Future literature

Recently read a book. Jack London "Martin Eden." Amazing book! I didn’t read the best in my life. Throughout the book, I literally lived the main character, I thought how he, combined his life with his - became not divided with him. I will not describe in detail what exactly attracted me to the book, and how, in my opinion, the author managed to achieve this effect (or maybe I have nerves and psyche to the devil), maybe I will write a review later.



But after reading this book, I seriously wondered - what are they - the books of the future? What will the authors write a new generation? Or, say, what will my children write about?



Russia is the most reading country in the world.

(slogan)

In general, the entire space of literary works (let us immediately agree that we are talking about works of art) can be divided into subspaces, delimiting them by the time in which the events described in the book take place. I would do it like this:

1. "Historical" - the book, the events in which occur somewhere in the distant past, relative to the present moment. Surely, everyone in childhood read Stevenson, Dumas ... Mine Reed and Jules Verne also fall into this category. The books of all these authors are imbued with some spirit, romance of the past tense, and this is their main value. Of course, most of them were written by contemporaries - the authors, who with their own eyes found that time. In the same category I write such authors as: Conan Doyle, Jack London, Dreiser, O. Henry, Selinger and many other authors of past eras. But there are authors of our time who also write historical novels, in them, not infrequently, surprisingly the very same “romance of past centuries” with some modernizing . (see Authors: Yury Nikitin, quite well-known, and the equally well-known, but not very prominent (in my opinion) Andrei Belyanin, recently also came across Alex Orlov’s book).
2. “Science Fiction” is a separate category that, perhaps, does not find a response in the hearts of a sufficient number of people, but this, in my opinion, is an immortal direction, but everything outstanding, written in it, as a rule, gradually begin to be attributed to other space . The time and place of these books usually corresponds to the time of the author.
3. “Cosmic Fantasy” - everything is clear here - events have found a place on the spiral of time somewhere, at least in the next century. Intergalactic flights, Frank Herbert, Dan Simmons, Harry Harrison, and entire legions of other science fiction writers for most people have turned the word "fiction" into a synonym for this genre. The disease of the last century, which, however, in spite of it, is already a much more weighty approach of civilization to the events described, is no less popular, attractive and romantic these days.
4. And, of course, “fantasy” - in my opinion, in Russia, the genre became widespread only at the end of the last century, but still does not lose ground. The main names, familiar, perhaps, to everyone: Tolkien, Perumov, Nikitin, Zelazny, Salvatore. Millions of people around the world see fantasy plots as an alternative model of the sympathetic world, dreamers, romantics, or simply people looking for peace, rarely prefer fantasy. (However, I, perhaps, myself belong to those). There are numerous role-playing games on especially popular fantasy books. First of all on the "Lord of the Rings".
5. "Books of recent times." Not real! I will refer to the authors, perhaps, Pelevin, Bogomolov, Solzhenitsyn.

(This classification was made exclusively by the time of the works, and only the main directions are indicated.)



In the heart of everyone, at least one “of the genre-time epochs presented on the shelves” will find a response. Preferring books from one category or another (my version of the division of book space), you, of course, find something close to you, I repeat, but you can’t find a better word just romantic — something you may not have enough in life than Something that you would like to immerse in completely, just to get away from the real world (after all, is it then that books bring real pleasure?) . Everyone likes some kind of epoch. Someone prefers swords and armor, and someone has light sabers and the sound of a ship's bell, someone likes chic social receptions, and someone walks in interstellar space.

')

And how do you ... computers, information technology ..? Do you find it interesting? Do not you think that your grandchildren will not read about the "times of Steve and Bill"? Yes, modern writers, there are still themes taken from our life with you, but abstract from IT - the plots of numerous detective stories, novels of county towns. But the information sphere is rapidly expanding, swallowing us. IT has become not just a means of improving the convenience and improvement of life, they have become a lifestyle, they have become an element of comfort (such as smoking - and why not?) .



Whether you find that if the growth of IT influence on our life continues, the next generation of writers simply will not write about anything, and it will not be necessary. As a vivid example of “not being needed”, paradoxical and strange - you remember, books of contemporaries that described the beauty of the southern seas, the difficult conditions of the taiga, or the north (Alfred Shklyarsky did not offer, you can’t call him a contemporary with you). Many can you remember?



Of course, the categories I have listed will always remain, but if you noticed, I did not indicate the category “books about our time”. Specially. This is really a problem - the authors of the XXI century devote too much time to fantasy, historical stories in a modern way and fiction. There is no such category.



This article is my personal opinion. I just share my impression. If there are worthy books “about our time”, it means something in our country is still missed, because I have not heard of these and have not seen those in the ratings.



I am not against IT, I only sadly state that something very important is leaving our life. Yes, I do not think that, based on the books listed by me, the popularity of reading will always remain stable, it will fall and will fall for a long time.



Instead of a conclusion.



Go to the store. Buy it. Buy absolutely any book on “space fiction”. The authors describe our future. Have you seen there mention of Facebook, twitter, jabber and other social diseases of our time? Our future should be ashamed of us.



Igor Kuzmin, 2008



PS Please, if you will reprint, specify the name of the author and a link to the source.

Cross post in my blog.