ILB Argues About Who is the Greatest Science Fiction Author

Typewriter in the Sky sounds p fun actually, like a proto-PKD (esp that title)

i don't think i've ever read any L.Ron. he doesn't even really pop up in the golden age collections i have.

this is interesting to read. about ol' L. Ron. good history...

"I recall his eyes, the wary, light-blue eyes that I somehow associate with the gunmen of the old West, watching me sharply as he talked as if to see how much I believed. Not much."

http://www.panshin.com/higher/hubbard.html

I tried to read Battlefield Earth in high school but didn't get very far - it is really terribly written and it is *endless*

re: lack of Olaf content ref'd upthread - it took me awhile to get a copy of Starmaker, but it lives up to its rep. It's like an extended Aristotelian thought experiment, the spiraling scope of it is v well done.

massive van Vogt appeciation on that same website:

http://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html

I tried to read Battlefield Earth in high school but didn't get very far - it is really terribly written and it is *endless*

Ditto, before I knew anything about scientology, etc. My dad saw I was reading it and was appalled, told me all about the Seaorg boat, etc

yeah I think I was vaguely aware that there was a book called Dianetics that got advertised on TV but that was it

Some say that Fear relies heavily upon not knowing the twist ending, but a horror survey spoiled the ending for me, so I'll probably never read it.

I think I first heard of Lron when the Mission Earth books started coming out and got adverts everywhere. I remember there was an intro where he defended writing shitty undeveloped characters because he was into FUN.

i STILL remember seeing the huge paperback of Battlefield Earth at Caldor in Brookfield, Connecticut when i was a kid. I have no idea why it would be so memorable other than the fact that it was huge. i'm pretty sure the only books i ever bought there were the Mr. Bill book and 101 Uses For A Dead Cat.

the dead cat guy was such a Kliban rip-off, but i didn't care.

i mean Kliban + Jack Ziegler = Gary Larson and that didn't bother me either. steal from the best. that's what i always say.

so is this just the rolling random spec fiction thoughts thread

now

But with more arguing

i can't actually remember the last time anyone argued on ILB. for some reason i am no longer a mod on ILB. which means we are moderator-less. or have been for years actually. nobody noticed.

cool let's fight

thou art a prinking varlet and so is your mother

ILB will be 12 years old this december. almost a teenager.

I'm Gonna Post Here All The Time-I Swear!

Turn back in time, you poxy fule!

my oldest kid is turning 13 in december. good grief! you can blame him for ILB. home with babby all day...

got Ballard's "Complete Short Stories" from the library over the weekend. hooooooly shit. Even having read a a fair chunk of his output, a lot of these stories are new to me, and it's crazy how almost fully-formed he was right out of the gate. I have the "Vermilion Sands" collection, which iirc is from 1971, but for some reason was unaware that a bunch of those stories date from the late 50s.

Would have been seriously put off if Vermillion Sands had been the first stuff I'd come across. Everything else is next level, those are dreadful.

That wasn't the first Ballard I read (I'm not sure what the first was, maybe Concrete Island?), but I don't think they're dreadful at all. A lot of his themes are already there, fully formed - the dreamlike, wasted landscapes, the group dynamics of cultists, the psychological unraveling of various unstable protagonists, etc.

this Ballard book continues to reap prodigious rewards, damn.

er reap return

Wish you had been liveblogging.

I'm only a little over halfway through it there's still time

I just read Concrete Island. Funny!

your one-word review will not satisfy Aimless

I've had the first volume of the Ballard short stories on my shelf for years but never touched it. What's a good one to start on?

book is pretty short too

like, what's a good story to start on? idk um "Mr. F is Mr. F"? "The Illuminated Man"? "The Concentration City"? "Prima Belladonna"?

manhole 69

that's a good one

for some reason it's the abiding memory of the collected short stories for me. I got it out the library in 2007 or something and I didn't read all of them but that was a creepy and enigmatic one

I bring that one up one whenever a new wall appears out of nowhere- it happens!- as at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament a few years ago.

Yeah that's one of the best. Also would recommend Track 12, a perfect little revenge fantasy and the mysterious and paranoiac The Watch Towers. Some of the longer ones are pretty similar, lonely scientists obsessed with deep time and playing strange power games - The Waiting Grounds gives a good example of their highly oblique but hypnotic tone.

I remember your favorite from this thread, ledge: best story in the penguin science fiction omnibus, 1973

I like everything I have read in the Ballard Collect Short Stories but just sort of chip away at it now and then rather than reading systematically or plowing through.

your one-word review will not satisfy Aimless

Heavens!

finally up to the mid-70s w Ballard collection, omg @ "The Ultimate City", so eerily perfect in composition.

reading them chronologically it's also interesting how there are often minor details that carry over from one story to the next - a variation in premise, a character name, etc.

Have never really gotten Ballard. He seems admirably dry (admirable because of the nature of the material he writes about in that dry style?), but that's about it. I don't think I ever finished Crash, but I have read a few of his stories, at least.

His style is a very unusual combination of clinical and poetic. I can't say I really like Amis' description of it as "creamy" lol. "Crash" is a singular achievement but it is also (not unsurprisingly) puts the reader in a mental space that is def not pleasant to occupy.

uh not surprisingly

that'll teach you to use the "not un-" formation!

i think crash is his best work of his that ive read - a few of his novels and a reasonable amount of his short stories - reads like a mix of pornography, a technical manual, and topographical description. also has the plus point of being "relevant" through its "prescient" exploration of celebrity culture

I haven't read all of his novels, such as the early "disaster" ones, but most days I actually think "Hello, America" is my favorite. It's got a lot of his usual tropes - obsessed/insane cult figures, dissections of mass media imagery, strange aircrafts, desolate landscapes and deserted cities - all wrapped up in a tidy bildungsroman.

I loved concrete island

I'm not sure what to say per se about Ted Chiang except he should absolutely be mentioned on this thread.

Arguably one of the best authors of sci-fi short stories ever, certainly the most consistently amazing.

Here are two of my favorite recent ones online:

http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_lifecycle_of_software_objects_by_ted_chiang

http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang

(I think about the latter pretty constantly)