At Marginal Revolution, co-blogger Tyler Cowen nominates some candidates for the category of "underrated science fiction" books, but also opines that there really isn't much in the way of underrated science fiction (because genre enthusiasts are so eager to "clutch at straws and elevate the mediocre into the worthwhile and the worthwhile into the superlative"), and that the genre has been "mostly retreads" since the 1960s.

There is some truth to Tyler's view. Successful innovations in science fiction have indeed been rare in recent decades. Moreover, at least one of the works Tyler considers underrated - Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker - is in my view actually overrated; like most of Stapledon's work, it is pretentious, lacks compelling characters, and unwieldy. At the same time, I can in fact think of several innovative and interesting sci fi writers of the last thirty years - Card, Brin, Niven, LeGuin, Scalzi, and some others. Most of their work is not underrated. But that may simply mean that the "rating" system in science fiction is working well, not that the average quality of the genre is declining. An alternative explanation for the paucity of underrated science fiction books is that critics and fans are getting better at rating the genre (at least relative to previous performance). Even so, I tend to agree that there has been less innovation in sci-fi over the last 30-40 years than in the previous several decades. This may be an inevitable consequence of the genre's relative maturation. Other things equal, it's much harder to innovate within a mature industry than in a new one.

This latter factor may explain why there has been much more innovation in fantasy than in science fiction over the last few decades, with writers such as Guy Gavriel Kay, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Stephen Donaldson, George R.R. Martin, and Tad Williams making major contributions that have expanded the genre. Unlike science fiction, which had at least a half century of maturation and growth by 1970, fantasy only really broke through with the publication of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in the 1950s.

Finally, I am less troubled than Tyler by the fact that most of the genre consists of "retreads." By definition, most of the work produced in any genre consists of retreads. One of the defining characteristics of a genre is the existence of standard tropes, characters, and plot lines; by definition, most work within the genre uses at least some of these stereotypic elements. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a genre at all. Most science fiction is indeed unoriginal in that sense. But the same is true of most work in other genre literatures, such as mystery, horror, Westerns, historical fiction, romance, etc.

In the next post, I will present a few of my own nominees for underrated science fiction works of the last few decades.

As promised in my last post, here is my list of a few underrated science fiction novels of the last 30-40 years. The list is not meant to be exhaustive. Moreover, it is definitely not meant to be a list of the best sci fi of the era, merely the most underrated.

1. Norman Spinrad, Iron Dream. This is a great satire of some common shortcomings of the sci fi and fantasy genres. It purports to be a sci fi novel written by Adolf Hitler, who in this alternate universe left Germany in the 1920s and became a science fiction writer in the US. The fake "novel" makes the point that many standard genre tropes have a lot in common with the main themes of Nazi/fascist ideology. I think that Spinrad takes the theme a bit too far, but it's an interesting and fun book nonetheless. Ironically, the book was for a long time banned in West Germany because censors feared that it would actually stimulate support for Nazism (the very opposite of Spinrad's intent, but a possible validation of his point about the genre and some of its more misguided fans). Iron Dream is well-known to aficionados, but hasn't received as much broader recognition as it arguably deserves.

2. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. This series has been overshadowed by the author's own better (and more popular) Mists of Avalon. Moreover, some of the books in the series are far from brilliant. Nonetheless, the series has numerous interesting elements, characters, and plotlines.

3. S.M. Stirling's Draka trilogy. I include this one with some trepidation, because it has many weak points, including the unrealistic nature of the "alternate history" elements of the plot, and extremely silly technology in the last book. Nonetheless, the author's idea of a society that is essentially the negation of American ideals is interestingly developed and thoughtprovoking. Stirling manages to make the evil and depraved Draka characters weirdly fascinating, a rare achievement for sci fi villains. The series is also unusual in that the villains, not the "good guys," are actually the central characters. Like Spinrad above, the author has been misinterpreted as sympathizing with the dystopian society he portrays. I should warn also that the sequel to the trilogy, Drakon, is lame. It combines most of the defects of the original series with none of the virtues.