ᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥ THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL - NOMINATIONS & DISCUSSION THREAD ᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥ

Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Hal Clement - A Mission of Gravity
Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany - "Aye, and Gomorrah..."
Thomas Disch - "Descending"
Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld series
Philip Jose Farmer - "Mother"
Robert Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein - The Past Through Tomorrow
Damon Knight - The Man in the Tree
Kim Stanley Robinson - Three Californias trilogy (The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge)
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Peter Straub - Ghost Story
Michael Swanwick - The Iron Dragon's Daughter

When are nominations due by? Do I have time for some re-reading first?

i'm going to give the nominations at least a couple of weeks, depending on how much interest we can get

there are a bunch of fantasy thread regs that havent shown up yet that i really hope participate

Thought about nominating Dangerous Visions but wasn't sure what the ruling would be on multi-author anthologies; also, it just wouldn't make a cut of 15.

did Riverworld already

yeah any thoughts on anthologies Lamp? Dangerous Visions is a classic, but it's a can of worms.

did Riverworld already

― sleeve, Sunday, February 6, 2011 4:20 PM (55 seconds ago)

whoops, ok, then I'll make my #15:

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

nice!

i'm fine with multi-author collections but if siginificant overlap exists btw titles then ill give precedence to the title first nominated

Greg Egan - Axiomatic
Peter Watts - Blindsight
George Orwell - 1984
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells - The Time Machine
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Bram Stoker - Dracula
R L Stevenson - Jekyll & Hyde
Robert Charles Wilson - The Chronoliths
Strugatsky brothers - Roadside Picnic
Algis Budrys - Rogue Moon
John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids
John Christopher - The Death of Grass/No Blade of Grass (US, UK titles)

Man, going down to 13 is really hard!

I put 1984 up already

I already nominated Dracula.

Yeah think we have had a few of those already. I nominated Day of the Triffids.

Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
Alistair Reynolds - Revelation Space Trilogy
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
Isaac Asimov - I, Robot

Thomas M. Disch- On Wings of Song

uh

― just woke up (lukas), Saturday, February 5, 2011 2:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

What are you uh-ing, Lukas?

― My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Princess TamTam), Sunday, February 6, 2011 4:17 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark

he somehow left out all my noms. sadface.

John Crowley - Engine Summer

thanks, this is what i actually meant to nominate and somehow typed Little Big instead

Would be awesome if someone nom'd Gaiman's American Gods...

David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress

I didn't see anyone mention that Autobiography of Red is by Anne Carson, not Rachel Carson. Great book, although it seems the main character's being a monster was mostly metaphorical. I guess there were a few physical descriptions.

If no one has nominated these yet (I looked at the nominations but I didn't commit them all to memory and I'm on a phone, so cross-referencing is hard):

Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia
Thomas Disch - Camp Concentration
John Sladek - The Reproductive System
Emmanuel Carrere - The Moustache
William Pene du Boise - The Twenty-one Balloons
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days
RL Stevenson - New Arabian Nights
RL Stevenson - Fables
Friedrich Schiller - The Ghost-Seer
Jonathan Lethem - Amnesia Moon
Strugatskys - The Ugly Swans
Wiliam Beckford - Vathek
Osamu Dazai - Blue Bamboo

New Arabian Nights? really? There's the Avenging Angel (is that right? I'm sleeplessly posting on phone) story I suppose, but I'm not sure it really fits in this poll - always saw it more as a somewhat whimsical set of tales - detection stories really, if anything.

Am thinking of The Great God Pan by Machen from the same period, but in some ways wd prefer to nom The Novel of the Black Seal from the Three Impostors. Will think more when I get up and go to work.

Also, what's the view on Asimov's I Robot stories? Remember loving them as a teenager, not sure how they'd hold up now.

Okay, cross off New Arabian Nights. I just realized a second ago that I wanted to add

Stanley Elkin - The Living End

Read most of I, Robot one day while I was substitute teaching about eight years ago. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Really functional, determinedly unpretentious writing, maybe one step up from Richard Matheson in his story-as-screenplay mode.

he somehow left out all my noms. sadface.

Oops. Sorry. I knew I would do something like that. I guess at the end of noms ignore my list or at least remember to add in Lukas' noms if you do use it!

That's addressed to Lamp.

david mitchell - ghostwritten
david mitchell - cloud atlas

Am thinking of The Great God Pan by Machen from the same period, but in some ways wd prefer to nom The Novel of the Black Seal from the Three Impostors

Haven't read the latter, but either way The White People will be on my list.

I'd just like to note that Tove Jansson's Moomin series probably shouldn't count as one entry. Each Moomin book tells a finite story and the series wasn't "conceived as a single entity", as said in the nomination rules. So it would make more sense to nom separate Moomin books, not the whole series.

Marge Piercy - Woman at the Edge of Time

ON the Edge of Time , obv...

Also no Doris Lessing?

Can I get a ruling on RPG sourcebooks? Do they count as prose works?

totally nom'ming Arms + Equipment Manual for ADnD 2nd edition "i won dungeons and dragons! and it was advanced!"

Most of the SF I could think of has been nominated. Borderline perhaps, but Lanark by Alasdair Gray? Half of it is a realist 'portrait of the artist as a young man' novel, the other half is a dystopian projection of certain characters and their settings into a dystopian SF setting, with timey-wimey weirdness, sinister corporations, and a heavy allusion to HG Wells' Time Machine.
Oh, and forgive me if I've missed it, but there's no Ian M Banks.

Actually, scratch that. Of course there is some IMB upthread.

lanark has been nom'd as well

So it has. Ah well, never mind.
A dystopian projection into a dystopian setting? Argh, I need more coffee.

I am not huge on speculative fiction, but as I haven't seen them mentioned I would like to nominate

Guy Gavriel Kay - The Fionavar Tapestry
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Sarantine Mosaic
Stanislaw Lem - Mortal Engines

I'd just like to note that Tove Jansson's Moomin series probably shouldn't count as one entry. Each Moomin book tells a finite story and the series wasn't "conceived as a single entity", as said in the nomination rules. So it would make more sense to nom separate Moomin books, not the whole series.

― Tuomas, Monday, February 7, 2011 4:28 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

booooo!

fine, split the votes :(

if I have to nominate just one it is Tales From Moominvalley.

wheres ilx poster thomp, i wouldve thought he'd be all up in this

v flattered! er i've barely been around this week, family health issues, um let's see

lord dunsany, the king of elfland's daughter
michael bishop, philip k. dick is dead, alas
philip k. dick, galactic pot-healer
robert sheckley, options
tove jansson, moominvalley in november

and beyond that i'll think about it, i guess.

i suppose to be honest to my younger self i need to nominate

margaret weis and tracy hickman, the dragonlance chronicles

by which for the sake of clarity i refer to the original trilogy and not any latterday sequels or expanded-world business

Brian Aldiss - Hothouse
Iain M Banks - Look to Windward
Iain M Banks - The Player of Games
China Mieville - The City & The City
Phillip Reeve - The Mortal Engines Quartet

xp - I fully expect an army of lurkers to put Dragonlance at #1.

I want to nominate some Roald Dahl but his stuff fills the full spectrum tween real and fantasy and I'm not sure where to draw the line

Well, OK, if no-one else will

Doris Lessing - The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
Doris Lessing - The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

Also

Jack Vance - Big Planet

They are, of course, both part of the Canopus in Argos but they're different stories (in the same way I suppose that Banks novels are about the Culture) so they should count separately, yes?

This list is looking pretty good, and you now have his novel but you still don't have

Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man

which has all the short fiction- "Scanners Live in Vain," "The Game of Rat and Dragon," etc.

list of nominees so far:

Alan Garner - The Owl Service
Alan Garner - The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen
Alasdair Gray - Lanark
Algis Budrys - Rogue Moon
Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space trilogy
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester - "Fondly Fahrenheit"
Alfred Bester - "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed"
Anne Carson – Autobiography of Red
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke - The City & The Stars
Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Arthur Machen - "The White People"
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan

Barry Malzberg - Beyond Apollo
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Brian Aldiss - Hothouse
Bruce Sterling - Islands In The Net

Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Herland
China Miéville – Perdido Street Station
China Miéville- The City & The City
China Miéville – The Scar
Christopher Priest - The Affirmation
Christopher Priest - Inverted World
Clive Barker – Imajica
Cordwainer Smith – Norstrilia
Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man (1993)
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
C.L. Moore - "The Vintage Season"
C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia

Damon Knight - The Man in the Tree
Dan Simmons – Hyperion
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
David Lindsay - A Voyage to Arcturus
David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
David Mitchell - Ghostwritten
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Diana Wynne Jones - Archer's Goon
Diana Wynne Jones - The Dalemark Quartet
Doris Lessing - The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
Doris Lessing - The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)

Edward Bellamy – Looking Backward
Edwin Abbott Abott - Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Emmanuel Carrere - The Moustache

Frank Herbert - Dune
Frank Herbert - The Jesus Incident
Franz Kafka - The Collected Stories (Schocken; 1971)
Frederick Pohl - Jem
Frederick Pohl - Gateway
Fritz Lieber - "A Pail of Air"

Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe - Latro in the Mist
Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus
George R R Martin - Song of Fire and Ice
Glen Cook - The Black Company
George Orwell – 1984
Greg Egan - Axiomatic
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Fionavar Tapestry
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Sarantine Mosaic

Hal Clement - A Mission of Gravity
Harlan Ellison - "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
H.G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
H.P. Lovecraft - "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"
H.P. Lovecraft - "The Call of Cthulhu"
H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness
H.P. Lovecraft – “The Whisperer in Darkness”

Iain M. Banks - Look to Windward
Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games
Isaac Asimov - "The Last Question"
Isaac Asimov – Foundation
Isaac Asimov – I, Robot

Jack Vance - Big Planet
Jack Vance - Tales of the Dying Earth
James Tiptree - "The Girl Who Plugged In"
James Tiptree - "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever"
J.G. Ballard – The Drowned World
J.G. Ballard - High Rise
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up
John Christopher - The Tripod trilogy
John Christopher - The Death of Grass/No Blade of Grass
John Crowley - Little, Big
John Crowley - Engine Summer
John Crowley – “The Great Work of Time”
John Sladek - The Reproductive System
John Varley - "The Persistence of Vision"
John Wyndham - The Chrysalids
Jonathan Lethem - Girl in Landscape
Jonathan Lethem - Gun, With Occasional music
Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph
JRR Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
JRR Tolkien - The Hobbit
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days
Julian May - Pliocene Exile

Kim Stanely Robinson - The Mars trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson - Three Californias trilogy
Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
K.W. Jeter - Dr. Adder
K.W. Jeter - The Glass Hammer
Koushun Takami - Battle Royale

Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes - Dream Park
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye
Larry Niven - Ringworld
Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles
Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter

M. John Harrison – Viriconium
Madeleine l'Engle - A Wrinkle In Time
Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time
Margret Atwood - Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman - The Dragonlance Chronicles
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Mervyn Peake – Gormenghast
Michael Bishop - Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas
Michael Moorcock - Cornelius Chronicles
Michael Moorcock - Dancers at the End of Time
Michael Swanwick - The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Michelle West - The Sun Sword

Neal Stephenson – Anathem
Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
Neil Gaiman – American Gods
Nevil Shute - On the Beach
Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood
Olaf Stapledon - Sirius
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game (first book only!)

Patricia A. McKillip - The Riddle-Master trilogy
Peter Straub - Ghost Story
Peter Watts - Blindsight
Philip Jose Farmer – Riverworld
Philip Jose Farmer - "Mother"
Philip K. Dick – Clans of the...
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Philip K. Dick - VALIS trilogy
Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick - Galactic pot-healer
Philip K. Dick - Collected Stories Vol. 4 (pub Citadel 1954-1964)
Philip K. Dick - Ubik
Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials
Phillip Reeve - The Mortal Engines Quartet
Pohl & Kornbluth - The Space Merchants

R.L. Stevenson – Strange Case of Jekyll & Hyde
R.L. Stevenson – Fables (1896)
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury - Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury - The October Country
Richard Adams – Shardik
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
Robert Charles Wilson - The Chronoliths
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein - The Past Through Tomorrow
Robert Jordan – The Wheel of Time
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside
Robert Sheckley - Options
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow
Roger Zelazny - The Amber Series
Rudy Rucker - Software/Wetware/Freeware/Realware
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker

Samuel Butler – Erewhon
Samuel R. Delany – Babel-17
Samuel R. Delany – Nova
Samuel R. Delany - The Einstein Intersection
Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany - "Aye, and Gomorrah..."
Sean Russell - Moontide & Magic Rise
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - Memories of the Future
Stanislaw Lem - Mortal Engines
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Stanislaw Lem - His Master's Voice
Stanislaw Lem - The Cyberiad
Stanley Elkin - The Living End
Stephen Donaldson - The Chronicles of Thomas Convenant
Stephen King - The Stand
Steven Erikson – Malazan Book of the Fallen
Strugatsky brothers - Roadside Picnic
Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising

Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow & Thorn
Ted Chiang - Stores of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang - The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Thomas Disch – 334
Thomas Disch – Camp Concentration
Thomas Disch - "Descending"
Thomas Disch- On Wings of Song
Thomas Ligotti - Songs of A Dead Dreamer
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying Of Lot 49
Tom Godwin - "The Cold Equations"
Tove Jansson – Tales From Moominvalley
Tove Jansson - Moominvalley in November

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guin - Tales of Earthsea trilogy
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Compass Rose

Victor Pelevin – Oman Ra

Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
William S. Burroughs - The Red Night Trilogy
William Gibson – Neuromancer
William Gibson – Burning Chrome
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
William Morris – News from Nowhere
William Pene du Boise - The Twenty-one Balloons

Yevgeny Zamaytin - We

so the following ppl had duplicate nominations:

ismael klata +2
ears are wounds +1
omar little +1
eephus! +1
alex in sf +2
peter in montreal +1
pixel farmer -1
james morrison +2
bamcquern +1

the following were removed from the list:

JG Ballard - The Complete - not sure which edition or version you wanted
M R James - Complete Ghost Stories - title doesnt exist?
Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - tempted to put this back in now, sorry
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman - this is really far out of the poll's scope

i combined the three narnia nominations into a single one for the chronicles - i can break this back up if the person nominating really wants. i did the same for the earthsea trilogy

Here's some noms, will post more later:

Connie Willis - Doomsday Book
Bob Shaw - Who Goes Here?
Tove Jansson - Moominland Midwinter
Michael Ende - The Neverending Story
Octavia Butler - Kindred

Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman - this is really far out of the poll's scope

I've never read this one, but I've always assumed it's some kind of surreal fantasy novel - is it not?

Just a little tech tip for everyone - you can find things in a thread by pressing ctrl-f and typing a name or other word, and thereby avoid duplicate nominees. Hope that helps!