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

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

tbf our list was pretty whitebread too

(also #18 is noted female author Patrick Rothfuss)

he's got a great ass what can i say

No Delany, no credibility

I presume they disqualified Earthsea for being YA, which is fucking garbage when there's Schmored of the Schmings on there, plus Watership Down, The Once and Future King, Pratchett, and fifty dozen facile happy fantasyland unicorns and rainbows la di da vomitbooks.

starting in on Lanark. This better be good! the illustrated plates in the edition I have are promising

oddly had just been re-reading some Irvine Welsh as well, had no idea Gray was Scottish

Don't forget James Kelman. I think there is an entire Kelman story buried in Lanark somewhere

the first book of lanark is absolutely brilliant but I got bogged down in the biographical section

love this doc on gray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrSxH9RjBQc

Is it weird that I've never even heard of Gene Wolfe until this thread?

A little, yeah!

I have read about 80-90% of the top 60, too, but have never heard of Wolfe. Weird.
But I find it strange that some people don't know/don't care about Ted Chiang

I've just given up on Song of Ice & Fire, halfway through Book 2. I'm going to read this Gene Wolfe instead