Word: shikasta
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This is the third installment of a space saga that Author Doris Lessing calls Canopus in Argos: Archives. That running title is matched by the pace of Lessing's production: three good-sized novels in the past 16 months. Shikasta (1979) tells of a primitive, beautiful planet called Rohanda, which is being jointly colonized by the two vast galactic empires of Canopus and Sirius. A misalignment of cosmic forces throws Rohanda awry; its developing inhabitants stop listening to their wise tutors and begin behaving suspiciously like members of the human race. The Canopean overseers sadly change the place...
...Sirian Experiments, unfortunately, recapitulates as much as it adds. The primary subject is once again the catastrophe that overtakes Shikasta (earth). The observer this time is a woman named Ambien II, a virtually immortal emissary from Sirius. She was in on the original cultivation of Rohanda-Shikasta. She retains a proprietary interest in the ailing planet, and visits it every eon or so. In addition to the unfolding spectacle of human savagery, she sees some spectacular sights. She happens to be flying over in a small bubble of a spaceship when the planet suddenly tips over from its upright axis...
...publishing standards, this second installment of Doris Lessing's series of visionary novels arrives at the speed of light. It was only six months ago that Shikasta unveiled Lessing's new cosmology; three vast galactic empires (two benign, one evil) and mysterious universal harmonies that, when slightly untuned, wrecked life on Shikasta. a small planet suspiciously similar to earth. The result of this disturbance was the dark underside of human history, which Lessing retold as much in sorrow as in anger. Now she has traveled past Zone Six to some nicer neighborhoods in her mental landscape. If Shikasta...
FICTION: Life Before Man, Margaret Atwood ∙ Morgan's Passing, Anne Tyler ∙ Shikasta, Doris Lessing Smiley's People, John le Carre ∙ The Beginning Place, Ursula K. Le Guin The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter Yellowfish, John Keeble...
FICTION: A Married Man, Piers Paul Read · Life Before Man, Margaret Atwood · On the Edge of the Cliff, V.S. Pritchett · Shikasta, Doris Leasing · Smiley's People, John le Carre · The Beginning Place, Ursula K. Le Guin · Yellowfish, John Keeble