Canopus in Argos: Archives

Abstract

After the publication of The Memoirs of a Survivor one critic wrote: ‘One wonders where Lessing can go from here.’³⁵ And indeed, the tone of transcendence at the end of that novel is such that it is not surprising that Mrs Lessing moves out of this world altogether for her next five novels — a series which takes a cosmic viewpoint and which has the overall title Canopus in Argus: Archives. In her preface to Shikasta, the first in the series, she defends science fiction and science fiction writers:

These dazzlers have mapped our world, or worlds, for us, have told us what is going on and in ways no one else has done, have described our nasty present long ago, when it was still the future and the official scientific spokesmen were saying that all manner of things now happening were impossible — who have played the indispensable and (at least at the start) thankless role of the despised illegitimate son who can afford to tell truths the respectable siblings either do not dare, or, more likely, do not notice because of their respectability.