what are you reading now?

I have a PKD collection with an intro by Harlan Ellison in which he talks about this game they (+ other sci-fi contemporaries) would play where you take a single sentence or simple concept and try to spin it off into as many directions as you can, how Dick was invariably the winner, how he could come up w/more wild ideas in a single paragraph than some writers in their entire careers. there were a whole lot of authors better at the craft of writing, but science fiction is ultimately about ideas and Dick is pretty much the undisputed champion. honestly I kind of like the clunky prose, tho that might just be me. it has charm.

@Benny - I've never actually read any Ellison but for excellent SF short story writers I have two other recs: James Tiptree Jr. and Lucius Shepard.

When i read Cocaine Nights I hated it and thought I'd never read Ballard again. But recently I read War Fever and some of it was brilliant. Some (the first story for example) was a good idea + excruciatingly bad writing, bad enough to actually spoil the overall effect, but sometimes it all came together. It's strange, I can't quite work him out, I spent a lot of time after reading the first story trying to work out if it was deliberately written so badly but I don't think it was, or at least, I can't see a reason for him to have done so.
I'm just reading a couple of children's fantasy book that DannyL lent me after he told me they were the basis of some exhibition he went to - The Owl Service by Alan Garner (very good - Welsh myths, class/race stuff all chucked together) and Midnight's Children by John Masefield (much more for children but still fun - think I've read this before actually). Then back to The Devils of Loudon which I thought I'd lost somewhere.

On the subject of sci-fi - bad covers anyone?





http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/

IdleRich said:

That's two comparisons that I would never have thought to make - can you enlarge on them a bit?

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yikes. this thread is moving faster than i remember. i am responding o your question from a few pages back.

i compared solaris to fall of the house of usher because of the slow build up of dread. when dude first sets foot on the ship, like, and is nosing about. it is the claustrophobic phantasmagoric atmosphere that i associate with EAP; but maybe it is something in the translation that gives it a stiff Poe-like buttoned-upness.

as far as the Henry James comparison, i should have just said Turn of the Screw. but in place of ghosts, psychic wounds made manifest.

having finished the book, i now see it has more in common with borges than anyone else.

somehow not surprised nabokov is getting a lashing in here. precisely because i've never heard anyone (besides misguided ultra-conservative christians) criticize him. he's obviously a masterful writer. i've only read lolita (perfect book, i think) but his craft is so finely honed there's not a word that is misplaced. his process is amazing (committing each line to an index card). i've been meaning to read Pale Fire but i've got a lot of irons in the... uh... fire.

reading Cryptonomicon now. only second stephenson i've tried. one of those writers that seems to have researched my life and interests before setting out to write a book for me. the way the novel is overlapping with my life experience is eerie. only 75 pages in so i reserve the right to take-backs in case the balance of the book is about sheep-fucking.

I liked this description

I was drinking fairly heavily when I read, “The E.S.P. Worm” but I’m pretty sure it was about an estranged pair of anthropomorphic sticks of chalk, plus a bespectacled penis, I mean “worm”, lassoing the Earth with its magic rainbow powers. So put that on the cover!

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http://subtopia.blogspot.com.au/2007/08/city-in-crosshairs-conversation-with.html
this is an interview with the author of cities under siege a book ive been reading slowly.

If Nabokov is a pastiche of literature then I think it's better than the real thing.

OK, I hear you Mirror - the atmosphere at the start... but they diverge a lot don't they? The thing that the book of Solaris left me with was the idea of an intelligence that was utterly alien to us and thus completely beyond, or possibly beside, our understanding. Interesting what you say about the translation... I often wonder about books I read in translation... what have they gained or lost... I'll never know I suppose.

Nabokov pastiched a near future dystopia, I don't think there are any empty swimming pools in it though

you thik nabakov is better than shakespeare, dostoyevsky, kafka? thats an odd posistion to take. id put him at the level of johnathan franzen or julian barnes. pastiche.

Nah, I'm just saying I don't think he is a pastiche of literature. To be honest I've only read Lolita but I enjoyed it a lot. I think there is a bit more to him than Franzen.

ive never read him but i think it is important to take a stand on such issues.

Which one have you never read - Nabokov or Franzen... or both?

luka said:

ive never read him but i think it is important to take a stand on such issues.

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That made me laugh! i would expect nothing less. Strident views and things I disagree with - better than my contributions.

I have read a fair bit of Vladimir, i quite like him, but I wouldn't go to the stake for him. Dissensus doesn't really like writing with its best clothes on. I am more than partial to the prose stylists like Nabokov - I think Flaubert and Stendhal are his models and I really like both of them and would readily re-read their complete works before i would pick up Conan the Barbarian.

Obviously good writing is a difficult thing to define maybe we could compile a list?

I think show, don't tell is a key thing.
No dream sequences.
Dialogue, if you're going to have it then it has to be credible.
No wacky names.

No dream sequences? That's Murukami and Strindberg fucked then. Dialogue is hard but if you're gonna avoid it then you're fairly restricted in what you can do. So if you're an author you've got to learn how to do it.

I generally hate dream sequences - they are often clumsy devices to 'reveal' something - either freudian insights or as some way of prefiguring something that will happen in their waking lives.

I'd ditch most of Murakami as in the end I just get annoyed that his stories don't deliver often enough. Also I'm getting tired of the same old tropes in his work. Ten years ago I thought he was going to brilliant, now he mainly irritates.

I'll let you keep Strindberg though.

Well I'm just thinking of Dream Play to be honest. I always like books that could be interpreted as a dream the whole way through eg Ishiguro's The Unconsoled or Alice in Wonderland or a million films such as The Wizard of Oz - but that's something different from the expicatory or Freudian sequence. I guess that the first time there was one of those it seemed like such a good idea that everyone started doing it and it became a cliche. So, I understand what you're saying.

IdleRich said:

No dream sequences? That's Murukami and Strindberg fucked then. Dialogue is hard but if you're gonna avoid it then you're fairly restricted in what you can do. So if you're an author you've got to learn how to do it.

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I was just gonna say, I think Murukami writes good dream sequences and he may not be to everyone's taste - Sick Boy compared him to Dan Brown! - but I've liked most of what I've read by him. There are some great dreams in 2666 too, I recall.

NO BLOODY DESCRIPTIONS!