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

so is the top half all delany all the time or did vote splitting leave us w/no delany, i wonder

I've only read Nova, but didn't vote for it in the end.

I'm thinking the same about Michael Moorcock (who I voted for three times!)

enjoying the slightly unpredictable, all-over-the-shop this is rolling - thinking Ballard should pop up again. Expecting to see LOTR, Scanner Darkly, Lion in my Wardrobe, Forever War, Book of the New Sun, Hitch-hikers Guide.

Was a lot of Moorcock nominated? He seems a natural vote-splitter.

Maybe if I show you a picture of Vernor Vinge he'll place higher. http://www.gbn.com/images/people/46_vernor%20vinge.jpg

Starting to think from now on it's all going to be butterflies and zebras, moonbeams and fairy tales.

i predict the #1 will be a book that most teenagers are forced to read in school.

The list so far, like SF as a whole, has too much Dick.

can't take exception to PKD, the placing of The Hobbit is some bullshit tho imo

Just see at as a sweet-natured 20th century fairy tale really. It was also the first book I properly read. But I'm feeling a bit guilty now. It's nowhere near as good as some stuff I left off.

i like it well enough but JRR is a clunker of a writer imo and I would've place more or less every book that finished below it above it

The list so far, like SF as a whole, has too much Dick.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, April 6, 2011 9:31 AM (4 minutes ago)

otm

I have halfling-fatigue like every other right-thinking person, but Tolkien had to make the list somewhere.

don't agree. being the originator don't make you the leader of the pack

Ey now, The Hobbit's a terrific yarn. It's the follow-up I have ambivalence about - applaud the ambition, wish he'd been kept on a leash a bit more.

LOTR was another I was surprised to find myself throwing a low vote to - fond of its overinvention & academic fussiness/depth spread across a 30s-ish landscape & England book. Amazingly bad passages (all that romance stuff late on!) and fairly boring stretches, but it fascinates me (like I try to imagine alternate universe in which it is an out-of-the-way book that had no success - a forgotten project of obsessive don - I would be screaming about it all day in that universe)

I gave LOTR quite a high vote but that was mainly because of what it meant to me growing up.
I think four books on my list got their position due as much to their formative influence as their absolute quality as books.

This poll isn't at all what I expected. I didn't vote (or even read the threads) because I assumed it would be just sci-fi and wizardy stuff (which, despite being named after a Michael Moorcock character, I don't read at all) but Pynchon, Shelley, Vonnegut, Huxley, Carroll, Bulgakov and MR James are some of my all-time favourites. I think the list I feared was maybe the one Shakey wanted.

I think four books on my list got their position due as much to their formative influence as their absolute quality as books.

Yeah that was the approach I took - prob more than four tbh. Although I will rep for absolute quality of LOTR, screw you all.

My LOTR vote was present-day and sincere, reread them all not long ago and it's one of those tremendous monsters of a work where the flaws just get steamrollered by the vision. Did not vote it top 5 but did vote it top 10.

I predict no Delany in this countdown. That makes me sad. In fact, it's starting to feel like the only things I voted for which will get in are LOTR and New Sun.

Will totally check out some Pohl cuz of this Poll.

It's garbage.

^^^this. I read the whole thing a few years ago and it was fun in a goofy way but it is a) really shittily written and constructed, b) oppressively smug, and c) its best ideas are liberally cribbed from other, better sources

My LOTR vote was present-day and sincere, reread them all not long ago and it's one of those tremendous monsters of a work where the flaws just get steamrollered by the vision.

^^^also cosign this. I give points for being such a seminal work.

Don't get me wrong LOTR would probably have scraped into my top 25 on it's own merit. The fact that it transformed my life as a pre-teen pushed it right up into my top 5.

I was going to agree about transforming life as a teen, but how can that possibly be true?!

Tolkien didn't make my final ballot, but it would have made a top-50.

LOTR is still my favourite "big fantasy" work, more for the layers of loss and sadness that saturate it than for the (obviously seminal) plot and characters.

I agree with that. LotR has in many ways a more adult sensibility and more depth than a lot of the fantasy that followed in its footsteps. It's not all just high adventure (though there's plenty of that too), the sense of an older, more mythical world fading away is almost tangible in the books. And when you think about, even though none of the main characters die, Sam is pretty much the only one of them who gets a traditional storybook happy ending.

whoever suggested 1984 wins, i hope they are very wrong

And when you think about, even though none of the main characters die, Sam is pretty much the only one of them who gets a traditional storybook happy ending.

And that fact then makes Sam's ending kind of sad in a way, too.

1984 shouldn't win, but I reread it several years ago and that's a good piece of writing there

everybody reads it in high school but everybody reads hamlet too and so what

I never read 1984 in high school, or any school. Or at any point in my life.

I re-read it a few years ago. it's classic status is well-deserved.

yep

jeff you are missing out on some wacky dystopian hijinks!

I can't believe all you horrible Britishes hate The Dark Is Rising and think Cooper is anti-fun. The first book in that series still makes my neck prickle with the menace and wildness of the magic that is coming to, and for, Will Stanton, and later books The Greenwich and the last one, Silver on the Tree, are quite adult for their reading audiences and hint at a lot of things that they don't say outright, which is very deftly done and not found NEARLY enough in YA lit. Silver is also hugely synthetic, if that's the right way to say it? and grabs so many images and story bits that are in our vague awareness/culture/mythology and puts them to work adding symbolism and a feeling of momentousness.

Do you hate it because of antipathy about any kind of Welsh/Irish pride stuff? The later books are p heavily Arthurian, but everything of interest is set in Wales.

Have a feeling James Morrison and myself won't be enough to get Morel in the Top Ten

The list so far, like SF as a whole, has too much Dick. ― Guayaquil (eephus!)

Fully expect it will also have too much dick, but I'll wait and see how the countdown goes on. Don't blame me, I voted for plenty of women authors.

I would guess that most of the PKD stuff that's going to place has already made it. Only one left that I would expect to place is A Scanner Darkly. maybe Man in the High Castle, can't remember if that has any serious defenders or not

if this list has no Delany on it, that will be a small victory

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/17AScanner.png
17 - Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly
131 points/10 votes/0 #1 votes

It's as corny as anything, but I once had a near-religious epiphany while reading 'A Scanner Darkly' on a bus going from Brockley to Lewisham. It wasn't so much a mind-altering/expanding bk as a text capable of bringing back certain lived lysergic experiences. Powerful and unsettling.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, May 13, 2003 3:05 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark

lol

so many great things have already made it I'm a little scared of what the upper bracket is composed of tbh

ugh, jesus! Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick

http://cdn.mos.totalfilm.com/images/r/reservoir-dogs-1992--00-630-75.jpg

lookin fwd to LOTR #1 may well re-read in celebrimbation

Man there should never be ANY PKD cover designs except these DAW ones, they are kicking my ass!

(putting in an early vote for the crazy LOTR cover designs from the early Ballantine pb's where there are like a million little stylized creatures running around)

(or the ones w the low-contrast Tolkein paintings, anything but photorealistic eagles tbh)

Woot. A Scanner Darkly is my favorite PKD.

Mine too.

mine too

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/dispossessed2.jpg?t=1302110245
16 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
132 points/9 votes/0 #1 votes

Not in the least bit trashy: 'The Dispossessed' by Ursula le Guin. Probably the best political sci-fi I've read. Including '1984'.

― Wooden (Wooden), Wednesday, August 18, 2004 2:23 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

I love books, and I love Ursula Le Guin! In fact I just wrote a paper on how she redefined traditional notions of text/literature as a ?? post-modernist author. What fun!

― kath (kath), Friday, June 11, 2004 9:54 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

This muthafucka has still never read Scanner Darkly or Palmer Eldritch. Sort of saved them for later on purpose (my time of biggest PKD reading activity was like 1989-1994).

Ursula K Le Guin hooray! Must reread them all some day.

great book, surprised to see it place so high (presumably beating out Left Hand of Darkness?) It's definitely a high point for her. I think it was the first place I really read anything that took anarchism seriously.