▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪ ILX ALL TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION VOTING THREAD & MARGINALIA ▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■

sorry it took me so long to get this thread together! i have been busy! & sick :/

How do I vote?

Send a list of up to 25 speculative fiction prose titles to specficpoll at gmail dot com. Please include your ilx username/whatever name you would like to be indentified by with your list.

Deadline:

Voting will close March 25th.

What can I vote for?

There's this handy list! If you feel compelled to vote for something that IS NOT on the list, you can do so, with the obvious caveat that it will be less likely to place.

A.A. Attanasio - Radix
Adam Roberts – On
Adolfo Bioy Cesares- The Invention of Morel
Alan Garner - The Owl Service
Alan Garner - The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen
Alasdair Gray - Lanark
Algis Budrys - Rogue Moon
Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space trilogy
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Alexander Key - Escape To Witch Mountain
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester - "Fondly Fahrenheit"
Alfred Bester - "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed"
Andre Norton -The Beast Master
Andre Norton - Judgment on Janus
Anne Carson – Autobiography of Red
Anne McCaffrey- Dragonflight
Anne McCaffrey - Dragonquest
Anne McCaffrey - The Harper Hall Trilogy
Apuleius - The Golden Ass
Arthur C. Clarke - The Nine Billion Names of God
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke - The City & The Stars
Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Arthur Machen - "The White People"
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
Astrid Lindgren - Ronia, the Robber's Daughter

Barrington J Bayley - The Rod Of Light
Barry Malzberg - Beyond Apollo
Bernard Wolfe - Limbo
Bob Shaw - Who Goes Here?
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Brian Aldiss - Heliconia
Brian Aldiss – Hothouse
Brian Aldiss (ed) - The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (1973)
Bruce Sterling - Islands In The Net
Bruce Sterling – 20 Evocations
Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire
Bruce Sterling (ed) - Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1988)
Bruce Sterling - Schismatrix Plus

Charles Finney - The Circus Of Dr. Lao
Charles Robert Maturin - Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Stross - Accelerando
Charles Stross - Halting State
Charles Stross - Laundry Series
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Herland
China Miéville - Iron Council
China Miéville – Perdido Street Station
China Miéville- The City & The City
China Miéville – The Scar
Christopher Priest - The Affirmation
Christopher Priest - Inverted World
CJ Cherryh – Cyteen
Clive Barker - Books of Blood
Clive Barker - Cabal
Clive Barker – Imajica
Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist
Connie Willis - Doomsday Book
Connie Willis- Impossible Things
Cordwainer Smith – Norstrilia
Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man (1993)
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (a novella)
C.L. Moore - "The Vintage Season"
C.S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis – Out of the Silent Planet trilogy

D. Terman - By Balloon to the Sahara
Damon Knight - The Man in the Tree
Dan Simmons – Hyperion
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
David Brin - The Uplift Storm trilogy
David Eddings - The Belgariad
David Gemmell – Legend
David Lindsay - A Voyage to Arcturus
David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
David Mitchell - Ghostwritten
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
David R. Bunch - Moderan
Diana Wynne Jones - Archer's Goon
Diana Wynne Jones - Chrestomanci (series)
Diana Wynne Jones - The Dalemark Quartet
Doris Lessing - Canopus in Argos: Archives (1992)
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)

E.B. White – Stuart Little
Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1908)
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars
Edward Bellamy – Looking Backward
Edward Whittemore - Quin's Shanghai Circus
Edwin Abbott Abott - Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Ellen Kushner- Swordpoint
Emmanuel Carrere - The Moustache
Enid Blyton – The Magic Faraway Tree
Erik Frank Russell – Wasp
E.T.A. Hoffman - The Devil's Elixir (Die Elixiere des Teufels)
E.T.A. Hoffman - The Golden Pot (Der goldne Topf)

Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman
Frank Herbert - Dune
Frank Herbert - The Jesus Incident
Frank Herbert -- Whipping Star
Franz Kafka - The Collected Stories (Schocken; 1971)
Fred Hoyle - The Black Cloud
Frederick Pohl - Jem
Frederick Pohl – Gateway
Frederik Pohl - Man Plus
Fritz Lieber - "A Pail of Air"
Fritz Lieber - Conjure Wife
Fritz Leiber - Lean Times in Lankhmar
Fritz Leiber - Met in Lankhmar

Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe – Book of the Long Sun
Gene Wolfe - Latro in the Mist
Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden
George MacDonald - Lilith
George R R Martin – A Song of Ice and Fire
George R R Martin - Wild Cards
George Orwell – 1984
George R. Stewart - Earth Abides
Glen Cook - The Black Company
Greg Egan – Axiomatic
Greg Stolze - Unknown Armies
Gustav Meyrink - The Golem
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Fionavar Tapestry
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Last Light of the Sun
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Sarantine Mosaic
Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
Gygax & Arneson - 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide

Hal Clement - A Mission of Gravity
Harlan Ellison - "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
Harry Harrison - The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat
Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Herman Hesse - Magister Ludi
H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man
H. G. Wells - The Island of Dr Moreau
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells - The Time Machine
Howard Waldrop- All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
H.P. Lovecraft - "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"
H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin; 1999)
H.P. Lovecraft - "The Colour out of Space"
H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness
H.P. Lovecraft – “The Whisperer in Darkness”

Iain M Banks - Consider Phlebas
Iain M Banks - Excession
Iain M. Banks - Look to Windward
Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games
Isaac Asimov – Foundation trilogy
Isaac Asimov - "The Last Question"
Isaac Asimov – I, Robot
Isaac Asimov - Caves of Steel/Naked Sun
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities

Jack Vance - Big Planet
Jack Vance - The Demon Princes
Jack Vance - The Lyonesse Trilogy
Jack Vance - "The Moon Moth"
Jack Vance - Tales of the Dying Earth
James P. Blaylock - The Last Coin
James Tiptree - "The Girl Who Plugged In"
James Tiptree - "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever"
J.G. Ballard – The Drowned World
J.G. Ballard - High Rise
J.G. Ballard - The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard (2009)
J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World
J.G. Ballard – Track 12
Jim Butcher - The Harry Dresden Files
Jim Theis - The Eye of Argon
J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter septet
Joan Aiken - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (series)
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Johanna Sinisalo - Not Before Sundownz
John Barth – Chimera
John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up
John Brunner - Stand On Zanzibar
John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider
John Christopher - The Tripod trilogy
John Christopher - The Death of Grass/No Blade of Grass
John Christopher - The Sword of the Spirits Trilogy
John Crowley – Aegypt
John Crowley - Engine Summer
John Crowley - Little, Big
John Crowley – “The Great Work of Time”
John M. Ford - The Dragon Waiting
John Sladek - The Reproductive System
John Steakley - Armor
John Varley - "The Persistence of Vision"
John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham - The Chrysalids
John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos
Jonathan Lethem - Girl in Landscape
Jonathan Lethem - Gun, With Occasional music
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph
Jose Saramago - Blindness
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days
Julian May - Pliocene Exile

Kate Wilhelm – Where the Late Bird Sang
Ken Grimwood – Replay
Ken MacLeod - Engines of Light Trilogy
Ken MacLeod - Fall Revolution (series)
Kim Stanely Robinson - The Mars trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson - Three Californias trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson - years of rice and salt
Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
K.W. Jeter - Dr. Adder
K.W. Jeter - The Glass Hammer
Koushun Takami - Battle Royale

Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes - Dream Park
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye
Larry Niven – Ringworld
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles
Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter
Lucius Shepard- The Jaguar Hunter, The Ends of the Earth, Life During Wartime

M. John Harrison - The Centauri Device
M. John Harrison – Viriconium
Madeleine l'Engle - A Wrinkle In Time
Marge Piercy - He, She & It
Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time
Margaret Atwood - Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle - The Blazing World
Margaret Mahy - The Changeover
Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman - The Dragonlance Chronicles
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Marueen McHugh – China Mountain Zhang
Max Beerbohm - 'Enoch Soames'
Max Berry - Jennifer Government
Melissa Scott – Trouble and Her Friends
Mervyn Peake – Gormenghast
Michael Bishop - Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas
Michael Ende - Momo
Michael Ende - The Neverending Story
Michael Moorcock - City in the Autumn Stars
Michael Moorcock - Cornelius Chronicles
Michael Moorcock - Dancers at the End of Time
Michael Moorcock - Elric
Michael Swanwick - The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Michelle West - The Sun Sword
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
Monique Wittig - Les Guérillères
M.R. James – The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (1931

Nancy A. Collins - Sunglasses After Dark
Neal Asher - The Skinner
Neal Stephenson – Anathem
Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle
Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
Neil Gaiman – American Gods
Neil Gaiman – Coraline
Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens
Nevil Shute - On the Beach
Nicholas Fisk - Time Trap
Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron
Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth

Octavia Butler - Kindred
Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood
Olaf Stapledon – Sirius
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game (first book only!)
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Patricia A. McKillip – Fool’s Run
Patricia A. McKillip – Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Patricia A. McKillip - The Riddle-Master trilogy
Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman (eds) - In Dreams (1986)
Peter F. Hamilton - The Night's Dawn trilogy
Peter Straub - Ghost Story
Peter Watts - Blindsight
Philip Jose Farmer – Riverworld
Philip Jose Farmer - "Mother"
Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick - Clans of the...
Philip K. Dick - Collected Stories Vol. 4 (pub Citadel 1954-1964)
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Philip K. Dick - Galactic pot-healer
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip
Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K. Dick – Ubik
Philip K. Dick - VALIS trilogy
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials
Phillip Reeve - The Mortal Engines Quartet
Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden
Piers Anthony - Apprentice Adept
Pohl & Kornbluth - The Space Merchants
Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

R. Scott Bakker – The Prince of Nothing trilogy
R.A. Lafferty - Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury - Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury - The October Country
Richard Adams – Shardik
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Richard Cowper - Piper At the Gates of Dawn
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
R. L. Stevenson – Strange Case of Jekyll & Hyde
R. L. Stevenson – Fables (1896)
Roald Dahl - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl - Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator
Roald Dahl - James & The Giant Peach
Robert C. O'Brien - Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Robert Charles Wilson - The Chronoliths
Robert Charles Wilson – Spin
Robert Heinlein – Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein - The Past Through Tomorrow
Robert E. Howard - The Complete Chronicles of Conan (2006)
Robert Jordan – The Wheel of Time
Robert V.S. Redick, - The Chathrand Voyage
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminats! Trilogy
Robert Sheckley - Options
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow
Robin Hobb - The Farseer trilogy
Roger Zelazny - The Amber Series
Roger Zelazny - Lord Of Light
Rudy Rucker - Software/Wetware/Freeware/Realware
Rudyard Kipling - The Mark of the Beast And Other Fantastical Tales
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker

Samuel Butler – Erewhon
Samuel R. Delany - "Aye, and Gomorrah..."
Samuel R. Delany – Babel-17
Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany - Neveryon
Samuel R. Delany – Nova
Samuel R. Delany - The Einstein Intersection
Samuel R. Delany - stars in my pockets like grains of sand
Sean Russell - Moontide & Magic Rise
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - Memories of the Future
Stanislaw Lem - Mortal Engines
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Stanislaw Lem - His Master's Voice
Stanislaw Lem - The Cyberiad
Stanley Elkin - The Living End
Stephen Donaldson - The Chronicles of Thomas Convenant
Stephen King - The Dark Tower (series)
Stephen King – IT
Stephen King - Salem's Lot
Stephen King - The Stand
Steven Erickson – Tour of the Black Clock
Steven Erikson – Malazan Book of the Fallen
Storm Constantine - Hermetech
Strugatsky brothers - Roadside Picnic
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising
Susan Cooper - Seaward

Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow & Thorn
Tad Williams - Outland
Ted Chiang - Stores of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang - The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Terry Pratchett - Lords and Ladies
Terry Pratchett – Mort
Terry Pratchett - Night Watch
Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
Terry Pratchett - The Tiffany Aching trilogy
Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Thomas Disch – 334
Thomas Disch – Camp Concentration
Thomas Disch - "Descending"
Thomas Disch- On Wings of Song
Thomas Ligotti - Songs of A Dead Dreamer
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying Of Lot 49
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
Tom Godwin - "The Cold Equations"
Tove Jansson – Tales From Moominvalley
Tove Jansson - Moominvalley in November
Tove Jansson - Moominland Midwinter

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea Trilogy
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin -- The Compass Rose

Vasya - Mahābhārata
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon Deep
Vernor Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky
Victor Pelevin – Oman Ra
Vladimir Nabokov – Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
William S. Burroughs - The Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs - The Red Night Trilogy
William Gibson – Burning Chrome
William Gibson - Count Zero
William Gibson – Neuromancer
William Gibson - Pattern Recognition
William Gibson - Virtual Light
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
William Hope-Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
William Mayn e- Earthfasts
William Morris – News from Nowhere
William Pene du Boise - The Twenty-one Balloons
Willo Davis Roberts - The Girl With The Silver Eyes
Wyndham Lewis - The Human Age trilogy

Xavier de Maistre – Voyage Around my Room

Yevgeny Zamaytin - We

thank you btw to all the ppl who nominated stuff - if i missed something i am a terrible person & deserve to be suggest b&.

Awesome work Lamp. Will sit with the list over the weekend.

oh btw i am going w/ all ranked ballots if ppl want to be total ~babies~ about it than i will cave, probably

Psyched to do a ranked ballot, myself. Too easy otherwise.

If you feel compelled to vote for something that IS NOT on the list, you can do so, with the obvious caveat that it will be less likely to place.

Haha I deliberately didn't nominate Infinite Jest just so I could avoid having to vote for it! GAH

Keeping it bumped…

My problem is Gulliver's Travels. If I vote for it, it has to be number one. But maybe I just want to vote more narrowly. I don't know.

thanks 4 bumping this!

so, please vote. its important!

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore. So e.g. no Wittgenstein's Mistress even though it's fantastic. It's just not what I think of when I think of spec fic, nawotimean? Something along the lines of, the worldbuilding is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore.

Yeah, I think I'll do this.

Ballot sent!

It was hard getting it down to 25. It was an honest list, no tactical fiddling, so who knows if any of it will place.

I'm not voting for anything I wouldn't find under the skiffyfantasymindrot shelf of my local bookstore

Me too. All SF&F here.

lamp do u want ~commentary~ with the ballots

if you want to thatd be awesome, i avoided asking for any because i think it makes ppl less likely to vote & id like a lot of ballots

I'll probably vote, even though I didn't nominate as I wasn't entirely sure what came under the banner or not. Though having said that, why bother making it 'speculative fiction' if all people are going to vote for is sci-fi and fantasy? That's like having an electronic music poll where people only vote for techno (and that would NEVER happen on ilx, right?). I'll stick to my literary fiction, thank you.

(By the way, in my comparison Delia Derbyshire = Borges.)

haha yeah i hear what yr saying but im hoping its mainly sci fi + fantasy just cuz thats a huge blindspot w/ my reading + i want to use this poll to draw up an awesome list. i dont need help finding out abt calvino/murakami/borges etc

True, but I'd rather see either a pure SF&F poll or find out which books of that genre stand up enough to make it with the 'canonical' literature in a poll like this, rather than knowing that most people are going to treat it like the former even though it's not supposed to be. Also, what about the horror? If someone tells me that the Dungeons & Dragons manual is better than Poe, I'm inclined not to take them very seriously.

will vote but will have to think about this a bit

I think the amount of genre-quibbling in the noms process that would result from trying to have a pure SF&F poll is not worth it tbh.

xp emil.y - tell me what the equivalent of Hennix on this poll is, and i'll read it.

poe is spec-fic imo. 'speculative' is just a catch-all for all these genres, poe is genre fic and swift ain't. imo. imo imo. sorry for starting this argument (again).

Ledge, I agree - what I was saying is this is a speculative fiction poll, not a pure SF&F poll, so don't ignore people like Poe just because they're not SF! Also, I think there may be some of that ol' reverse snobbery going on, in that people want to rep for their SF underdogs rather than the more canonical stuff. Which isn't always a bad thing - as in, you may consider pure SF to be more 'speculative' than Poe, so you bump it up a notch. But that's re-ordering, not excluding.

And sarahel, ha, I wish I knew the answer to that one. Maybe I shall make it a quest to find out.

emily my problem with mixing 'canonical' stuff with more traditonal or typical genre works is that the criterion im using to judge each are fairly different & attempting to stand one against the other often loses what vital about each work. but i think in a poll like this that tries to be as big tent as possible its impossible to find a clear line or a common set of criterion that ppl are using to evaluate the works.

but max really p much has to vote in this imo

two ballots!

encourage everyone to vote btw - sarahel you should vote too imo

Will definitely vote, and I think I can talk my wife (an occasional ilxor) into doing a ballot as well.

I haven't read nearly enough of these to justify voting, but right here, right now, I vow to read the top 5 placings by the end of this calendar year.

although if i were to vote my number 1 would be either lolcanon Dune or Neuromancer

narrowing down my ballot, got it down to one work per author, except for le guin *shakes fist at le guin*. earthsea or left hand? argh.

haven't read any more than a tiny fraction of this list

I haven't read nearly enough of these to justify voting

just vote - send in a short list if you think its necessary but the more ppl that vote the better

also bump obvs

Psyched for this--am going to have to think about rankings very carefully.

this poll is pretty strange to me because a) i haven't read the majority of the entries, while in various ilm polls i've probably at least heard most things once or twice; b) it seems, in a lot of cases, to be comparing apples and oranges; and c) there's a difference between what i think is probably 'best' and what meant the most to me as a child (which is when i read most of these). i am not a christian and can see ppls' issues with them, but the narnia books were just huge to me as a kid, not least because my mom and i read them together when i came home for lunch in kindergarten (my school was on my block).

anyway, i tried to find some mix in voting, which i have now done amen.

I wish I had nominated The Atrocity Exhibition.

Is that Lucius Shepard nom correct or should it have been three different choices?

Saw some copies of Inverted World at the Strand yesterday and thought of this thread. You still have time to read it and vote for it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-X3yXOknJQ

bump!

Lamp -

do you want a numbered list, or just a authors and names?

ranked is preferably if using the very basic 1st = 25 points system so if you want/need to provide an unranked ballots i just give each title the same # of points.

ugh if = i'm

ballot sent!

I have my ballot done, but I'm letting it sit and will ponder it a couple of times before sending it. I want to make sure I don't regret my last few cuts.

Couple of things on the list that I have been meaning to read forever and own copies of, wonder if I should make the effort in the next few weeks.

But who am I kidding

bump!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTephFMbxaU

Currently whittling

Lamp - did you get my ballot?

catching up on a couple entries - read Babel 17 and Rendezvous with Rama over the last week. Babel 17's the third book I've read of Delany (well, I never finished Dhalgren) and dude's style just straight up annoys me, even when I find some of the underlying ideas/concepts intriguing I get irritated with how sloppily he structures things, and how distracting his prose is.

ez i did, sorry i thought i had sent confirmation emails to everyone

dude's style just straight up annoys me, even when I find some of the underlying ideas/concepts intriguing I get irritated with how sloppily he structures things, and how distracting his prose is.

This goes for vast amounts of SF tbh, I just try and ignore the substandard writing.

No problem. I didn't get an email is all.

This goes for vast amounts of SF tbh, I just try and ignore the substandard writing.

sure but Delaney's rep seems to place him above yr garden-variety pulp toiler - I mean dude is a lit professor, won numerous awards, gets tons of critical hosannas and snazzy reprints, etc.

I have no idea how I am going to vote in this

Delany knows exactly what he wants to do with his prose; "distracting" I'll definitely cosign, but not "sloppy".

Then again I haven't read too much early Delany; my estimation is based on Triton and the Neveryon stuff and The Mad Man.

apart from this the other one I've read was Nova. Started Dhalgren, never finished. An example of the sloppiness I'm referring to - and hey maybe it is totally deliberate, but that only makes it even more irritating imho - is how he handles the expository passages in Babel 17 that provide background details on the universe the characters inhabit. There are allusions to a war, to Invaders/the Alliance, very early on and the reader isn't given any indication as to what the war is about, what the two conflicting sides are actually composed of (humans? aliens? robots?), and the story moves along fine without providing these details. The reader is led to believe that this is either inconsequential or will be revealed later, if it does actually merit any significance. But no, about 2/3rds through the book, completely disconnected from anything the characters are doing/discussing, he drops a couple paragraphs about how many star-faring races there are, and how long the war has been going on and then - hey, back to the plot! And I'm just like, WHY? This is so pointless and distracting, if you were gonna drop this kind of background info why didn't he do it up-front, instead of burying it in the middle, apropos of nothing, long after the reader has accepted that this stuff isn't important? This is shitty writing.

I'd intended to nominate, but was a bit distracted last month. Most of the things I'd vote for are present, but if I may suggest a glaring omission from the nominations list:

Harlan Ellison (ed) - Dangerous Visions (1967)

In the opinion of many, including myself, the most important anthology ever in the speculative fiction genres.

Overrated imo ;)

I've not read it in a good few years though.

I'd cosign Shakey's comments on Delany as well. I've lost count of the number of times I've started Dhalgren and given up before even getting 50 pages in.

xpost that seems like a pretty valid beef, Shakey. I hope I get around to reading Babel 17 in the next few years...

Nominations poll made me want to read some Aldiss but the only thing I own is The Malacia Tapestry. Which I'm enjoying so far but seems like it is probably p atypical for him?

Yeah Dangerous Visions is bound to get a number of write ins. Weird that no one nommed it.

Dhalgren was my first attempt at Delany too, long ago, and I had to give up. But I'm glad I read a bunch of his other stuff instead.

To be fair I did manage to finish Babel-17, but it didn't grab me really.

I expect that one day the stars will be in alignment and he will click with me.

Nominations poll made me want to read some Aldiss but the only thing I own is The Malacia Tapestry. Which I'm enjoying so far but seems like it is probably p atypical for him?

Aldiss seems all over the map, really - I have a hard time wrapping my head around his body of work. I've read some stuff that was great (Barefoot in the Head, Report on Probability A), some stuff that was garbage (Cryptozoic!), and have never even heard of the two novels nom'd here.

re: Babel 17 - I really dug the stuff about language/codes/consciousness in this, but all the pointless digressions and willful obscurity/nonsensical tech talk really grated on me.

I voted... how did RW Chambers' King in Yellow get left off this list?

It's there, Lamp nominated it right off the bat

ah duh my mistake. oddly when I narrowed this list down to what I've actually read it came out to an even 100 titles.

Delany's the complete opposite of sloppy, but he does sometimes sacrifice narrative flow and readability on the altar of semiotics and metatext.

dude's style just straight up annoys me, even when I find some of the underlying ideas/concepts intriguing I get irritated with how sloppily he structures things, and how distracting his prose is.

This goes for vast amounts of SF tbh, I just try and ignore the substandard writing.

wont be voting cuz i've read a paltry 17 of these (including Book of the New Sun which i was loving but never finished), but i'm really psyched on getting a new reading list when this countdown finally happens. Thank you lamp and responsible registered voters.

Ach, just vote - you won't be ruining anything, it's just that every extra ballot makes the process run more smoothly.

I have done my duty btw.

156 of those I have read and remember reasonably clearly, about another 25 I'm pretty sure I've read but need to go away and jog my memory (just in case)... Working on it, but my whittling could take a while.

Joyful work!

This is the reason you should vote for Shakey's creator, M. John Harrison.

lol

oddly I have not read the two Harrison works nom'd here - but Light (and to a lesser extent Nova Swing) were awesome late-career surprises. I do dig the stories he did for New Worlds back in the day, obviously.

(just in case anyone so inclined is using the noms thread as a basis to vote with, i nominated jeff noon (pixel juice) but it got left off - nbd though)

fwiw I agree that Pixel Juice is his best. Didn't put him on my ballot but he was a brief flare of promise for UK sci-fi at the time

I've read 26 in full. Here's my "started but never finished" pile:

Kim Stanely Robinson - The Mars trilogy
Stephen King - The Stand
Isaac Asimov – Foundation trilogy
Jim Theis - The Eye of Argon
J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter septet
Bram Stoker – Dracula

Isaac Asimov – Foundation trilogy

This is on my started-but-never-finished pile too, life's too short sometimes.

Mars trilogy is declining returns but the first book is grade-A awesome. the second retreads a lot of the themes/structure/ideas first, and I've never made it through the third

i was really young when i read the mars trilogy but i was p blown away by the whole thing

anyway: into double digits now, please keep the ballots coming in!

Only books on here I've read are, like

A. Huxley
B. Stoker
C. Whitehead
D. Mitchell
H. Murakami
J. Lethem

So I'm gonna sit this one out.

^^^biases... EXPOSED

I've read about 43 of these so if I vote it will probably be a short ballot. I assume that's okay? Also, I don't know if I missed this somewhere, but how are are points working with this?

I just ranked everything 1 to 25, no points

I've read about 43 of these so if I vote it will probably be a short ballot. I assume that's okay? Also, I don't know if I missed this somewhere, but how are are points working with this?

short ballot is fine. your 1st place selection gets 25 'points' & so on. unranked full ballots get 13 points per title (i think?). unranked short ballots would get total # of points allocated/# of titles on ballot.

I'm sure it was obvious anyway, but my ballot was ranked, Lamp - I just didn't explicitly say so in the email.

yeah i generally assume its ranked. there was one listed in alpha order which i assumed was unranked, thats the only one so far iirc

Did you guys see this by the way?

http://scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg

Hmm maybe hard to see.

Try the link: The History of Science Fiction

Is that a giant octopus?

It looks like a weird disembodied whale to me, but anyway it is supposed to be a map of the history and evolution of SF.

i think its an anatomical diagram of an 'unnamed horror'

The Tempest is partly new world exploration too

WHOOOOOAH

xp

I don't think the taxonomy is v sturdy for Renaissance or Enlightenment. Dunno what Oceana's doing sitting next to (and after) Gulliver's Travels chronologically or generically.

I never got anywhere with Oceana, but then maybe I shouldn't have tried to read it at age 10. Hazard of getting into the boxes of books in the attic all willy-nilly. I bet my mom gave/threw that hardcover copy away 20 years ago. ;_;

I feel sorry for 10-year-old you - I struggled with it as a motivated academic 20something with keen interest in its arguments. I mean the sugar-coating utopian stuff is barely there - it's just a big work of political philosophy - history, constitutions, balance of property etc etc

Maybe I wasn't 10, maybe I was 14 or so, but in any case I didn't get more than 20 pages done, I'll bet. I think the flap copy made it sound much more exciting than it actually was.

just sent my ballot.

Finished rereading "Tales of Neveryon" last night and it is just one of the most magical things ever.

i just scanned the list and i've read about 40-45 things on it, so maybe i'll put together a ballot of 10 or so if that's ok. i'd feel disingenuous voting for a number that's more than a certain percentage of the number i've read.

yeah honestly id just like to get ballots, from anyone, no matter if the only vote for 10 or 15 or 5. the more ballots the more interesting the results, i think

Agreed. Jaymc, rank those six you've read and send 'em in.

Cosign. I've run two of these things now and honestly, any honest attempt at a ballot is really welcome because it only helps things along.

Voted. Can't imagine ranking. And short story collections are bullshit btw.

i'm writing in Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for my Murakami pick because it seems much more SF/F to me than Wind Up Bird Chronicle (and also i like it more!)

Yeah for some reason Silverberg's Shadrach in the Furnace got dropped. I didn't bother to write it in though.

short story collections are bullshit btw

I think pretty much every great sf writer has also written good short stories as well as novels, and in the case of JG Ballard I think his short fiction is generally better than the novels.

I voted for Tiptree's Her Smoke Rose Up Forever collection because a) it doesn't look like she has any classic novels, really (correct me if I'm wrong, somebody) and b) it's amazing

It is a little strange that that book is competing with a short story that is in that book.

Yeah you have to account for the short story specialists. Lafferty, Tiptree, Sturgeon...

yeah Sturgeon's another one, good call

And Avram Davidson! (but he didn't make this poll).

In modern times I guess Kelly Link and Ted Chiang? Neither of whom I've read yet.

"I think pretty much every great sf writer has also written good short stories as well as novels, and in the case of JG Ballard I think his short fiction is generally better than the novels."

This goes without saying, but I think you nominate/vote for their best story not a collection.

I think with some writers - eg Ballard & Dick - it's hard to say that there's a single best story: there's a total or cumulative effect of stories when they cluster so hard around obsessive themes or motifs, & I'm happy to vote for a collection as exemplary of this. (Tho' I guess 'Voices of Time' for Ballard could take a high place in my rankings on its own).

no will self?
no george saunders?
no david ohle?
no ben marcus?
only one pynchon?
arkady & boris strugatsky's "roadside picnic" absent?
marlen hasuhofer's "die Wand"
how come murakami's "wind-up bird" but no "hard boiled wonderland" or others?
gore vidal's "duluth"?
sorry this reads like a complaint - it's not - i'm just surprised !
just for the record iain m. banks " excession" - wow - the most fascinatingly poor book i ever read - finished it, ripped the cover in disgust, left it on a bus.

Er, maybe you should have nominated stuff then?

Roadside Picnic there under Strugatsky brothers.

Someone did actually nominate Saunders "Jon" but it's not on the list. I remember cos i quibbled with the inclusion of single stories but seeing as they are allowed it should be on there.

yeah sorry i wasn't around for nominations - no grudge !

aw shoot - mist the strugatsky bros under "S" - mein fehler !
good call.

In modern times I guess Kelly Link and Ted Chiang? Neither of whom I've read yet.

Read Ted Chiang! Kelly Link may also be excellent, idk, but I can't recommend Ted highly enough.

Most everyone I know has been pushing Kelly Link on me for a couple years, so I am p confident I will like her as well.

the two short story collections I have of hers are some of my favorite horror/fantasy/sci-fi sorta stuff of recent years

today is the 1st day i havent got any ballots btw so someone plz send 1 in!

the results are p goofy atm

quel surprise

I will send a ballot before the deadline but I am super busy right now

i am bored at work and will send you a ballot

ok i sent it

I will be laid up all next week post-surgery so I will do this, prob. Weds.

so the copy of Babel 17 that I have also includes the tangentially-related novella "Empire Star" and, maybe against my better judgment, I thought what the hell I guess I should read this too, since I did think it was cool that Empire Star is referred to in Babel 17 as a novel written by one of the characters. But, y'know, 40 pages into it and it's littered with what seems to be Delany's trademark shitty prose:

"San Severina took him shopping in the open market and bought him a black velvet contour cloak whose patterns changed with the pressure of the light under which it was viewed."

Which is just a clumsily constructed sentence, the fact that light does not exert pressure notwithstanding. really do not get how this guy is so highly lauded.

- he was uniquely gay and out and young and black when he first hit the market.
- he has a fantastic beard.

- by the mid-1970s he was actually amazing and fully in control of his mtrl

^^^

is that the best example of a bad sentence you can find in 40 pages? i mean

no it's just the one I flagged because the "pressure" thing irritated me so mcuh

much

"San Severina took him shopping in the open market and bought him a black velvet contour cloak whose patterns changed with the pressure of the light under which it was viewed."

I'll agree this is an awkward sentence. About the 'pressure', though-- I haven't read this story, but is there some science-fictional reason why the "wait huh wtf?" of light being said to have "pressure" is supposed to call our attn to some kind of technology which exists in the story? Because that seems v much like a thing SRD would do on purpose.

Also, aren't solar sails theorized to work because of the "pressure" of photons?

Cap'n and Lt. Save-a-Delany over here

http://scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg

There is a very light pressure due to the minute momentum of photons. At Earth's orbit a black object would experience 4.7 micronewtons per square meter, a perfect mirror twice that.

Solar sails would potentially have the highest speeds possible with current physics (it depends on the mass, but 0.0005 c is plausible using a sun flyby, about 3x speeds possible with the highest impulse reaction thrusters like VASIMIR). If the race survives, perhaps there will be autonomous fleets of them deflecting tiny ice worlds from the Trojans to the volatile poor (outside of gravity wells) inner solar system.

I haven't read this story, but is there some science-fictional reason why the "wait huh wtf?" of light being said to have "pressure" is supposed to call our attn to some kind of technology which exists in the story

honestly I have no idea - hasn't been mentioned yet, but maybe it will be. otoh he seems to just drop techno-babble all over the place regardless of whether or not it has any bearing on the story or is given any explanation.

re: the light pressure of photons, this seems like an impossible principle to apply to fabric designed and worn by planet-bound people.

but what do I know

otoh he seems to just drop techno-babble all over the place regardless of whether or not it has any bearing on the story or is given any explanation.

I mean the sentence I quoted is immediately preceded by this one:

"Having to admit that it was pretty simplex after all, Jo went down in the hole to turn over the boysh and rennedox the kibblebops."

RMDE look he made up some funny words.

just wondering (and it's not an exact parallel); what did you think of A Clockwork Orange?

zomg did we forget to nominate A Clockwork Orange

votes for unnominated things will still be counted, right?

A Clockwork Orange is great. I don't have a problem with authors who play with language, invent terminology, or write in a made-up dialect. Riddley Walker (which was rightfully nominated), for example, is really ingenious in the multiple layers of meaning that he embeds within the narrative via the narrator's dialect. And obviously making up terms for things, even silly terms (as is the case with Bester or some of PKD's stuff - lol "wubfur"), is part of the territory with sci-fi/fantasy. I just find the slapdash, almost careless way that Delany does it to be really irritating. He belabors defining certain terms - like "simplex", used above, and "multiplex" - and then drops a bunch of gobbledygook for no apparent reason other than that he maybe finds it amusing...? I dunno.

xp

votes for unnominated things will still be counted, right?

They will, but that's a massive oversight on all of our parts IMO

in the Delany stuff I've read, he seems to be REALLY inconsistent with this kind of thing. His decisions regarding what merits further explanation or definition and what just gets tossed off seem really arbitrary.

xp

(mostly mad because I had one nomination left and thought that someone else had already nominated it)

xp - that and Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition - esp. considering it was the title of a beloved Joy Division song.

"Having to admit that it was pretty simplex after all, Jo went down in the hole to turn over the boysh and rennedox the kibblebops."

This is actually horrible.

what are kibblebops - or do i not want to know?

xp: it's true, there's nothing worse than having to rennedox the kibblebops

His prose is so stylized and idiosyncratic that there's no real argument to be made against not enjoying it. I love from '67-'68 onwards, myself, and think he achieve real mastery of what he was aiming for from Dhalgren onwards. ::shrug::

what are kibblebops - or do i not want to know?

I have no idea and I don't think I want to know either

rennedoxing just doesn't sound healthy

I hispert back, "O, what we ben! And what we come to!" Boath of us were siffling and snuffling then. Me looking at them jynt machines, and him lissening to their sylents. Right then I didnt know where I wer with any thing becaws all on a sudden I wernt seeing any thing from where I seen it befor... Now all the sudden Eusa and Eusas head and the little shyning man had becom some thing woaly diifrnt in my mynd to what they were before. How cud any 1 not want to get that shining power from back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air and picters on the winds? How cud any 1 not want to see them shyning weals terning?

^^^this is how inventing a hypothetical future dialect is done kids

misread that as "I hipstert back"

hipstert runofft

"Do you mean to tell me you've never used one of these before?"
"I didn't..." he began, unsure if the question was about meaning, or telling, or use.

obv. a guy more in love with the tools of storytelling than with story itself, but that's why I love his work.

*slaps forehead* at forgetting A Clockwork Orange. Would've been at a rough estimate my #3.

there have been a couple of write-in votes for 'a clockwork orange' so its not getting completely lost in the shuffle...

more votes plz!!!!

okay I have given up on Empire Star... moving on to Cloud Atlas

(which is really good - but 75 pages in I have no idea why this book was nominated here)

ballot sent!

emailed mine!

mine is culled down to 64!

ugh this is impossible

so... 25 ballots! thats about half of what im hoping for. thank you so much to the ppl who have voted & plz tell your friends how painless & easy it was!!!

i'm trying to find the half-done ballot i cooked up before i went on holiday last week...

I voted! That was fun.

yah i got your ballot + a few other ppl's sorry i havent sent confirmation emails busy busy busy

anyway bump &c &c &c still a few conspicuous holdouts btw

BUMP!

hey I edited my list down to the 94 I've read

I promise I'll have it in before deadline!

(which is really good - but 75 pages in I have no idea why this book was nominated here)

― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 14, 2011 1:02 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there's at least one section of the book that fits here but yeah i wouldn't call it spec-fic as an overall work

There's at least two

hey I edited my list down to the 94 I've read

I promise I'll have it in before deadline!

― sleeve, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:17 PM

additional

http://www.apotheosisnow.com/gallery/apothgallery/album01/bump_signs.jpg

down to 25, just working on the ranking...

Did you get my ballot, Lamp?

I'll be putting a ballot in, just got to whittle it down from the longlist of 80 or so...

there's at least one section of the book that fits here but yeah i wouldn't call it spec-fic as an overall work

fwiw I am loving it and about 1/3rd of the way through I think I've guessed the overall structure of the book, but yeah it seems out of place on this list, even if it does have some spec-fiction elements. but I guess if people are gonna seriously nominate stuff like Calvino and Borges eh whatever

Crap I have to sit down and do this. Tonight I'll get home before 11pm, might even have time!

toumas yeah i did - i have four ppl's ballots that i havent sent emails for was waiting until i had time to add them to data sorry!!!

ok now I just have to rank my final list

OK, I just sent in my ballot.

done!

should I even bother to continue checking this thread, or is all the discussion of the actual books gonna happen on the results thread

i will do one but it will be rubbish and limited and poorly informed

i read a canticle for leibowitz because of this poll. i wish people had warned me about the crazy catholic luddite last third.

I've never read that one - been kinda apprehensive about it because of the Catholic angle

Great book.

The last third is more fail-safe than it is crazy catholic luddite to me.

The final third is definitely the worst section. Reading Stapledon at the moment, and wow.

Sorry for not getting a ballot in, I'm on holiday.

yeah Star Maker's on my list

of things to read, that is

Poll sent! Thanks again for doing this, Lamp.

5 DAYS LEFT PLEASE SEND IN YOUR BALLOTS YES YOU SRSLY

hey jon i dont think i got your ballot?

stuck in a thing of 'i'll just read x and then i will do my ballot', oops

Did mine come in?

yes, yes it did

You didn't get it? Maybe it is in yr spam philtre?

It is from j o n p a t l e w (at) y a h o o (dot) c o m

Hmph.

did you get mine lamp?

Lamp I just tried again, this time from my work address.

re: Cloud Atlas

In 2009 it was announced that the Wachowski Brothers had bought the rights to the novel, DreamWorks will produce the film, while Disney will distribute it under its Touchstone Pictures banner. Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg will executively produce the film. and that writer/director Tom Tykwer would be working on a screenplay

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

barf

I'm kind of intrigued to see just how horrible this prospective film could be.

ok updated list there are 30+ ballots, which is rad, although there are a couple of ppl that i really hope still manage to contribute

jon & eephus! got both your ballots, thank you

ranked or not?

my list is pitiful. i'm vowing to turn this poll into a 'to-read' cos all of mine are really pre-teen faves or milqutoast variations thereof.

Just wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to the results thread - so pumped to talk about all these amazing books! How many results are you going to announce a day Lamp?

I am still planning on voting FYI

Robyn has been visiting NYC and I've been out like EVERY NIGHT AFTER WORK, sorry. I am also planning on voting but first I need a break from all this damned fun.

haha i hope so!

gravel it really depends on how many more ballots i am going to get id like to do a top 50 but the bottom end of the 50 is looking a little anemic - im not sure how i feel about stuff that only 3 ppl voted for getting listed. but i was thinking 20, 20, 10 over three days in early april.

No wait nijoli gets here on Friday and caek on Saturday. I'm going to have to actually make time for this.

ranked or not?

whichever is most comfortable 4 u

sent

im not sure how i feel about stuff that only 3 ppl voted for getting listed

This can be p.great ime - "huh i read that as a kid, kinda sucked"/"no it's great because blah blah" - but I'm not the one who has to do the work of posting the results!

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kqsa7yzlyG1qzma4ho1_500.jpg

Am sending my votes in today. I've just had a really hard time cutting 28 to 25!

Done! Fucking difficult, though

I've got it down to 46, removing anything now is too painful so I've resorted to a pair-comparison matrix.

Been sleeping on this - all sorts of far less important stuff been getting in the way of having a proper sit down and look at it. This means that I'll probably do that stuff today at work (just need to find a computer where I can't be seen) and do the voting drunk tomorrow or tonight. That seems a satisfactory solution anyway. Going mainly for the 'sci-fi/fantasy shelf in bookshop' thing, but run as I would have run it; no Gulliver's Travels, yes to Frankenstein, for example.

u mad

Maybe. The Gulliver's Travels/Frankenstein thing or voting while drunk?

gulliver's travels!

Eh i'm probly just spoiling to start the fightin early. It can wait for results thread i'm sure

I've got time for a quick fight I reckon - let's see, where do I start? I guess I'd say something like the manipulations of satire upon the material world for the purposes of mockery seem to me to be part of a long tradition, whatever you want to call it, the grotesque, caricature, which are other than the speculative.

What works against this? Well, an awful lot of science fiction is morally or politically speculative (dystopias, or kakatopias are usually clearly designed to reflect upon the current state of the world, as are utopias for that matter), but I guess I'd be wanting something a bit more. There is some science, but it's there to mock the Royal Society. It doesn't even really feel that speculative really.

Something like Frankenstein uses a scientific experiment as the premise for its treatment of the New Prometheus, that seems to me to be an adequate reason to, with a certain amount of latitude, and not excluding it from other areas, to put it in a science-fiction section of my fictional bookshop.

i got as far as 'quick fight', saw the size of it, conceded

i guess i'd counter with islands of midgets islands of giants and underlying complications be damned!

I may be somewhat out of my depth here

That gets it out of SciFi, but given bounds of poll, it's way harder to exclude it from Spec Fiction, books 3 & 4 in particular. Easy to make a case that Imaginary Satirical Voyage genre belongs in the poll, given its DNA is in a lot of politicised SF & Fantasy, and the stuff that was nommed.

GT is my favourite book, but I didn't vote for it: can't rationally argue it - sort of Gamaliel's reasons, but also having it tied tightly to Swift & the earlier 18th century in my head.

Don't forget flying islands and talking horses.

xpost to d. Sorry, yeah, the person who might be potentially looking over my computer has been away from his desk for a bit, so I had more time than I thought. I guess what I'm saying is that there's definitely an argument to be had, but my gut is telling me not to include Gulliver's Travels, plenty of other entries just as problematic tho.

Jekyll and Hyde for instance - definitely going into my science-fiction/speculative section, but having read a lot of RLS's letters last year, I felt it had an awful lot to do with his crisis over religion and relationship with his father - the problem of moral responsibility in a world where the soul is called into question. Motive doesn't matter of course, but it made me see J&H in slightly different terms to those I had hitherto used.

There is some science, but it's there to mock the Royal Society

Well yeah, it mocks the major scientific institution of the day, but that sort of suggests scepticism about the scientific project - the constructed languages, sunshine from cucumbers & general desolation stuff in Laputa isn't just a local squib.

Talking horses I can take (part of history of moral exempla and talking animals - not that something being part of a tradition shd exclude it of course), but flying islands, check, also, the way Swift's imagination gets carried away with itself, dealing with the practical problems of being whatever size, and also the alienation of being a stranger in a strange land, to use a loaded phrase - that feels like a science-fiction thing to do.

xpost - yep, where the imagination is used (which it so clearly is) always feels more than a local squib (hence the reason it's in the poll I guess, and also its ability to last beyond its local refs).

Swift's imagination gets carried away with itself, dealing with the practical problems of being whatever size

So determined to deal with 'need to piss' then 'how to dump' in Lilliput.

i've enjoyed this diversion

jesus christ on a stick, that was difficult

I still can't believe some of the stuff I left off my ballot

My worry: "stuff everyone has read" will rise to the top just by virtue of being on lots of ballots, even if low-ranked

Next time maybe we should give each person five negative votes they can use to attack stuff they've read and didn't care for!

I would hope that you wouldn't vote for something just because you've read it

Done, sent! Ranked pairs was v. interesting - I would never consciously have been able to exclude Asimov or Harrison from my list, for ex.

Next time maybe we should give each person five negative votes they can use to attack stuff they've read and didn't care for!

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 24 March 2011 15:05 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

ahah i would LOVE to have these

lol that's an awesome idea!!

yeah negative votes are ~sorta~ a good idea but then i feel like complaining abt other ppl's taste is a primary reason to participate in ilx polls

ONLY TWO & HALF MORE DAYS TO VOTE SO FUKKEN VOTE ALREADY!!!!

You got my email ok Lamp?

i did, thank u!

lying islands, check, also, the way Swift's imagination gets carried away with itself, dealing with the practical problems of being whatever size, and also the alienation of being a stranger in a strange land, to use a loaded phrase - that feels like a science-fiction thing to do.

Very much otm

Can't believe some of the stuff I had to leave off my ballot. I'm finding this whole thing surprisingly painful, like it MATTERS a lot more than some of the stuff I actuallyu ought to be spending time on in real life.

just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day to vote (although i will probably accept any that straggle in over the wknd)

so, please, if youve thought abt it at all try to fire a ballot off were p close to 50

Damn you Lamp: already supposed to be doing among other things going to collect a prescription, getting my hair cut, collecting dry cleaning, going for a swim, sending James his books, preparing to go for an extended drunken lunch with friends.

Instead I'm sitting at my desk in my pants poring over Amis' New Maps of Hell and Aldiss' Billion Year Spree.

Liked this nugget from NMoH -

Rodan, a Japanese film, made great play with a brace of giant armour-plated radioactive supersonic pterodactyls finally despatched by guided missiles

There's all sorts of pertinent stuff in the first chapter, Starting Points, an excellent survey of pre-20th century works with claims to science-fiction but... man I've got to put some troosers on and get moving. I'll be voting later, possibly much later if that's ok, Lamp.

gah will really try to get my ballot in today

i enjoy new maps of hell a lot - that and his book on usage. wouldn't ever have bothered to finish lucky jim without them. not that it's any good, mind.

I wanted to try to track down one of the Calvinos (haven't read either nominated one), but nope, of course. Will see what I can do today but the weekend's ridiculously busy.

When he's not late-career trolling I find Amis exceptionally good company as an essayist - lively, unpretentious, erudite and well-read. Did Lucky Jim put you off everything else, thomp, or do you find later Amis just as uncongenial? (Slightly off-thread I know, but will serve as a bump + I can limber up for some consideration of The Alteration later).

xpost obv

i never got around to the later stuff. i'd be open to trying it, i just haven't got any of it and, you know, there's so much else around to read. -- i mean, i found Lucky Jim not-awful, in the end: well-executed, but fundamentally unsympathetic, and hardly as funny as its reputation suggests.

I don't usually enjoy Amis's fiction that much (non-fic I do like a lot). Fell off the Alteration last time I had a go. Just had an urge to read The Green Man though, so grabbed a copy on Amazon. Had better come through my door with this cover:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VPtjKE3OL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_.jpg

I voted. Not ranked, sorry - no time!

I'd read 113 of the list, but didn't find it that hard to whittle down, and there are more than one entry from some authors. I guess I've just read a lot of bad sci-fi!

Don't forget A Clockwork Orange, stragglers!

Or Fahreinheit 451.

ONLY TWO & HALF MORE DAYS TO VOTE

I'd be glad to vote again.

Just had an urge to read The Green Man though, so grabbed a copy on Amazon. Had better come through my door with this cover:



I got that copy. Green Man is tops.

just sent in a ballot. I've only read about 40 of the nominated books (one quarter of which is philip k dick), but still wanted to vote for some of my favorites

Have them all chosen and ranked but ...I...can't...figure out...what to put... at number 25.

yeah honestly bros new maps of hell is p terrible

IF some ppl send ballots this weekend ill take them, simply bcuz im not sure i will have much time this wknd to really start on the poll anyway. BUT the earlier they are in the better.

Phew. I'm glad that's over. Almost sent it to specific poll instead of specficpoll. Do u see it, Lamp?

I'm finding this whole thing surprisingly painful, like it MATTERS a lot more than some of the stuff

Instead I'm sitting at my desk in my pants poring over Amis' New Maps of Hell and Aldiss' Billion Year Spree.

only bcoz I had these books to hand. standing outside a pub waiting to go to a cocktail bar. still thinking bout voting. Its like some sort of curse.

why do you hat nmoh so much, Lamp?

Now that I have sent in my ballot I feel free. Free to fill up my book cart with unread beloved ILX classics such as Damon Knight's

Man In The Tree

lol i am formatting moran

Don't think I'm gonna get to do this. Sorry guys. I'd have just been voting for Borges and other literary shit anyways, so I guess I'll take it as a sci-fi primer instead.

What emil.y said. Just ran out of time to sit down and think....though I would have put Dragonlance at #1, so you're probably better off without my ballot.

Personally wouldn't mind seeing your ballots- if it's nominated you should be able to vote for it- but that's your choice.

Am much more on edge about seeing the final results than I would have expected.

Was The Invention of Morel nommed?

ignore that, i must be blind.

Fuck, seeing Nicholas Fisk's name there - shd've remembered Chocky, Trillions and Antigrav!

I remember trillions! Chocky is Wyndham tho.

Oh of course, you're right. Had cover images in my head - Chocky=Antigrav for some reason.

A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair as well. Which also prompts me to wonder whether I can seriously vote for Kipling (I'd rep for his Mark of the Beast and End of the Passage as great ghost stories, the latter a masterpiece. And his obsession with technology and how it affects narrative feels almost something like science fiction, but possibly deserves another name - science experimentation?)

Arrrrghghg SENT.

Not ranked. Heavy on the swords & sorceresses.

Sent, if that's ok, sorry it's so late. If it's any consolation I'm in a great deal of alcohol related pain. Been vaguely switching attention between the cricket and this, and kept losing focus.

Oh no fuck damn I forgot Ligotti in my ballot!

Wow, Fisk was prolific, huh. I definitely read A Rag..., and Escape from Splatterbang rings a bell as a title, but can't recall anymore than that. I didn't vote for any YA stuff (except Earthsea I spose), but would like to revisit at least some of the titles that have left a lingering echo down the decades.

Don't worry, I voted for all the YA stuff for you.

Just fired off a very hastily assembled ballot all the way from Brazil. Sorry for lateness!

Oh no guys Diana Wynne Jones died today...

Oh no! RIP DWJ, I've never read a bad book by her.

oh man ;_; rip...

um wow

thank you so much to everyone who has sent in a ballot! if anyone is on the fence & has a few minutes ill accept anything that comes in before i check my email on monday morning ~ 10:30 a.m. EST. so ilx poster thomp i fully expect something from u

I want to slip Ligotti into my ballot as #12 and bump out my #25, problem is my personal email addy @yahoo doesn't seem to reach u Lamp and I won't have access to my work email til Monday...

Also it probably doesn't really matter but it SEEMS v important at the mo

i have voted. since there are almost twenty hours left i would like to negative vote by exhorting anyone still considering sending a ballot to not vote for george r.r. martin. also, dear lord why am i not voting for these, other people please vote for them:

lud-in-the-mist
joan aiken
pamela zoline

ok thanks

Why the Martin hate?

it's because i think he's awful

Well argued.

Diana Wynne Jones RIP :(

i had Invention of Morel at #10, I think

will vote 2nite

exhorting anyone still considering sending a ballot to not vote for george r.r. martin.

I didn't, but if that one about the dead dude from the rock band getting reincarnated was on there I might have had to for nostalgia's sake!

Sent a hastily assembled ballot that I will probably regret.

ditto - thanks Lamp!

tom didnt you put one of that awful writer's books on your end of the decade list

i did that in the full knowledge it was an awful book by an awful, awful man

looool

okay so poll is closed ive got the final list tallied unfortunately i scheduled the voting to end right around the end of the semester. tentatively id like to start counting down the TOP 50 next week but it may be the week after.

thank you again to all who participated, should be a fun countdown

you gotta be shitting me

we wuz robbed.

Haha at WmC's current screenname.

lud-in-the-mist

I thought Elizabeth Hand was married to Richard Grant (the sff novelist not the Withnail actor). Then again that was years ago...

I believe he is the father of her children, yes, Jon.

Just bought a copy of your favorite book, The Man In The Tree, Rock.

Starting to fear that Lamp is going to use our ballots as data for a term paper he has to write.

haha i wish i just have a bunch of tedious marking to do... also a paper to write.

anway it didnt take that long to do the quote hunting/img formatting so i should be good to go next monday.

can you just give us the ones that didnt make top 50 this week

no rush Lamp! thx so much

Please please spell Bioy Casares name correctly on the results thread.

Just realised I (and everyone else) completely forgot Greg Bear and 'Blood Music'

I've avoided Greg Bear. Seems like a dick. It is weird to me how many sci-fi guys came out of the same UC San Diego scene though (Bear, Vinge, KS Robinson)

I liked Blood Music. I don't think it would have made my final ballot, but it was a good read. His new novel looks interesting.

hey guys. can the uplift storm trilogy be read without reading the first three books?

Yes.

I've not read the first three.

His new novel looks interesting

It's pretty good. I'm no big Bear fan, but Blood Music, Eon and Anvil of God are all pretty amazing, and Quantico was very good indeed (while stuff like Dead Lines, Vitals, Strength of Stones, crappy movie tie-ins etc can all go away)

hey guys. can the uplift storm trilogy be read without reading the first three books?

Oh wait, crap, is THAT what I voted for? I thought it was a typo and I was voting for the actual (great) Uplift trilogy, not the inferior sequel!

xpost aw shit Strength Of Stones is no good? The concept sounded awes and I was looking forward to reading it at some point.

From (fairly faded, admittedly) memory it (Strength of Stones) was clever but pretty dull

(reads amazon summary) sounds like a buncha wank imo.

Anvil of God

forge of god? or anvil of teh stars? or both? i've read the first, was pretty dope, but the second doesn't get stellar reviews.

I thought the novella of Blood Music was stronger than the full novel. I considered nominating it, but I wouldn't have voted for it so I didn't.

Forge of God! That's the one I meant, it was excellent. Couldn't really see how a sequel was possible, so I ignored it.