November 2007

Influences: From L'Engle to Lessing
By Lettie Prell

Conversations at WisCon and elsewhere often touch upon the question of influences. What books introduced us to the world of science fiction? I've told my own story several times, which features my experience in the Durand, Illinois high school library. I started with the As and read Asimov, then Bradbury, Heinlein, Herbert, and so on around that horseshoe of shelving that constituted the fiction section. In reality, when I arrived at the Ss I fell in love with Steinbeck and read every single one of his novels—but that didn't fit the focus of the conversation.

It was at WisCon during one of these sharings that I heard Madeleine L'Engle's name. "Who?" I asked. "She wrote A Wrinkle in Time," my friend said. "Oh, I loved that book," I replied, and in that moment I realized my love of science fiction hadn't begun with Asimov after all. It had begun much earlier, before I became conscious of author names. It had begun with a woman writer, in a male-dominated genre.

What I remember of Wrinkle is still vivid. I can still see those fingers holding that piece of thread taut, and then in the next picture, the hands touching. So easy to walk across now, whether the medium is time, space—or the expanded world of a little girl's imagination. It was most likely Madeleine L'Engle's early, unacknowledged presence in my literary world that, years later, gave me permission to write science fiction. Judging from the number of times I've heard L'Engle's name at WisCon, her influence has been broad indeed, and will live on well past her death this past September.

On the heels of the L'Engle tributes came the announcement in October that Doris Lessing had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While Lessing's writings began with stark realism akin to a Steinbeck novel, she moved on to science fiction and (almost) never looked back. I have yet to read The Golden Notebook, published in 1962 and lauded as a feminist classic. Rather, I voraciously consumed her Canopus in Argos: Archives series, as well as that haunting tale, The Memoirs of a Survivor. It was the latter book that prompted a friend of mine, whose name was also Doris, to write to Lessing. Lessing sent a brief note back—along the lines of "how nice of you to write." Although Lessing never answered my friend Doris' question about the nature of Lessing's influences with regard to an aspect of Memoirs, I am certain that hand-written note is doubly cherished now.