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Keeping it bumped…

My problem is Gulliver's Travels. If I vote for it, it has to be number one. But maybe I just want to vote more narrowly. I don't know.

thanks 4 bumping this!

so, please vote. its important!

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore. So e.g. no Wittgenstein's Mistress even though it's fantastic. It's just not what I think of when I think of spec fic, nawotimean? Something along the lines of, the worldbuilding is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore.

Yeah, I think I'll do this.

Ballot sent!

It was hard getting it down to 25. It was an honest list, no tactical fiddling, so who knows if any of it will place.

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore

Me too. All SF&F here.

lamp do u want ~commentary~ with the ballots

if you want to thatd be awesome, i avoided asking for any because i think it makes ppl less likely to vote & id like a lot of ballots

I'll probably vote, even though I didn't nominate as I wasn't entirely sure what came under the banner or not. Though having said that, why bother making it 'speculative fiction' if all people are going to vote for is sci-fi and fantasy? That's like having an electronic music poll where people only vote for techno (and that would NEVER happen on ilx, right?). I'll stick to my literary fiction, thank you.

(By the way, in my comparison Delia Derbyshire = Borges.)

haha yeah i hear what yr saying but im hoping its mainly sci fi + fantasy just cuz thats a huge blindspot w/ my reading + i want to use this poll to draw up an awesome list. i dont need help finding out abt calvino/murakami/borges etc

True, but I'd rather see either a pure SF&F poll or find out which books of that genre stand up enough to make it with the 'canonical' literature in a poll like this, rather than knowing that most people are going to treat it like the former even though it's not supposed to be. Also, what about the horror? If someone tells me that the Dungeons & Dragons manual is better than Poe, I'm inclined not to take them very seriously.

will vote but will have to think about this a bit

I think the amount of genre-quibbling in the noms process that would result from trying to have a pure SF&F poll is not worth it tbh.

xp emil.y - tell me what the equivalent of Hennix on this poll is, and i'll read it.

poe is spec-fic imo. 'speculative' is just a catch-all for all these genres, poe is genre fic and swift ain't. imo. imo imo. sorry for starting this argument (again).

Ledge, I agree - what I was saying is this is a speculative fiction poll, not a pure SF&F poll, so don't ignore people like Poe just because they're not SF! Also, I think there may be some of that ol' reverse snobbery going on, in that people want to rep for their SF underdogs rather than the more canonical stuff. Which isn't always a bad thing - as in, you may consider pure SF to be more 'speculative' than Poe, so you bump it up a notch. But that's re-ordering, not excluding.

And sarahel, ha, I wish I knew the answer to that one. Maybe I shall make it a quest to find out.

emily my problem with mixing 'canonical' stuff with more traditonal or typical genre works is that the criterion im using to judge each are fairly different & attempting to stand one against the other often loses what vital about each work. but i think in a poll like this that tries to be as big tent as possible its impossible to find a clear line or a common set of criterion that ppl are using to evaluate the works.

but max really p much has to vote in this imo

two ballots!

encourage everyone to vote btw - sarahel you should vote too imo

Will definitely vote, and I think I can talk my wife (an occasional ilxor) into doing a ballot as well.

I haven't read nearly enough of these to justify voting, but right here, right now, I vow to read the top 5 placings by the end of this calendar year.

although if i were to vote my number 1 would be either lolcanon Dune or Neuromancer

narrowing down my ballot, got it down to one work per author, except for le guin *shakes fist at le guin*. earthsea or left hand? argh.

haven't read any more than a tiny fraction of this list

I haven't read nearly enough of these to justify voting

just vote - send in a short list if you think its necessary but the more ppl that vote the better

also bump obvs

Psyched for this--am going to have to think about rankings very carefully.

this poll is pretty strange to me because a) i haven't read the majority of the entries, while in various ilm polls i've probably at least heard most things once or twice; b) it seems, in a lot of cases, to be comparing apples and oranges; and c) there's a difference between what i think is probably 'best' and what meant the most to me as a child (which is when i read most of these). i am not a christian and can see ppls' issues with them, but the narnia books were just huge to me as a kid, not least because my mom and i read them together when i came home for lunch in kindergarten (my school was on my block).

anyway, i tried to find some mix in voting, which i have now done amen.

I wish I had nominated The Atrocity Exhibition.

Is that Lucius Shepard nom correct or should it have been three different choices?

Saw some copies of Inverted World at the Strand yesterday and thought of this thread. You still have time to read it and vote for it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-X3yXOknJQ

bump!

Lamp -

do you want a numbered list, or just a authors and names?

ranked is preferably if using the very basic 1st = 25 points system so if you want/need to provide an unranked ballots i just give each title the same # of points.

ugh if = i'm

ballot sent!

I have my ballot done, but I'm letting it sit and will ponder it a couple of times before sending it. I want to make sure I don't regret my last few cuts.

Couple of things on the list that I have been meaning to read forever and own copies of, wonder if I should make the effort in the next few weeks.

But who am I kidding

bump!

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

Currently whittling

Lamp - did you get my ballot?

catching up on a couple entries - read Babel 17 and Rendezvous with Rama over the last week. Babel 17's the third book I've read of Delany (well, I never finished Dhalgren) and dude's style just straight up annoys me, even when I find some of the underlying ideas/concepts intriguing I get irritated with how sloppily he structures things, and how distracting his prose is.

ez i did, sorry i thought i had sent confirmation emails to everyone

dude's style just straight up annoys me, even when I find some of the underlying ideas/concepts intriguing I get irritated with how sloppily he structures things, and how distracting his prose is.

This goes for vast amounts of SF tbh, I just try and ignore the substandard writing.

No problem. I didn't get an email is all.

This goes for vast amounts of SF tbh, I just try and ignore the substandard writing.

sure but Delaney's rep seems to place him above yr garden-variety pulp toiler - I mean dude is a lit professor, won numerous awards, gets tons of critical hosannas and snazzy reprints, etc.

I have no idea how I am going to vote in this

Delany knows exactly what he wants to do with his prose; "distracting" I'll definitely cosign, but not "sloppy".

Then again I haven't read too much early Delany; my estimation is based on Triton and the Neveryon stuff and The Mad Man.

apart from this the other one I've read was Nova. Started Dhalgren, never finished. An example of the sloppiness I'm referring to - and hey maybe it is totally deliberate, but that only makes it even more irritating imho - is how he handles the expository passages in Babel 17 that provide background details on the universe the characters inhabit. There are allusions to a war, to Invaders/the Alliance, very early on and the reader isn't given any indication as to what the war is about, what the two conflicting sides are actually composed of (humans? aliens? robots?), and the story moves along fine without providing these details. The reader is led to believe that this is either inconsequential or will be revealed later, if it does actually merit any significance. But no, about 2/3rds through the book, completely disconnected from anything the characters are doing/discussing, he drops a couple paragraphs about how many star-faring races there are, and how long the war has been going on and then - hey, back to the plot! And I'm just like, WHY? This is so pointless and distracting, if you were gonna drop this kind of background info why didn't he do it up-front, instead of burying it in the middle, apropos of nothing, long after the reader has accepted that this stuff isn't important? This is shitty writing.

I'd intended to nominate, but was a bit distracted last month. Most of the things I'd vote for are present, but if I may suggest a glaring omission from the nominations list:

Harlan Ellison (ed) - Dangerous Visions (1967)

In the opinion of many, including myself, the most important anthology ever in the speculative fiction genres.

Overrated imo ;)

I've not read it in a good few years though.

Sent, if that's ok, sorry it's so late. If it's any consolation I'm in a great deal of alcohol related pain. Been vaguely switching attention between the cricket and this, and kept losing focus.

Oh no fuck damn I forgot Ligotti in my ballot!

Wow, Fisk was prolific, huh. I definitely read A Rag..., and Escape from Splatterbang rings a bell as a title, but can't recall anymore than that. I didn't vote for any YA stuff (except Earthsea I spose), but would like to revisit at least some of the titles that have left a lingering echo down the decades.

Don't worry, I voted for all the YA stuff for you.

Just fired off a very hastily assembled ballot all the way from Brazil. Sorry for lateness!

Oh no guys Diana Wynne Jones died today...

Oh no! RIP DWJ, I've never read a bad book by her.

oh man ;_; rip...

um wow

thank you so much to everyone who has sent in a ballot! if anyone is on the fence & has a few minutes ill accept anything that comes in before i check my email on monday morning ~ 10:30 a.m. EST. so ilx poster thomp i fully expect something from u

I want to slip Ligotti into my ballot as #12 and bump out my #25, problem is my personal email addy @yahoo doesn't seem to reach u Lamp and I won't have access to my work email til Monday...

Also it probably doesn't really matter but it SEEMS v important at the mo

i have voted. since there are almost twenty hours left i would like to negative vote by exhorting anyone still considering sending a ballot to not vote for george r.r. martin. also, dear lord why am i not voting for these, other people please vote for them:

lud-in-the-mist
joan aiken
pamela zoline

ok thanks

Why the Martin hate?

it's because i think he's awful

Well argued.

Diana Wynne Jones RIP :(

i had Invention of Morel at #10, I think

will vote 2nite

exhorting anyone still considering sending a ballot to not vote for george r.r. martin.

I didn't, but if that one about the dead dude from the rock band getting reincarnated was on there I might have had to for nostalgia's sake!

Sent a hastily assembled ballot that I will probably regret.

ditto - thanks Lamp!

tom didnt you put one of that awful writer's books on your end of the decade list

i did that in the full knowledge it was an awful book by an awful, awful man

looool

okay so poll is closed ive got the final list tallied unfortunately i scheduled the voting to end right around the end of the semester. tentatively id like to start counting down the TOP 50 next week but it may be the week after.

thank you again to all who participated, should be a fun countdown

you gotta be shitting me

we wuz robbed.

Haha at WmC's current screenname.

lud-in-the-mist

I thought Elizabeth Hand was married to Richard Grant (the sff novelist not the Withnail actor). Then again that was years ago...

I believe he is the father of her children, yes, Jon.

Just bought a copy of your favorite book, The Man In The Tree, Rock.

Starting to fear that Lamp is going to use our ballots as data for a term paper he has to write.

haha i wish i just have a bunch of tedious marking to do... also a paper to write.

anway it didnt take that long to do the quote hunting/img formatting so i should be good to go next monday.

can you just give us the ones that didnt make top 50 this week

no rush Lamp! thx so much

Please please spell Bioy Casares name correctly on the results thread.

Just realised I (and everyone else) completely forgot Greg Bear and 'Blood Music'

I've avoided Greg Bear. Seems like a dick. It is weird to me how many sci-fi guys came out of the same UC San Diego scene though (Bear, Vinge, KS Robinson)

I liked Blood Music. I don't think it would have made my final ballot, but it was a good read. His new novel looks interesting.

hey guys. can the uplift storm trilogy be read without reading the first three books?

Yes.

I've not read the first three.

His new novel looks interesting

It's pretty good. I'm no big Bear fan, but Blood Music, Eon and Anvil of God are all pretty amazing, and Quantico was very good indeed (while stuff like Dead Lines, Vitals, Strength of Stones, crappy movie tie-ins etc can all go away)

hey guys. can the uplift storm trilogy be read without reading the first three books?

Oh wait, crap, is THAT what I voted for? I thought it was a typo and I was voting for the actual (great) Uplift trilogy, not the inferior sequel!

xpost aw shit Strength Of Stones is no good? The concept sounded awes and I was looking forward to reading it at some point.

From (fairly faded, admittedly) memory it (Strength of Stones) was clever but pretty dull

(reads amazon summary) sounds like a buncha wank imo.

Anvil of God

forge of god? or anvil of teh stars? or both? i've read the first, was pretty dope, but the second doesn't get stellar reviews.

I thought the novella of Blood Music was stronger than the full novel. I considered nominating it, but I wouldn't have voted for it so I didn't.

Forge of God! That's the one I meant, it was excellent. Couldn't really see how a sequel was possible, so I ignored it.