THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION

Sorry I didn't vote but Disch and Sturgeon winding up in the 90-100 zone is some straight bullshit.

Think a lot of you would enjoy reading the Tom Disch book about sci-fi that Elvis Telecom hipped us to, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of.

sturgeon's best stuff is his short stories, tho 'more than human' is really good.

Camp Concentration was my #2

thanks again to lamp for doing this! ha goddamn narnia i thought i was going to get by without a single top 50 thing OH WELL

Stuff I think of as universally loved that I was surprised didn't crack top 50: Ender's Game, Perdido Street Station, Ted Chiang (i voted only for Ender's Game of these)

ender's game is a bunch of fascist fantasy claptrap

wish i'd been around to see this unfold in real time.

lol @ dick
yay @ leguin (left hand was my #1, earthsea #6 - that's a childhood fave but I only read left hand last year and was blown away, as you can tell.) (banks is the only other author i gave two votes to, neither of which made the #50.)
smdh @ narnia
sad for wells, wyndham.

read 32 of the 50, 45 of the 100, voted for 9, 13. The bottom 50 is definitely crazier than the top.

this was a good thread and a very handy 'to read' list for the next while, thanks lamp.

Ted Chiang got a lot of lower ballot votes it seems like, which makes sense to me - it's easy to really like and hard to unreservedly love imo.

17 of the 51, exactly a third. and, tbh, there's not a lot in the other 2/3rds that particularly appeals.

(and reynolds was robbed.)

Have not even tried to follow these threads but Lamp thank you so much for getting all this together. I've grabbed the whole top 100 and will start pecking at the ones I've never read.

I didn't register in time to vote in this, but thanks for doing it, Lamp. A cool mix of stuff I haven't read and stuff I have strong feelings about.

Belated comments -

Laurel & Jon Lewis OTM about Riverworld. I think you're as well-served reading the back cover blurbs as the books.

DJP - I can't stand V, but Lot 49 is great. Just pretend V is written by Pynchon's dark half or something.

Jon Lewis - have you read the revised edition of Aegypt? Or the revised edition of The Solitudes, I forget which title refers to which edition. It's been on my to-read list for ages, but only one edition is available for the Kindle, and I'm not sure if it's the one I should read or not.

WAHT I know nothing about a revised edition of Aegypt!!!

revised Aegypt = The Solitudes right? The overlook press eds? I actually wasn't sure whether Aegypt meant the cycle or the renamed first book in the poll.

Sorry, 'the now-renamed first book'.

Wiki says it was originally published in 1987 under the name Aegypt "...despite Crowley's objections. Revised 2007..." and re-released as The Solitudes. Okay, Aegypt is the one available for Kindle.

I don't know anything about the nature of the revisions, but 2007 was recent enough that maybe there's something on Crowley's LiveJournal.

Why do I keep saying "Kindle" instead of "the Kindle"? THE Kindle. THE.

BAD KINDLE. BAD.

I like the Kindle so much more than I thought I would, but that's a whole nother thread.

So far I can't find any deets about whether the text has actually been revised, in addition to the title change and shift of the title Aegypt to refer to the four books as a whole.

I think it is revised - publisher says so.

Keep in mind "revised" might just mean it got a cover re-design. It's not a very accurate way to talk about something, because "revision" should require a certain amt of changed content. But it's prob just a new afterword or new cover des or something.

Having brought it up, I feel obligated to look around too, and can't find anything specific. He does clarify that the later books are barely changed, but you'd think he'd have a blog entry about whether people who have the previous edition should pick up the new edition, or something along those lines.

They'll never do that, I don't think? Because a "revision" comes out when sales start slacking and the editor thinks the backlist could be working a little harder with a minimum of expense. If you're asking, "Should I spend money on your book regardless of whether I have a copy already?" the answer will always be "Yes!"

Missed the reveal, but a belated huzzah for the poll and for the high placings of Gene Wolfe and Earthsea. Those both would've been in my top 5 too, probably. I've read Book of the New Sun twice and thinking I'd like to read it again. Biggest surprise to me is no Harlan Ellison in the poll. But maybe there's no consensus pick for him? (Or maybe everybody just knows he's a big asshole?)

They'll never do that, I don't think? Because a "revision" comes out when sales start slacking and the editor thinks the backlist could be working a little harder with a minimum of expense.

In this case the two editions are from different publishers and the original was out of print, but yeah, the same idea still holds - bill it as something new and hope for a sales bump. Stupid anniversary edition of The Jerk.

Re: Ellison, I think most people were disinclined to nominate or vote for individual short stories (I nominated two and voted for one), and there's not really a consensus Ellison collection.

i probably would've voted for 'i have no mouth...'

I Must Vote, But I Have No Mouse

A+

Also scrap what I said about Ellison being the biggest surprise -- Bradbury! Can't believe at least the Martian Chronicles didn't make it.

After having witnessed the results of thinly attended jazz instrumentalist polls in which most of the cats nominated got zero votes, I'm never surprised by the results of any poll ever.

Right, have managed to get some info on the Crowley revisions now I'm not on a phone. Aegypt isn't heavily revised:

This is a great way to advertise the series and a few small changes have been made, with a a few more substantial ones to come in the later volumes, but your old hardbacks will do just fine. There are errors in the Latin and other things but if you don;t mind those just read on. I don't know why I'm saying this since I thereby lose my $1.60 on the pb you miht have bought, but ah well.

And on the later books:

The Overlook Love&Sleep isn't substantively different -- mostly I removed recap material intended to remind readers of what happened in Volume I, which appeared some years before. In the Ovelook Daemonomania I did that too, and also made other cuts, most small -- a paragraph, a sentence -- and some larger -- a couple of pages. One or two entire scenes are now gone, as being either redundant, or made redundant by their appearance in the last volume, or just not so hot. One entire brief new scene added. And throughout there are words altered, sentences recast, sentences added, etc., that perhaps a reader of both would not notice but which I think are decided improvements.

Excellent! Thanks for finding that.

always forgot john crowley was on livejournal. him and disch. that was weird, that whole thing.

Yeah, for a long time it felt (till the Fantasy Masterworks Little, Big, I guess) he was this mysterious writer who was almost entirely unavailable in Britain, & there didn't seem to be much info anywhere out there; it blew my mind a little when I first saw him on LJ.

I hadn't heard of him until that came out, but, then, I was fourteen.

I was 26, & had caught wind of him years before from references here and there, American friends primarily. Had had little luck finding much.

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master & Margarita

this is only £3 in hmv if any britishers wanna pick it up. excited to put it on my shelf to read after my book of checkov plays.

woof, major thankage for that info. It sounds like the changes he made to books 2-4 might be salutary (removing redundant mtrl which had been necessitated by the time gaps between books).

I have never cracked open Daemonomania let alone Endless Thingy. Someday...

£1.99 on amazon 8)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Margarita-Wordsworth-Classics/dp/1840226579?qid=1302280724

those wordsworth classics are a recently discovered goldmine. picked up a couple and they seem fine. (they are cheap as they are out of copyright, but still, how you can print a 777 page book like the one i bought (dickens) and transport it and give the shop a slice and still turn a profit out of 1.99 is a bit of a mystery)

Have no idea. The copy I got is nicer than those though, glossy cover, don't know the pages will fall out*, nice little notes on the text and commentary bits at the back etc.

*goodbye copy of confessions of an english opium eater, i hardly knew thee.

I bought TIGANA today - pumped!

We should have a thread where we read all the books we are buying because of this wonderful thread and say what we think of them.

ok how about using this thread

well, there's already what's basically a rolling fantasy thread. an SF one could work.

rolling fantasy thread could use a title other than "fantasy sucks, but not all the time" or whatever

"HELP ME FIND SOME FANTASY THAT DOESN'T SUCK QUITE AS MUCH AS THE REST OF THE SUCKY GENRE" yeah, oh boy, can't wait to get to that.

Greg, I'm pumped that you're gonna read Tigana too!!!

I love the fantasy genre, lots, and I want it to stop sucking (OR: recommend me fantasy stuff that does not suck)

yeah, i don't really like searching 'fantasy sucking' when i look for it. maybe a mod could retitle it 'fantasy sucks, but not all the time: rolling fantasy and speculative lit thread'. or maybe someone could start that thread, and then we could retire the other thread; that would work, too.