| Readers bring a different set of expectations to science fiction than to mainstream literature. They expect to be disoriented by settings, characters and levels of technology that represent a different world. However, the more subtle effects of disorientation that are achieved rhetorically and stylistically can be disturbing, especially for uninitiated readers. While these devices initially effect disorientation, they can ultimately serve as tools with which the reader can unify the text and arrive at an interpretation.;Further, since the graphic, stylistic, and rhetorical features differ in each text, special note is made of the way the particular text functions in Canopus in Argos.;The choice of these three books from the same series afforded opportunities that otherwise could not be realized in a study such as this one. First, the analysis of Shikasta demonstrates that the obstacles that readers encounter can themselves be aids to making a difficult text easier to read. Then, since the texts of the three books are so different in structure, the applicability of the procedure to the other texts was shown. At the same time, because the analysis shows that Shakasta serves as a kind of umbrella from which the others emerge, the investigation shows how readers can use this approach to uncover the connections that exist among the texts. Further, where diversity exists, as between the headings in Shikasta and those in Sirian, the procedure is helpful in showing how the device functions in terms of the particular text and in terms of the series as well. Such an approach makes the individual texts easier to read and provides a means for arriving at a reading of the series at the same time.;In this study, an analysis is made of the distinctive graphic, stylistic, and rhetorical devices that effect disorientation of the reader in the first three books of Doris Lessing's space-fiction series, Canopus in Argos. These books are: Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta; The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five; and The Sirian Experiments. In addition, the study identifies the disorienting features that can serve as signals for elucidation of the text. |
