Is Your Fav SF Tome Banned? or We Braved the New Slaughter House #5 and What a Strange Clockwork Land it was Indeed.

Seriously, consider one of your most cherished Science Fiction book.  Is there a possibility that the book you hold near and dear is on someone's ban list?

I am not too sure how how I got here, but I was following link and five or six layers deep came across an IO9 article written by Susana Polo that originally appeared at Geekosystem.   Her article was the top ten banned science fiction works.  Now, the first few were works that I wasn't familiar with, but then it got....interestin!

Check it out

7:  Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein -This book was:

• pro-religion, free love was controversial even when it was published in 1962.  So naturally it was challenged as part of the curriculum of a summer "Science Academy" course in Texas.

6: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - As the author of this io9 article points out :

• In a textbook example of "missing the point," in 1981, Jackson County, Florida challenged ... Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in its schools and libraries, claiming that the book was pro-communism and anti-Semitic 

Did they even bother to read past the first chapter?  Clearly they never understood the novel what so ever!

5: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - I wonder if anyone stopped for a second to savor the irony of this situation?  Banning a book whose very nature rails against book banning! Here, from the article itself:

•  In 1998, Fahrenheit 451 was removed from the curriculum in a Mississippi high school because a parent objected to the use of the phrase "god damn."

4:  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle - I myself am not familiar with this book, but I feel the  book bears mentioning if for nothing else than for the number of times they were banned.  From the article:

• This first book of  the series, tackles the the vastness of time and the universe, the nature of evil, and the dangers of blind belief.  But, it's got characters known as "witches"...... 

3: Slaughterhouse-Five - is a thinly veiled autobiography of Kurt Vonnegut's experience during the bombing of Dresden which killed tens of thousands of German civilians by firebombing the city. 

From the article:

• Not only banned (in New York State, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin) and challenged (in Louisiana, Michigan (twice), Texas, Virginia, Rhode Island, Illinois, Kentucky (twice), and Wisconsin again), copies of Slaughterhouse-Five were burned in North Dakota in 1973.

It is like you combined Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451!  Bradbury's novel was a work of fiction....right?

2: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley   Here is a clear example of not understanding  what you are reading.   BNW was banned because it was supposed to endorse:

• free love, free drugs, atheism, and rejection of the nuclear family.

Now as  Susana Polo points out that this would be a legit argument if  BNW was presented as a utopia

But even I, ( Paul ) as a very green SF reader when I first started reading SF, could PLAINLY see that this WAS NOT as it was portrayed but a not to subtle Dystopia! Who could have missed this heavy handed wide brush painting of everything that is wrong with society whether it is early 20th or early 21st. Be that obvious as it may:

• It was banned in Ireland in 1932, a Missouri town in 1980, an Alabama high school in 2000; and challenged in Oklahoma in 1988, California in 1993, Texas in 2003, and Indiana in 2008.   

1: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Now I know...everyone is going to say Novel? No!  Movie directed by Stanley Kubrick starring Malcolm McDowell.  Granted, the movie is brilliant at times and disturbing, but at other times almost self indulgent.  But we are talking about banned books here and Burgess wrote the short novel....... And the book itself did have some strange moments in the annals of banned bookdom.  Here from the article is one of the more warped book bans, and I have to think, this one was based not on reading the book, but watching the movie...:

• in 1973 a shop owner in Utah was arrested for selling the book, and though the charges were later dropped, the store was forced to relocate due to the controversy. Later in the 70's it was removed from two high schools for "objectionable language." Presumably they didn't mean bratchny, droog, or garbles.

full IO9 article with the complete list HERE

Comment: Banned Book Week

I think that one of the most fundamental reasons I consider reading one of my major hobbies is the freedom I have enjoyed since I started reading in earnest way back in the 60s. Not that my reading habits changed all that much during that period, I still read mostly for entertainment, but what before was satisfied by comics now required a bit more meat. Mainly I suspect it was something to do with attention span. I wanted material that would take me away for longer periods of time.

My parents never really put limits on what I read. It wasn't until much later when it came to me that not being serious readers they may have never considered books anything more than what they were fundamentally. That very likely worked in my favor, for had I been told that I must read this, I would have looked upon reading as a chore.

So I spent my formative years and early adulthood exploring the trials of the dustbowl years, the fate of indentured or otherwise in the civil war years, Idealized Polynesian society, small town social / economic strife in a small new England town in the 60s, wild adventures along the Mississippi frightening political upheaval during the 30s and 40s. It was all open to me.

Then in the 70s I discover science and science fiction. Now the past present and the future were my playgrounds. I was free to read whatever I wanted....or so I thought.

Yes, I am talking about that horror called banned books. Dan brought me some pages this week to the September 2010 issue of the AARP Bulletin. On page 39 they list some of the books banned by American schools and libraries. Even this list is astounding and frightening. There is just something inherently ugly and evil about banning books. It should be so easy, if you choose to object to and not read something fine but what gives you the right to tell me that I must adhere to your choices.

I am not going to go through the whole list. Find a copy and read the article. It is truly unbelievable. But here are some of the books that I think are well within the venue of BMU.

Animal Farm George Orwell, 1945
1984 George Orwell, 1949
Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1954
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962
Slaughter House Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969

Some that might span the gap so to speak would be books like

Cujo, Stephen King 1981
James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl 1961
Harry Potter books J.K. Rowlings 1997 - 2007
Lord of the Rings J.R.R. tolkien 1954

One of the most egregious occurrences has to be Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which according to the article Ballantine sanitized editions sold to schools from 1967 to 1973 and went so far as to SELL ONLY the sanitized editions from 1973 to 1979. You have to ask why would Mr. Bradbury
allow one of his most memorable novels be butchered? Ballantine carried out this campaign without telling or asking Mr. Bradbury! Now that takes a pair right there....

Stay vigilant. I can guarantee that no matter what your political or religious views, the books that you consider as your RIGHT to have own and read are on someone else's ban list. Before you take the easy route and believe that certain people should never have access to certain books, consider your most important book and have someone take it away from you and possibly imprison you for owning it. Don't say that it can't happen because it already has, countless times. If you can justify any banning of books then you are a breath away from agreeing with them all.

September 25th to October 2nd is the American Library Association's annual Banned Books Week