space fiction

I love alternate history and space fiction.

Her speculative space fiction was part of an unusual creative journey.

The last book, The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, is a tonal shift: a farcical study of imperialism or, as Lessing asserted, “old-fashioned satire in space fiction terms”.

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.

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”.