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

lol awesome.

Jeter did a comic in the early 90s? For Vertigo maybe? It was some Books of Magic offshoot, I think.

Mister E

btw I posted that cover on the assumption dr adder is not going to place in this horse race

That's a pretty safe assumption.

jeter's last published work is a novella from 2006 called ninja two-fifty, available on yr kindle for $2.99

There are no customer reviews yet.

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #251,750 Paid in Kindle Store

"mean star WARS hackery there btw"

He also hacked out some Star Trek actually.

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34 Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising Sequence
91 points/7 votes/0 #1 votes

THE DARK IS RISING IS THE BEST SHIT EVER. SUSAN COOPER.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 14 July 2005 18:07 (5 years ago)

^^ searching for quotes on that is the most lol intersection of n0ize doodz & britishers

also another book(s) id never even heard of

also before the next couple a note on ties:

- if a title tied on points first tie-breaker was # of votes then average placement on ballot then # of #1 votes (this was never used tho). i had so many bcuz i h8 ties, deal with it

- some of the next entries are p heartbreaking for me so

they're like worse alan garner, have you read alan garner

xpost

would never have heard of that book at all if it weren't for Mercury Rev lol

okay that's just dumb

I read some of 'em in grade school... was also a major motion picture that no one saw apparently

http://imdb.com/title/tt0484562/

All the folklore stuff in them is really annoying and anti-fun. There's like a three-page bit where one character pedantically corrects another for not pronouncing Welsh properly. f u, Susan Cooper

I remember that movie poster. I had no idea it was a book (or a series of books.)

the only reason I read the dark is rising in 4th grade was because of freaky cover art, def didn't look like other children's fantasy novels of the time, kudos art dept

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/dark-is-rising-the-pix.gif

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33 H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
93 points/7 votes/0 #1 votes

lovecrafts whole THING is hating the other--makes for awful politics and worse interpersonal relationships but AMAZING short stories

― Bobby Wo (max), Friday, 23 October 2009 03:16 (1 year ago)

I used to think he was dud but I was a fool.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 February 2003 12:34 (8 years ago)

I think the Cooper books being relentlessly grim anti-fun is a large portion of what drew me to them

I was an angsty kid before I ever had any reason to be, lol

I was such a discipline problem in 4th grade that the exasperated school system stuck me in a room by myself with my schoolwork, when I finished I could read whatever I wanted

this is the environment in which I read the dark is rising

did I mention the room was windowless? talk about relentlessly grim anti-fun!

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32 William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
93 points/7 votes/0 #1 votes

of course Naked Lunch is funny: it's just one hilarious stand-up comic routine after another!! (admittedly it might not go down well in most clubs, but there was a reason the CBGBs crowd liked Bill so much) (actually it was the wrong reason, they were just trying to be cool, but this was the reason they SHOULD have had)

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 9 January 2003 13:41 (8 years ago)

I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.

― Nelson (Muntz), Sunday, 31 March 1996 6:49 (15 years ago)

My vote for Naked Lunch is basically a vote for Burroughs' entire ouevre.

nothing i have voted for so far! yesss

lem is especially awesome, he gets compared to borges sometimes

I used to think he was dud but I was a fool.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 February 2003 12:34 (8 years ago)

Am I right in thinking the only English version of Solaris available is still the one that was translated via French? Or has there been a new translation?

I'm surprised that I've read a fair number of these. That will prob change as Lamp continues to roll them out but I've been surprised so far. I read NL in high school and don't really remember anything about it except that I gave my copy to a boy I liked and he never gave it back. :/

I didn't vote for Cthulhu because I decided on a one book per author list. Lovecraft warped me as pre-teen, to the point that I wrote my own bad horror stories with my own elder god rip-offs led by one Hloab-Guru (sadly, I don't remember all their names. I do remember their avatars met around and ever shifting surface which also had a name now lost to time, but known as The Table of Chaos ). Oh, to be 10 and under H.P.'s spell again.

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31 Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
96 points/7 votes/0 #1 votes

i just read "the three stigmata of eldritch palmer" in one evening. did a lot better than when i was a sixth-grader. i think i stopped "getting it" sometime around the sixth or seventh chapter back then ... this time i could follow it almost all the way to the end. i got more of the jokes and references this time around, too. particularly the dirty ones and the ones about religion. weird, that.

― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Wednesday, 7 June 2006 05:17 (4 years ago)

I think Dick's rep as a (technically) 'bad' writer is seriously overstated - ok he's no John Updike (thank fucking christ) w/ loads of uselessly 'poetic' observations, and being a speed freak novel-writing machine did mean his quality control wasn't always the highest, but he has great empathy for his characters, spits out a new idea every other page, can make you laugh in sympathy or horror, and generally fucks over yr mind like nobody else.

― Andrew L, Tuesday, July 2, 2002 7:00 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark

Yet more canonical books that I shouldn't admit I've never read. I did read The Dark Is Rising when I was 9 or 10; kind of surprised it didn't make a bigger impression, it's blended with all the other young people's fantasy I read back then (I have much stronger memories of tat like The Demon Headmaster).

I love Lem but only know the shorter texts; "A History of Bitic Literature" blew my mind to a greater extent than any Borges did.

xp - Oh wait - something I voted for! Hurrah!

Last time I read Three Stigmata it left me feeling psychically itchy, I was uneasy for days. Maybe Dick's most paranoid book, and that's saying something.

I read that in college while on a choir tour; it was about the only time I really didn't notice the horrible bus rides.

I should reread it, I think.

Three Stigmata is incredible

And on that DAW pb an unforgettable cover.

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30 Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
98 points/6 votes/0 #1 votes

everyone in the world has read more novels than me, so you perhaps have already read my current book (as in, the one I am reading, not my latest authored book), "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Attwood. It presents a nightmare vision of a USA rule by people like Dick Cheney.

- DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, February 8, 2003 8:35 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark

She calls The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake 'speculative fiction'.

Compound or no Compound, you're still dead.

- Archel (Archel), Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:09 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

ilx does not really have much thats good to say abt that book btw

which is a shame because it's excellent

generally speaking, ILX hates sad women

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29 M.R. James - The Collected Stories of M.R. James
101 points/6 votes/0 #1 votes

Collected Stories lives on my bedside cabinet but Xmas = M.R. James time for real. Read "Casting the Runes" again the other night cos it's pleasant enough to not kick the nightmares in i.e. at least it ends well. That thing he wrote for the Boy Scouts is maybe the wickedest piece of child-scaring I've ever read.

I know there's some James love on this board, let's try and work out why he's the best Christmas writer ever.

― http://uktv.co.uk/ can fuck right off imo (Noodle Vague), Friday, November 13, 2009 6:27 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

The late Mr. james is enjoying a boomlet!

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, December 13, 2005 9:07 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

Wish J0hn D. was posting in this thread. I bet he'd have some insights on how The Handmaid's Tale is basically COMING TRUE with all this anti-abortion/anti-woman legislation going on this year.

MR James is the best Christmas writer ever, and is also the alpha and omega of ghost story writing. Found its environmental niche right here.

He also used to ride on a safety tricycle round England n France looking at churches.

Flawless.

Haven't read any James but "Night of the Demon" is a really cool 50s film adaptation of "Casting the Runes".

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28 Fredrik Pohl - Gateway
108 points/7 votes/1 #1 vote

Frederik Pohl's Gateway -- wowed by the bleakness, the mysteries, and that ending

― a nan, a bal, an anal ? (abanana), Monday, November 29, 2010 1:08 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark

how about frederik pohl, he's pretty badass too

― moonship journey to baja, Monday, September 17, 2007 5:48 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

fwiw i know the 'gateway' cover isnt for the book but i liked it too much not to use it

Oh I see - I was o_O at a novel coming with a "Free Hint Book".

I recommended Flatland to a kid at a month ago school and he loved it, it was really gratifying.

Joining the chorus loving the covers - that L'Engle one really really makes me want to read it.

I actually read Gateway because I played that game

Only things I voted for that have shown up so far have been Lanark and M.R. James. But there's a lot of dope stuff showing up that I'm putting on my to-read list...

Nothing from my ballot has placed yet, but some stuff I'm pretty happy about.

I am assuming Mountains of Madness is the HPL which will hit top 10 or 5 since Cthulhu placed relatively low. Also yay for MR James! Be born be born!

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27 Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
110 points/13 votes/0 #1 votes

In my English 110 or something I got in, not quite trouble, but ah increased my rep as a lit-scoundrel for arguing (this was a long time ago, so details are sketchy) that the way the one guy kept quoting Shakespeare was no different from the Somatose people always reciting their mantras. That everybody's just programmed anyhow, so we should eat donuts and get fat.

This was the class where I also suggested that Lady Macbeth had recently had a miscarriage or lost an infant since there is a reference to her lactating in one of her solils. This evoked a wonderful "ewwww" from the rest of the class, and I didn't sleep with any of them.

― The Luge (Horace Mann), Friday, January 23, 2004 4:06 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark

Well, there could be a serious lack of human intimacy in my world. But I find there isn't if I make an effort, and try to connect with people, and "love is a verb, not a noun, blah blah blah" and all that.

The future of BNW *has* to be somewhat slightly appealing and/or realistic, or we wouldn't buy the idea that people would have chosen to live in it. Many Dystopian stories (Logan's Run, f'rinstance) I just can't picture how it could have happened. BNW, I could. But it wouldn't be my choice.

― the river fleet, Saturday, January 24, 2004 8:57 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

People who disparage the Soma-world are ignorant of how shitty life is for a lot of people. Free will would be great if everything else was free too

― dave q, Saturday, January 24, 2004 9:13 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

^ lowest average ballot placement in the TOP 50 fwiw