness is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius. I remember a colleague on a judging panel surveying the gathered novels and saying, with a certain roll of the eyes: “There’s a lot of … fine writing in here.” By this he meant overwrought bad writing. The idea of literary fiction – in particular the idea that it is intrinsically high-status or, worse, “important” – is the rock on which many ambitious second-rate writers bark their shins. It’s what gives us plotless novels choked with portentous metaphors and pseudo-profound ruminations, novels that mistake difficulty for accomplishment or, worse, solemnity for seriousness.

Sam Leith

“A good novel might prompt people to ask themselves questions that don’t have easy answers”

Only a fool says writing isn’t political. People are subjects in history, and so are fictional characters. But the novel is in the category of art, and art is something special, irreducible. It is not a vehicle for a message. Still, a good novel might prompt people to ask themselves questions that don’t have easy answers, and to take a break from themselves and consider the lives of other people and the mechanics of the world, and meet new streams of comedy and grief. There is always some surplus that isn’t exactly political, but it cannot be separated cleanly from the society one lives in.

Rachel Kushner

“There are certain novels from which you only need revisit a couple of pages to be reminded of why it is that you’re crazy about science fiction”

There are certain novels – and I’m sure it’s like this for every science fiction reader – from which you only need revisit a couple of pages to be reminded of why it is that you’re crazy about science fiction. Novels that churn up memories so powerful they bring tears to your eyes. You know there are no novels quite like this in mimetic literature, that in some incalculable yet inarguable way they articulate what being a reader and being a writer is about.

Nina Allan