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Canopus in Argos #1-5
Canopus in Argos: Archives
Even as it gives an epic account of the struggles between Canopus and its rivals over the fate of the universe, 'Canopus in Argos' comments, with Lessing's characteristic insight and eloquence, on human history and our prospects for the future.
1228 pages, Paperback
First published August 12, 1981
14 people are currently reading
1348 people want to read
About the author
Doris Lessing
475 books3,191 followersDoris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
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October 7, 2014
If you've never heard of this series before, if you ever see it on a shelf in a bookstore it's going to look like something left behind from another planet. At least that's how it seemed to me. More years ago than I'd like to imagine I was browsing the shelves of a giant local chain bookstore and as is my nature my eye tended to focus on the large bricks of books since there's some weird part of me that conflates "doorstop" with "mark of ineffable quality". The title itself was both simple and odd, "Canopus in Argos: Archives", like it was some kind of scientific treatise. And it turned out the brick was just an omnibus for five novels, each of which had a title that seemed to have been translated from another language improperly. "Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta"? Even when the titles did correspond to what I imagined as actual English, it gave no clue as to what the stories might be about. But . . . it sounded remotely like science-fiction (even though it was probably placed in the literature section, only increasing its bizarre allure) and as a younger man I thought SF was the only thing worth reading ever. And this read like it should be SF but . . . not.
I didn't buy it right away and when I did get around to it the volume had gone out of print. And then I didn't read it for ten years after I bought it (hey, books have to take a number). Now that I have, I can pretty much say it's what I expected. Back then I had no idea who Doris Lessing was, although over time I figured out that was one of them literary types, eventual Nobel Prize winner, now sadly deceased. Reading her introduction to this collection and other background notes, it's clear that she became fascinated by what she charmingly calls "space fiction" (which reminds me of something might a grandmother might say looking through her grandkids' "Buck Rogers" comics or whatnot) not only as a genre but as one that would allow her to tell certain kinds of stories that wouldn't be possible in the framework of straightforward realistic literary fiction. It's an odd rule, you can go all stream of consciousness, you can tell stories forwards, backwards, sideways, have hallucinations and dream sequences and unreliable narrators, but as soon as you unironically start sticking spaceships into things, you've just demoted your novel to the kiddie table.
What's heartening here is how unabashedly and completely Lessing embraced SF but in her own way. The main characters are definitely aliens, even if they talk like people. Everyone visits other planets even if the spaceships are sometimes kept offscreen. Eons are often covered in the expanse of a story. There are competing galactic empires and enemy agents and spies. There's enough SF so that you can't really mistake it for anything else, but readers walking in thinking they are going to get standard SF will be utterly confused. There's hardly any fighting or space battles and most of what passes for genre cliches are blissfully absent, replaced by something wholly strange, recognized only when viewed through skewed glass. There's never a sense that she's slumming or talking down to the mouth-breathing SF readers (and in a world where other writers sometimes work hard to backpedal any elements in their books that might be remotely construed as SF and reassure people that, "No, no, I'm writing about serious things" even when they really have aliens and spaceships, Lessing's attitude toward this is remarkably refreshing), she simply feels this is the genre that best fits these particular stories she wants to tell.
Still, reading them all in a row does require some adjusting, SF fan or not. None of them are geared toward telling a continuous story but rather a patchwork depicting the various relationships between Canopus (the nice empire, more or less), the Sirian Empire and the dark and dastardly Shammat, all of which have various traits that are often contrasted with each other, especially in their effects on alien societies. At least three of them are written as field reports, meaning that they can come across as rather dry in parts, a relating of events that happened as opposed to a depiction of events that are happening and as they are reports, imagine what your local real estate agent might write back as observations to his or her supervisors, but from an alien planet instead. Except most of the time, we're the aliens. As I said, some adjusting is required.
Most of it, frankly, screams "didactic" and your tolerance for the series for a whole may have more to do with your appetite for stories that are blatantly a commentary on society and in that sense isn't much different from taking a Native American character from the 1700s and dumping him in London to see what hilarity ensues.
With that in mind, the first book ("Shikasta") is probably going to come across as the strangest, as least until you get used to the style. Told as a series of field reports spanning centuries, it lays the basic template of Canopus and Sirius doing their best to influence other worlds before Shammat comes in to screw things up. This was Lessing's first foray into SF and as such reads as extraordinarily bizarre, one woman's take on a genre that she's familiar with and not really caring if she's following any of the "rules" or not. The early section depicting what you eventually figure out is Earth's prehistory, with the giants and castles and lead agent Johor walking around the ruins of previous civilizations has an eeriness to it, as if she's tapping into some kind of lost memory. It becomes less exciting when you do realize that you're on Earth and she's merely relating Earth's history but through the eyes of aliens, the early sections feel so odd and unfamiliar that to realize she's observing WWII Germany feels like a bit of a letdown. She does eventually move past that into the future and for me the novel finally comes alive when she starts to relate the story through the journals of a girl named Rachel. These sections feel like they play more to her strengths and include some honest human emotion, giving the story that all the vaguely dippy "Substance of We-Feeling" talk is lacking. But I give her points for a "try-anything" approach.
About every other story in here uses that journal format and so the in-between tales, like "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" almost act like palette cleansers. People have commented that this one feels like a fairy tale and in a sense that's true. The Zones are mentioned in the first book and seem to exist as metaphorical and spiritual areas and are places that Canopus feels the need to interfere regularly, insisting that the queen of Zone Three marry the more militant prince of Zone Four (and in turn he marries the more tribal queen of Zone Five). Having actual people doing things like riding horses and having sex makes all the talk about Zones much more palatable and since the focus of the story is more gender relations and their interactions (each Zone seems to have its own characteristics that affect each us as they intermingle more), it becomes a bit easier to relate to, feeling more like a fantasy tale that is bent on conveying its point of view. If you can stomach all the talk about Zones, it's actually rather charming and she does make you feel for the characters almost from the get-go, something that "Shikasta" struggled with for a bit.
Things flip back to Earth for "The Sirian Experiments", basically showing what the Sirians were doing on Earth during the first book (they had taken over, or were given, the southern continents in the name of rampant scientific experimentation). The oddly named Ambien II is one of the Five, who run the empire. Much of the book deals with depicting how Sirian singlemindedness (they are vague fascist but not necessarily evil) leaves it unable to view Canopus as anyone other than a competitor, despite Canopus more or less doing only nice things. The central crux of the book is a series of interactions between Ambien II and her Canopus counterparts, although the book doesn't heat up until the metaphors hit the fan and Shammat swoops in to take over and corrupt everything. Those scenes have a tension that suggest Lessing is finally finding her footing in the format and telling a story instead of just telling us things that resemble a story. Unfortunately they are few and far between, but really liven up events when they do transpire.
"The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" is Lessing's tribute to the the ill-fated (to say the least) Scott Antarctic expedition and reads like a feverish tone poem. Told in a slow moving rush of words that occasionally breaks into a paragraph, it takes us to a world that is dying. Canopus instructs the world to build a giant wall and the narrator discusses the events as they circle the world near the wall, watching their world slowly succumb to ice and cold and wondering when Canopus is going to swoop in and save them. Much like Kate Bush, Lessing apparently knows every word for snow and her descriptions of everyone trying not to think about freezing to death while everyone around them freezes to death is harrowing in its way. It ends mystically, which is about the only way something like this can end without everyone dying. It also acts as a nice cleanser and I give Lessing credit for taking an idea and following it through to the bitter and weird end.
"Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents of the Volyen Empire" is what I want to name my band if I ever have one, but also seems the most specific of the journal led novels. Klorathy relates events back to Johor from another world, where Canopus and Shammat and Sirius are once again vying for domination, this time through a war of words. There's more of a sense of satire here but discussions of the effects of Rhetoric and ideas, while not subtle, seem to depict an avenue of metaphorical SF that was never quite taken. It keeps the strangeness that marked the earlier novels but in the context of this novel, makes it strange indeed as people come down with rhetorical diseases and have to be reeducated, immersed in treatments at hospitals that may not take. Klorathy acts like a calm man knowing that he's running out of time and while she can't keep the tone consistent (I'm never sure what's happening to Incent is supposed to be amusing or terrifying) the interactions between the various factions are chilling, watching them yank an otherwise clueless world this way and that in the name of dominance, all the while claiming its for their own good. The sense of narrative drive is strongest here and what it lacks in off the wall weirdness it makes up for in being a kind of coherent strange I can relate to, with actual villains and conflicts as opposed to people telling me things that I'm supposed to assume are standing in for something else (here it's probably Communist Russia).
I can't say that any of these completely worked as both novels and commentaries, sometimes it seemed like Lessing was in a constant war to write SF and also craft meaningful critiques of society as she understood it, and it's not always clear which side won. But they are never less than interesting reading, especially for SF fans, who might wonder what is possible to do in a genre when you stop wondering about appealing to a certain fanbase or dealing with what the rules are. The mass impact of these novels on the genre was probably about zero, which is a shame in itself. In a world where one man's spaceship empire war could easily be swapped out for another's, trying something different should be less rare than it is. And if the author never quite understood how different from the norm the stories are, so much the better.
I didn't buy it right away and when I did get around to it the volume had gone out of print. And then I didn't read it for ten years after I bought it (hey, books have to take a number). Now that I have, I can pretty much say it's what I expected. Back then I had no idea who Doris Lessing was, although over time I figured out that was one of them literary types, eventual Nobel Prize winner, now sadly deceased. Reading her introduction to this collection and other background notes, it's clear that she became fascinated by what she charmingly calls "space fiction" (which reminds me of something might a grandmother might say looking through her grandkids' "Buck Rogers" comics or whatnot) not only as a genre but as one that would allow her to tell certain kinds of stories that wouldn't be possible in the framework of straightforward realistic literary fiction. It's an odd rule, you can go all stream of consciousness, you can tell stories forwards, backwards, sideways, have hallucinations and dream sequences and unreliable narrators, but as soon as you unironically start sticking spaceships into things, you've just demoted your novel to the kiddie table.
What's heartening here is how unabashedly and completely Lessing embraced SF but in her own way. The main characters are definitely aliens, even if they talk like people. Everyone visits other planets even if the spaceships are sometimes kept offscreen. Eons are often covered in the expanse of a story. There are competing galactic empires and enemy agents and spies. There's enough SF so that you can't really mistake it for anything else, but readers walking in thinking they are going to get standard SF will be utterly confused. There's hardly any fighting or space battles and most of what passes for genre cliches are blissfully absent, replaced by something wholly strange, recognized only when viewed through skewed glass. There's never a sense that she's slumming or talking down to the mouth-breathing SF readers (and in a world where other writers sometimes work hard to backpedal any elements in their books that might be remotely construed as SF and reassure people that, "No, no, I'm writing about serious things" even when they really have aliens and spaceships, Lessing's attitude toward this is remarkably refreshing), she simply feels this is the genre that best fits these particular stories she wants to tell.
Still, reading them all in a row does require some adjusting, SF fan or not. None of them are geared toward telling a continuous story but rather a patchwork depicting the various relationships between Canopus (the nice empire, more or less), the Sirian Empire and the dark and dastardly Shammat, all of which have various traits that are often contrasted with each other, especially in their effects on alien societies. At least three of them are written as field reports, meaning that they can come across as rather dry in parts, a relating of events that happened as opposed to a depiction of events that are happening and as they are reports, imagine what your local real estate agent might write back as observations to his or her supervisors, but from an alien planet instead. Except most of the time, we're the aliens. As I said, some adjusting is required.
Most of it, frankly, screams "didactic" and your tolerance for the series for a whole may have more to do with your appetite for stories that are blatantly a commentary on society and in that sense isn't much different from taking a Native American character from the 1700s and dumping him in London to see what hilarity ensues.
With that in mind, the first book ("Shikasta") is probably going to come across as the strangest, as least until you get used to the style. Told as a series of field reports spanning centuries, it lays the basic template of Canopus and Sirius doing their best to influence other worlds before Shammat comes in to screw things up. This was Lessing's first foray into SF and as such reads as extraordinarily bizarre, one woman's take on a genre that she's familiar with and not really caring if she's following any of the "rules" or not. The early section depicting what you eventually figure out is Earth's prehistory, with the giants and castles and lead agent Johor walking around the ruins of previous civilizations has an eeriness to it, as if she's tapping into some kind of lost memory. It becomes less exciting when you do realize that you're on Earth and she's merely relating Earth's history but through the eyes of aliens, the early sections feel so odd and unfamiliar that to realize she's observing WWII Germany feels like a bit of a letdown. She does eventually move past that into the future and for me the novel finally comes alive when she starts to relate the story through the journals of a girl named Rachel. These sections feel like they play more to her strengths and include some honest human emotion, giving the story that all the vaguely dippy "Substance of We-Feeling" talk is lacking. But I give her points for a "try-anything" approach.
About every other story in here uses that journal format and so the in-between tales, like "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" almost act like palette cleansers. People have commented that this one feels like a fairy tale and in a sense that's true. The Zones are mentioned in the first book and seem to exist as metaphorical and spiritual areas and are places that Canopus feels the need to interfere regularly, insisting that the queen of Zone Three marry the more militant prince of Zone Four (and in turn he marries the more tribal queen of Zone Five). Having actual people doing things like riding horses and having sex makes all the talk about Zones much more palatable and since the focus of the story is more gender relations and their interactions (each Zone seems to have its own characteristics that affect each us as they intermingle more), it becomes a bit easier to relate to, feeling more like a fantasy tale that is bent on conveying its point of view. If you can stomach all the talk about Zones, it's actually rather charming and she does make you feel for the characters almost from the get-go, something that "Shikasta" struggled with for a bit.
Things flip back to Earth for "The Sirian Experiments", basically showing what the Sirians were doing on Earth during the first book (they had taken over, or were given, the southern continents in the name of rampant scientific experimentation). The oddly named Ambien II is one of the Five, who run the empire. Much of the book deals with depicting how Sirian singlemindedness (they are vague fascist but not necessarily evil) leaves it unable to view Canopus as anyone other than a competitor, despite Canopus more or less doing only nice things. The central crux of the book is a series of interactions between Ambien II and her Canopus counterparts, although the book doesn't heat up until the metaphors hit the fan and Shammat swoops in to take over and corrupt everything. Those scenes have a tension that suggest Lessing is finally finding her footing in the format and telling a story instead of just telling us things that resemble a story. Unfortunately they are few and far between, but really liven up events when they do transpire.
"The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" is Lessing's tribute to the the ill-fated (to say the least) Scott Antarctic expedition and reads like a feverish tone poem. Told in a slow moving rush of words that occasionally breaks into a paragraph, it takes us to a world that is dying. Canopus instructs the world to build a giant wall and the narrator discusses the events as they circle the world near the wall, watching their world slowly succumb to ice and cold and wondering when Canopus is going to swoop in and save them. Much like Kate Bush, Lessing apparently knows every word for snow and her descriptions of everyone trying not to think about freezing to death while everyone around them freezes to death is harrowing in its way. It ends mystically, which is about the only way something like this can end without everyone dying. It also acts as a nice cleanser and I give Lessing credit for taking an idea and following it through to the bitter and weird end.
"Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents of the Volyen Empire" is what I want to name my band if I ever have one, but also seems the most specific of the journal led novels. Klorathy relates events back to Johor from another world, where Canopus and Shammat and Sirius are once again vying for domination, this time through a war of words. There's more of a sense of satire here but discussions of the effects of Rhetoric and ideas, while not subtle, seem to depict an avenue of metaphorical SF that was never quite taken. It keeps the strangeness that marked the earlier novels but in the context of this novel, makes it strange indeed as people come down with rhetorical diseases and have to be reeducated, immersed in treatments at hospitals that may not take. Klorathy acts like a calm man knowing that he's running out of time and while she can't keep the tone consistent (I'm never sure what's happening to Incent is supposed to be amusing or terrifying) the interactions between the various factions are chilling, watching them yank an otherwise clueless world this way and that in the name of dominance, all the while claiming its for their own good. The sense of narrative drive is strongest here and what it lacks in off the wall weirdness it makes up for in being a kind of coherent strange I can relate to, with actual villains and conflicts as opposed to people telling me things that I'm supposed to assume are standing in for something else (here it's probably Communist Russia).
I can't say that any of these completely worked as both novels and commentaries, sometimes it seemed like Lessing was in a constant war to write SF and also craft meaningful critiques of society as she understood it, and it's not always clear which side won. But they are never less than interesting reading, especially for SF fans, who might wonder what is possible to do in a genre when you stop wondering about appealing to a certain fanbase or dealing with what the rules are. The mass impact of these novels on the genre was probably about zero, which is a shame in itself. In a world where one man's spaceship empire war could easily be swapped out for another's, trying something different should be less rare than it is. And if the author never quite understood how different from the norm the stories are, so much the better.
June 1, 2009
Back in the 1980s, I loved the idea that Doris Lessing was trying the scifi genre and started (naturally, for me) with the third book of this five-book series. I found it incomprehensible and badly-written, but wanted very much to like it, because I liked Lessing and wanted to see a serious author make a real go of science fiction.
Now, long after she finished (sort of) her Canopus series, I still go back every once in a while and reread and marvel. It's turgid, it's not good in many places, it's preachy, it's humorless (or, worse, heavyhanded in its humor) - and it's wonderful. And quotable. And vast. I have read it straight through twice, and go back to browse at least once a year. I recommend it to Lessing fans who haven't read it yet; I recommend it to scifi fans; I recommend it to openminded fiction lovers who want to see the boundaries of fiction expanded.
Now, long after she finished (sort of) her Canopus series, I still go back every once in a while and reread and marvel. It's turgid, it's not good in many places, it's preachy, it's humorless (or, worse, heavyhanded in its humor) - and it's wonderful. And quotable. And vast. I have read it straight through twice, and go back to browse at least once a year. I recommend it to Lessing fans who haven't read it yet; I recommend it to scifi fans; I recommend it to openminded fiction lovers who want to see the boundaries of fiction expanded.
May 23, 2013
As an "omnibus collection" covering millions of years of universal development, it's enough to say that Canopus in Argos rewards patience, pauses, and revisitation. The opening book is the least engaging, if the most familiar (it takes place on Earth in reasonably modern times), and it's difficult to ask that readers wade through the almost 400 pages of it as a primer for the rest of the collection. The second book, though, is unbelievably more honed and crafted in the direction of revolutionary 'space fiction,' without seeming too much like pure fantasy. The beating drum sensation that comes from who-knows-where and is felt by the two protagonists of this section is a fascinating thread that carries through the rest of the collection. I look forward to revisiting these stories--at least the four that follow the first--soon.
Read
August 18, 2012My favourite Lessing and my favourite sci-fi.
May 16, 2016
Lessing's novels about Canopus in one collection. Wonderful.
August 24, 2015
Canopus In Argos: Archives by Doris Lessing
Five novels in one, 1229 pages. "Soft" or "social" science fiction. The reader eventually comes to realize that the planet "Shikasta" being described dispassionately by envoys from the highly technologically advanced civilization of Canopus, is Earth. And what a damning report it is, in all its starkly objective depiction of human cultural- and collective psycho-pathology. "1984" and "Brave New World" are kid stuff compared to this.
I first discovered Doris Lessing's semi-autobiographical "African Stories," set in apartheid Rhodesia, decades ago, and liked them. Later I read her surrealistic dystopian "Memoirs Of a Survivor" and her compelling "Summer Before the Dark" and liked them too. Doris Lessing was a prolific author and I haven't read much of her work and what I have read, including the Canopus series, is probably what's considered her experimental fringe by those familiar with the corpus of her literary output. She writes very well and I'm sure deserves her Nobel Prize.
I'm fascinated with Canopus and love it. It isn't an easy read and it isn't a pretty story. But, then, we aren't a pretty species. Doris Lessing sees our situation as I do and she pulls no punches. I would like to recommend Canopus In Argos: Archives, to everyone. I think that everyone needs to read it. Yet I don't know anyone who I think would appreciate it or like it. I don't think anyone I know has the patience to put up with it or the courage to face it. Maybe some would enjoy the brilliance of Doris Lessing's prose style, her sheer skill at writing. But her message? I think you would shy away from it, but maybe not. Try it for yourself if you like, and see.
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Finished reading Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos: Archives" today. All 1,229 pages. I'm left thinking, WHAT did I just read.
These five novels give vignettes from an archived history of our galaxy, seen from the perspective of the species from several different galactic empires, primarily the reports of Agents of Canopus, spanning interstellar distances over vast periods of time. The empire of Puttiora, and their outlaw planet Shammat, are the "bad guys," being parasites and general troublemakers who suck energy from the Alignment that energizes the Galactic Necessity, which only the Canopeans fully understand. Then there is the Sirian empire, conducting their genetic experiments on planets far and wide, who for ages are galactic tyrants before becoming introspective and well-meaning, before the cycle repeats. And everywhere are the Agents of Canopus, doing what they can to help all these species and civilizations deal with various catastrophes, while appearing rather ineffective since they realize that cosmic processes can't be rushed -- who understand that there isn't much they can do as circumstances unfold according to the Necessity -- having learned from experience that all too often direct intervention only makes matters worse.
The Canopeans only travel by spacecraft, subject to the laws of physics, if they have a lot of cargo to haul, a population to remove before a comet impact, or something similar. When they want to travel faster they simply die, to be reborn on the world of their destination as one of the native inhabitants, spirits apparently not being subject to the limitation of Einstein's equations. Not only does the "Canopus .. " series describe the physical galaxy as we know it but likewise the various "Zones" that surround planets, Zone Six being very much what we may conceive of as the "spirit world" or "Bardo" as the Tibetan Buddhists called it. According to the "Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead," the recently departed spirit, if not conditioned by yogic practice, shies away from the Pure White Light of Reality into reincarnation post haste. Doris Lessing introduces the cheerful idea of spirits being so disheartened by repeated incarnation on "Shikasta" (Earth) that they prefer existence as unhappy ghosts in a bleak ghostland to another planetside go-round, and must be urged by Canopean Agents into queue for the next available womb.
Yes, Shikasta is not a happy planet nor is its dominant species a very attractive animal. Having our foibles as a particular ape species with a certain set of behavioral prerogatives spelled out by selection in a certain adaptive environment, described dispassionately by alien sociologists or "anthro"-pologists, or ethologists perhaps most aptly, is marvelous to me although I suppose could be unsettling to those who have a higher opinion of our species than I do. What else is marvelous is Doris Lessing's sense of dry ironic humor. These books are full of humor although Lessing can be so unremittingly grim (The fourth Novel, "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8," tells the story of a rather pleasant planet that undergoes an ice age that ends all life, for example.) that her humor can sneak up on you. I'd find myself laying there reading away while it slowly dawned on me that what I was reading was really funny. So don't expect her humor to leap out at you. Maybe it helps to be a bit twisted to appreciate her.
The story of what's going on and who's who unfolds over the first, third and fifth novels. Lacking a sense of narrative structure until well towards the end of the collection, creates a tension that helps hold interest. The reader wants to know more about what's going on in this galactic scale saga, and Lessing only gradually lets you know. In a larger sense, though, the story itself may not be all that important. Plot is de-emphasized and serves only as loose matrix for the author's descriptive embellishments, explorations of dialogue, moral and sociological musings, and experiments in storytelling. I almost get the feeling that even her words don't matter much as she weaves a dreamy spell over the reader, from whose miasma unspoken truths may sink in.
It occurred to me that reading "Canopus in Argos: Archives" is an experience much akin to reading Gurdjieff, particularly his "Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson" trilogy. Both strike me as being more of a neurolinguistic programming endeavor or device, as opposed to being stories to be told with details to be remembered. Perhaps this isn't accidental, as I read later that Lessing was influenced by the writings of Indries Shah. There was a bit of a controversy back in the 1970s, I believe it must've been, when Shah proclaimed that there was nothing original about the teachings of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky school, that everything they said came directly from the Sufi literature. Students of Gurdjieff hotly contested that assertion but there can be little doubt but what Gurdjieff was heavily immersed in Sufi mysticism, as was Shah himself. Could "Canopus in Argos: Archives," along with the writings of Gurdjieff, be Sufi expositions rendered consciously or unconsciously by these authors? Or could they just be monumental exercises of the urge to spill words? I'm still trying to decide WHAT "Canopus .. " is supposed to be, besides one long slog of a read.
Five novels in one, 1229 pages. "Soft" or "social" science fiction. The reader eventually comes to realize that the planet "Shikasta" being described dispassionately by envoys from the highly technologically advanced civilization of Canopus, is Earth. And what a damning report it is, in all its starkly objective depiction of human cultural- and collective psycho-pathology. "1984" and "Brave New World" are kid stuff compared to this.
I first discovered Doris Lessing's semi-autobiographical "African Stories," set in apartheid Rhodesia, decades ago, and liked them. Later I read her surrealistic dystopian "Memoirs Of a Survivor" and her compelling "Summer Before the Dark" and liked them too. Doris Lessing was a prolific author and I haven't read much of her work and what I have read, including the Canopus series, is probably what's considered her experimental fringe by those familiar with the corpus of her literary output. She writes very well and I'm sure deserves her Nobel Prize.
I'm fascinated with Canopus and love it. It isn't an easy read and it isn't a pretty story. But, then, we aren't a pretty species. Doris Lessing sees our situation as I do and she pulls no punches. I would like to recommend Canopus In Argos: Archives, to everyone. I think that everyone needs to read it. Yet I don't know anyone who I think would appreciate it or like it. I don't think anyone I know has the patience to put up with it or the courage to face it. Maybe some would enjoy the brilliance of Doris Lessing's prose style, her sheer skill at writing. But her message? I think you would shy away from it, but maybe not. Try it for yourself if you like, and see.
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Finished reading Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos: Archives" today. All 1,229 pages. I'm left thinking, WHAT did I just read.
These five novels give vignettes from an archived history of our galaxy, seen from the perspective of the species from several different galactic empires, primarily the reports of Agents of Canopus, spanning interstellar distances over vast periods of time. The empire of Puttiora, and their outlaw planet Shammat, are the "bad guys," being parasites and general troublemakers who suck energy from the Alignment that energizes the Galactic Necessity, which only the Canopeans fully understand. Then there is the Sirian empire, conducting their genetic experiments on planets far and wide, who for ages are galactic tyrants before becoming introspective and well-meaning, before the cycle repeats. And everywhere are the Agents of Canopus, doing what they can to help all these species and civilizations deal with various catastrophes, while appearing rather ineffective since they realize that cosmic processes can't be rushed -- who understand that there isn't much they can do as circumstances unfold according to the Necessity -- having learned from experience that all too often direct intervention only makes matters worse.
The Canopeans only travel by spacecraft, subject to the laws of physics, if they have a lot of cargo to haul, a population to remove before a comet impact, or something similar. When they want to travel faster they simply die, to be reborn on the world of their destination as one of the native inhabitants, spirits apparently not being subject to the limitation of Einstein's equations. Not only does the "Canopus .. " series describe the physical galaxy as we know it but likewise the various "Zones" that surround planets, Zone Six being very much what we may conceive of as the "spirit world" or "Bardo" as the Tibetan Buddhists called it. According to the "Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead," the recently departed spirit, if not conditioned by yogic practice, shies away from the Pure White Light of Reality into reincarnation post haste. Doris Lessing introduces the cheerful idea of spirits being so disheartened by repeated incarnation on "Shikasta" (Earth) that they prefer existence as unhappy ghosts in a bleak ghostland to another planetside go-round, and must be urged by Canopean Agents into queue for the next available womb.
Yes, Shikasta is not a happy planet nor is its dominant species a very attractive animal. Having our foibles as a particular ape species with a certain set of behavioral prerogatives spelled out by selection in a certain adaptive environment, described dispassionately by alien sociologists or "anthro"-pologists, or ethologists perhaps most aptly, is marvelous to me although I suppose could be unsettling to those who have a higher opinion of our species than I do. What else is marvelous is Doris Lessing's sense of dry ironic humor. These books are full of humor although Lessing can be so unremittingly grim (The fourth Novel, "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8," tells the story of a rather pleasant planet that undergoes an ice age that ends all life, for example.) that her humor can sneak up on you. I'd find myself laying there reading away while it slowly dawned on me that what I was reading was really funny. So don't expect her humor to leap out at you. Maybe it helps to be a bit twisted to appreciate her.
The story of what's going on and who's who unfolds over the first, third and fifth novels. Lacking a sense of narrative structure until well towards the end of the collection, creates a tension that helps hold interest. The reader wants to know more about what's going on in this galactic scale saga, and Lessing only gradually lets you know. In a larger sense, though, the story itself may not be all that important. Plot is de-emphasized and serves only as loose matrix for the author's descriptive embellishments, explorations of dialogue, moral and sociological musings, and experiments in storytelling. I almost get the feeling that even her words don't matter much as she weaves a dreamy spell over the reader, from whose miasma unspoken truths may sink in.
It occurred to me that reading "Canopus in Argos: Archives" is an experience much akin to reading Gurdjieff, particularly his "Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson" trilogy. Both strike me as being more of a neurolinguistic programming endeavor or device, as opposed to being stories to be told with details to be remembered. Perhaps this isn't accidental, as I read later that Lessing was influenced by the writings of Indries Shah. There was a bit of a controversy back in the 1970s, I believe it must've been, when Shah proclaimed that there was nothing original about the teachings of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky school, that everything they said came directly from the Sufi literature. Students of Gurdjieff hotly contested that assertion but there can be little doubt but what Gurdjieff was heavily immersed in Sufi mysticism, as was Shah himself. Could "Canopus in Argos: Archives," along with the writings of Gurdjieff, be Sufi expositions rendered consciously or unconsciously by these authors? Or could they just be monumental exercises of the urge to spill words? I'm still trying to decide WHAT "Canopus .. " is supposed to be, besides one long slog of a read.
May 24, 2023
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.
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.
Want to read
October 12, 2019OMG, 1228 pages of this stuff! Like many SF fans, I tried "Canopus in Argos" way back when, and gave up in bafflement. But maybe I should try again. Here's Nature's take:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
"Lessing intended the first book, Shikasta, to break the bounds of her earlier work. She wanted to write open-ended space fiction as a study of social systems, taking in colonial dominance, sexuality and gender, evolution, eschatology and ideas about memory and power. She was not very interested in the mechanics of science fiction: a character might be “space-lifted” to another planet with little explanation. But in her futuristic anthropological analysis, much else of sci-fi culture is recognizable. She had been writing psychedelic, semi-realist fiction a decade before: The Four-Gated City (1969) ends in plague and the outbreak of the Third World War. . . .
Lessing wrote the five books at typically breakneck speed. Initially, they were greeted with bafflement. Novelist Anthony Burgess, author of the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), complained of her “fanciful cosmic viewpoint”. Although science-fiction doyenne Ursula K. Le Guin praised some character sketches in Shikasta as “immortal diamond”, she found the whole at times “little more than a pulp-Galactic Empire with the Goodies fighting the Baddies”. . . .
Undeterred, Lessing worked her way through the series, declaring bloody-mindedly that “space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now”. She had friends among sci‑fi authors, including Brian Aldiss, and happily attended meetings of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. She championed the genre as influential in mainstream literature, whose pundits nevertheless “are much to blame for patronising or ignoring it”. The critical readings became more analytical by 1982, when she published The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, the series’ most moving book."
OK, I'm not sure how high in the TBR to put this massive omnibus -- but you should at least reasd this detailed review!
https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
"Lessing intended the first book, Shikasta, to break the bounds of her earlier work. She wanted to write open-ended space fiction as a study of social systems, taking in colonial dominance, sexuality and gender, evolution, eschatology and ideas about memory and power. She was not very interested in the mechanics of science fiction: a character might be “space-lifted” to another planet with little explanation. But in her futuristic anthropological analysis, much else of sci-fi culture is recognizable. She had been writing psychedelic, semi-realist fiction a decade before: The Four-Gated City (1969) ends in plague and the outbreak of the Third World War. . . .
Lessing wrote the five books at typically breakneck speed. Initially, they were greeted with bafflement. Novelist Anthony Burgess, author of the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), complained of her “fanciful cosmic viewpoint”. Although science-fiction doyenne Ursula K. Le Guin praised some character sketches in Shikasta as “immortal diamond”, she found the whole at times “little more than a pulp-Galactic Empire with the Goodies fighting the Baddies”. . . .
Undeterred, Lessing worked her way through the series, declaring bloody-mindedly that “space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now”. She had friends among sci‑fi authors, including Brian Aldiss, and happily attended meetings of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. She championed the genre as influential in mainstream literature, whose pundits nevertheless “are much to blame for patronising or ignoring it”. The critical readings became more analytical by 1982, when she published The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, the series’ most moving book."
OK, I'm not sure how high in the TBR to put this massive omnibus -- but you should at least reasd this detailed review!
October 1, 2018
I read this book because John said it was his equivalent of Little Women. It was really interesting. I like how disorienting it is, especially at the beginning. John likes that it's assembled by an archivist.
February 17, 2021
Started reading this expecting something like Le Guin's Hainish novels, but instead found it to be cumbersome woo-woo nonsense. DNF
February 25, 2014
Let me say first that I do not read science fiction. I found this collection at a book sale and since I had never read Lessing, decided to give it a try. I read the first three books with enthusiasm. Her writing held my interest and I marveled at her creativity. Unfortunately, by the end of the third book, the genre became a distraction. If you are a science fiction fan, I recommend this series. If you enjoy a well written story and are comfortable with the genre, give it a try. She is a talented writer and I intend to explore her further.
Currently reading
January 2, 2016Began re-reading this because I was so in love with it the first time, many years ago. But it sounds different this time, dense as lead and hard to follow. Guess it's possible i don't love Doris Lessing as I thought I did.
July 11, 2012
Lessing weaves her Sufi beliefs throughout. Not always the easist reading but worth the effort.
January 2, 2016
Reread the entire archive....a good reminder of how difficult Lessing can be to read, but worth it!
January 22, 2016
its a summary of Lessing's own political views masquerading as a sci fi book
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