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

I prob should try Solaris but my impression (not having seen the films either) has generally been that it's quite heavy on the psychology, which is not something that interests me greatly, cf. my comment on the HMV preface. Am I wrong?

Yes.

the book is waaaaaaaaay better than both versions of the movie, imho (*ducks* I know there are some serious Tarkovsky stans on this board). I don't think it's Lem's best by a long shot, but it is good.

Ok, I'm on it. Became a full-on Le Guin stan last year, maybe it's Lem's turn.

his ouevre is really broad - satire, po-mo experiments, hard science, political allegories, silly stories about robots. and unlike Moorcock his prose is always crisp and economical.

currently reading Jetse De Vries' Shine anthology... dunno how I feel about this yet, but I'm only on the first story. Never heard of any of the authors included before, except for Alisdair Gray

This thread got me into reading sci-fi novels for the first time in ages (I haven't really read novels at all for the last few years, mostly just science and other non-fixtion + comics)... It didn't place in the poll at all, but I picked up Sheri S. Tepper's Grass at the local library, because it sounded like the sort of novel I would enjoy - and I did. I've always been fascinated by sci-fi that focuses on the ecosystem of planets which are sorta like ours (i.e. they sound credible enough, not too far-fetched), but still inherently weird. And Grass had plenty of that (it sort of reminded me of the Aldebaran comic book series by Leo), but it also managed to include political commentary, philosophy, religion (it took religion much more seriously than sci-fi stereotypically does, which was interesting), hard science, and a large cast of well fleshed-out characters in the mix, so it definitely was a fascinating read. Plus her writing was often a joy to read, obviously she isn't one of those writers who'd put ideas before language.

I think I want to check out some more Tepper, but her bibliography seems to be quite large, what should I try next?

Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

lol

What's that one about?

Although tbh Grass was one of my favorites, too. Subtle they are not, however.

shakey thats a real title? its not her best imo but its interesting...

i really like the tepper thats set during the french revolution

I'm almost positive I have either Shadow's End or A Plague of Angels but neither descrip sounds familiar now that I re-read them....

its p funny i was actually thinking abt tepper earlier today because one her books (gibbons?) was where i first read abt jane elliott's brown eyes/blue eyes experiment, & i was trying to recall what the name of the experiment was. for some reason the part of the novel where the one gifted girl figures out how to 'beat' the test really stayed w/ me

shakey thats a real title?

lol joke's on me apparently!

had always assumed tepper was awful based on a summary i once read of 'beauty', this was probably close-minded of me

Lem's ouevre is really broad - satire, po-mo experiments, hard science, political allegories, silly stories about robots. and unlike Moorcock his prose is always crisp and economical.

And bracingly chilly (though not humourless by any means)

agreed

Yeah there's really no one to like in Moorcock. I'm that kind of reader, I need someone to invest in, and now that I'm into the second of the books I found, I'm kind of losing focus.

hmm yeah a lot of his characters are thoroughly unpleasant people

I suppose, but even the likeable ones are kept at a huge distance from the reader. They're kind of hardly even people, just distant bodies governed by a different set of rules than us human beings.

I had to snort this morning upon reading, "Needing neither to shave nor, in the conventional sense, pass feces, few Melniboneans were familiar with beards or urinals. Many human habits remain deeply mysterious to us."

OH LA DI DA MISTER TOO GOOD TO LIVE get tae fuck

ha i love Moorcock but i don't think he deals in likeable characters much

my favorite stuff of his (the Pyat novels) are narrated by a delusional, racist, pathologically lying pederast

sorta like Lolita but with more Nazis, Communists, and coke snorting

nor, in the conventional sense, pass feces, few Melniboneans were familiar with beards or urinals

If you're passing feces into urinals, you're already doing it unconventionally

Tell that to Elric Silverskin.

Just got back from a trip to Portland. Was nice to go to Powell's with the poll still fresh in my mind. Could only spend a few bucks but got:

Pohl - Gateway
Horwood - Duncton Wood
Ligotti - Teatro Grottesco

Finished vol 1 of Book of the New Sun. It hasn't really captured my imagination tbh. He seems to be taking a long time to tell a short story, and dressing it up with a whole lot of mysticism and conundrums, more for effect and atmosphere than out of any grand plan. Could be completely wrong about that of course. But are all the strange mysteries and visions really going to be resolved and explained at any point?

a lot of it is left as an exercise for the reader iirc? whether that exercise is worthwhile or not, eh

It is a while since I read and it kind of depends which mysteries and visions you are talking about, as some of them are more obviously explained than others, but Gene Wolfe has always been adamant that everything in the narrative is explicable with careful reading. You can be pretty certain that nothing he throws into the narative is simply for effect and atmosphere though.

I think that's right - it all fits together, and there isn't much ambiguity, but chunks of it are designed as a puzzle, because that's what Wolfe does. Frankly I would prefer it as a load of mystical atmosphere rather than logic problems.

Waggish's posts on Wolfe are very good I think (and spoilery) - clearly likes the work, but lays out these problems.

A Wolfe interview, quoted by Waggish in one of those links:

I try not to leave a clue more than once. It bothers me a lot when it is left more than once in somebody else’s book. If you told me once that the hero is left handed, I have registered it or at least I hope I have registered it or whatever this may be and if you told me five times then I feel that you are writing to somebody that is a lot dumber than I am. So I try and leave my clues once and generally try and leave all the clues that I think the reader is going to require, sometimes more than they require because you don’t generally find situations in which you have exactly as much information as you need to solve the thing. If it is solvable at all you probably have more. If you have only a very few items then it probably isn’t solvable with the information that you have. What you need to do in a real life situation is to go out and get more clues. If you know anything about actual police work very little of it consists of reasoning from clues and the great majority or it consists of finding more clues. Because when you have found enough then you have got, you have very little difficulty in understanding what they mean.

but fwiw I agree with Waggish:

I am not the sort of person who remembers that a character is left-handed two hundred pages later, I find it frustrating, for example, that it would greatly aid my understanding of the book to realize that two characters with different names are actually one and the same by virtue of their handedness. This is just not what I read fiction for.

Ok that is interesting, I did get a sense that a lot of things were CLUES. Kind of ambivalent about that, if I were more invested in the story and the genre overall then I might appreciate it more, but as I'm not a big fantasy fan in general it just adds to my sense of 'uhhhh whatever'.

I recently read "Martians go Home" by Fredric Brown it was pretty good. I also bought the film of the same name starring Randy Quaid, haven't watched it yet. Only cost me £1.50.

Reading "Radio Free Ablemuth" right now, and read the first 20 pages of Valis, but I'll come back to it another time.

Quite enjoyed Philip K. Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist", though it's not really speculative fiction.

man, the first edition of it looks awesome:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/83/ConfessionsOfACrapArtist%281stEd%29.jpg/200px-ConfessionsOfACrapArtist%281stEd%29.jpg

if I were more invested in the story and the genre overall then I might appreciate it more, but as I'm not a big fantasy fan in general

I would say that Wolfe is really not very typical for the genre though. Whether you enjoy what he does or not, there isn't really anyone else attempting anything even remotely similar.

Also although I found it takes me a few reads to get the most from his novels, I still got a lot from the first go through. It isn't necessary to work out every puzzle to get the main thrust of what he is getting at. For example <very minor spoiler>if you don't realise that the painting of the 'knight' that Severian sees when he is searching for the library in the first book, is actually a painting or photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon, it hardly detracts from the overall experience of the novel </very minor spoiler>, but there are a lot of layers and little easter eggs that are rewarding for the careful reader and have generated a lot of interesting discussions over the years.

I can see how it would be an acquired taste though and there is a certain arrogance to his whole "I will never repeat any clues or make it easier for the casual reader" attitude.

Pohl - Gateway
Horwood - Duncton Wood
Ligotti - Teatro Grottesco

Don't know much about Duncton Wood, but Gateway is up there in my top 3 SF novels ever for sure. Teatro Grottesco is excellent in places, but I found Ligotti's unrepentant nihilism wearying by the end. Certainly diminishing returns.

love duncton, but it's some heavy stuff for a book about mole belief systems

(I was a very casual reader of New Sun and loved it, but I *am* a Fantasy fan, so the more complicated bits were sustained by the whole 'hey there's a guy with a sword' shabazz. I wouldn't have liked it nearly as much if it weren't ultimately in that genre (and in fact I got bored of book five by 40 pages in - do not care about space particularly) but I can see how a better reader than me could still get a lot out of it!

I care deeply about space, so I'm kind of thinking that even if I'm still not draw in by the end of book two, I'll want to carry on so I can get to all that spacey shit, woo yeah.

if you don't realise that the painting of the 'knight' that Severian sees when he is searching for the library in the first book, is actually a painting or photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon, it hardly detracts from the overall experience of the novel

lol I totally don't remember this

Or Buzz Aldrin. I will try and dig out the exact bit, but it is in the first book when he meets the character Rudesind, who is engaged in cleaning a painting. The painting is described as being of a knight in a strange armour with a golden visor in a desolate wasteland, standing next to a stiff banner, or somesuch.

http://www.windows2universe.org/moon/images/Apollo_11_Aldrin.gif

carrying on with vols 3 and 4 since i located pirated epub copies. gene wolfe if you are reading this you have not lost a sale since i would have got them from the library if they'd had them, or gone without.

a painting or photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon,

If it's a photo, it has to be Aldrin. As I understand it, Aldrin threw a shitty over not being able to get to be first on the Moon, and refused to take any pictures of Armstrong. The only photo of Armstrong on the moon is the one he took himself where he's reflected in Aldrin's helmet

This is very off-topic, but it amuses me

"wdyllotm?

You'll never know you first-jumping prick you"

Ledge it is your willingness to read four volumes of a book series you are not really enjoying that explains how you have read so much more than all the rest of us imo.

(except moby dick)

Well, yeah, I wasn't that gripped or emotionally invested, nor in love with the style, but they weren't a struggle to read at all (except the play at the end of vol 2). Really I'm only blundering on for morbid curiosity.

how you have read so much more than all the rest of us

also pretty sure this isn't true