The New Classics By Sarah Windeløv
It is fairly easy to compile a long list of the literature and of the authors that helped shape the literary world. A simple search on google, and you instantly have review after review, praising and naming different books as an expression of the tendencies of the past. These books are most often what we call “the classics” and are associated with knowledge and culture. By looking at books written in specific periods of time, you’re able to look into that specific period of time from a different point of view. For instance, if you read Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, you get an insight into what being a slave meant at that time. By reading The jungle written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 you get an inkling, that the difference between the poor and the rich was a very real problem at the time. By reading fictional pieces you can get a very real idea of what living in the books’ own time was like. These books are what you might call must-reads. But what are the must reads of today? Which books will make it and become one of “the classics”? All this is very difficult to predict, but we do have some hints as to what might end up becoming “the new classics”.
Literary tendencies differ in many ways. They are geographically affected and the tendencies vary across the different genres. So there is a lot to keep track off. One genre that is rising, however, is Science-fiction. By creating a dystopian world - a world that is broken and has to start over from scratch - the authors can address a lot of frightening but still very relevant questions. What is going to happen to the human species if what we know now as society collapses? Would we be able to survive in a world that is against us, or would we succumb to nature? That, for instance, is one of the themes in Jeff VanderMeers novel Annihilation from 2014 where the world as we know it starts to bend over for nature. This could be an expression of the ever growing fear that global warming is real and is going to change our planet for good. A very heavy and present problem, wrapped neatly and easily digestible in a thrilling sci-fi novel. Themes likes this are getting more and more popular in the sci-fi genre.
A thing that has always played a big part in sci-fi is technology. Read an old classic sci-fi novel like Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” from 1870, and you have the mentionings of technology that was not in use at the time, and therefore seemed foreign and scary. The same is happening in today’s science-fiction, but with the rapid changes in technology that occur today, a theme like this might be even more relevant than it was back in the days. The big focus in modern Sci-fi is the idea of an AI (artificial intelligence) that could possible turn on the human species and become self aware, a fear that for some is very real. The idea that humans end up creating a technology that they cannot control is written about an awful lot in sci-fi and is an expression of a modern fear.
Modern fears like the above mentioned (with an addition of others of course) might be the big themes of 21st century literature. As the authors of the past, the temporary authors write about issues and fears that take place in the present world. It is going to be interesting to look back in 100 years time, on the literature of today and use it to get an idea of the society at this time. What did we fear? Why did we fear it? And was there probable cause for the said fear? I guess we won’t and cannot know for sure, at least not yet.
The purpose of this blog is to explore new literature and to try and make a map of the different trends, that might end up defining 21st century literature.
