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

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.

I'm reading "What Mad Universe" by Fredric Brown...it's really great! Love sitting next to someone with a Kindle, and reading a beat-up old sci-fi paperback...

Bought some books in an Oxfam bookshop yesterday..."Who?" by Algis Budrys, "The Battle of Forever" by "A E Van Vogt" and "The Inner Wheel" by Keith Roberts...

Ayn Rand and LRH usually win public reader polls. At least NPR vetoed Anthem.

NPR poll results

lol Kushiel's Dart

lot of silly-ass Stephen King and Neil Gaiman crap on there

the existence of Feist on there signals that pretty much any old shit is go

first woman #18, first non-white writer is... uh ... back to you in a sec....

wait, I'm not kidding any more. I think every single book on here is by a white person.

Octavia Butler's gonna be piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiised

ppl voted exclusively for white people in an NPR poll? NO WAY