“If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas,” writes Clive Thompson in Wired. (via Books, Inq.)

I’m not sure Thompson is right, because crime fiction or mystery explores some deep ideas about humanity, community, God, and life. I think science fiction may be the best label for this kind of praise because it can include almost any story with unreal elements, even overriding other genres or labels. When Thompson starts throwing out examples to support his argument, he picks three fantasy series first.

Frank Wilson writes about a publishing company who have abridged some of the great works of the past. He begins:

The last commandment in Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing (Morrow, $14.95) declares that an author should “try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” The people at Phoenix Press think a number of classic authors were negligent in observing this rule. Anna Karenina, for instance, weighs in at a whopping 800-plus pages. Who can possibly hope to read that and still have time to watch Dancing With the Stars? . . . And there’s the rub, as Hamlet might not say, if a Phoenix editor thought better of it. There is nothing inherently wrong with what Somerset Maugham called “the useful art of skipping.” Maugham himself in fact helped produce a series of abridged classics in 1948 called “Great Novelists and Their Novels.”

How much skipping do you do in your reading? I have a hard time with it, but I have done it. I remember skipping chapter 13 of The Silmarillion.

The Jollyblogger talks about the power of story in connection with Pullman’s Golden Compass.

Christian apologists have spent years and years attempting to show the reasonableness of Christianity, and have claimed many victories. Yet the religious landscape around us suggests that whether or not we have persuaded many heads, we continue to lose ground in capturing hearts – so let me join the chorus of those who are saying that we need to learn better to speak the language of “once upon a time.”

Pig Wot Flies tells us why Neil Gamon’s Stardust is so much better as a book than a movie. “In Gaiman’s Faerie, no-one is safe. People die, sometimes bloodily and it’s a shock when they do.” That’s one of the book’s good parts which doesn’t come through in the movie.

Will Smith is in another sci-fi novel adaptation, this time I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which has been adapted twice before. Apparently, a four writer team undertook this adaptation. Either that or two writers adapted a previous two-writer adaptation. Matheson has many stories in the public mind, in part because he worked on The Twilight Zone, in part because authors like Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz have praised his work highly. Another adaptation from him, one of a script seen on The Twilight Zone, is coming in the movie The Box. Still another in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

From what I understand of the story, I Am Legend can’t be called a vampire tale, though there are vampires in it. It’s better described as a post-apocalypse story, focusing on a man as a representative of all mankind. Speaking of the Matheson’s book, Dan Schneider says it focuses “on human loneliness. . . Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre.” (Spoiler warning on that link.) It could be a good movie. Probably is a good book.

Harrison Scott Key complains that novels are boring and short stories are worse. He says, “My general claim is that fiction is in the dumps because fiction isn’t fun like it used to be. Somewhere after Cervantes, novelists forgot that it was okay to be funny.” Woody Allen on the other hand . . .