Largely, though, I continue to wonder what all the fuss is about. I feel I should be expressing more solidarity with those who are perturbed by Ishiguro’s seeming attempts to distance himself from genre. I read widely in genre, I write in genre, I attend genre conventions, I mingle with genre people. There are other genres, of course, but SF and F seems to have claimed it) there are some hackles raised.įirst off, let me nail my colours firmly to the mast. So it’s understandable that, when an author appropriates the conventions of genre (the science fiction and fantasy community regularly refers to itself as “genre”. I mention, only because there might be one or two people out there who aren’t aware of it, Margaret Atwood’s now legendary distinction between what she wrote (around the time The Blind Assassin won the Arthur C Clarke award) and what she thought of as science fiction, which she dismissed as “talking squids in outer space”. It is an argument that resurfaces every time an author with “literary” chops dips a toe into the waters of SFF. She adds: “Familiar folktale and legendary ‘surface elements’ in Mr Ishiguro’s novel are too obvious to blink away, but since he is a very famous novelist, I am sure reviewers who share his prejudice will never suggest that he has polluted his authorial gravitas with the childish whims of fantasy.” Why not? It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.” Hairless beasts hurl themselves down mossy tunnels.The fantasy author Ursula K Le Guin quickly picked up on Ishiguro’s words in a piece written for the Book View Cafe: “Well, yes, they probably will.

They stumble into Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur’s round table, “a whiskery old fool” whoĬlaims to be on his way to slay the she-dragon Querig and rid England of her amnesic curse.

They climb a mountain with a poison-laden goat. They travel downriver in bobbing baskets. They fall into the hands of monks - some inexplicably kind, some evil and treacherous. They undertake the protection of a boy, bitten by ogres and set upon by fellow villagers for the contagion they suspect he carries. In the course of a desperate odyssey, they will encounter perils they cannot recall: They are guided by a Saxon warrior, who promises to protect them, but whose hatred for their race soon becomes apparent. But even a crossing of a few days can seem an eternity in that badland. Shunned, marginalized and wondering whether life might not be easier alongside their son, they decide to take off across the bog. It has been decided that their old, shaking hands could too easily start a fire. What prompts Axl and Beatrice to set out in search of their son is that their fellow villagers have strictly forbidden them to own a candle.

Ishiguro the buried giant