Peter Kreeft
I had the great honor and privilege of being inviting to a private talk given by Peter Kreeft at the Catholic Information Center, which is a bookstore and spiritual arsenal hunched in the position of a gladiator on K street in Babylon, that Great City, about two blocks from the offices of the Washington Post. It is run by Opus Dei, but I did not see any albino assassins there, or else I would have turned in my resume.
During the reception, I engaged in conversation a man of particular wit and good sense, someone extraordinarily well read in philosophy and Thomism (better read than yours truly, which, in all immodesty, is rare enough), and he and fell to speaking about science fiction books. He declared the best SF book of all time was Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., but he allowed that Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles were near enough in excellency to make it a photo finish. He disallowed Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy from the running on the ground that it was fantasy, not Science Fiction properly so called.
Only after I had squirted him with my novelty boutonniere and had been drubbed by the Opus Dei Swiss Guards in Power Armor, was it revealed to me that this was Peter Kreeft himself. My brush with greatness was that he had heard my name: there had been a article mentioned me, along with Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, and Mike Flynn in some recent publication (First Things? Dappled Things? Dappled First Things? I have it in my scrapbook somewhere) as four writers who were Roman Catholics, or, to be precise, three science fiction writers and one space-opera hacking Walloon. (note to the humor impaired: The Opus Dei Swiss Guards in Power Armor did not actually drub me. That is a joke. They were in their dress blues, and do not wear power armor except when making an orbital-to-surface paratrooper drop into Protestant territory controlled by the Witch-Queen, Elizabeth I Regina. And I am not a Walloon.I do not even speak Belgiumish.)
He asked me what I thought was the greatest Science Fiction book ever, and I (being a ninja-trained Philosopher) answered the question with a question, to wit: greatest by my personal taste, or greatest as history measure greatness?
By my personal taste, I would say Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe is my favorite book, because I am so refined in my taste, followed by Galactic Patrol by Doc E.E. Smith, because I am a philistine who likes to read about planets being blown to space-smitherines. Not an interesting answer, except maybe to the psychologist ordered by the court to study my psychology.
By a more objective measure, I would say a great Science Fiction book, in order to be great, has to meet four criteria. It has to meet the three criteria of a Great Book, and the particular criterion of Great SF:
Let me turn to the founder of my school, St. John’s College in Annapolis. Mortimer Adler used three criteria to determine inclusion in his “Great Books of the Western World” series for Encyclopedia Britannica (see http://books.mirror.org/gb.sel1990.html).
The same criteria were used to determine the curriculum of my education. If anyone ever wants to know where I got my ideas, here is the list (http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/asp/main.aspx?page=1302)
I have here paraphrased his words:
- TIMELESS: Great Books should be works that are as much of concern to us today as at the time they were written, even if that was centuries ago. They are thus essentially timeless — always contemporary, and not confined to interests that change from time to time or from place to place.
- INFINITE: The second criterion was their infinite re-readability. Few books are worth reading more than once. A great book is inexhaustibly re-readable. It cannot be fully understood on one, two, or three readings. More is to be found on all subsequent readings. One re-reads a great book with greater pleasure and more insight on each rereading.
- RELEVANT: The third criterion was the relevance of the work to a very large number of great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last twenty-five centuries. The authors of these books take part in the great conversation, reading the works of many of their predecessors, and answering them. In other words, the great books are the books in which the great conversation occurs about the great ideas. It is the set of great ideas that determines the choice of the great books.
Adler is kind enough to list the Great Ideas. There are 102 of them:
Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy and Cosmology, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Equality, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, Love, Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny and Despotism, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, World.
Also worth quoting in full is Alder’s comment on what was excluded from criteria of judgment:
We did not base our selections on an author’s nationality, religion, politics, or field of study; nor on an author’s race or gender. Great books were not chosen to make up quotas of any kind; there was no “affirmative action” in the process.
In the second place, we did not consider the influence exerted by an author or a book on later developments in literature or society. That factor alone did not suffice to merit inclusion. Scholars may point out the extraordinary influence exerted by an author or a book, but if the three criteria stated above were not met, that author or book was not to be chosen. Many of the great books have exerted great influence upon later generations, but that by itself was not the reason for their inclusion. [Adler’s footnote: This negative consideration applies, in my judgment, to Voltaire and his “Candide”. It also applies to the German philosopher Leibniz and his works. Just think of the influence exerted by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin!”]
In the third place, a consideration not operative in the selection process was the truth of an author’s opinions or views, or the truth to be found in a particular work. This point is generally misunderstood; many persons think that we regard the great books as a repository of mankind’s success in its ever-continuing pursuit of the truth. “That is simply not the case”. There is much more error in the great books than there is truth. By anyone’s criteria of what is true or false, the great books will be found to contain some truths, but many more mistakes and errors.
The fourth criterion I would add is true only of Science Fiction. Other genres have standards of their own to meet:
- SUNSAWUNDA: Great Science Fiction Books should be works that lead the reader to a sense of wonder by means of speculation starting with science that has reality or verisimilitude of realism, but extrapolated to a fantastic, awe-inspiring, or horrific, yet plausibly logical conclusion.
How would you answer, O readers? Which science fiction books are timeless and relevant, yet rewarded endless re-readings, and contain scientific speculations starting with sound science and ending in the lands of perilous wonder?
I managed to convince Mr. Kreeft to try reading Gene Wolfe.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
