Photo: AlfredTNT, 2006. (GFDL); text by Doris Lessing (fair use)“A visiting American said, did I read science fiction? I offered Olaf Stapledon, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and he said it was a good beginning. Then he gave me an armful of science fiction novels. What I felt then I have felt ever since. I was excited by their scope, the wideness of their horizons, the ideas, and the possibilities for social criticism ... and disappointed by the level of characterization and the lack of subtlety. ... But if what we do get is so wonderfully inventive and astonishing and mind-boggling, then why repine? In science fiction are some of the best stories of our time.” —Walking in the Shade, 1997.
Born on 22 October 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran), Doris Lessing has won all the major European literary awards. Her first words on hearing that she had also won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature were, “Oh, crap.”
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