The conversation keeps flowing.
Meantime, in the American Library Association’s post about the 100 most frequently challenged books by decade is illustrated with this stack of books — John King Tarpinian invites you to see which sf novel stands out most prominently.
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1177BC is very good. It is very readable, and I really like history books which tie things together synchronically instead of keeping them in cultural silos:
This was going on in Egypt and meanwhile this was happening in Persia and this was happening in Greece and this was happening in what is now Turkey, and by the way these troublemakers might have been from Sicily.
The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor is similarly cool because (aside from Mithridates being so badass that people would say he was a Gary Stu if he was fictional) it covers stuff like the siege of Athens and other events at that end of the ancient world that somehow get omitted from the pro-Roman histories we get in school.
Mandatory quote from Houseman:
I tell the tale that I heard told
Mithridates, he died old.
🙂
… in his 70s, by assisted suicide, to avoid being captured and paraded by the Romans, after being betrayed. The assistance was needed because he had made himself so immune to poison that one of his bodyguards had to help him finish the job with a blade.
You could get a hell of a good reading list out of that Omni selection, but I’m not sure I’d call any of those writers under-appreciated, really. All of them have got a pretty good reputation and a decent level of recognition, even if it’s sometimes in slightly specialised circles. (The Strugatskys must be easily the best-known Russian SF writers… I have never managed to lay my hands on a copy of Noon: 22nd Century, though: I mention this in case any enterprising e-book publisher should happen to be reading.)
I suppose you could make a case for Brunner and Butler being under-appreciated, a bit (not un-, just under-.) Possibly Stapledon, but that’s more a factor of the passage of time, and him not having a very big output. But the rest? Not really.
Edwin Abbot? Known for one novel which I read in high school, which was sequelized by a Dutch writer (titled SPHERELAND), annotated and given another sequel titled FLATTERLAND
Most “known” novels are the ones that come out and are forgotten in about five years. The ones that stick around tend to be referenced Those are the ones I like to read.
‘Most underrated’ is weird, but the general point being made doesn’t seem to me unreasonable. The point is not that these people aren’t recognised among science fiction fans (as ‘for true fans’ makes clear), but that they aren’t so much recognised in the wider world. I think that’s by and large true, by comparison with Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Herbert and the like. Le Guin is an exception, but her wider recognition is largely due to her children’s books, which the article does take note of.
Breaking news! I’ve uncovered the details of the elusive SJW virtue signal–It is a dinosaur having tea with kittens.
http://imgur.com/qEwXUII
http://imgur.com/a/6b54o
To be fair, I hadn’t even heard of the Strugatskis until a Turkish publisher released new editions of a couple of their books recently.
Please excuse the unnecessary post: fat fingers on my phone!
It’s on my wishlist. I’m a Bronze Age fangirl (and named my cats Hector and Achilles).
One great thing about Donald Wollheim’s DAW is that DAW published translated SF. Unfortunately, as I recall DAW’s main translator was Wendayne Ackerman, who meant well, I am sure. And whose translation services would be affordably priced.
In fiction, still on my Agatha Christie kick. I never got into her when I was young, but in the past 3-4 years, I’ve been enjoying working my way through her entire oeuvre and will be sorry when I’m all done. Current read is The Pale Horse, which is my 6th or 7th Christie myself this year, and my favorite of the year so far.
In other fiction, I’ve read Jo Baker’s Longbourn (Pride & Prejudice from the servants’ perspective). I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” it, since servants’ lives were bleak and thankless, even in what was, for the era, a fair and courteous household (the Bennetts), and “bleak” is invariably my least-favorite thing in fiction. But certainly a different view of a very familiar tale.
Also read Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase (I’d say it’s in the “Daphne Du Maurier” genre, and although I enjoyed the book, it didn’t have the impact that a Du Maurier novel does), The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (decent Sherlock Holmes novel), Planetfall (didn’t work for me, for several reasons, though I thought the writing was good), and some PD James mysteries.
I recommend a YA I liked We Were Liars, which my dad recommended to me. by E. Lockhart.
Some of my most engaging nonfiction reading of the year are a couple of British humor books my dad loaned me, Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops and its sequel, More Weird Things etc., both by Jen Campbell. Laugh-out-loud novelty books.
BTW, whoever it was here who recommended the cookbook to me, OLIVES, LEMONS, & ZA’ATAR by Rawia Bishara — great recommendation! I checked it out of the library last week (I always do this before buying, since cookbooks are expensive). There are many recipes in it I want to try (as well as gorgeous photographs and engaging anecdotes), and the first one I tried was a success. I made her spicy red-bell-pepper-and-walnut spread for a fireworks party last night, and it was a hit. Also so “meaty” (though it qualifies as a vegan recipe) that a couple of people who liked it (and swiped the leftovers) thought it was a chorizo dip.
Sooner or later, I am going to have to re-read and reassess those Perry Rhodan books (mostly translated by Wendayne Ackerman.) My recollection is that the translation is, umm, workmanlike. I seem to remember it’s good enough to show differences in style between the main writers, though. (Although it can be hard to tell, since I think some of them were pseudonymous or using house names or something. Certainly, if I was writing Perry Rhodan, I’d want to be pseudonymous.)
I have posted the 1941 Retro Hugo Longlist. As with the other Hugo longlists, it is drawn from the post-award Hugo stats that are released, cleaned up (there were a lot of spelling errors in the original) and reordered. Also, some added commentary by me.
@Troutwaxer and Simon,
Dammit! I just bought it too and immediately broke 2 day old rule of no more new books until I get through Mount TBR.
@Kyra
The Amanda Downum looks good as well. I’ll be taking a look at it.
Ouch.
IIRC, there were at least two translators by the time DAW was publishing the Strugatskys. I noticed the differences between the translation styles.
::ticketty::
Oooh, I did that a few years ago. Very satisfying. No other mystery writer seems up to snuff once you’ve read her works. Like you, I never read her when I was young. As it turned out, I realized I’d actually been in an Agatha Christie play in high school (a memory I try hard to suppress), and when I read the play script I was a little shocked to recognize it. Like Holly on Red Dwarf, I wish I could erase all memory of Christie’s work so I could read them all again for the first time.
@laura
Indeed, when the Doctor shows Donna a far-future edition of Christie’s work, I thought “Okay, I think I can buy that.”
It’s worth noting that there have been fresh translations of several of the Strugatskys’ books in recent years, and they are a delight.
As for the frequently-banned books…just the other day I commented to a friend about some other banning effort that there are a lot of people who fundamentally don’t believe fiction. They think that anything you read, you must either want to or end up trying to make real.
Chicago Review Press recently published the Strugatskys’ The Doomed City in its first English edition, translated by Andrew Bromfield. Writer of the introduction Dmitry Glukhovsky calls it their best book. I’ve not read it yet so can’t comment. Boris Strugatsky’s Afterword is quite interesting, however.
@Mark-Kitteh – it works, but arrgh! 142 pages!
@Various – all but two of the unappreciated writers were white men? And only one non-white on the whole list? Yeah, no. Despite popular belief, women and people of color have been writing SFF since the beginning, and are far more likely to have been swept under the rug than white men.
@Kyra & others – I also have been rereading Christie, and while I have respect for her, I find her bigotry and misogyny, and her anti-adoption bias, very distasteful. In addition, about every fourth book is full of repetitive conversation with little to no plot movement. I do enjoy the rest despite the above, but it’s annoying not to know in advance which type of book I’m getting.
I tried to read Murder on the Orient Express this year. I had seen the Albert Finney version and the David Suchet version, so knew the ending and I spent most of my time skimming. It’s a shame because the book was better than either of those versions. (And when did Suchet’s Poirot start moralizing? Was it there throughout the entire series and I just didn’t notice it?)
Lenore Jones:
all but two of the unappreciated writers were white men?
All but three. (Out of ten. That some readers did not notice the third – presumably Leigh Brackett – suggests that she is indeed underappreciated.)
Jack Lint: The moralising was a special feature of that episode. They took the view that as the solution is so well-known, they couldn’t make the whole thing turn on that, so they would focus on the moral implications instead. (Though having said that, they did in fact subtly change the solution.)
Clicky
In regards to Agatha Christie’s Poirot, I watched the series recently, and it takes a much more serious turn after Hugh Frasier leaves in the ninth season. The last couple of seasons are particularly somber, and embrace the moralism that Jack Lint noticed. I thought it was unfortunate, given how talented David Suchet is as a comedic actor. The Suchet version certainly drained all the comic life from Murder on the Orient Express, which was disappointing given how funny the novel is.
I noticed that, too. The Suchet MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS was bleak and dour. There were a number of other of the late-in-the-series episodes that also seemed quite dark in tone, a noticeable departure from the earlier years of the show.
I, too, preferred the book of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS to either of the filmed versions.
From Tor.com: (Almost) Every SFF Adaptation Coming to Television and Movie Theaters!
There’s some good news in there:
and some not-so-good news:
1177BC: Y’all made me buy it. Love good history books and always fascinated by the Bronze Age.
Thanks for the heads up, whoever did first bring it up…to my head.
Am also getting The Invisible Library and Ninefox Gambit.
At least I’ve broken my reader’s block!
Bartimaeus
Re: Camelot
What….
I’m just going to polish up a pitch for Romeo and Juliet … as a police procedural, and see if it flies.
We interrupt this discussion for the following announcement:
Jo Clayton books are being reissued on Kindle. Available so far: The Skeen trilogy, the Duel of Sorcery trilogy, Bait of Dreams and the first several Diadem books. In an ideal world, the rest of her catalog won’t be far behind.
(And I’m dreaming when I write this, but could we also get Louise Cooper and Jane Gaskell?)
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled comments.
What’s weird is how many of the banned books are also required reading. I guess that’s how the banninators come to find out about them. But I swear, of the ones that were published when I were a lass, at least half of ’em were required or recommended, and a bunch of them were in the school library.
@Dawn Incognito (how’s your dad?): That link is great. Plus it’s worth it just for the line I thought “you knob, you didn’t buy a book at all in the seventies or eighties, did you.” It’s true. 70’s SF covers usually had NOTHING to do with the book. (Also yes. The Neveryona cover is man-ass-tastic. Hope Chip liked it.)
Wonder if my library has “1177BC”. Probably.
@Mark-kitteh: Don’t bother. They’ve got a sequel or prequel or midquel or some damn thing of R&J set up as a series this year.
@lurkertype
I used up all my flabbers on Camelot, so now I’m merely ghasted. There’s a trailer and everything.
Romeo would be a Canadian with surname “Gue”.
@Bartimaeus:
I could swear this was one of the outtakes from the long tracking-shot sequence at the beginning of ‘The Player’. This concept pitch would have happened right after the one for ‘The Graduate 2’.
(Thanks, Bartimaeus. I could swear I heard a thud, when I read that aloud to a friend, and the elevator pitch snapped its cable and plunged into the basement.)
@lurkertype:
Dad is better, thanks for asking. They got the fluid off his lungs and ran all their tests and discharged him today. Which hopefully means his heart is now pumping as it should.
As for the link, I was entertained at the highly sci-fi covers for collections of Asimov’s non-fiction science essays.
(Kinda like the time I saw Contact on the History Channel.)
“I’m just going to polish up a pitch for Romeo and Juliet … as a police procedural, and see if it flies.”
One of the pleasures of Ryan North’s recent choose-your-own-storyline _Romeo and/or Juliet_ is finding a a noir detective coda in one of the paths, where a character you’ve heard of (but not yet seen) comes in after the star-crossed lovers have met their fate, and tries to put together what *really* happened. It’s silly, but it works. (And it made me go back to the play and check what we actually see, and aren’t simply told, of Mercutio.)
@Dawn Incognito: I like surreal, but the cover for Strange Relations is a bit disturbing. 😉 But Neveryóna – wow, what a pair of buns! 😀
@Mark (kitteh): Thanks for that link! ::adding “Good Show Sir” to my feeds::
@JKT: Other kids’ parents tried to control your reading as if they were your parents?! WTF.
@Bartimaeus: Reading the list of possible/probable/definite SFF adaptations (thanks for the link), it’d be nice if moving-picture folks would stop remaking the same things (e.g., Camelot), or at least not remake things that didn’t work out the first time – instead, keep trying more new things. Still, some interesting things on the list; let’s see what really comes out!
Bonus points: I’ve opened new tabs to look into the original books/stories for a few items I wasn’t familiar with. 🙂 Uh-oh, the TBR stack’s looking a little shaky.
Unrelated to anything, but my other half sent me a link to photographs of old World’s Fair buildings – not SF, but many of them look SFish. (I’m sure there are other photo sets like this; this is just the one I was sent today.) Cool-looking stuff, though sad to think of these cool things created and, in many cases, getting so run down because they had not actual purpose beyond that.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/photographic-tour-wonders-worlds-fairs-leave-behind-180959195/
emgrasso: People still believed that story about Mithridates building up immunity to poisons as late as the 1920’s (see Sayers’s Strong Poison); it is now considered very unlikely.
Andrew M: I don’t think Brackett belongs on that list; IMO, she was writing pulp fiction (the sort even the Puppies might find retro?) long after the field had moved past that stage. OTOH, she did have a remarkable feminist statement that got past whoever edited People of the Talisman.
Forget Romeo and Juliet: Much Ado About Nothing as a Noir detective piece.
I knew it was, forsooth, trouble, the moment she walked back into my life.
Beatrice.
Like a drink of tall water, if the water came with a hot sauce chaser.
BTW, new potential reading I’m finding from the list of properties optioned/in development/coming out/etc. that @Bartimaeus linked to at Tor.com:
Kazu Kibuishi’s “Amulet” (never heard of it, unsurprisingly since I’m not generally into anime) Howey’s Beacon 23 (I’ve seen the book title, but knew nothing about it befoer now), Grant Morrison’s “Happy!” (sounds vaguely familiar), & Ken Liu’s “Memories of My Mother” (wow, the premise looks so poignant).
I read Beacon 23 as it was serialized … and liked it a lot.
if you go read the Amazon comments on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book … you’ll see one mom who thought it was too scary for her 8th grader and decided that NONE of the 8th graders should get to read it.
Although I’m sure it wasn’t the scary bits that had her in a fit but rather the ghosts and witches etc.
Tonight is not a good night. I’ve had to turn on All The Lights.
Currently reading: Forsaken Skies, by D. Nolan Clarke. Humans have colonized about 100 systems without encountering any hints of alien intelligence. Now an isolated, low-value colony world is being attacked by…someone. Someone who’s sending drones that are, by the standards of known human civilization, very strange, oddly primitive and oddly advanced in about equal measure. Too bad Niraya has such a tiny, unauthorized naval contingent to defend it.
Jo Clayton’s books are being reissued?
[celebrates]
Yay Jo Clayton and all the diadem books!
Eta My husband DJ loves them too!