AHC: Science fiction or detective fiction author wins Nobel Prize for Literature

In view of the controversy over Bob Dylan's Nobel, I would like to discuss two popular genres of literature that have not been represented--at least not so far as authors *primarily* known for them are concerned.

(1) What if the Nobel Prize for Literature were awarded to someone primarily known for science fiction? Yes, I know Doris Lessing wrote science fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canopus_in_Argos but it is not *primarily* what she is known for. Likewise, even if one classifies *The Glass Bead Game* as science fiction, Hermann Hesse was not primarily a science fiction writer.

The science fiction writer who had the best chance for a Nobel was undoubtedly H. G. Wells, nominated four times. http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=10075 Of more recent writers, I would have thought that Stanislaw Lem had the best chance, but looking at the nomination database, he was apparently never nominated, nor do I find the names of Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Butler... Nor could I find any nominations of Margaret Atwood or Ursula Le Guin (both of whom resist the science fiction label in any event).

(2) What if the Nobel Prize for Literature were awarded to someone primarily known for detective fiction? Although one of Patrick Modiano's novels involves a detective with amnesia, Modiano can't really be called a detective novelist. The detective fiction writer with the best chance was undoubtedly Georges Simenon, who was nominated seven times. https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=12388 (I like Ted Gioia's "alternate Nobels" where Agatha Christie shares the 1966 Prize with Jorge Luis Borges, http://www.greatbooksguide.com/nobel2.html but it was never likely to happen in the real world, though he does have Bob Dylan win in 1992...)
 
Bradbury would be one I think has the best chance, because of the range of his writing (is there a subject or genre he didn't read in?), the subtle, but still intelligence criticism that took on right, left, and center. Plus his prose (and literary cred) made him readable to those that saw Science Fiction and Science Fantasy still as " that "space monster and half dressed princesses stuff", quote from my Frosh English teacher, before she realized "the Rain Falls Softly" was Bradbury, and "Stranger in a Strange Land" was Heinlein)

Heinlein's 60, 70s, 80s stuff (the above mentioned Stranger, as well a Time Enough for Love, Job..., even Moon is a Harsh Mistress) might have broken thru. Of course Starship Troopers likely would ended any chance of Nobel recognizing him...(the descriptions of the book not the actual book.)

Finally, MAYBE if 2001 the book, came out before the movie.....
 
Hunh.
I always viewed Doris Lessing and William Golding (Lord of the Flies) as SFF writers. But I guess they wouldn't have won if that had been all they wrote.

Do note that very, very few of the prize winners were best selling authors. Clarke, Bradbury, Anderson, Asimov are all HIGHLY unlikely to get a prize.

Somebody like Ursula LeGuin, on the other hand, could be a distinct possibility, or maybe someone like Elisabeth Vonarberg. You need to explore the 'human condition', and be 'literary' to win a Nobel. It helps not to be in English ( :) ).

My wife suggests Asimov. (She's the English Major in the house, so ...)

HG Wells, if they'd done it while he was still alive.
 
I'd put Ursula K. Le Guin as the most likely science fiction/fantasy author to possibly win a Nobel Literature Prize. Her Earthsea novels and the landmark novel The Left Hand of Darkness are good reasons for her to win the Nobel.
 
Oh. And Margaret Atwood.

Interestingly, Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin were both on the bookies' lists as possible candidates (the Literature committee apparently never releases their shortlists formally, and rarely do they get leaked, so bookies' lists maybe the best we can do.)
 

Driftless

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Which author(s) have the most cross-cultural impact? (however you choose to define cultural) I think you can make a case there for Atwood, Bradbury, and Hammett. Maybe even for Tolkien, whether you like his epics or not (I do). His works have had a lasting impact on how grand scale stories have been told for a half-century - both in in Fantasy and in other genres.
 
Haruki Murakami was apparently on the bookies' list. His stuff isn't sci-fi but definitely falls into the broader speculative fiction, with a strong urban fantasy element in some of his work.
 
Shortly before Jack Vance died there was a NY Times Sunday magazine article about him that pointed out he was vastly underrated and that, if he'd been a Latin American writer, he might have won the Nobel Prize. I earlier bought his complete works, the Vance integral edition, just in case there would be a Nobel Prize or some other breakthrough. The set trebled in value over a ten year period and I got a nice tax write off by donating it to a research library.

Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing was primarily a science fiction writer in the second half of her career and never denied the label.

Nobel Prize winner Winston Churchill wrote a celebrated short story in the alternate history anthology "If...". In his history of World War Two (in the second volume) he has a remarkable passage about what if the French had fought on from North Africa. It's too bad he never developed this idea after the war, but a book with such a theme would have been bad for Allied relations as the Cold War developed.

Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse's most important work, The Glass Bead Game, is definitely science-fiction, although not classified as such, and there are strong strains of fantasy scattered through his works.

P.K. Dick died too young for Nobel consideration, just as he was beginning to achieve his first mainstream recognition.

Borges, whose work included strong elements of science-fiction, only just missed getting the Nobel Prize because of his support for the Cold War torture regimes in Latin America.

Tolkein was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961 by C.S. Lewis but the Swedish committee rejected Tolkein for "poor storytelling" (!!!) skills. Lewis himself was probably a much stronger candidate, based on the totality of his writing (which included much science fiction and Christian fantasy as well as his nonfiction and especially his two memoir volumes), but was never considered at all. I would say that he and Nabokov were the two biggest Nobel Prize English language "misses" of the three decades immediately following World War Two (well, Evelyn Waugh too).

As to living writers, I think it's not beyond the realm of possibility that J.K. Rowling will someday get the prize, although her work is fantasy, not science fiction.

For mystery writers, any Nobel Prize winner is likely to be British or Scandinavian. Today's American mystery writers, although enjoyable, are mostly formula writers (one exception is Carol O'Connell).

For American writers and their champions/fans, the Library of America (LOA) series is a way to get around the inevitable limits of the Nobel Prize Committee, which has to cover the whole world and can only honor one writer per year, picking from novelists or poets or "other" (e.g., Churchill).

Some science fiction writers (and science fiction works by "mainstream" writers) have been included in the LOA--Lovecraft, Dick, Le Guin, Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor), Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court) and Jack London (The Iron Heel). Edgar Allen Poe, Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce, all in the LOA, wrote stories that can be fairly described as proto-science fiction. The LOA has also done a two-volume anthology of weird fiction apart from Lovecraft. https://www.loa.org/books/310-ameri...ror-and-the-uncanny-from-poe-to-now-boxed-set I personally think the Library of America should also do Heinlein (arguably the most influential--in a broad and varied cultural sense--American fiction writer in any genre, including mainstream fiction, of the 20th century, although his inclusion would be for this cultural influence more than for literary excellence), Jack Vance, L. Frank Baum (ESPECIALLY Baum), Edward Bellamy and finally, Austin Tappan Wright and Mark Saxton for the Islandia novels.

The Library of America has also done Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and a collection of noir novelists; perhaps a volume is due of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin books; Goodwin is arguably one of the great characters of American literature--the American answer to Jeeves and Bertie Wooster (combined in one person).
 
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"Do I wish to be a great writer? Do I wish to win the Nobel Prize? Not if it takes much hard work. What the hell, they give the Nobel Prize to too many second-raters for me to get excited about it. Besides, I'd have to go to Sweden and dress up and make a speech. Is the Nobel Prize worth all that? Hell, no."--Raymond Chandler, letter to Jamie Hamilton, 1949. https://books.google.com/books?id=imQoKJKgYoQC&pg=PA118
 
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The Nobel Prize could be a lot fairer if it had a prize for fiction each year, along with a prize for other (poetry, drama, memoirs, travel, history, etc.) and a prize for "popular fiction" (genre fiction plus humor). Three prizes per year. That would dilute the effect of the prize for each recipient, but the point should not be so much to honor the individual as to encourage people to read the best that humanity has to offer. Also it would make it not so disgusting when the prize committee makes an embarrassing pick (I am NOT alluding to Dylan; he deserved his prize). Some people could argue that creating a genre fiction category (s-f, mystery, spy, etc.) could delay the merging of mainstream and genre fiction; but that's a matter of framing the question: if a writer transcends his or her genre (e.g., John le Carre), then they could be accepted for the mainstream fiction prize. Meanwhile giving a prize of somewhat equivalent status to genre writers AS genre writers would strike a blow against elitism in literature, which benefits no one.

As to the "other" non-fiction category, it would have enabled a Nobel Prize for the likes of P.G. Woodhouse (humor), travel (Jan Morris), memoirs (May Sarton) -- these are only a few who come to mind.
 
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