ILB Argues About Who is the Greatest Science Fiction Author

I've only read the two upthread and The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate and the latter is without question the best time travel story ever written. It doesn't fuck around with bullshit physics, incomprehensibly tangled causal loops or alternate timelines, and although it's ostensibly (sf&) fantasy it is, even more than the two upthread, purely and transparently about the human heart. So yeah I really should seek out more of his stuff.

Working my way through Stories of Your Life and Others, finding it fairly so-so tbh, not really feeling the emotional resonances; Tower of Babylon is neat, Seventy-Two Letters feels like a weird solution to a question no-one was asking. Then I got to Hell is the Absence of God, holy shit. Like a stand up routine that ends with the comedian jumping off the stage and punching you in the stomach.

Tower of Babylon is the one that's stuck with me the most for some reason. central imagery is v memorable I guess

*don't bump*

oh, wait.

I thought I had escaped this Charybdis of a thread.

now reading 'a scanner darkly'

it is good and better than the other dicks i've encompassed, if you will. we'll see.

of the others in aimless's original list, heinlein sucks and was a dick, asimov had wonderful ideas but was a terrible writer, i like most of the others, and it's probably ballard for legit pushing the envelope

Frank Herbert should probably be included, just for Dune, if nothing else.

fyi, that list was compiled out of my exceedingly scifi-deficient knowledge base in about four minutes, tops. it was only meant as a provocation.

dune is too weird/fantasy adjacent/sui generis and niche.

I think it's a rather narrow definition of science fiction that would exclude it though.

sure but i wouldn't put him in a list of greatest authors for his one weird magnum opus. either way there's really no need to carry on arguing about yet another canon of white dudes.

so, how about we usher in Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin for a refreshing twist?

I think we could do better than that.

Joanna Russ, The Female Man. Articulate rage about the expectations for women in mid century America (marriage, children, housewifery; education? get tae fuck) in a mindbending postmodern style.

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time: I came for the feminist agrarian utopia, I stayed for the brutal picture of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship by poverty and the state.

James Tiptree Jr: The Screwfly Solution. A sublime example of using science (in this case biology and sociology) to hold up a mirror to society, done with absolute panache. Head and shoulders above 99% of other SF short stories, Aimless if you haven't read this one then start here, it won't take up much of your time.

^this last

James Tiptree Jr is really good, but I read an entire collection of hers front-to-back recently and it gets incredibly depressing after a while. If I hadn't known she was a woman I'd have thought "why does this author love making women suffer so god damned much?"

Fair enough, but if it is the main collection of her work, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, it is grebt.

Yeah, not going to disagree, just my own experience with it wore me down a little. And honestly, it's at least partly because she has important shit to say that it was so depressing. The ways in which women were and are treated, and what humans do to each other in general - those are super important topics. But it's hard to read a collection where literally every story involves rape or the prospect of it, and similar violences. My interpretation is also that she intentionally mimics that "macho sci-fi" tone of voice that was prevalent for some decades, which makes it more exhausting to me, and why I said if I didn't know she was a woman I'd feel like it was some scumbag dude getting off on making women suffer. I don't feel like any of this is doing her down as a writer, or saying that her stories aren't great, but rather explaining my own feelings while exploring that work.

not being a big reader or sci-fi i would venture to say that i would include cixin liu in my personal pantheon as his three-body problem is probably my favourite sci-fi series

emil.y agree with all of that. even if one is prepared for some brutal misogyny the 'macho sci-fi' tone does grate and make it hard to get into the stories, though it's used to particularly good effect in 'the women men don't see', where the whole story passes over the head of the macho narrator.

depressing though it is i guess it speaks to the maturity of SF that some of the most celebrated stories by women are about patriarchy and male violence (the ones mentioned above, 'the handmaid's tale', 'kindred', 'tehanu'...)

I'm sure you've had the same reaction as me to reading 1950s SF written by men tho, ledge - those stories about patriarchy and male violence HAD to be written, urgently, just because of the genre's legacy of crazy sexism and outright misogyny.

This is a difficult thing to express - but isn't Sheldon's use of the Tiptree persona, and use of 'macho' language/viewpoint, partly a 'cover' for the expression of lesbian desire in her work, and life, from what I know of her biography.

Robert Sheckley seemed to have a very golden 1950s - that NYRB collection of his short stories is enough to put him into the v top tier of SF authors.

those stories about patriarchy and male violence HAD to be written, urgently, just because of the genre's legacy of crazy sexism and outright misogyny.

yes, absolutely.

i know the hugo and nebulas are no longer the sausage parties they once were but i've just discovered the otherwise award (formerly the tiptree award) 'encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender' which I think might be a more fruitful source of un-macho sf - started in 1991, the retrospective awards in 1995 mention russ, piercy and tiptree, delany, butler, atwood, and some others i haven't heard of:

https://otherwiseaward.org/award/1995-retrospective-award
https://otherwiseaward.org/award/1995-retrospective-award/1995-retrospective-honor-list

Which, um, used to be the Tiptree Award.

which I think might be a more fruitful source of un-macho sf

― Believe me, grow a lemon tree. (ledge), Thursday, August 5, 2021 11:25 AM

Good publisher
http://www.aqueductpress.com/

I don't know if it's un-macho but woman centred swashbuckling is an interesting mission statement
https://queenofswordspress.com/

Which, um, used to be the Tiptree Award.

I recently seen Farah Mendlesohn say that Gollancz Masterworks had a shortage of women because they only pull from their own already existing catalogue (I think Lafferty was an exception?) which is apparently missing a lot of contenders despite its enormity. Gwyneth Jones recently got 5 books on the list and they were mostly Gollancz books in the first place. I'd like to see Tanith Lee on there sometime, they have a large chunk of her on ebook.

I posted that Mendlesohn interview on the speculative thread, it's really good and she stans pretty hard for Heinlein over authors she's more politically in line with, but she's convinced most people (including his fans) are wrong about him.

btw there is a great article about Cordwainer Smith and TIptree by a guy who was writing a bio of the former which I don't think he ever finished.

Oh, here is a link to download the pdf: Painwise in Space: The Psychology of Isolation in Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree, Jr., by Alan C. Elms.

Took a while but here is the index that shows more of his publications. Some have links to pdfs, including a few more about Smith, some don't, include more about Tiptree.

https://elms.faculty.ucdavis.edu/publications/

One of which is mentioned here: https://weirdfictionreview.com/2016/02/101-weird-writers-39-james-tiptree-jr/

But I can't click on those pdfs directly, I had to copy the links and repaste to browser.