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SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #36 [message #7007] Tue, 31 July 2012 00:04
Anonymous
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Originally posted by: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sf-lovers
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8258
Posted: Wed Aug 11 11:41:53 1982
Received: Sat Aug 14 03:31:42 1982

>From JPM@MIT-AI Wed Aug 11 11:37:32 1982

SF-LOVERS Digest          Sunday, 8 Aug 1982       Volume 6 : Issue 36

Today's Topics:
                Administrivia - Opinions from SU-LOTS,
                  SF Topics - Opinions from SU-LOTS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Monday, August 9, 1982 4:17AM
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) 
Reply-to: SF-LOVERS-REQUEST at MIT-AI
Subject: Opinions from SU-LOTS

The following material is from the BBoard at SU-LOTS, and was
submitted by Stuart M. Cracraft (mclure at SRI-UNIX).  It was thought
to be of interest to the readership.  Since LOTS is not on the net,
responses cannot be made to the original submitters - however, people
should feel free to discuss the topics and issues raised.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jul 1982 2048-PDT
From: M.McLure at SU-LOTS (Stuart M. Cracraft)
Subject: science fiction reviews

As with any list like this, it is impossible to include everything of
significance. Your grouping of Le Guin with Varley & Farmer is
preposterous.  Le Guin and Varley are extraordinarily talented
authors. Farmer is absolute trash. I haven't read a thing of his that
I thought was worthwhile. He puts man on a treadmill with no hope for
salvation. The Magic Labyrinth (end of the Riverworld series) was one
of the all-time worst books I have ever read.

You left out three books by Varley:

        The Ophiuchi Hotline
        The Persistence of Vision
        The Barbie Murders

I consider all three of these to be among the best SF written in the
last decade. His Titan/Wizard stuff is much less impressive because he
was duped into going sequelitis/series by his publisher. I trust he
will get out of that rut after Demon.

Also important is James Tiptree, Jr. (a.k.a. Alice Sheldon) who is on
a par with Le Guin and Varley. Anything by her is worth reading.
Interestingly, these three authors are the first ones to come to my
mind who are capable of really believable female protagonists.

Silverberg's most important book was also left out: Dying Inside.  I
consider this to be the most impressive character study in any fiction
I have read.

On a different note, try Vladimir Nabokov's ADA. I have always felt
this is the best alternate-worlds novel. And unlike most other authors
in mainstream, SF, or otherwise, Nabokov demonstrates absolute control
of the English language.

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jul 1982 2126-PDT
From: A.AVERY at SU-LOTS (l. avery)
Subject: De Gustabus non Disputandum

(I don't know if that's right; I never took Latin.)

I cannot understand the kind of taste that can give "Foundation" an
A+, and "The Gods Themselves" a C.  I think Issac Asimov in general
comes up with great stories that are poorly written; and "Foundation"
comes in there.  I'd give it a C+ or B-.  "The Gods Themselves", on
the other hand, is three great stories, well tied together, and all
well written.  In my book it's among the top five of all SF novels
written.

I also can't understand the kind of taste that says Heinlein is an
excellent writer, but LeGuin isn't.  I consider her the best SF writer
ever, bar none, while he partakes of the general stylistic sloppiness
that chaacterizes the Golden Age.  I enjoy reading "The Left Hand of
Darkness" more than everything except some of Shakespeare, Jane
Austen, and Tolkien's two big ones.

Understand that I'm not saying anything is WRONG with your taste, but
just that it is very different from mine.  I was thinking of putting
together a similar book list, just so that people would have the
benefit of more than one person's opinions.  Would anyone be
interested?

                                        l. avery

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jul 1982 1710-PDT
From: A.AVERY at SU-LOTS (l. avery)
Subject: sf reading list

Rating system:
E       Excellent       This is meant to be a very high rating; I have
                        used it sparingly.
G       Good            Still a pretty good book.
F       Fair            Woth reading, but not wonderful.
A       Average         or worse.  If I found a book average or worse,
                        I decided there was no point in saying how
                        much worse I found it.

Additional information:
* following the rating means this book is important to the
developement of SF as a whole.  I have used this rating sparingly,
too, to avoid redundancy with Ross Nelson's more complete list.

(H)     Hugo award winner.
(N)     Nebula award winner.
(W)     Newbery Award winner.
In these I'm going by memory.  If I say a book got an award, it almost
certainly did, but if I don't say it doesn't mean that it didn't.

Vonda McIntyre
        Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan                    F
        Dreamsnake                                      G

Ursula LeGuin
        The Winds' Twelve Quarters                      G
        Rocannon's World                                G
        Orsinian Tales                                  G
        The Eye of the Heron                            G
        Planet of Exile                                 G
        City of Illusions                               G
        The Left Hand of Darkness                       E*      (HN)
        The Lathe of Heaven                             E
        The Word for World is Forest                    G
        The Beginning Place                             E
        The Dispossessed                                E       (HN)
        Malafrena                                       G
        Hard Words (poetry)                             A
        Earthsea Trilogy:
                A Wizard of Earthsea                    E
                The Tombs of Atuan                      E       (W)
                The Farthest Shore                      E

Isaac Asimov
        The Gods Themselves                             E       (HN)
        Foundation Trilogy:                             *       (H)
                Foundation                              F
                Foundation and Empire                   F
                Second Foundation                       G
        Murder at the ABA                               G
        The Bicentennial Man                            G
        The Stars Like Dust                             F
        I, Robot                                        F
        The Rest of the Robots                          F
        The Caves of Steel                              F
        The End of Eternity                             F
        The Naked Sun                                   F

Robert Heinlein
        Methusalah's Children                           F
        Time Enough for Love                            F
        The Puppet Masters                              F
        Double Star                                     G
        The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag      F
        Starship Troopers                               F*
        Glory Road                                      G
        Stranger in a Strange Land                      F
        The Moon is a Harsh Mistress                    G

J.R.R. Tolkien
        The Hobbit                                      G
        Lord of the Rings                               E*
        Smith of Wooton Major                           E
        Farmer Giles of Ham                             F
        The Silmarillion                                G

Madeleine L'Engel
        A Wrinkle in Time                               G       (W)
        A Swiftly Tilting Planet                        A
        A Wind in the Door                              F

C.S. Lewis
        The Chronicles of Narnia                        G*

Alexei Panshin
        Rite of Passage                                 G

Philip Jose Farmer
        The Lovers                                      F*
        Riverworld Series:
                To Your Scattered Bodies Go             G
                The Dark Design                         F
                The Fabulous Riverboat                  A
                The Magic Labyrinth                     A

???
        Conan the Swordsman                             A

Joan Vinge
        The Snow Queen                                  G

Alfred Bester
        The Demolished Man                              F*

James Tiptree, Jr.
        Up the Walls of the World                       E
        Out of the Everywhere                           G

Philip Dick
        The Man in the High Castle                      G

Joe Haldeman
        The Forever War                                 E       (HN)

(Forgot the name)
        A Canticle for Leibowitz                        E       (H)

Frederick Pohl
        Gateway                                         G

Larry Niven
        Ringworld                                       G       (HN)

Arthur Clarke
        Childhood's End                                 G*
        The Fountains of Paradise                       G
        Rendezvous with Rama                            G       (HN,
        The City and the Stars                          G     I think)

Susan Cooper
        The Dark is Rising series:
                Over Sea, Under Stone                   F
                The Dark is Rising                      G
                Greenwitch                              G
                The Grey King                           E       (W)
                Silver of the Tree                      A

Lloyd Alexander
        Chronicles of Prydain:
                The Book of Three                       G
                The Black Cauldron                      G
                The Castle of Llyr                      G
                Taran Wanderer                          F
                The High King                           G       (W)

Stephen Donaldson
        Lord Foul's Bane                                F
        The Illearth War                                F

Spider and Jeanne Robinson
        Stardance                                       G       (HN)

Patricia McKillip
        A Riddle of Stars trilogy:                      E
                The Riddle-Master of Hed
                Heir of Sea and Fire
                Harpist in the Wind

Frank Herbert
        Dune                                            G
        Dune Messiah                                    A

Ray Bradbury
        Fahrenheit 451                                  F
        The Martian Chronicles                          F

Harlan Ellison
        I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream               G

Weinbaum
        A Martian Odyssey                               F*

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jul 1982 1711-PDT
From: A.AVERY at SU-LOTS (l. avery)
Subject: sf reading list: discussion

Maybe a quarter of my reading is SF, the rest is mainstream
literature, mostly modern classics such as Tolstoy, Austen, etc.
Therefore I'm not a real hard-core SF fan.  I judge SF by the same
standards of literary merit as other fiction.  I suppose
characterization is more important to me than anything else, but it is
certainly not the whole ball of wax.  Another thing:  I tend to judge
books by what is best in them; that is, if there's something really
good about a book, I'll call it a good book, almost independent of
what's wrong with it.

I'm interested in SF not only because I really enjoy reading it, but
also because it's a uniquely American art whose development can be
traced.  Of course, there were H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, etc., but
they weren't aware of SF as a distinct genre, and so weren't really SF
authors.  Real SF began with Campbell's pulps.

G. Allen mentioned that the old authors have become "stylistically
obsolete".  While that is basically true, it's a bit euphemistic.  The
literary world unanimously considered SF to be trash in it's early
days.  Oddly enough, this had a beneficial effect:  the new art had no
one to please but it's own practitioners, so it didn't have to
overcome obsolete prejudices.  Unfortunately, this also made it able
to ignore truly applicable standards, and as a result most early SF is
rather shoddy literature.

Heinlein and Asimov are the two authors of that period I've read the
most.  Heinlein is annoyingly pedantic, and his characters are
paper-thin.  He seems determined to force on his readers the
philosophical principle that nothing in the world is so important as
fucking.  But his plots are often exciting, and he made many important
contributions to the field which were later used by more skillful
writers.

Asimov is, I believe, a better writer; inherently a >much< better
writer, but he has a problem.  He writes too much, and quality is
sacrificed for quantity.  Few of his books are as good as he could
make them if he did his best, and those that are are hard to find in
the pile.  The characters in all his early works are stereotypes.
"Foundation" is populated by paper dolls.  There is only one point in
the whole series where a character pops into three-dimensionality, and
then only for a moment (Arkady when she's running from Callia), but
that moment makes the whole series worth reading.

In recent years he's been improving.  Dua in "The Gods Themselves" is
wonderful.

The early SF was incredibly chaste, seldom getting beyond the fatherly
kiss.  "The Lovers" changed that.  That's Farmer's claim to fame:
introducing sex to SF (or perhaps the other way round).  In my
opinion, he's a lousy writer, even when judged by his best, and his
worst is putrid.

Of course the most important work in the history of F&SF is "Lord of
the Rings", by Tolkien.  There's hardly been a book written since in
which it's influence wasn't obvious.  For all that, the
characterization is only mediocre.  Its greatness rests on variety of
its fantasies, the enormous, magnificent plot, and above all on the
reality of Middle Earth.  "Smith of Wooton Major" is a masterpiece in
a different way:  it's a fine gem, carefully and elegantly cut.  If
you like Tolkien at all, you should take half an hour off sometime for
this story.

Stanley Weinbaum in "A Martian Odyssey" threw down a gauntlet.  He
challenged SF writers to create an alien intelligence that wasn't just
a human with pointy ears.  Whether such a character can be created by
a human author, or interest a human reader is a question, but even if
all attempts so far have been failures, two of them are so interesting
that they have to be read.  One is "The Gods Themselves"; the other is
"Up the Walls of the World" by James Tiptree, Jr.  She's an excellent
author, but unfortunately I am turned off by the conviction which
shows through in so much of what she writes that all men are
inherently evil, and just the width of a gnat's eyebrow from being
rapist-murderers.

Arthur Clarke is a good writer who knows his science, but
unfortunately a lousy novelist.  Somehow he manages to write very good
readbale books which are almost devoid of plot.  It's a mystery.
"Childhood's End" is a special case.  It's a very rough read, but the
view into the uncertainty, almost insecurity, of the young authors
mind as he looks for something real is rewarding.  The hero of
"Childhood's End" is Arthur Clarke.

I expect most people will be indignant with me for not giving "Dune"
an E.  I was on the point of making it an F.  This book and "Stranger
in a Strange Land" seem to me to pander so shamelessly to the
mystic-cult market that I often retch with disgust while reading them.
For all that, "Dune" has a lot of good in it, so I gave it a G.  But I
think it fundamently a very dishonest book.

There are some books which you may not recognize: Lloyd Alexander's
"Chronicles of Prydain", and Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" .
These are children's fantasy.  I love children's literature, and
consider myself something of a connoiseur (sp?).  I haven't read any
of Heinlein's kid's books, but I'm a little suspicious due to hearing
people say that they liked them when they were kids.  Good children's
literature is just as enjoyable for adults as children.
Unfortunately, very few people believe that; children's literature has
been second-class for longer than SF.  Try reading "The Jungle Books"
again if you don't believe me.

Finally I come to Ursula LeGuin.  I don't pretend to be objective.  I
am in love with her, or at least her books.  In my opinion, she stands
head and shoulders above every other fantasy, SF, or children's writer
alive today.  Her style is lovely, her characters are full and real,
and it is NOT true that her plots are inadequate.  It depends on what
you want.  If you go for panoramic, "War and Peace" type plots, you'll
be disappointed with hers.  But if you like >stories<, gem-like,
Shakespearean tales, with a feeling of unity, of inevitability, of
simplicity, you like U.K. LeGuin.  And anyone who calls "The
Dispossessed" a utopian novel missed the point.

Her poetry, on the other hand, is just awful.

                                        l. avery

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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