Doris Lessing's rapidly growing series of novels, "Canopus in Argos: Archives," raises certain compelling questions about the uses of fiction. Through her prolific work from 1950 to the early 1970's, Mrs. Lessing acquired a deserved reputation as one of the most intelligently discriminating of contemporary English novelists, her characteristic mode of fiction being a traditional novelistic one in which individual fates, caught in a tangle of social and political circumstances, we...

The second of the Canopus in Argos series of novels is finer-grained and stronger than Shikasta [the first]…. [The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five] may be read for the pure pleasure of reading it, a tale unencumbered by metaphysical machinery. The Canopans and Sirians, the superhuman powers of good and evil of Shikasta, stay offstage this time…. [The powers of good, the] Providers, command Al · Ith, ruler of Zone Three, and Ben Ata, ruler of Zone Four, to marry. Both obey ...