(that's Love To The Grave, not Place lol)
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 May 2021 09:50 (two years ago) link
The only one of these I've read is La Place de L'Étoile, but I still feel good about voting for it – it's a Major Work, and fun to boot.
Definitely need to read the Baldwin!
― Mark E. Smith died this year. Or, maybe last year. (bernard snowy), Monday, 17 May 2021 12:01 (two years ago) link
Has anyone read the Manuel Puig? Dalkey Archive very much wants me to...
― Mark E. Smith died this year. Or, maybe last year. (bernard snowy), Monday, 17 May 2021 12:04 (two years ago) link
The ones I've read:Rite Of Passage by Alexei Panshin - interstellar SF with strong moral dilemmas and a realistically-drawn teenage girl protagonist, unusually for the time. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick - a very different beast from Blade Runner, one of his best.Nova by Samuel R. Delany - can we call this proto-cyberpunk? A lot better than the previous year's The Einstein Intersection.Outer Dark by Corman McCarthy - I much prefer McCarthy in gothic horror mode. Rinthy might be the best character name ever devised.A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin - brilliantly devised and written, and maybe not even the best of the Earthsea trilogy. JK who?2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke - haven't read it in decades, suspect the film's 10xbetter.Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner - got 50 pages in and gave up, kind of dated I thought.His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem - I love sardonic SF and wish there was more of it. The passages near the beginning about how the supposed alien message was discovered are hilariously bleak.
Corman gets my vote!
― remind me not to read the comments on that one (Matt #2), Monday, 17 May 2021 12:17 (two years ago) link
I've read "True Grit" and "Chocky", and possibly "2001" but that was a long time ago. "True Grit" would get my vote, especially for the first half.
― o. nate, Monday, 17 May 2021 18:52 (two years ago) link
PKD 4 Me (Earth as depleted backstreet, where it rains alla time, on junk, some of it running loose, he makes me care, story still developing)
― dow, Monday, 17 May 2021 22:01 (two years ago) link
I've only read the SF stuff here, and not all of it: Dick, Le Guin, Clarke, Wyndham, Lem. Le Guin deserves a vote, the first Earthsea book is great but sets the stage for even better things, though I don't know if those are going to show up here as they're not on the wiki 'year in literature' pages. Lem is brilliant, sardonically bleak as noted above, it throws a wrench into the mechanism of typical first contact stories while deftly dealing with physics, psychology, philosophy, politics. Chocky is pretty good fun (or was when I was a kid), the bit where Chocky is a dick about the new car is almost a Lem-like moment for younger readers. (Lem: 'aliens will be incomprehensible'; Wyndham: 'aliens won't like your brand new car'.)
― I was born anxious, here's how to do it. (ledge), Tuesday, 18 May 2021 07:47 (two years ago) link
1968: The Year Science Fiction Exploded
I don't know if those are going to show up here as they're not on the wiki 'year in literature' pages
I use the "category: (year) novels" lists, not the year in lit ones.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 09:30 (two years ago) link
I want to try and vote for one of the later PKDs but I think it's between that and Nova as the only two I've read (I should pick up The Quest For Christa T. by Christa Wolf as I love Cassandra). PKD it is.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 09:43 (two years ago) link
"A Wizard of Earthsea" and "A Fan's Notes" has got to be the starkest contrast yet between novels I really care about appearing in the same year of this poll.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 18 May 2021 11:14 (two years ago) link
Cancer Ward.
― Heavy Messages (jed_), Tuesday, 18 May 2021 11:29 (two years ago) link
Is Arthur Clarke 2001 a film tie in novelisation or a reissue of the Sentinel tied to the film
― Stevolende, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 11:45 (two years ago) link
It was written concurrently with the film; film and novel are both based on several different Clarke stories, including The Sentinel.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 12:09 (two years ago) link
Only a few choices for me, think I'm going for one of the 'read as a kid' ones, probably Chocky.
― emil.y, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 16:16 (two years ago) link
I should really read House Made of Dawn, as I've taught "The Way to Rainy Mountain" many times and love it more each time I teach it.
― Lily Dale, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 17:54 (two years ago) link
House... was Required Reading in an American Studies course I took, and I know or think I know I much enjoyed it, but the PKD forces its way up front in the memory smog, even past Nove.
― dow, Tuesday, 18 May 2021 23:53 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Wednesday, 19 May 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Wonder if anyone else would vote for the same thing as me.
― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 May 2021 00:08 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Thursday, 20 May 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1969
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 20 May 2021 10:54 (two years ago) link