Lists and definitions highlight the stories in today’s Scroll.
(1) Pat Cadigan on Facebook about winning a Seiun Award:
Anyway, since 1990, when I heard Cristina Macía talk about the challenges of translating work from English, I have tried to be more conscious of my language. I don’t know that it always makes a difference…actually, I don’t know that it ever makes a difference. But I do know that stories change in translation.
The first story I ever had translated was my first sale, “Criers and Killers” (thank you, Marta). I read French well enough that I can check a translation provided I have a French-English dictionary handy. That story is so much better in French. I can’t even tell you how much better it is. I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of the translator. I was less conscientious back then (pre-1990).
And now “Girl-Thing” has won the Seiun for best translated short fiction in Japan. (If you’re tried of hearing about that, I’m sorry. My only advice is, scroll, baby, scroll.) I’m so pleased that it’s my first Seiun and I’m delighted. But I know that my translator, Mr. Yooichi Shimada (yes, it’s Yooichi with two o’s) made me look good in Japanese.
Translators, whether they are translating to English or from English, don’t get half the recognition they deserve. They not only have to know the other language well enough to understand *intended* meaning as well as vocabulary and syntax (synecdoche, anyone? How about sarcasm? Hyperbole?), they have to understand story structure, the characters, the setting *in the cultural context of the writer* and to make all of it meaningful to people of a different culture. Maybe that sounds like something not so hard to you. And it’s not like people in a non-English-speaking country are totally aliens––thanks to global media, we know more about each other than ever before.
But there are certain *ambient* differences that never occur to us, things that are virtually invisible in our lives, the things we do all the time without even thinking about them. Translators have to keep those things in mind, too.
So my humble thanks to Mr. Shimada.
(2) Click to see a photo of Jim C. Hines hugging the restored Galileo shuttle that File 770 has been tracking since it was rescued from storage and auctioned for $70,000 in 2012.
Before.
(3) Friends have sent me this link a total of six times! It’s a post on Mental Floss about Harlan Ellison, “The Author Who Wrote In Bookstore Windows”.
He started at 1 p.m., craning the necks of passerby outside the shop. They wondered about the man sitting in the window, hunched over a typewriter. It was like a piece of glass that allowed you to see the gears and pistons of a machine.
When the Dangerous Visions bookstore in Sherman Oaks, Calif., closed that day, Harlan Ellison had completed “Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear,” a short story that, yes, included a pregnant corpse and added three suspects.
Ellison did this a number of times, including in a public area of the 1978 Worldcon where he was a guest of honor.
(4) BBC Culture has issued a new list of “The 100 Greatest American Films”. Here are the ranked sf and fantasy films (“fantasy” in the loose sense of magical and impossible).
Each critic who participated submitted a list of 10 films, with their pick for the greatest film receiving 10 points and their number 10 pick receiving one point. The points were added up to produce the final list. Critics were encouraged to submit lists of the 10 films they feel, on an emotional level, are the greatest in American cinema – not necessarily the most important, just the best. These are the results.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
- Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
- Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
- Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
- The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
- Night of the Living Dead (George A Romero, 1968)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
- The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
(5) Lawrence Person goes into overwhelming detail about additions to his Zelazny collection in “Library Addition: Another Major Collection of Roger Zelazny Books and Manuscripts”.
(6) John C. Wright’s “Great Books and Genre Books” is generating quite a lot of comment. Its premise, which he develops in detail, is —
As much as it pains me to say it, my reluctant conclusion is that there is no great Science Fiction literature.
Now, before you get out your crying bags, fanboys, keep in mind that the standard for being a Great Book is extremely, absurdly high. It is the best of the best of the best. There is no Western that makes the cut for being a Great Book; no mystery novel; no horror novel (unless we stretch a point to include HAMLET, because it has a ghost scene). One might even argue that no romance novel that makes the cut, not even GONE WITH THE WIND, and that is a damn fine novel. Genre writing does not reach the stratospheric heights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
However, the part I like best is Wright’s effort in the comments to combat nihilists who want to define classic sf works out of the genre. (I can’t make the link work, but it’s a comment logged Tuesday, July 21st 2015 at 2:30 am.)
Any definition of science fiction that rejects the core books and stories that are on everyone’s list of the greatest science fiction books and stories of all time is a useless definition.
And, in each case, the argument is the same: anything not Hard SF is not SF at all. Unfortunately, the statement is false. Even at the height of the Golden Age Campbell published and readers read works that do not fit the stricture of Hard SF, including all the books but one listed on the Baen list. That one is 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.
If the Baen list strikes you as not representative, please feel free to consult Hugo or Nebula award winners, or any serious reader of SF’s top ten essential books of SF. You will find the same result.
The reason why the clerks in bookstores you pretend to despise shelve those books where readers can find them is that this is exactly where readers look to find them when they are looking for what they the readers consider to be science fiction books.
If you wish to say that the consensus science fiction readers over decades and generations have not the authority to define what is science fiction, that would be an argument on which I have nothing further to say.
(7) We here in drought-stricken California are lucky to find living grass in our yards, but after last week’s heavy rain in Ohio John “Noah” Scalzi found a crawdad and a live fish in his lawn.
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BREAKING!! Brian Z finally endorses EPH. It was a long road, but after a versiferous effort by Camestros it appears Brian Z has finally relented and decided that broad support is more important than small group signal jamming. Reporter on the ground rob_matic has the scoop.
Brian Z:
That is answered on the Hugo page:
So the answer is b) regarding the Hugos.
Camestros Felapton on July 22, 2015 at 3:17 am said:
Did I read or did I just imagine that it was sort of set in a kind of South America?
That’s in my memory too, and I’ve read little if any critical work on Book of the New Sun, so I’d guess that it’s in canon. (“Patagonia” keeps popping up in my mind and waving for attention.)
Camestros,
Your blind insistence that a community of serious readers organizing themselves to honor literary greatness by each reader nominating up to five out of literally thousands of possible works/authors/editors is the equivalent of our being the victims of an old imperialist loophole in some western democracies that occurs when a small number of differently positioned candidates choose to stand for a public office is about to force me to shift my position from “do nothing” to “embrace the longlist” – for the sole reason that having a three stage process where people are forced to confront an unwieldy longlist that they couldn’t possibly hope to finish in time would serve as a constant and visceral reminder that this is about reading and loving genre fiction, not about politics. Happy?
Brian Z:
BREAKING!! Brian Z promises to leave File770 after reading the Hugo page about voting systems, seeing that the philosophy of the Hugos is totally opposed to the one he prefers.
1. Pass. Though I have learned a lot about seeding in the past few hours, I still haven’t read LoL. But I have to say: I freaking love Cherryh.
2. Aaaargh. Further rounds can’t possibly be more difficult than this choice. Tiptree seems more relevant everyday, but Dune is seminal AND holds up (although it has gotten more ominous with time) surprisingly well. I can’t.
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness. Easy. It’s the best book. On Wednesdays, anyway. The Dispossessed (Hi, Jason! I suspect you might love the Cherryh, too) may be it on Tuesdays, and one of the collections on Thursdays, or maybe Searoad, and other days may even see authors who are not Le Guin.) And Neuromancer seems to me now like it’s clever, more than deep.
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. Also easy. The writing wins handily, and I give it a win on themes, too the “man grew proud” element being there, but not as prominent, for me, as taking responsibility, and others. Or it could be I just don’t like reading Wells. I feel somewhat guilty about that.
Comment 3)
Received wisdom is that comedies and books aimed at children or teens have greater hurdles to overcome for awards that are not specifically for those categories; they tend to be regarded as slighter. It’s a little hard to say here, since only a few such works appeared on the initial list of 32 (which may say something in and of itself, even if only about me), but those that were on didn’t advance very far, and slightness in comparison to the works they were paired against was brought up as a factor.
I do wonder if there would be significant differences in that regard in a fantasy bracket. Fantasy has a bigger tradition than SF does both for comedy and (especially) books aimed at younger readers, at least to my eye. Terry Pratchett would likely do at least reasonably well in such a bracket, and it’s difficult for me to believe that, say, Lewis Carroll would get knocked off early on.
(This comment and the last do make me idly wonder what would have happened if I’d put The Cyberiad on the bracket instead of Solaris. I suspect it’s more widely read, and the Michael Kandel is a gold standard for literary translation.)
Still pissed about Wright. Has he even read The Island of Dr. Moreau? The man is a moron.
Haven’t read Wright’s essay, but am concerned about his criteria already.
Do I gather from his sentence “Genre writing does not reach the stratospheric heights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.” that he is comparing not works, but authors?
Also, that’s a pretty cut-and-paste list there, an easy screengrab from the height of the Victorian English education system.
But if you read them, well …
Shakespeare wrote some real dogs. Virgil was writing fanfic. And … Goethe? He’s not bad, but … really?
I will have to look at Wright’s essay, because I am really curious to see if his list of great books contains any sign of his own creativity, imagination or thoughtfulness or if he is just parroting someone else’s dusty old syllabus.
The crazy thing is that it’s not even that. The philosophy of the Hugos is mildly at odds with the one he (claims to) prefer.
Comment 4)
Representatives of all the major “subcategories” I had mentally made passed on to the second round (Founders, Golden Age, New Wave, Modern, Literary Crossover.) By the third round, however, a preference for New Wave, Modern, and Founders over Golden Age and Literary Crossover appears to be developing.
For the Golden Age, it is not particularly surprising who showed the greatest staying power: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein. Of those four, while it’s a little hard to judge, I got the impression from comments that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was the most widely well-regarded, but all of them had dedicated fans. Nonetheless, they have now all been knocked off. I’m not sure a different choice of specific book would have made a huge difference here in the long term; if The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress had been on instead of Stranger in a Strange Land, my suspicion is that it still would have won against A Clockwork Orange and then lost to Dune. It’s possible Bradbury would have made it further on the best of his short story collections; he got close against War of the Worlds with Fahrenheit 451, and some have argued his short stories are better.
The books I regarded as Literary Crossovers have also all been knocked out now. Again some of these had passionate adherents. Atwood probably did the best, and Huxley made a good showing (and Orwell likely would have done better if he hadn’t been up against Tiptree in the first round.)
The shortlist is an attempt to pick five likely winners. The most important part of a shortlist is that it contains at least one work that makes people say “yes, that’s a worthy winner”. A shortlist where No Award wins is a failed shortlist.
FPTP allows a small minority to pick all works. This can produce a situation where 80-90% of the voters considers every single work on the shortlist to be totally crap. That is a situation I want to avoid.
EPH makes sure that the shortlist, in total, represents the diversity of taste among voters. This gives a much higher chance that the shortlist will contain at least one work that a majority considers excellent.
Peace Is My Middle Name on July 22, 2015 at 4:11 am said:
From Wright’s post: “Again, Moore’s “Question Authority” theme is one I find mildly distasteful”. ‘Nuff said?
He’s parroting Mortimer Adler, whose list of 102 great ideas leaves out birth, sex, motherhood, difference, choice, or work. (Not that any finite list would be a good thing, but still), along with some list of great sf from Baen.
Kyra on July 22, 2015 at 4:16 am said:
I missed the first round, but I would have chosen 1984 over the Atwood or Huxley for dystopia. I like “mainstream” Atwood better than speculative Atwood. I’m still mourning Dhalgren, which I think could fit in Lit Crossover, too.
Now I have had my morning coffee, it occurs to me that I was needlessly cold to Goethe.
Also, John C. wright’s list of great authors no SFF author will ever be as good as is: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
All of whom are authors of fantasy.
Already.
Soooo … there is no great genre fiction because none of it can reach the heights of this … genre fiction.
Brian Z.: If the shortlist is that bad, make your voice heard through No Award. I’d rather see a couple dark years of heavy No Awarding, frankly, in place of permanently damaging the institution.
“No Award” is not a solution to slates causing bad shortlists. It is not a way for Hugo nominators to “make their voice heard”. It is a last-ditch resort when the normal working of the Hugo nomination system has been destroyed by a minority slate, and the rest of the nominators have no chance whatsoever of making their voices heard.
Numerous consecutive “dark years of heavy No Awarding” — which is what is going to happen if EPH is not passed — will permanently damage the institution. The fact that you are in favor of this happening pretty much says it all.
What genre would movies made from these works be classified as?
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: fantasy
“The Odyssey”: fantasy (the recent attempt to make a “non-genre” film of the Iliad without gods or magic was rotten foul)
“Inferno”: fantasy
“Faust”: fantasy
“The Aeneid”: pure, unadulterated fanfic patriotic country-insert fantasy
JJ:
Last I heard, across the board “No Award” was being championed by those who would usurp the Hugos for themselves and their buddies.
Then again, I stopped paying attention to them a while back.
I would have prefered Karin Boyes “Kallocain” instead of Huxleys “Brave New World”, but have no idea of how well known it is outside sweden.
@Hampus Eckerman, I consider myself reasonably widely read in the genre (as a benchmark, I’ve read 31 of the 32 books Kyra bracketted for this game, and I’ve read other works by the 32nd author) but I’ve never heard of Karin Boyes or Kallocain. What is is about? (If you’re comparing it to Brave New World, may I assume a cloning dystopia?) Should I look for it in English translation?
Cassy B:
Kallocain is a classic Dystopia novell, written eight years before 1984. It is a drug dystopia, like Brave New World, where truth serum is used to detect rebellion. It was inspired by the nazis take over in germany and from a trip to Sovjetunion. In sweden, we usually talk about 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and Kallocain together. Or used to anyhow. :/
http://www.amazon.com/Kallocain-Karin-Boye/dp/0299038947
I cannot decide between ‘Downbelow Station’ and ‘Lord of Light’; they are ranked equally in my mind.
Wright’s witterings are old school Eng Lit Crit; he doesn’t understand that Shakespeare intended his plays to be performed, not read. For that matter, Homer’s works were intended to be recited, not read. Given his ignorance of those fundamental facts one can hardly expect him to be any less ignorant in his other observations.
And this is the man for whom Brian Z turns himself inside out in his desperate attempts to pretend that he is worthy of all his nominations…
1. Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
2. Frank Herbert: Dune
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
In fact, One Bright Star to Guide Them was the only one I put above No Award.
A significant number of terms in the Commonwealth and Long Sun have roots in Spanish America. It’s more specific than being generally Latinate.
Thank you, Hampus. I’m always pleased to expand my horizons and my reading. Most of my SF reading is of American and British authors; this is partly because I’m a typical mono-lingual American <wry> and partly just inertia. So I appreciate the recommendation.
1. CJ Cherryh: Downbelow Station (although I would have preferred Cyteen). Cherryh sticks with me much more than Zelazny, although I loved the Amber books.
2. Frank Herbert: Dune. Simply because of the impact it had on me in my teens.
3. William Gibson: Neuromancer. I can still remember where I was sitting when I read that first sentence. Changed SF forever for me.
4. HG Wells: War of the Worlds. I know it should be Shelley’s Frankenstein, but my, Victor would win an Olympic gold medal for whining. Drove me up the wall he did. Just get *over* it, man!
Jayzuz Brian, if yoiu’re going to lie about these things, you need to not provide links demonstrating the lies! Or alternatively you need to not link to a page which lies about your having voted for Tank Marmot ahead of JCW!
Carry B:
Well, that is more or less the only swedish Science Fiction novell that is at least partly read outside of our country. 😉 Not sure if anything else has been translated apart from Aniara.
But I will always do a bit of PR for the illustrations of Simon Stålenhag. He needs a Hugo:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/27/4664842/sweden-reimagined-what-if-sci-fi-tech-were-real
http://simonstalenhag.tumblr.com/
I think I’m echoing other voters. A slate, a veritable slate.
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
Frank Herbert: Dune
Dune Just
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Bye bye Neuromancer 🙁
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
However, you agressively defend the flaw in the nomination process that gave Wright all his nominations. Which implies that you think all his nominations are deserved, even if you vote him below no award in the final round.
And that, IMHO, makes absolutely no sense.
1. Zelazny.
2. Tiptree.
3. LeGuin.
4. Shelley.
Evil Zelazy cabalista since 4th grade, DMS presses copies of Lord of Light into the hands of anyone who looks literate.
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
I haven’t read LOL so an easy one here. That said I’ll reiterate that as much as I like DBW I think Cyteen is Cherryh’s best novel in a distinguished career.
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Tiptree because there is nothing like having your preconceptions being upended.
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
William Gibson: Neuromancer
I find Neuromancer to be a big gut punch as well as being a thoughtful book. I enjoyed the story more than I did The Left Hand Of Darkness.
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
H. G. Wells: War of the Worlds
Regarding “Damage” by David Levine, wow. In the middle I put the story down for a minute and tried to imagine things Scraps might end up doing that would be a happy ending for her just to take the pressure off for a while.
Has anyone else read Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest, Aurora, yet? I just finished it today and it is splendid. All the usual KSR ingredients, but he really knocks it out of the park.
Should be a surefire contender for next year’s Hugos (it’s better than 2312 in my opinion) although it’s presumably too leftist and literary for our Puppy friends.
rob_matic on July 22, 2015 at 6:45 am said:
Inhaled it, more like. It’s incredibly good. I had more fun while reading 2312, but I agree Aurora is better. I don’t mean “more worthy”, I mean I like it more now.
And I liked 2312 a whole lot. Brad Torgersen says he did too, but I suspect he either didn’t read it or doesn’t mean it.
1. Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
This was the easiest choice on the list. Lord of Light is in a category by itself.
2. Frank Herbert: Dune
I think Tiptree is the better writer, but Dune is one of those near flawless books where the prose perfectly mirrors the themes and characters in a way that is incredibly rare. It’s also a good case for why sometimes, you shouldn’t indulge in sequels because they have too high a bar to match.
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
This one hurt, considering that I think Gibson is likely the best and most innovative sci-fi writer currently working and Neuromancer was a transformative book for myself as a writer and for the genre as a whole. But The Left Hand of Darkness is simply too masterful and important a work to not pick.
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
All credit to Wells, but Shelley was both earlier with less influences to draw on and an uncanny assembler of prose.
Hampus Eckerman: But I will always do a bit of PR for the illustrations of Simon Stålenhag. He needs a Hugo
Clicked the link and wow–yes, he does. Has he done anything eligible yet this year? Which category? (I’ll go looking, but I thought you might have an idea offhand.)
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
–no vote
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Frank Herbert: Dune3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
William Gibson: NeuromancerUrsula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
H. G. Wells: War of the WorldsMary Shelley: Frankenstein
One key to understanding John C Wright(*) is that the non-lawyer part of his college education was a “great books” syllabus designed around 1920 as a kind of synthetic common culture for an American ruling class(**). In particular, this explains why he thinks Great Books are a thing in the first place and why he places the start of our inevitable cultural decline at the end of the nineteenth century, where the syllabus ends.
(*) I wouldn’t presume to know his innermost thoughts, but he’s a classic authoritarian follower so it’s possible to derive his public persona from surprisingly few basic facts.
(**) There are other interpretations, but it reads to me like it was intended to produce an American version of what an idealised English gentleman would learn from public school and Oxbridge.
A long, long time ago –
I can still recall the part where Frankenstein created Life.
But then he left it to its fate,
A grave mistake, he learned too late;
But he refused to build his child a wife.
The narrative turned grim and gory
With each new chapter of the story –
Tragic and cathartic,
They fled into the arctic.
I can’t remember if I shook
When he vanished with no backwards look,
But something touched me, and it took,
The day I read the book.
It’s sci-fi, asking how, asking why,
Innovation, exploration, FTL and AI,
We’ll live forever, or we’ll horribly die,
Saying that we’ll do it reading sci-fi,
That we’ll do it reading sci-fi.
Then Verne said, hey, let’s look around,
Beneath the sea, below the ground,
And then even into space.
We’ll cross earth with flag unfurled,
We’ll take it all around the world,
And so we’ll gain the time to win the race!
But Wells said, you’re an optimist,
There’s dangers we don’t know exist.
To them we’d be like fleas.
Our only hope would be disease!
But here is why we keep Wells on our shelves:
Our human flaws are truly where he delves –
Go far enough, we’ll meet ourselves
The day we read the book.
We’ll be reading sci-fi, looking up to the sky,
See it clearer – it’s a mirror, showing you your own I.
We’ll live forever, or we’ll horribly die,
Saying that we’ll do it reading sci-fi,
That we’ll do it reading sci-fi.
@Kyra
+1
Kyra: Standing ovation!
Brian Z
As others have noted you desperately defend the slate system which gave Wright all his nominations, you desperately lie about the consequences of EPH, and you desperately pretend that if enough people voted on the first stage of Hugo nominations that would provide a counter to slates. The mathematics is really not difficult; no matter how many people who vote, setting up one or more slates will inevitably result in a rerun of Hugo 2015.
I don’t know why you are prepared to lie in this fashion, but I don’t actually care why you lie; what matters is that you do lie, and that if people believe your lies the Hugos will be trashed.
I am absolutely opposed to any slates; the fact that the slates have been supported by people ignorant of anything beyond their own petty insular culture wars merely demonstrates that those particular supporters are ignorant of what Worldcon is. Ignorance is fixable; malice, unfortunately, is not so amenable to correction, and I see a great deal of malice at work in the people who put together the slates, and have lied ad nauseam about it.
Of course, my objections to the tactics and the results you so desperately defend are also fuelled by my having to read the garbage stuffed onto the ballot in order to vote fairly; I read a great deal and therefore have a great deal to compare the garbage with.
I have just spent a week in Gozo, accompanied by two people who read a lot of SF/fantasy but are not part of fandom. Naturally I tried out what they were reading, and discovered that their unpretentious holiday reading was far, far better than the garbage I have endured, allegedly as the best in the world.
Puppidum will inevitably keep doing this until such time as slates are stopped by rule amendments or the Hugos are destroyed, whichever comes sooner. All I can do is vote fairly and speak up when I see people lying about it…
Simon Stålenhag has published one book (previously in Swedish, now also in English) and a second book is in the works – per this kickstarter project (which I have backed). Post-Kickstarter preorders of books and merchandise are also available from backerkit.
// Christian
Oh! I’ve been slacking off reading recent threads and didn’t know the bracket was going on. Probably better if I don’t go back and check whether anything I love has lost by one vote.
1. I think Lord of Light is a bit better than Downbelow Station, but I also think it’s among Zelazny’s best, whereas if I swap out Downbelow for Cyteen or The Pride of Chanur, Cherryh wins easily.
2. Dune is a novel I admire for its ideas more than its execution. “Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death” is probably my single favourite short work of science fiction, and would win this one for Tiptree even if the other stories weren’t the classics they are.
3. Le Guin. Neuromancer’s stylistic innovations were amazingly influential, but so were Darkness’ conceptual ones, and those count for more with me.
4. Embarrassingly I haven’t read either of these. Abstention.
Ripple Dot Zero is a free online game for which Simon Stålenhag is credited with “art, music, and level design”. I can’t agree that Mr. Stålenhag “needs” a Hugo, on the grounds that I don’t think anybody “needs” one… but that said, yeah, he’s definitely Hugo-calibre.
I haven’t had the time to read through the whole of JCW’s attempt to reduce an entire old-school liberal-arts curriculum to a blog post, but in scanning the responses here about “genre,” I would point out that 1) the term has a range of senses beyond the one that deals with how books are labeled for sale / shelved in a bookstore, and 2) applying the contemporary genre sense of “fantasy” to pre-modern works (Divine Comedy, Odyssey, chivalric romance, and so on) muddies the literary-historical waters. (One can make a case for, say, The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream operating in a consciously metaphysically-contrafactual mode, but Shakespeare is working just inside the boundaries of the modern worldview.)
In any case, lists of “great” or “best” or “most” books/movies/ice cream sandwiches are parlor games–we can attempt to derive the components of “greatness” from long-term* compilations of items that people have tagged as “great,” but the selection processes that produce those lists have enough variables to yield only the fuzziest of sets. (Or we can, like JCW seems to be doing, apply a gaggle of “objective” a-priori values. The resulting sets might have sharper boundaries but will run up against lists based on competing a-prioris.) “Greatness” is a statistical observation, compiled across many generations–we won’t know which contemporary works will make the cut until long after our grandchildren are dead. In the meanwhile, we can keep exchanging recommended-reading lists and explaining our enthusiasms–I’ll be doing a version of that this weekend on a con panel, and then come home to finish a review column about what I read this month. It’s a harmlessly amusing activity.
(An alternate parlor game: look at almost any list of literary prize-winners or even best-sellers from a century ago and see how many remain in our collective mind as still worth reading.)
* Where “long” indicates centuries rather than decades. And the longer “long” gets, the greater the chance that some candidates will be lost or misunderstood or have their cultural/linguistic support systems sublimed away by time. What I wouldn’t give to have the experience of reading Dante with the cultural-linguistic apparatus possessed by his contemporary audience.
How I do go on. Too much morning coffee.
Since a Great Book appears to be something that requires historical perspective, Wright must’ve used a time machine to travel forward in time to confirm his point of view. Which is really a waste of time travel. At the very least he could’ve brought Shakespeare to modern times and have him write a Western to show how a master would do it. I’m sure the rodeo clown scene would be phenomenal.
nickpheas said:
A longlist strikes me as fundamentally against the spirit of the Hugos. Everyone should be able to nominate the works they think are best, those with the least support get eliminated, those with the most go through to the run off.
Brian Z omits that that particular commenter has been pushing a longlist stage since first showing up, and has been told ‘no way’ several times, with explanations of why it’s not going anywhere every time, and never seems to get it.
Congrats to Pat Cadigan!
1. Roger Zelazny: Doorways in the Sand
I’m going to break here for a personal favorite because otherwise the choice is between two great books that didn’t really work for me.
2. James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Dune was another great book that didn’t really work for me. Although it occurs to me now that some of these “didn’t work” books I attempted when I was 12-18, so I should probably give them another go. There are definitely books I couldn’t get into when I was a kid because the themes and characters didn’t resonate with my non-adult-self, but I liked them when I went back as an adult.
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
By a hair.
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Not only is this a great novel about creation, but the story of its own creation is compelling. And involves Romantic poets. Bonus!
About “great books” — JCW here seems to be taking the Howard Bloom approach, which fits with his persona as a pompous old-fashioned windbag. But he’s also, as Peace pointed out, being slippery with his definition of genre. If fantasy is a part of our genre — and it always has been — then most of the “great works” he cites are indeed genre.
Anyway, shockingly, I don’t agree with his fundamental premise any more than I agree with Bloom. I don’t find any value in the idea that the purpose of an education in the classics is for modern students to sit around basking in their essential greatness. It’s to show us where we came from — our cultural history.
How can I seriously try to claim that no modern work holds up against Paradise Lost, when I like Nick Cave or Neil Gaiman revisiting those themes more than I like the original? I suppose you could say that the original is “more great” than the works it inspired, almost by definition, but how useful is that definition, when it pretty much has to go to the oldest work?