First SF Nobel?

Dorris Lessing won the Nobel prize in literature today. I’ve never been a fan of her work myself. I don’t think I ever finished reading The Golden Notebook and I literally found Shikasta unreadable. (I may have gotten to page 5.)

Although plenty of other Nobel laureates have written speculative or fantastical fiction — Garcia-Marquez, Paz, Mann, Milosz, Lewis, and Saramango come to mind — I’m pretty sure that Lessing is the first self-described “science fiction” author to win the world’s top literary award. I’m also pretty sure that she’s the first Nobel laureate to write about space aliens at any length. (Correct me if I’m wrong on this.)