ILB Argues About Who is the Greatest Science Fiction Author

B-b-but what about Aldiss? What separates him from the pack?

not much I just figured I'd go alphabetically

One of the signs of being on the spectrum.

what can I say, I was raised by a librarian. I alphabetize shit.

Okay, ping me when you get to Zelazny.

so yeah, Aldiss. I've read two books of his, attempted and never finished a third, plus a smattering of short stories (not all of which I can immediately recall). The two books I do rate very highly - "Barefoot in the Head" and "Report on Probability A" - are both stylistic and formal exercises more than anything else, and as such more conventional metrics of fiction writing (plot mechanics, characterization, dialogue, etc.) are not relevant, as they are not really employed in any standard, recognizable way. "Barefoot in the Head"'s structure mirrors the progressive psychological states typical of a psychedelic trip. Things begin slowly and with giddy optimism, gradually building to a frenzied "peak", followed by the inevitable comedown. The text is an amalgam of Burroughs-style cutup, jumbled slang, songs/poems, typographical experiments, and stream-of-consciousness narrative. It is possible to discern plot points in the chaos, as well as recurring themes and imagery - driving and cars and their perpetual forward motion are central (in a way that perhaps presages fellow New Worlds contributor Ballard's "Crash" nearly a decade earlier), as are a commitment to simultaneously maintaining multiple points of view. The ostensible plot centers around a messianic protagonist, Charteris, against the backdrop of a Europe that has been devastated by successive wars involving the massive deployment of psychotropic drugs into the environment. The protagonist becomes the chosen one/messiah of a huge gang of motorized followers, who stream across Europe towards an eventual violent end. Chapters written in a more or less conventional format (Charteris addresses his followers, miraculously survives a huge crash, etc.) are interjected with pages featuring song lyrics by the musicians that are following Charteris, or a page consisting entirely of iterations of the word "acid" in the shape of skull (ASCI-image style), etc. I'm not sure what other points of comparison can be made for these kinds of interjections and textual trickery - which bear more similarity to things like pop art than other contemporary lit - certainly there's some precedents in e.e. cummings and Alfred Bester and Burroughs and probably some others I'm unaware of, but they contribute very much to the novel's "anything can (and might) happen at any moment" feel. The book is a rush, dreamlike, not always coherent but with enough density that underlying patterns can be discerned and enjoyed and picked apart. It is *very* 60s, a reflection of psychedelic anxiety and hysteria, in love with the violence of free association.

"Report on Probability A" is completely different (hilariously it is listed as a "fantasy" novel in the "Also by" column of my copy of "Barefoot in the Head") in construction and themes, but is similarly built around a strong underlying premise. It is about surveillance and observation and the crippling inactivity and anxiety produced when all one does is sit and watch something; it's a book about people watching other people watching other people - ie a book where nothing happens. Instead of plot action what we get is a series of nested narratives where different subsets of characters are observing each other. iirc (it's been 10+ years since I read it, forgive me if some details are fudged - they don't really matter anyway) there's a couple in a shack who are supposed to be spying on someone in a large country house. Detailed descriptions of the environs are provided. Motives and characterization are not. Then it turns out the spies in this world (which is the titular Probability A) are also being spied on by some people in another dimension, who are in turn being spied on by people in yet another dimension - with the parallels piling up such that the reader is implicated as being one in just a series of realities observing other realities through the prism of the book, all begging the question of who's observing the reader. The overwhelming effect of the book is one of tension and paranoia - no resolution is ever provided. It sounds a bit dry in practice, and it is, but it's compelling for the way it's telescopic construction, where the eye of the narrative keeps backing out and out and out until nobody in the book, much less the reader, can maintain any sense of certainty or autonomy. Obvious shades of Kafka and Dick and Foucault.

After loving these two I started on "Cryptozoic", written around the same time as the others, and was startled at what a mess it was. Comparatively a straightforward narrative with classic sf themes of time travel and drug-induced states but everything about it was unengaging and tiresome. Where more standard plotting and character devices would have served him well, he just failed. Moorcock (who frequently commissioned and included material from Aldiss, including various sections of "Barefoot in the Head", for "New Worlds", the magazine he was then editing) has commented that Aldiss benefited from editorial guidance, that he flourished when he was given clear tasks. Which would seem to be borne out by my reading experience - "Barefoot in the Head" and "Report on Probability A" work so well because they are grounded in strong core concepts and executed with these sort of pre-laid restrictions in place, everything is in service to the central idea. But when it comes to more standard storytelling, he's less effective. That being said, if others here have other recs for Aldiss I would certainly entertain them. He's written a great deal of which I've read only a fraction, it's entirely possible (if not likely) that I'm missing out on some key works.

apologies for numerous grammatical errors

the (much superior) fantasy genre

?!?!?!?

In the spirit of this thread, would be interested in some current fantasy recommendations: I frequently find it hard enough picking out good SF from the dross, and have no idea with fantasy, since all the stuff in the bookshops seems to be desperately marketed as either Game of Thrones-lite or Tolkien-lite: not saying that's what it IS, but that's how it's presented, and I have no interest in either

def feel ya on that. the endless serialized novels featuring quests and savior figures and *zzzzzzzzz*

otoh I never would have guessed at the quality of Gene Wolfe's fantasy stuff based on how it's marketed/presented

Also gtfo any book which relies on a "prophecy" to push the plot along

I know I am the mjh street team in this thread, but does the word Viriconium mean anything to you, James M?

Yes indeed--i have it and really like it. It's that sort of thing that would interest me: I came to it via SF, having read several of his novels in that genre.

By "it" I mean the Fantasy Masterworks omnibus of Virconium stories

James, I would like to recommend to you the work of Elizabeth Hand.

I will investigate her this weekend. Cheers!

words to live by from van Vogt: "When I opened a book in a library to see whether I would borrow it or not, if the paragraphs were too long, I didn't borrow it."

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 October 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

One for the 'ppl who figured out how to live' thread.

To each his own.

Is skot posting all these vV quotes because:
1) He thinks it will help Aimless understand the genre better
2) He read someone mention his posting style upthread and he wants to make good on that
3) He is just being skot

4) Because they are hilarious and the thread can have hilarity from both vV and Aimless.

Hah? Would you buy that for a quarter?

but it is not true of, say, academia, which has generated a rich and expansive critical discourse (one that is nonetheless not as old or as large as the academic discourse around more mainstream lit)

Most of the academic writing I've seen about SF has little to do with what is good or bad about the writing, but rather what ideas the text contains, or at least which ideas can be used as a jumping off point to write about politics, gender, etc.

probably a reflection of authors' own priorities there, to some extent.

also reflects that SF became a matter of academic concern in the current age

haha yes

should I do Armstrong or Aylett next or just skip straight to Ballard (feel like we already covered Asimov well enough)

actually feel like Milton covered Ballard p well too now that I think about ti

i just read SF writers on SF. because, man, they loooooove to talk about themselves and their stories and their ideas and other people's stories and ideas. but i kinda love that. i love when i get a short story collection and EVERY story has a two page introductory essay by the writer explaining the exact circumstances of their writing the story. you don't really get that with any other genre.

haha yeah I have a copy of Clans of the Alphane Moon that came with a fantastic afterward by Malzberg that apes PKD's writing style.

the recent Silverberg omnibus short story collections all contain introductory texts by Bob, they're great

I def prefer reading the supplementary material in More Dangerous Visions to most of the stories themselves

That reminds me to get a copy of Charles Platt's Dream Makers now that it's not a collector's item anymore. I had it in my teens and foolishly sold it for a buck.

i just read SF writers on SF. because, man, they loooooove to talk about themselves and their stories and their ideas and other people's stories and ideas. but i kinda love that. i love when i get a short story collection and EVERY story has a two page introductory essay by the writer explaining the exact circumstances of their writing the story. you don't really get that with any other genre.

i think some people are incapable of reading SF because you do have to read it differently than you would lit fic and you have to learn how to do this and this might take time and effort that a lot of people don't want to expend. like opera! you just can't compare it to straight fiction. not critically. i don't think. it would be like comparing lit fic to a poem or a painting or a comic book. they are just different things with different rules. the best sci-fi writers are often beloved for reasons that have little to do with trad literary elements. i think we have established that here. malzberg's blurb about vV explains it pretty well. just as a poet or painter can get to the heart of something that a novelist can't, good SF writers can take the human imagination to places that a trad novelist never could. or wouldn't even think to.

( i mean if you want to get INTO it for real it takes time and effort to get used to the form. not if you're just gonna read ender's game or ready player one or whatever. SF can obviously be enjoyed on the fly...)

SF definitely does stuff that trad lit just... doesn't. which is not to say there are not SF writers with trad lit qualities, because there definitely are.

people enthusiastically recommending Ready Player One around my office kinda bumming me out

just finished the coyote trilogy by allen steele - trad heinleinian space opera stuff - and there is no way in hell anyone not already interested in science fiction is ever gonna read those things. even though they are entertaining and straightforward and suspenseful and have sympathetic characters and all that. i wouldn't necessarily recommend them to anyone either! but i'm glad i read them. that's kinda my definition of genre fandom. i will read all these books that are not really great but they give me that thing that i like.

Definitely feel that it helps to make analogies with the way genres work in film or music and to understand that different rules are in play.

Two of the inherent problems in answering the original poster in the terms he demanded is that:
1) He wanted us that champion and sing the praises of our particular favorites, when in fact that there tends to be so much of that kind of thing within the world of the fans and the writers that some of us might want to steer clear of it and use other rhetorical devices such as late posting styleterse understatement.
2)He wanted us not to refer back to other opinions, but instead generate our own unmediated opinions of our untarnished uninfluenced encounters with the text themselves. How easy this can be if it is even possible at all for any kind of writing is a good question but in such a self-referential genre of SF it is particular challenging. I mean you don't listen to a Parliament album and then say afterwards "but my dear Mr. Clinton you have evaded the premises of your own proposition, you never satisfactorily explained what the funk really is."

lol @ P-Funk analogy

ugh ready player one was the worst.

just read about this in an old issue of Analog. would like to look at it. lots of essays by sf writers.

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Science-Fiction-Education-Tomorrow/dp/0913896152

putting this here so that i remember to read it later.

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/teaching.htm

I loved that Van Vogt interview, especially this bit -

I write with total conscious craftsmanship. I'm always aware of the techniques I employ---my eight-hundred-word scenes, my five-step process, my fictional sentences, my presentation units.

You can tell why you liked dianetics!

Prompted me to dig out my Van Vogt holdings, all unread (by me) as yet - Weapon Shops of Isher (great cover by my fave SF artist, Bruce Pennington, who also did the New English Library cover for Dune); Voyage of the Space Beagle; The Anarchistic Colossus; The Mind Cage; Quest for the Future - think the first two are meant to be among his big hits?

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5526/11510739785_074cacdfc9_b.jpg

Weapon Shop of Isher is a fixup - one of the stories it includes ("The Weapon Shop") was included in Silverberg's Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. 1 collection. This is to-date the only Van Vogt I've read and it has a very strange tone throughout, not the least of which can be attributed to its not very subtle didactic point about weapons ownership as a bulwark against tyranny. But motivations are generally both obscure and mutable, and I had a hard time just determining who Van Vogt thought were the real protagonists/antagonists of the story. I wouldn't say it was good exactly, but it has stuck in my mind.

Dick's favorite was Null-A iirc

I think Slan is his biggest hit.

Did he get sucked the whole way into scientology or not rich enough to get in?

Splendid as always, Ward; thanks. Here's Alfie Bester on his method, influences, strange encounter with boyhood hero Campbell, much else--think this might've started as background notes for publisher, re book jacket flap thumbnail bio, turned into excellent jazz spiral:
http://www.loa.org/sciencefiction/biographies/bester_writings.jsp

(I tend to think of science fiction as jazz)

Also his career in comics; nobody's mentioned comics yet, have they? Sorry if I missed it; feel like I have to duck in and out of here quickly and rarely, no offense.

I've never felt that the main genres of fiction read that differently. I don't feel like I have to approach reading them differently.
I think the values really depends on the writers.

Most of the academic writing I've seen about SF has little to do with what is good or bad about the writing, but rather what ideas the text contains, or at least which ideas can be used as a jumping off point to write about politics, gender, etc.

Not an expert, and can only write from a UK perspective, but there was def a pre-structuralist/semiotic but postwar tradition of British intellectual engagement with SF, somewhat tied to the universities, where there were Science Fiction societies, and epitomised by Kingsley Amis' New Maps of Hell - eg Amis v. matey with Brian Aldiss. It was also part of a larger appreciation for certain aspects of what became known as popular culture. Being old school style lit crit, there was plenty of evaluation of good and bad, and it only really went away here after French Theory had become deeply embedded within the teaching practices of British Higher Education Literature Departments - the whole idea of good and bad and value and critical perspective had been irreversibly problematised. Now, saying what's good and bad about the writing is the province of fans, and of us lot, right here, and across the interweb to infinity and beyond.

SF always best read mildy stoned, obv.