Science fiction novels

I've enjoyed watching science fiction Netflix series like Altered Carbon and Dark so much that it triggered a deep desire to start reading it too. Science fiction almost seems to have even more of a burning desire to capture the human condition than other genres do, or are limited in doing. Its landscapes are limitless. 

So, I've read recently: 

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler 

Solaris by  Stanisław Lem

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Kindred blew my mind because one doesn't need to get into the book. From the first few words, one becomes absorbs headlong. With the same force that the narrator is pulled back into the past, one is wrenched brutally into the slave plantations. I finished that book in about 3 days. 

I had the utter pleasure of watching Soviet Solaris in London at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square. I'd always wanted to watch it and, it was such a treat to watch it. It's a very slow film , very artistic and, even boring for the Netflix addicted minds of today. I found it hard to keep my interest in the slow camera work but I watched it and, found myself admiring the artistry and  compelling mood and atmosphere that was created in this film without any technical marvel. 

I purchased the book later and read the novel. Having watched the film,  I found myself in a familiar terrain. That is the 'convenience' of having seen a film adaptation and, then being able to rely on the visual markers imprinted in our minds and, then reading the words. 

The novel is stunning, it's so slim but it's overwhelming, the pages and pages of history of scientific exploration of Solaris. It's stunning to have lived in the space station above Solaris along with the characters who have been so affected by it and struggle to understand why. It's a profound psychological novel. 

Le Guin's work is pure masterpiece. I think I found The Dispossessed to be even more mind blowing than The Left Hand of Darkness but I bet I'll be saying that with all her works. And, she's so prolific. Her name only entered my consciousness around the time of her passing, I think, and, that too on social media. One quote came up a lot: 

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

It's interesting that one comes to know of someone only after their passing on social media. 

We did not read science fiction at school: we read important English literature. I wonder how much it has changed since then. 

The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness study patriarchy, capitalism, gender, political organisation, etc through the eyes of aliens visiting strange planets on exploration visits. These violent  and contradictory systems are seen through wholly new eyes. 

Shevek in The Dispossessed though reacts to the society on Uras in a disturbed way. One of my favourite passages is when he goes shopping on a 2-mile street and is sickened by the infinite number of useless things one can buy and some of which is more astronomical more than what a worker makes in a year. It's "nightmare street": 

And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession.

This part struck me because that's often how I feel when I leave Monrovia to visit a big city like London where the endless variety of things one can buy is so overwhelming. Even Pakistan has become so consumerist and, one can just buy, buy, and buy provided one has enough money. How many fashion labels do we need? How many different styles of plates and glasses can one fill up one's house with? The supermarkets in London are overwhelming, even a small one. 

The conversations that Ursula writes in her novels are so tender, so powerful, so rallying! It's not merely an intellectual study of systems but also human yearnings. 

I want to say that both The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness can become reading material of feminist study circles. We can think about the systems that oppress us by reading these novels but also think about how resistance itself can become oppression.