Hacker News Reader

I've always had a soft spot for Doris Lessing's bizarre '70s sci-fi experiment Shikasta.

Ursula Le Guin wrote a review of Shikasta in 1979:

https://newrepublic.com/article/115631/doris-lessing-shikast...

I found this review really fascinating because I consider Le Guin and Lessing to be writers of equal caliber. Le Guin was pegged as a sci-fi / fantasy author, while Lessing just experimented with the form. (She won the Nobel Prize in 2007.)

View on HN

I've never read Lessing, but Le Guin is one of my favorite authors. For me, _The Left Hand of Darkness_ is easily on a par with other canonical "great" 20th-century literature I've read. I've always felt that if she were born later, now that sci-fi has become a little less fringe and a little more respectable, that she'd be more properly grouped this way.

She really pushed the envelope on sociological SciFi. "You may have the handkerchief i carry."

That review was amazing. Thank you for posting that!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com