▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪▫■□▪ 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.

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.