ᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥ THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL - NOMINATIONS & DISCUSSION THREAD ᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥᴥᴕᴥ

because the making and arguing over of lists of things is the supereme occupation of every free person

What's all this then?

its an ilx email poll for books of speculative fiction - primarily science fiction, fantasy, horror & adventure stories - that will if not determine 'the best' works in these genres at least give an interesting & informative list of rad books

How is it made?

to start any and all posters can nominate up to 13 different prose works that fit within the genre guidelines. there are a couple of caveats:

* any work that was conceived as a single entity but published in separate volumes (e.g. the lord of the rings, the wheel of time) should be nominated for the TOTAL WORK, rather than in their component parts
* both short story collections & short stories are eligible
* where overlap exists precidence will be given to the title published earliest
* non-english titles more than welcome
* for works in translation please note the translator

it would be helpful if all nominations could follow the form of AUTHOR - TITLE OF WORK

So that's it?

yeah, p much

How do we deal with a situation like: I think Gateway is awesome but think quality drops way down in the rest of the Heechee Saga, so I only nominate Gateway. Somebody else thinks "fuck you, all the Heechee novels are rad!!!" and nominates the whole thing. See also: Ender's Game, Ringworld, etc.

i think for fairness & uniformity's sake we have to treat everything the same. if the work is intended to be a single whole than you have to make a choice about whether the parts you like are flawed enough to taint the whole, & whether its still worth nominating. the same way in the tv poll you couldn't nominate only a single season of show - you have to weigh the entire work

my list of nominations:

robert jordan - the wheel of time
yevgeny zamaytin - we
urusla k le guin - the lathe of heaven
michelle west - the sun sword
robert w. chambers - the king in yellow
h.p. lovecraft - "the shadow over innsmouth"
kim stanely robinson - the mars trilogy
sean russell - moontide & magic rise
thomas ligotti - songs of a dead dreamer
stephen donaldson - the chronicles of thomas convenant
tad williams - memory, sorrow & thorn
sigizmund krzhizhanovsky - memories of the future
patricia a mckillip - the riddle-master trilogy

Good work!

Couple of questions before we start:

• series which aren't a continuing saga, but have overlap of setting or character e.g. Discworld. Are these single entities for this poll?
• how strict are we to be with story collections? Do you want The Complete Ballard, or just the volumes they were originally published?

man seriously don't know where to even begin

yevgeny zamaytin - we
robert w. chambers - the king in yellow

would definitely second both of these fwiw

um is there a limit on how long our list can be

roger zelazny - the amber series, books 1-5
william gibson - neuromancer
mervyn peake - gormenghast
madeleine l'engle - a wrinkle in time

isaac asimov - foundation
philip k. dick - do androids dream of electric sheep
harlan ellison - "i have no mouth and i must scream"
ray bradbury - the martian chronicles
ray bradbury - illustrated man
margaret atwood - handmaiden's tale
william goldman - the princess bride
nevil shute - on the beach
neal stephenson - snow crash
stephen king - the stand
walter miller - a canticle for leibowitz
warren ellis - transmetropolitan

more to come when i think of them

oh wow, that's more than i thought i had. one more, hmmm....

john christopher - the tripod trilogy

warren ellis - transmetropolitan

wait comics are eligible? that's a whole other level

oh, i didn't notice prose-only in the title, so idk. maybe not.

series which aren't a continuing saga, but have overlap of setting or character e.g. Discworld. Are these single entities for this poll?

books which take place in the same world & feature some of the same characters &c but are not part of a single cohesive saga/cycle/work are all separate entities so yeah, each discworld book gets its own nominations. or for example the two towers would get nominated as part of the 'lord of rings' but the silmarillion would be its own separate nomination.

i realize there are grey areas & will bow to w/e the majority think is right but this seems the fairest and clearest way of dividing things

also yeah no poetry no comics. partly because i don't know enough about either to adjudicate fairly & partly to contain the scope of the poll

if not, let me nom

frank herbert - dune

xp to shakey

to start any and all posters can nominate up to 13 different prose works that fit within the genre guidelines

if we don't get a lot of noms, i recommend opening up more noms per person (maybe even unlimited like they do on the decade film polls)

no worries, I totally missed that we're limited to 13 lol

um okay off the top of my head

JRR Tolkien - Lord of the Rings (I don't care if it's old/tired/obvious it's canonical for a reason)
Philip K. Dick - VALIS trilogy (VALIS, Divine Invasion, Transmigration of Timothy Archer)
Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun
Frederick Pohl - Jem
Michael Moorcock - Cornelius Chronicles (Volumes I, II and III)
Yevgeny Zamaytin - We
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow
H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu
William S. Burroughs - The Red Night Trilogy (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands)
James Tiptree - Her Smoke Rose Up Forever anthology
Koushun Takami - Battle Royale
Michael Moorcock - Dancers at the End of Time (Dancers at the End of Time (An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, The End of All Songs, The Transformation of Mavis Ming, and Legends From the End of Time)

Frank Herbert - The Jesus Incident [could nom the whole trilogy instead but this is the one I really love]

some obvious ones and some personal faves, 3 more later once I think about it

Rudy Rucker - Software/Wetware/Freeware/Realware
Bruce Sterling - Islands In The Net
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
Tove Jannson - Moomin series
Philip K. Dick - Collected Stories Vol. 4
Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld
Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood
Richard Adams - Shardik
Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising series
Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles

thanks for nominating Tiptree shakey! was gonna do Ten Thousand Light-Years but I bet your anthology has most of that.

Prydain! <3

Yevgeny Zamaytin - We
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow

shakey i already nom'd both of these (which you previously noted, um) so you can have two more nominations

@ mordy - yeah depending on how many ppl post opening up nominations might be necessary. i just want to see what sort of interest this thread gets 1st

Not being hitherto familiar with the term, let me fly a couple of kites:

George Orwell - 1984
Cormac McCarthy - The Road

Both definitely 'speculative' to a large degree. Seems to me 1984 should count if Dick does. The Road, I can understand why it wouldn't - too close to our world, which is kinda crazy when you think about it.

oh sorry I always have trouble figuring how these nominations/voting/polls things work

cuz I am dum

SO...

K.W. Jeter - Dr. Adder
Thomas Disch - 334

some canon & kids' canon at that:

Ursula Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea
JRR Tolkien - The Hobbit
CS Lewis - The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe
CS Lewis - The Silver Chair
CS Lewis - The Voyage of the Dawntreader
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials

madeleine l'engle - a wrinkle in time
urusla k le guin - the lathe of heaven

omg yes to both of these!

some more:

ted chiang - stores of your life and others
arthur c. clarke - childhood' end
arthur c. clarke - the city & the stars
alfred bester - the demolished man
ursula le guin - the left hand of darkness
kurt vonnegut - the sirens of titan
diana wynne jones - archer's goon
joe haldeman - the forever war

if we don't get a lot of noms, i recommend opening up more noms per person (maybe even unlimited like they do on the decade film polls)

don't let nominations run away ahead of potential votes though, else your final list will be too flat to run a proper countdown

more lovecraft:

hp lovecraft - at the mountains of madness
hp lovecraft - the whisperer in darkness

ok that's 10 for me. dunno whether lovecraft should be combined into the 'necronomicon' collection say?

Tove Jannson - Moomin series

yessssssssssss! :D

Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Frederick Pohl - Gateway
Octavia Butler - Dawn
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
Iain M Banks - Excession
Michael Moorcock - Elric
JG Ballard - The Crystal World
Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle
John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids
M John Harrison - The Centauri Device

I'm gonna have to look at the bookcase, make a list, check it against the thread so I don't repeat stuff...

I will nominate & vote. Just might be a day or two to get to it.

that Octavia Butler is included in the Lilith's Brood series I nommed above, so you got 1 more xp

those Narnia books should all be part of one as well, right?

Ah ok...then replace the Octavia Butler with:

Jack Vance - Tales of the Dying Earth

Should Wizard of Earthsea be nommed as part of the Earthsea Quartet series?

I nom'd Book of the New Sun already fyi

dunno whether lovecraft should be combined into the 'necronomicon' collection say?

I think his stuff should be nommed separately as not all of it share the same universe and even those that do are generally connected by theme and setting rather than plot and character. I mean I would probably vote for 'At the Mountains of Madness' but I don't love all his mythos stuff equally.

xp

Ah damn, I thought I'd checked all of them. Ok so replace Book of the New Sun with:

Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside

any work that was conceived as a single entity but published in separate volumes (e.g. the lord of the rings, the wheel of time) should be nominated for the TOTAL WORK, rather than in their component parts

Lovecraft doesn't seem to fit this, so yeah those should be separate imo

dan simmons - hyperion

glen cook - the black company
alastair reynolds - house of suns
joe haldeman - the forever war
m john harrison - viriconium
victor pelevin - omon ra

whoops forever war already nommed

julian may - pliocene exile

alasdair gray - lanark

clive barker - imajica
george r r martin - song of fire and ice
steven erikson - malazan book of the fallen

william gibson - burning chrome
samuel delany - babel-17

china mieville - perdido street station
china mieville - the scar

aren't his kind of related?

orson scott card - Ender's Game (first book only)
douglas adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)
jonathan lethem - Girl in Landscape
isaac asimov - "The Last Question"
kurt vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
tim powers - The Anubis Gates

This is out of control already. There's no clear genre here, and therefore no possible poll.

i don't see what the lack of a "clear genre" has to do with anything. and it's a poll because you vote in it.

Taco Bell: "I don't see what the lack of 'meat content' has to do with it. And it's food because you eat it."

whereas Homer, Chaucer, Dante etc. would not.

And indeed Shakespeare!

Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Oh wait

I've only just seen this, and it is awsome and exciting. When do the nominations end (although most of mine are there already)?

NOMINATIONS close on friday

Ta

william mayne, earthfasts
joan aiken, the wolves of willoughby chase series

Yeah, adored those Aiken books as a kid.

I just bought Star Maker and Forever War at Forbidden Planet, two I've meaning to get round to for years.

Whole poll is driving me into into a '14 used from £0.01' buying frenzy from Amazon. 334, Reproductive System, Report on Probability A…

it's driving me into a 'i should look for some of these in that box at my parent's house next time i am there' frenzy. it's not much of a frenzy.

more of a tizzy really

if you find 900 Grandmothers in that box, you will be sitting pretty

My list is basically covered. I have a soft spot for these:

Richard Cowper - Piper At the Gates of Dawn
Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake
Storm Constantine - Hermetech

Having children's and YA in makes this very wide, as most of it's speculative or fantastic in some way, but here are a couple of old favourites not yet mentioned:

Margaret Mahy - The Changeover
Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden

can someone nominate some andre norton books so i know which ones to buy. she wrote about 400 novels, i think.

Andre Norton The Beast Master
Andre Norton Judgment on Janus

I read loads of Andre Norton as a kid, but those stick in the mind. There was also a brilliant one about cat people, but I can't remember the title.

On stuff I liked as a kid, I think I should nominate this, which is excellent

Nicholas Fisk Time Trap

and this, which maybe isn't, but is one of the first books I ever read by myself, and started me on sci-fi in the first place

Brian Earnshaw Dragonfall 5 and the Empty Planet

Then some other stuff

Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake
AA Attanasio Radix
Bruce Sterling 20 Evocations (this is in Schismatrix Plus, which has been nominated, but I want to vote for it on its own; its my single favourite bit of cyberpunk)
Bruce Sterling Holy Fire
Can I add Isaac Asimov Caves of Steel/Naked Sun as one thing, or put the whole Robot series together?
William Gibson Virtual Light (the first books of his trilogies are always the best)
Fritz Leiber Ill Met in Lankhmar (I actually have the First Book of Lankhmar, which is a bigger compilation, but the second two books have been nominated in Lean Times in Lankhmar already)

Michael Moorcock City in the Autumn Stars (or whole Von Bek sequence if that counts)
Arthur C Clarke The Nine Billion Names of God

I'm sure I read some crazy hallucinatory inner space stuff in my 20s that was great, but I am having a total memory failure.

Just occurred to me that Illuminatus! has not been nominated. Don't know how it holds up, but that trilogy had an almost physical effect on me when I was 16, haunted my dreams for weeks. And me with no noms left, ah well.

I'll get that for you (might make my ballot)

The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

Thanks!

And sorry for the completely unsubtle hint.

ha no probs, had forgotten about it reckon it should be in the big list.

Plenty of literary stuff, but no Angela Carter. Has she fallen so far?

Also, no Harry Potter!

hp is on there

Oh yeah, wasn't looking at the latest list.

Never retained any important details of any Andre Norton I read besides a vague recollection of the word "Darkover" and the entirety of THE BEASTMASTER, which I think was a bit out of her norm but I liked it very much.

There was a sequel to THE BEASTMASTER, but I don't remember it being as good, or maybe I was just less impressionable by that time.

Lucius Shepard- The Jaguar Hunter, The Ends of the Earth, Life During Wartime
Kim Stanley Robinson- The Wild Shore
Howard Waldrop- All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
Connie Willis- Impossible Things

I nominated The Wild Shore as part of the "Three Californias" trilogy, so you get one more.

Here is a list from M. John Harrison: http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/some-interesting-science-fiction/

And some additions to it: http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/livelier-than-the-average-dragon/

am i too late to use up some of my remaining nominations on the duncton chronicles and the book of silence (each a trilogy) by william horwood?

Always meant to read some of those Horwoods. Hard to come across in U.S. used aisles though. I'm an old Wind-in-the-Willows head and latterday Watership Down zealot...

then i dont hesitate to recommend tho they're significantly darker

Plenty of literary stuff, but no Angela Carter. Has she fallen so far?

Just read her 'Heroes and Villains', the postapocalyptic one, and actually really liked it. But I've already use up all my noms and a fistful of other people's, and that's way more books already than I'll be able to vote for, and I'm already uncertain about which of the precious darlings is going to be abandoned

In my limited Angela Carter experience it seems like her short stories own her novels.

^^^
Completely the case in my experience too.

Most of what I'd written down last week has been put already.

GK Chesterton - The Man who was Thursday
Cynthia Ozick - "Puttermesser and Xanthippe" (part of The Puttermesser Papers)
Stephen King - "The Mist"
Hope Mirrlees - Lud-in-the-mist
A E Van Vogt - Slan (I mean, can't have an SF poll without this. "Fans are slans" etc!)

thoroughly baffled at the respect for that chesterton.

I put LUD-IN-THE-MIST on my reading list like 5 years ago but never actually found it anywhere and then got distracted by a shiny object, I guess. Good reminder!

i have tried to start reading that ~ half a dozen times in the past week and got nowhere, btw

Well, I've had the Gormenghast trilogy under my desk for over a year (I should return that) and got nowhere with IT, either.

Abortions for some, tiny American flags for others.

wrong thread?

What, does no one here watch Futurama?? I must have stumbled on the only thread in all of ILX where that is the case -- ironic that it's the spec fic poll, eh?

i lolled despite not getting the reference tbh

To be honest, I felt a bit unsure whether to nominate Lud. Although it's just five years since I read it, all I can remember at this point is that I enjoyed it a lot. Perhaps not the greatest basis to nominate something, but being a latecomer I find I have nominations to burn in any case.

Can totally understand not liking the Chesterton book -- it's so very silly and religious. The sequence where people reveal who they are is so obvious, but the farce of it is humorous enough for me. The Christianity clearly bothers a lot of people. As luck(?) would have it, I'm too obtuse to be bothered by such things, just having a grand old time with Chesty's fine language and Symes' vigorous romp with the anarchists.

Feel like I should nominate some scandinavian SF, but I don't think I've read any! Always meant to read Karin Boye's _Kallocain_, which is another one of those old dystopian messes.

hmmm to nominate the last of the renshai or not....

As oystein says, more indicative of being late to the party than any real belief in the great quality of the books

Bugger! Have bought Gormenghast, only to find I had actually already bought it about 10 years ago, and never got around to reading it.

THEY'LL MAKE NICE BOOKENDS FOR STUFF YOU'LL ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO WADE THROUGH IMO

holy shit, sorry! i should look up more when typing

ok nominations are closed i will put up a voting thread tomorrow once i figure some things out