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

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

What were your problems with it? I usually don't like epic fantasy but I was thinking of starting it.

I read the first book in conjunction with watching the HBO series, and can honestly say that although I enjoyed the book immensely, I felt the series was getting everything so right, appropriately condensing chapter-length 'reveals' into single scenes. Now, while reading Book 2, I feel like I'm reading a teleplay that needs editing.

read it very slowly - out loud if possible

wolfe, i mean

every time this thread is bumped the handful of formatting errors in the rundown posts eat away at me like acid

Bet nobody noticed them but you, Lamp, but that is how it goes.

Never really got into Gene Wolfe but he is such a favorite of everybody on ilx except ledge that I keep meaning to give him another chance.

Also never got a toehold on the oeuvre of that other local favorite Glen Cook, but that thing somebody posted about him complaining about the format of those Black Company collections was otm, those omnibuses are really clunky.

the second one is a big improvement on the first, actually, in terms of ugliness

It's an improvement in that it's more ugly or less ugly?

less ugly. matte printing; the digital painting fx on the cover are less .. bad; the lettering is no longer out of control. it's still not 'a good cover' but it's probably a little better than a lot of fantasy art. the spine design is pretty good. the next three are uniform with it, i think

I find Wolfe a bit impenetrable myself.

I heard recently that Damon Knight "grew him up like a bean" or something like that.

would anybody be interested if i started a book of the new sun reading club thread?

i am just startin the 4th book for the 3nd time and will soon be ready for the 4th go-round

YES

i just went looking for them all in the library the other day and no go u_u

ok

just finished canticle for leibowitz. didn't get it. meh.

Remember really liking the first third of that book, but would agree the rest was meh.

I love that book and its Luddism.

finished first book of Lanark... now on to the "Prologue". first book seemed very Lynchian to me, this dream state/purgatory world where things are only dimly understood and tangentially explained. Dunno if I'm gonna slog through all of this tbh

starting "book of the new sun" reading thread on ILB

so Lanark is suitably absorbing but I can't help but think it was a bit out of place here... I mean well over half of it is a completely straightforward biographical narrative, and the parts that aren't seem to fit more in the mold of Dante or something (granted I still have the last "book" to go)

it is in the british library science fiction 'OUT OF THIS WORLD' ergo it is science fiction

so is jane eyre

if only jane eyre were good it couldve had a spot in our countdown!

it's a thing

book 4 (and prologue too in retrospect) is more Kafka than Dante

despite enjoying the beginning i found lanark kind of a slog. frustrated man blah blah. i probably didn't 'get it'

reading Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice"... this is interesting on some levels, incomprehensible on others (I have already missed a bunch of references, I'm sure, as well as some jokes in German). On the fence about it.

I have gotten back to reading Dhalgren. It is... so good.

no

yes

That's one of the Delany's I just can't finish. 900 pages eek.

I put it down and was able to get right back into it! Really, the sections can almost be read as different stories.

his prose is so so terrible. I've read Nova, Babel 17, and couldn't finish Empire Star or Dhalgren just because the writing is so distractingly poor. cf this gem that I cited on some other thread:

"San Severina took him shopping in the open market and bought him a black velvet contour cloak whose patterns changed with the pressure of the light under which it was viewed."

this is like jr high school-grade level abuse of grammar.

But the fact is, almost any codic convention we can talk of in language matters is likely to be over determined. Where there's communication, there's redundancy—starting with the one between what's in your mind and what's in mine, which allows words to call up similar meanings for both of us. Indeed, if there's a codic rule of thumb governing the vast complex of codes which makes up life in the world, it would seem to be: the more obvious, important, and indispensable a codic convention, the more redundant it is—including this one. That results from all the other little rules, often very hard to ferret out because the obvious hides them, that obliquely replicate parts of it, that manage to reinforce much of it, that give it its appearance—in short, that make it "obvious," "important," and "indispensable" in the first place. Well, here I sit, in the middle of all these playful, sensuous sentences and codes, writing my SF, my sword and sorcery, more or less happily, more or less content. But I suspect there's little to say about writing, mine or anyone's that doesn't fall out of its sentences, or the codes which recognize and read them, the codes which the sentences are—and the sentences which are the only expressions, at least in verbal terms, we can have of the codes.

"Having to admit that it was pretty simplex after all, Jo went down in the hole to turn over the boysh and rennedox the kibblebops."

fuck Delany for writing this sentence.

Yeah, but he wrote this passage:

“There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

I think it's somewhat unfortunate that he was talented enough to get his juvenilia published. Dhalgren is a mature work by someone with some definite stylistic quirks.

you're never gonna convince me re: Delany

has anyone else read Sorokin...? he seems like a big deal in certain circles.

I didn't get that at all. I think some turns of phrase are a little odd out of context, but I've found it very readable and others have felt he was capable of teaching comparative literature, so results vary. That's probably a negative for the "those that can't, teach" lobby, though.

Really, the sections can almost be read as different stories.

OTM

i find it hard to imagine anyone who loves sf not cherishing some of those delany short stories. i think wmc is a little harsh calling the early stuff "juvenalia" -- though i guess they are, in the strict definition -- but there are fewer clunkers as he progresses for sure.

otoh i am not the most impartial critic here because his very existence on this planet is kinda inspiring to me.

I like Delany a lot. I just found Dhalgren a bit of a chore. I think I prefer the "juvenalia" frankly.

Have you guys read any Joyce stuff or Pynchon? More of a chore imo, but it's been a long time.

Read both and I find both a chore.