Datlow's Inferno

I started reading science fiction as a kid, 'way back in the '60s, so I absorbed the Party Line of the day, the one that was promulgated back during the 'New Wave' Wars: that 'science fiction' was but a subset of the larger universe of 'speculative fiction'.

'Speculative Fiction' (known to its friends as 'SF') included 'science fiction', but also includes 'fantasy', and even some of the more supernatural flavors of 'horror'. Slipstream, magical realism: it can all be subsumed into the larger 'umbrella' genre of "SF".

So, while I'm basically a 'science fiction' sort of guy, ideologically I've come to feel an obligation to keep abreast with what's going on in all the other corners of the field.

And for much of this, I've come to rely upon Ellen Datlow: her roundup in the annual series The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is - in many years - most of what I see in those sub-genres. I'm perfectly happy to let her find stuff and bring it to my attention. (And her original anthologies are worth tracking down, too.)

So when I heard that she had a new anthology of original horror, I took a peek. Now, let's announce up front that I am NOT by temperment a 'horror' reader, and the peek was from between my fingers; but even so, I can recognize a good story when I read one.

There's good stuff here. You can trust Ellen Datlow.

Gardner Dozois' List of Essential SF (pre-1980)

Thanks to James Nichol on LiveJournal for pointing to this:

http://www.sfwa.org/reading/rec_dozois.htm

Dozois lists the essential novels and short story collections for someone interested in pre-1980 SF. Like any such list, it has its problems in detail (a couple - Okla Hannali, for one - aren't actually SF), but, overall it's not a bad list of the SF I grew up with. Here's GD's list of novels - books I've actually read are italicized.

Brian W. Aldiss :
The Long Afternoon of Earth
Starship
The Malacia Tapestry

Poul Anderson:
The Night Face
Tau Zero
The High Crusade
Brain Wave
Three Hearts and Three Lions

Isaac Asimov :
The Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun

Gregory Benford :
Timescape

Alfred Bester:
The Stars My Destination
The Demolished Man

Michael Bishop:
A Little Knowledge
Stolen Faces

James Blish :
A Case of Conscience
Cities in Flight

Leigh Brackett:
The Long Tomorrow

Ray Bradbury:
Something Wicked This Way Comes

John Brunner:
The Shockwave Rider
Stand on Zanzibar
Polymath
Squares of the City

Algis Budrys:
Rogue Moon
Who?

Arthur C. Clarke:
Childhood's End
The City and the Stars
A Fall of Moondust
The Deep Range
The Sands of Mars

Hal Clement:
Mission of Gravity
Cycle of Fire
Needle

D.G. Compton :
Synthajoy
The Unsleeping Eye

Jack Dann:
The Man Who Melted
Junction

Avram Davidson:
Masters of the Maze
The Phoenix and the Mirror
Rork!
Rogue Dragon
Clash of Star Kings
The Enemy of My Enemy

L. Sprague de Camp:
Lest Darkness Fall
The Glory That Was
Rogue Queen
The Hand of Zei
The Tower of Zanid

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt:
The Complete Enchanter
Land of Unreason

Samuel R. Delany:
Nova
Babel-17
The Einstein Intersection
The Fall of the Towers
Triton

Lester del Rey:
Nerves

Philip K. Dick:
Ubik
The Man in the High Castle
Martian Time-Slip
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Time Out of Joint
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Gordon R. Dickson:
Soldier, Ask Not

Thomas M. Disch :
334
Camp Concentration

G.C. Edmondson:
Blue Face (a.k.a. Chapeyeca)
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream

George Alec Effinger:
When Gravity Fails
What Entropy Means to Me

Philip Jose Farmer:
The Lovers
Night of Light
The Fabulous Riverboat

James Gunn :
The Listeners

Joe Haldeman:
The Forever War
Mindbridge
Worlds

Charles L. Harness:
The Rose

Harry Harrison:
Make Room! Make Room!
The Deathworld Trilogy
Bill, the Galactic Hero

Robert A. Heinlein:
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Double Star
Starman Jones
Red Planet
Between Planets
Citizen of the Galaxy
Farmer in the Sky

Frank Herbert:
Under Pressure
(a.k.a. The Dragon in the Sea)
Dune
The Green Brain

Daniel Keyes:
Flowers for Algernon

Damon Knight:
The Man in the Tree
The Other Foot

C.M. Kornbluth:
The Syndic
Not This August

R.A. Lafferty:
The Reefs of Earth
The Devil Is Dead
Okla Hannali
The Fall of Rome
Past Master

Keith Laumer:
A Trace of Memory
A Plague of Demons


Ursula K. Le Guin:
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Dispossessed
Planet of Exile
City of Illusions
The Wizard of Earthsea
The Lathe of Heaven

Fritz Leiber:
The Big Time
Our Lady of Darkness
The Wanderer
Conjure Wife


George R.R. Martin:
The Dying of the Light
Fevre Dream

Walter M. Miller, Jr.:
A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ward Moore :
Bring the Jubilee

Ward Moore and Avram Davidson:
Joyleg

Larry Niven:
World of Ptavvs
A Gift From Earth
Ringworld

André Norton:
The Time Traders
The Beast Master
Galactic Derelict

Edgar Pangborn:
Davy
A Mirror for Observers
West of the Sun

Alexei Panshin:
Rite of Passage

H. Beam Piper:
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
Little Fuzzy
Fuzzy Sapiens

Frederik Pohl:
Gateway
Man Plus
A Plague of Pythons

Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth:
Wolfbane
Gladiator-at-Law
The Space Merchants

Keith Roberts:
Pavane
The Chalk Giants

Joanna Russ:
Picnic on Paradise
And Chaos Died
The Female Man
The Two of Them

Eric Frank Russell:
Wasp

Fred Saberhagen:
Berserker

Pamela Sargent:
Cloned Lives

James H. Schmitz:
Agent of Vega
The Witches of Karres

Robert Sheckley:
The Status Civilization

Robert Silverberg :
Dying Inside
Downward to the Earth
The Book of Skulls
Nightwings
Tower of Glass

Clifford D. Simak:
Way Station
City
Time and Again

Cordwainer Smith:
Norstrilia

Norman Spinrad:
Bug Jack Barron

Theodore Sturgeon:
More Than Human
Some of Your Blood
The Synthetic Man
(aka The Dreaming Jewels)
Venus Plus X

William Tenn:
Of Men and Monsters

James Tiptree, Jr.:
Up the Walls of the World

Wilson Tucker:
The Long Loud Silence

Jack Vance:
Emphyrio
The Star Kings
The Killing Machine
The Blue World
The Anome
Big Planet
The Dragon Masters
The Last Castle
The Dying Earth
The Eyes of the Overworld
The Languages of Pao
Trullion Alastor 2262

A.E. Van Vogt:
The War Against the Rull
The Weapon Shops of Isher
Slan
The Players of Null-A

John Varley:
Ophiuchi Hotline

Kate Wilhelm :
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Margaret And I
Let the Fire Fall
The Clewiston Test
City of Cain

Jack Williamson:
The Humanoids

Gene Wolfe:
The Book of the New Sun
(several volumes)
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Peace
The Devil in a Forest

Roger Zelazny:
Lord of Light
This Immortal
The Dream Master
Isle of the Dead
Doorways in the Sand

(that's 166 of 'em; about 31 unread (but those 31 titles include a trilogy and a quartet)

Hand-crafted vs. factory-made

Over at LibraryThing I've been involved in a long-running discussion of Why That Stuff You Read Sucks. I'm recycling a point I made over there:

By this point in the thread, I think we all understand that people read for different reasons. What I'm still not getting is why this is a problem.

Because it's also true that people write for different reasons:

1) Because they need to express themselves.
2) In hope of entertaining others.
3) In hope of making a living.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive reasons.

But I can only speak for myself. I read, I write. I long ago decided not to ever try to make a living from my pen.

I also do a bit of carpentry. I do it entirely for my own purposes, I derive satisfaction from the activity, and the end products are useful. People who come by admire my bookshelves. People often see my bookcases, and then ask if they can commission me to build some for them.

But I work wood for myself, for my own purposes. A few extra bucks might be nice, but I have no need to make custom bookshelves for others. I especially don't want to try to make a living as a cabinet-maker. For one thing, taking such a step would place me too much at the mercy of the taste of others. The craftsmen who DO meet this market - and I've talked to a couple - I rather tend to admire. Are they prostituting their art? I doubt they see it that way.

I also have no need to resent Ikea for selling the ignorant masses cheap, wobbly, factory-built bookcases. I especially have no need to yell at the customers of Ikea for not appreciating fine custom carpentry. People buy what suits their own needs. MY need is for several hundred feet of built-in custom bookshelves; other people can be perfectly happy with a DIY Ikea "BILLY" unit.

Well, that went well.

I've been accumulating books since I was a teenager.
(The clerk at Lescron once asked me - "So...do you read all these books you buy?")
Now that I'm finally getting my library accurately cataloged, now is a good time to unload some dupes.


M just put another first edition of Neuromancer up on eBay. I ran across this at Cranbury about 1989; I paid 60 cents for it.



Neuromancer, by William Gibson, first edition July 1984 Item number: 160114330525


Your item sold for US $163.10!

Like crack for OCD

Library Thing.

It took me three weeks to toggle in my SF book catalog. I felt like one of Skinner's pigeons: for a bibliophile, it's like direct electrical stimulation of the brain. "I'll just load in another hundred books."

...and then suddenly it's morning.

Just my SF makes my collection the 15th largest on Library Thing. I really am a Great Big Geek.

#15, out of 60,000 users. 6,000+ books. (I'm too embarrassed to list ALL of my SF: there's a box of ST books I don't want people to know that I own.)

It will be a lot slower to load in my non-genre books, which aren't obsessively cataloged, and so will each need to be handled individually. Then there are Comrade Wife's books...