Of the five novels collected in this omnibus, my favorite is the first, "Re: Colonised Planet 5: Shikasta", which covers the whole sweep of human history as told by Canopean aliens, immortal beings who are simultaneously transcendant and yet also banally bureaucratic (almost the entirety of the novel takes the form of reports filed by these aliens). Early human history, as recorded by the Canopeans, has echoes of the Hebrew Bible, as Johor talks about a race of giants (apparently a species transplanted by the Canopeans) and also humans vaguely reminiscent of Biblical characters. I was enthralled reading about the interactions of Johor (who apparently is reincarnated several times as different humans) with humans, as Johor is almost like a Biblical prophet. The sweep of the novel is breathtaking.

The second novel, "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five" was my least favorite, as it takes place entirely in metaphysical realms (which are briefly touched upon in the first novel) and has nothing to do with humans, Earth/Rohanda/Shikasta, or the Canopeans. The entire novel is a metaphor for gender relations and was heavy handed.

The third novel, "The Sirian Experiments" did not leave much of an impression of me. It returns to the scope of the first novel, the history of humans as told by a rival alien power, the Sirians. Lessing gets caught up in her world-building, but her alien characters (this time, a Sirian named Ambien II) are not really compelling characters.

The fourth novel, "The Mkaing of the Representative for Planet 8" makes for hard reading now, as it deals with the last days of an alien people wiped out by climate change. It is definitely more compelling than the second and third novels, but I was glad to get it over with.

The fifth novel, "Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire" returns to the Canopeans but suffers from the flaws of the second and third novels. Like the third novel, Lessing again gets caught up in the intricacies of this world, but the alien characters distance the reader from the proceedings, so I never got invested in the Volyens, and frankly was confused by the different planets/moons Lessing throws around. Like the second novel, this was a heavy-handed, "Animal Farm"-like parody of revolutionary movements and rhetoric. The centerpiece is a long legal proceeding that was a slog to get through. Having said all of that, I think I found this the second most enjoyable novel of the five. ( )

(Original Review, 1980-09-29)

League for the purity of what?

An admittedly less-than-thorough examination of Lessing's work leads me to conclude that her primary faults are bad (i.e., clumsy, awkward, [difficult without the extra levels that make Joyce, etc. difficult]) writing, excessive moralizing, and trite plotting with no refreshing elements (SHIKASTA in particular strongly resembles what Bova called the "tomato surprise story"). On the other hand, I admit that I've never been very impressed with Stapledon, either; I'll acknowledge that this may be a matter of taste while observing that various mundane reviewers also seem unimpressed with the Canopus Archives. In fact, I expect that most "hardcore SF fans" (however few of them are left) will simply ignore Lessing. I don't care whether she "follows conventions"; anyone who is good/ at an art form will break the rules and make you see why it is as right and necessary to break rules in the given context as it is to hold fast to them otherwise. (Granted, this is easier to see in formal music than in writing, but the frangibility of rules holds true for all art forms.) The one convention whose breakage annoys me is that the characters should be drawn in such a way that I can care what happens to them; obviously this is a subjective test, but it is the factor in which several authors (e.g., Ben Bova) consistently fail my expectation. (I also think the authors who claim they aren't competing for the readers' beer money are fooling themselves, and maybe snobs to boot; maybe their readers spend beer money on Glenfyddich instead, but it's still a competition for their recreational money and attention.)
As for "mundane" being an insulting term, that depends on where and how you use it. If you call people at an SF convention "mundanes" you'll probably annoy some of them; there the term tends to mean the people who gape at the costumes and wander away tapping their heads.

When the term is used of writers it can simply mean those who by/ their/ own/ definitions/ do not write SF --- I specifically said in the msg in question that there was a matter of intent. (I think I'll officially christen this Garrett's criterion, after Randall Garrett's TOO MANY MAGICIANS: "Black magic is a matter of symbolism and intent.") There are wide enough gaps dividing "literature" (Saul Bellow?), popular writing (Jacqueline Susann?) and SF that it is possible to draw, not a line, but a zone showing some authors bridging the gaps and others definitely in one of the divisions, and it is convenient to many of us to have the zones drawn.

If you're thinking I don't appreciate fiction in general, you're right; I find the incidence of self-indulgence, navel-scanning, and limitation of imagination even higher in mundane writing than I do in SF. I don't deny -- in fact I celebrate -- that some of the material I like on both sides of the gap reflects a bridging of the gap by a specific author; Kuttner, Priest and Kornbluth both had substantial mundane reputations, and John D. MacDonald wrote a lot/ of SF in his youth (the recently-published collection is less than half of his shorter work). But I do see that many of the principles of mundane writing --- principles whose following gains the writers favorable criticism and/or good reviews and sales --- are tangentially or diametrically opposed to what I and many of the SF readers I know enjoy.
Aside from my practical interest as an SF longtime fan, I don't believe in an SF Purity League, and I snicker at the J. J. Pierces who try to form them; the field doesn't deserve that kind or direction of effort. (Damon Knight, considering the charge that there is grown out of his writers' conference at Milford a "conspiracy to rig awards and elections, worship turkeys, and so forth", quotes P. G. Wodehouse hearing the accusation that he was planning to subvert the French government: " 'But one has so little time.' ")

Now I've/ gone into an over-long flame; let's see if there's anyone else who doesn't think we've beaten this to death yet.

[2018 EDIT: This is one if the few instances where my younger self strongly deviates from my current SF tastes. Somehow I get the idea that in 1980 there was a 'League for the Purity of SF' out there that didn't appreciate fiction in general.

1) Are there any SF fans nowadays, other than myself, who still enjoyed Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series? These books still seem to disgust some SF reviewers. I re-read them later on. I found the first 2 books elegantly written, imaginative in their use of archetypes, and fully committed to the examination of being that Olaf Stapledon did so well. (Lessing claims that she was influenced by Stapledon; while I wouldn't say that her Canopus books were as good as his, they're certainly in the same league.) It seems to me that hardcore SF fans are most upset that she doesn't follow certain SF conventions. (I feel that she made a few gaffes but that these don't detract from the themes of the books.)

2) Whence came the expression 'mundane' in reference to "non-SF" authors? I know I still use this expression nowadays. This sounds like some elitist term from the depths of the SF ghetto in the 80s. Look, all fiction springs from an act of the imagination. Most fiction in any category will not arise from any deep plumbing of the imagination, but in every field there is fiction that rises above the designation 'mundane'. (I know, some people try to use 'mundane' to mean 'earthbound', but it really only is lack of imaginative depth that keeps fiction on the ground.)

This review was changed from 2 stars (1980) to 5 stars (1993)] ( )

Lessing's sci-fi "space" stories are a bit too wordy and philosophic to really fit into the genre - I guess I feel like they're a bit too preachy and obvious in their intent. However, I have to say I still loved every book in the Argos series. ( )