THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION

ok! so thank you to everyone that participated, this was a lot of fun for me, if a little heartbreaking. im going to ~roll out~ the TOP 50+1 over three days & then on the fourth list the remainder of the TOP 100, some stats results &c

get hype!

hurrah!

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/51StarsMy.jpg?t=130194483351 Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
74 points/5 votes/0 #1 votes

Just getting through Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

Liking it, it reads (to me anyway) like a Chuck Palahniuk novel. I think this is something to do with how I'm seeing the main character, like he's kind of self destructive but somehow everythings going his way, and everythings basically a bit bleak. dunno. anyone else read it?

― Guru Meditation (Ste), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:40 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/50We.jpg?t=1301945091
50 Yevgeny Zamaytin - We
74 points/6 votes/0 #1 votes

What Zamyatin seems to be aiming at is not any particular country but the implied aims of industrial civilisation. I have not read any of his other books, but I learn from Gleb Struve that he had spent several years in England and had written some blistering satires on English life. It is evident from We that he had a strong leaning towards primitivism. Imprisoned by the Czarist Government in 1906, and then imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 in the same corridor of the same prison, he had cause to dislike the political regimes he had lived under, but his book is not simply the expression of a grievance. It is in effect a study of the Machine, the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again. This is a book to look out for when an English version appears.

― George Orwell, Tribune, 4 January 1946 11:56 PM (65 years ago) Bookmark

haha, great post!

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/49CatsCradle.jpg?t=1301945441
49 Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
74 points/7 votes/0 #1 votes

read a cat's cradle: fine stuff. wish i was 23 (am 23 and a half).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, March 10, 2003 6:04 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark

Haha, I love that.

Ste otm re Palahniuk!

that Bester book is so great

I can't believe I cut Cat's Cradle from my ballot; 25 books was way too few IMO (I could easily have voted for 50)

i meant to vote in this but neglected to. look forward to some ideas on new reading material, at least.

really wish someone would buy me a copy of Howard Chaykin's Bester adaptation from the late 70s

Stars is overdue for a rereading -- I think it's been 30 years since I read it.

really really hoping there were enough write-ins for A Clockwork Orange

agree that the Palahniuk parallel is a good one re: Stars, Bester's character has a similar unattractive machismo/self-destructive mania kind of thing

Stars is overdue for a rereading -- I think it's been 30 years since I read it.

I re-read it recently, it's a hoot.

I've never read Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut kind of leaves me cold

Yay countdown!

Lamp by any chance were u able to do that tweak to my ballot for which I pled? (Adding Ligotti?)

i understand if not (sorry Tom Ligotti please don't kill self thx)

bookmarked!

I don't know most of the books but I like the elaborateness with which each is being announced.

Lamp by any chance were u able to do that tweak to my ballot for which I pled? (Adding Ligotti?)

haha i think so? my biggest fear is i fucked up the data somehow tbh - i didnt really automate the #1 counting since it never affected the rankings at all & im almost positive that i missed a couple. the points are counted tho!

Well shakey you should read cat's cradle, sirens of titan and slaughterhouse five. I bet you read the latter and hated it.

I didn't vote because I sort of forgot and I only have 8 or 9 all time favorites and didn't think they would influence this fun countdown. Plus smartphones.

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/48Tigana.jpg?t=1301946764
48 Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
76 points/5 votes/0 #1 votes

Yes yes yes. Tigana was the point where I realized that he wasn't simply good but absolutely great, however those next two are when he perfected not merely the alternate Europe approach but the sheer moral greyness of his world.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, September 7, 2005 9:34 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

tigana wuz robbed imo

― thomp, Sunday, April 4, 2010 5:35 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Vonnegut I have read: Welcome to the Monkey House, Galapagos, uh one other involving some giant painting in a barn...? Also Man Without a Country. I didn't think any of them were particularly bad, but I didn't think they were particularly great either.

xp

huh never even heard of Tigana or its author before...

Lamp loves that dude.

... so basically you read a bunch of the Vonnegut no one cares about and skipped over all the ones that everyone loves?

that would be kind of like judging Michael Jackson's entire career off of Invincible

lol

SMC - Cat's Cradle is really good.

I know this is big, but --

http://pulpfaction.net/files/images/gully/gully_page_a.jpg

Australian comic strip version of Stars called "Gully Foyle" -- described here.

I am IRRATIONALLY ANGRY at everybody who had weeks to vote and couldn't manage it.

Tigana is magic. I like books to be magic.

I should read that

that would be kind of like judging Michael Jackson's entire career off of Invincible

― whelping at his sandpapery best (DJP), lundi 4 avril 2011 16:04 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

this kind of reminds of a friend who once told me he doesn't really like the godfather movies and then later mentioning he's only actually seen part 3.

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/47FlowMyTears.jpg?t=1301946764
47 Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
77 points/5 votes/0 #1 votes

I always liked Flow My Tears The Policeman Said but it rarely gets mentioned. The television personality/identity crisis angle is possibly relevant in our celebrity obsessed reality TV age. Or not.

― m coleman, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 5:02 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I am IRRATIONALLY ANGRY at everybody who had weeks to vote and couldn't manage it.

― The Louvin Spoonful (WmC), Monday, April 4, 2011 4:09 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i thought about it but most of the stuff i had in mind to vote for wouldn't have ranked (i meant to nom that stuff to get it out there but missed the deadline) - plus im just not very well read when it comes to spec fic

Flow My Tears is the one with the v. prescient portrayal of the Internet, yeah?

best thing about this poll is that it basically creates my summer reading list for me!

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/46SnowCrash.jpg?t=1301949032
46 Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
78 points/5 votes/0 #1 votes

I'm totally with Dan - when I started Snow Crash I hated it. That first chapter is awful. Pizza delivery on futuristic skateboards? Yeah right. It must have picked up though as I still remember it as a great story.

Maybe you have to be here or something -- the description of everything, from the pizza delivery to the nature of the burbs to all that -- is SO GODDAMN LA and Orange County especially. My laughter was the laughter of recognition. Last year I spoke to an English class taught by an old teacher of mine who was using _Snow Crash_ as a key text (she was the one who actually got me reading the book in the first place) and in rereading that first chapter all I could think of was the 55 freeway and Newport Beach.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, February 7, 2003 12:46 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/45AWrinkle.jpg?t=1301949136
45 Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
78 points/6 votes/1 #1 vote

I can't get started on L'Engle, I'll never do any work today!! My favorite author for so many reasons I can't even explain, it's useless to try.

― Laurel (Laurel), Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:20 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

god i love that cover

Pro tip never listen to the L'Engle audiobooks where she reads them herself, just don't.

... so basically you read a bunch of the Vonnegut no one cares about and skipped over all the ones that everyone loves?

lol yeah I know. what can I say, those were the ones I was assigned to read!

L'Engle covers always freaked me out - do they have anything at all to do with the material within?

that one is an alex rodriguez bio

lol

I A Wrinkle in Time with that cover and it always sort of scared me too.

Stars My Destination being #51 = I don't care about this poll.

Hey, it's - nevermind

Cool. That's a nice contribution to this thread.

44 Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
81 points/5 votes/0 #1 votes

lem is especially awesome, he gets compared to borges sometimes. he mostly wrote sci-fi (including "solaris," which is really different from and better than both movie versions) but also really weird mysteries and a collection of reviews of imaginary books.

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 8:45 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Glass Hammer's great

Silverberg's "Son of Man" may be the most genuinely psychedelic sci-fi book I've ever read. page after page of just "I AM TRIPPING BALLS" imagery, so weird that I'd never heard of it before.

entire book is basically a guy wandering through constantly shifting landscapes, changing gender/shape/bodies, meeting bizarre creatures, experiencing extremes of existence, wondering what the point of it all is and what is happening to him

I remember his Book of Skulls being the other side of the late 1960s psychedelic thing_ constant barrage of creep New Age imagery and endless grim fucking

Okay I now need to read both asap!

this was the very best poll

otm

searching for Malzberg books at the local library, library asked me if I was actually looking for books by "Barry Mailbag"

yah, kudos due to lamp . xp

I got deeper into SF because of this poll. Books from the poll that I read either during the poll or after the winners were announced:

097 Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
090 Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan
083 Joe Haldeman - The Forever War (also Forever Peace)
062 Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
057 Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
055 Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens
054 Adolfo Bioy Cesares - The Invention of Morel
050 Yevgeny Zamaytin - We
049 Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
043 Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
042 Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
036 Philip K. Dick - Ubik
031 Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
019 Philip K. Dick - The VALIS Trilogy (1/3)
016 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
012 Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
009 William Gibson - Neuromancer
007 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
006 Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials (2/3)
002 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Earthsea Trilogy (2/3)

yeah this poll was more enlightening/inspiring than any other, for sure

Every time this thread gets bumped it gives me happiness

book/author that I had never heard of before that had the strongest impact on me = Lanark

That's next on my reading list!

I was initially put off by it but the last third is really masterful. it definitely does not have any fantasy or sci-fi hallmarks, it's kind of its own weird beast.

it's "speculative" the way Kafka or Burroughs is speculative

I thought it was fantasy actually.

Lanark is on my reading list too, though I had heard of it before from the What Are You Reading threads in ILB

anybody got any thoughts/recommendations on Carol Emshwiller

why are all the R.A. Lafferty books on Amazon hundreds of dollars? I can't think of any other sci-fi writer whose work seems to be so wildly collectible

I mean seriously wtf this book is $900?

Figure some crazy niece or nephew is sitting on the copyrights so it can't get back in print. Still don't know who is paying the high prices for the existing books though.

yeah I understand the former. the latter not so much. $850 for a fucking paperback?

sounds like a case for interlibrary loan to me

You're kidding right. You think any libraries have any copies left? Seems to me that there are people who steal stuff that's still in print and readily available like Nova-either that or the library retires these books when they wear out- so what chance does a copy of Nine Hundred Grandmothers have?

Also http://locusmag.com/2011/Ads/digitallafferty.jpg

Maybe we could start an ilxor kickstarter to buy those and use the future proceeds to fund the server forever. Either that or see if Luna can come up with the purchase price.

I agree this kind of stuff gets stolen a lot, but not everywhere ... WorldCat shows 53 libraries with copies of the US edition of Nine Hundred Grandmothers. Some of those must still be on the shelves. The US edition of Not to Mention Camels is listed as available in 195 libraries.

Hm. Looks like you are right. But a lot of those are university libraries. Can those of us without any university connections anymore get them to request that stuff with a public library card?

Also:
http://www.soulculture.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/JIMI-HENDRIX4.jpg
RIght now I'd like to read a little thing by R.A. Lafferty, that's Nine Hundred Grandmothers over there

Good question ... I just put it to the resident librarian. According to her, it depends on which lending consortia your library belongs to. They'll probably try to get the book from another public library before going to a university. Basically, all you can do is put in a request and see what happens; there's no telling which library will actually come through. I think the odds are pretty good your library is connected to one that will lend the book.

xp!

this is my default sf thread so I'll just post this here... picked up Cosmos Latino from the library, sort of amazed at the breadth of stuff referenced. so far the only names I recognize are Jodorowsky (lol) and Bruce Sterling (who apparently helped set this)

set this up

that should say

Will check it out, thanks.

Cool, thanks Shakey Mo. Come on over to ILB's Rolling Speculative etc. sometime.

When I looked up this book I was also recommended an alternative history in which the Aztecs beat the Spaniards.

positive I've seen that premise in some book on the shelves (probably more than once)

wishing there was more in English by this guy

Neuromancer ebook on sale and I just got farther into it via the sample than ever before so maybe I'll actually get it and finish it this time. In the meantime just using this as a pretext to revive this excellent thread.

Have no memory of why I was asking about carol emshwiller upthread

The one emshwiller I've read, a novel called Carmen Dog, completely fucking ruled. I've never seen nor heard of it since then (early 90s).

this was the very best poll

― Thanks WEBSITE!! (Z S), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 5:33 PM (3 years ago)

just reposting the results since they're buried deep within the fold (the name of my new epic erotic speculative fiction series btw) now:

so i have most of the data here - enough to do a TOP 100 anyway & its sorta anticlimactic to do bottom half run down all day tomorrow - so heres the TOP 100 with point totals for the TOP 70. as you can see it was a really tight race a single first place vote for 'The Forever War' wouldve moved it ahead of 'We' @ #50.

100 Iain M Banks - Excession
099 Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
098 Robin Hobb - The Farseer Trilogy
097 Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
096 Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

095 Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
094 William Gibson - Pattern Recognition
093 Roald Dahl - James & The Giant Peach
092 Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
091 Thomas Disch - Camp Concentration

090 Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan
089 H.P. Lovecraft - "The Colour out of Space"
088 Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber
087 Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood
086 Christopher Priest - Inverted World

085 Gene Wolfe - Book of the Long Sun
084 Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds
083 Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
082 Russell Hobon - Riddley Walker
081 Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man (1993)

080 Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
079 Michael Moorcock - Dancers at the End of Time
078 J.G. Ballard - High Rise
077 Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
076 Dan Simmons - Hyperion

075 Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren
074 John Crowley - Engine Summer
073 Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles
072 Iain M Banks - Consider Phlebas
071 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven

070 Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange 59
069 J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter septet 59
068 Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics 60
067 Edgar Allan Poe - Tale of Mystery & Imagination 60
066 Jack Vance - Tales of the Dying Earth 61

065 Gygax & Arneson - 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide 61
064 James Tiptree - "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" 61
063 Glen Cook -The Black Company 64
062 Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others 66
061 John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids 66

060 Richard Adams - Watership Down 66
059 John Crowley - Little, Big 67
058 Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 68
057 Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities 70
056 China Miéville - Perdido Street Station 70

055 Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens 72
054 Adolfo Bioy Cesares - The Invention of Morel 72
053 Terry Pratchett - Small Gods 73
052 Kim Stanley Robinson - The Mars trilogy 73
051 Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination 74

050 Yevgeny Zamaytin - We
049 Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
048 Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
047 Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
046 Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

045 Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
044 Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
043 Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
042 Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
041 Edwin Abbott Abbott - Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

040 Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy
039 Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
038 Alasdair Gray - Lanark
037 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
036 Philip K. Dick - Ubik

035 Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
034 Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising Sequence
033 H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
032 William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
031 Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

030 Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
029 M.R. James - The Collected Stories of M.R. James
028 Fredrik Pohl - Gateway
027 Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
026 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

025 Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master & Margarita
024 J.G. Ballard - The Drowned World
023 Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games
022 Franz Kafka - The Collected Stories
021 H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness

020 Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time
019 Philip K. Dick - The VALIS Trilogy
018 J.R.R. Tolkein - The Hobbit
017 Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly
016 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

015 George R R Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire
014 Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
013 Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
012 Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
011 J.G. Ballard - The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard

010 Frank Herbert - Dune
009 William Gibson - Neuromancer
008 C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia
007 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
006 Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials

005 George Orwell - 1984
004 Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
003 Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun
002 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Earthsea Trilogy
001 J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings

― RANDY BEAMAN ANAGRAM (Lamp), Wednesday, April 6, 2011 5:44 PM (5 years ago)

can't decide whether to dive into the foundation trilogy, wheel of time, or one of the top placers that i don't know anything about (illuminatus trilogy, player of games)

Foundation is a slog imo

i forgot that wheel of time is 12,000 pages, so...i'll just wait for the hbo version.

er, i just googled that and learned that there really is a tv adapation in the works, for hbo. someone hand me a cigar and a desk to prop my feet up onto while i yell at subordinates, i should be a tv executive

Kinda wish we had separate fantasy and sf polls tbh

...it's not for hbo, sorry. a major studio is involved, but the announcement hasn't been made yet. i don't have time for accurate googling when i have all these meetings about upcoming pilots that need decisions, ASAP *cigar smoke ring*

Read it imo

These results are a bit not good. Does anyone really put his dark materials there now

Otm