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

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

as someone who is probably going to preorder 'a dance with dragons' today i like to think that we stand in solidarity

1600 pages! Good lord.

up to book 6 in rerun of wheel of time

Wow this Cordwainer Smith stuff is crazy. Moving onto Pohl's Gateway next.

Oh you are in for a treat

I want to reread Gateway but I remember it being so amazing, and I don't want an old/jaded/pomo rereading to mess that memory up.

bummed to have missed this. think one or two things i nominated way back made it through (ficciones, a different lem book), but would have loved to watch the returns.

Hi Contenderizer! U been scarce!

hi jon! and yeah, it became impossible to internet somewhere around the holidays, dunno why.

rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Aw but it's on ILB :(

(I am v much not in the habit of keeping up with anything beyond the 2 main boards)

bookmark it

or use Site New Answers

Dug out my copy of Gateway to reread and had completely forgotten that I'd gotten Pohl to autograph it back in 1980.

great poll! Handmaid's Tale was the last book I read, and it was phenomenal! Left me craving more Atwood. Everything else on here that I've read (Scanner Darkly, Three Stigmata*, Drowned World, Vonnegut) is great!

Bummed I missed out on the Jeter conversation. I remember wanting to read Morlock Night, but the cheapest I could find it on abebooks wz like $200, and the only library on melcat that had it was Michigan State but there was a no checkout policy...I didn't think I'd ever get to read it, but now Amazon is saying they have a copy for $16, so maybe I'll get it and do a steampunk run with Anubis Gates and the Prestige in tow...

(*Three Stigmata freaked me out bcz I could never quite suss out the implications of the novel; the only novel I read where widely divergent readings could make equal amounts of sense. I'd have to read it again before I got more specific, though, unfortunately...)

morlock night and infernal devices just got reissued, both $8

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0857661000/

I reread dr adder recently, what a bender that one is. also bought his last novella ninja two-fifty, only available on the kindle. guy is a great unsung writer.

so maybe I'll get it and do a steampunk run with Anubis Gates and the Prestige in tow...

EXCUSE ME you are leaving out James P Blaylock's Homunculus, pls rectify. (If it has become scarce in the original editions it's available now in a nice omnibus of all Blaylock's victoriana called Langdon St. Ives something something)

okey doke thanx for the pro tip JL! :D

(tireless Blaylock advocate ovah heah. Mebbe some of the attn Powers gets due to POTC movie will trickle down to my boy...)

Ted Gioia on this topic: http://www.conceptualfiction.com/index.html

re-reading Lem's Futurological Congress while waiting for new books from the library - had forgotten how laugh-out-loud funny this dude could be, book is non-stop social satire + language jokes

otm. Remember laughing out loud at some business about "every educated man knows a few words of Spanish"

reading Charles Yu's "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe" - really great. some really sharp, heartbreaking passages wrapped up in a meta-commentary on fiction disguised as a time travel memoir. VERY Malzberg.

yeah i just saw today that that was out in trade paperback, i liked it a lot too, probably posted about on ilb last year...

reading Jon Armstrong's "Grey". This is really funny, it's like a 70s era Bowie song in novel form. Also carries on the rich tradition of sci-fi novels where people wear absolutely insane fashions (wub-fur, hats with robotic copulating chickens on them, oversized bowties, etc.)

"hats with robotic copulating chickens on them"

these should exist!

It looks like NPR is doing the same sort of poll:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles

Liking it, it reads (to me anyway) like a Chuck Palahniuk novel

ugh god just...no.