Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v010.n010

From: Alice Turner <al at interport.net>
Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 00:00:36 +0000

>J.Shultz wrote:
>
>> Speaking of this, anyone have any suggestions for further reading.

>Hoom.  Well, there are a few SF writers out there with literary
>aspirations and executions as high as Wolfe, or nearly so:  Dan
>Simmons comes to mind, as does Samuel R. Delany.  Ursula K. Le Guin
>-- though she seems less likely to appeal to a Wolfe fan.  Tim
>Powers is not quite as good, but packs a lot of layers of meaning
>into his work anyway.
>
>A few individual books I've read lately that I can recommend:  Matt
>Ruff's "Sewer, Gas, and Electric," which is almost impossible to
>describe.  A computerized ghost of Ayn Rand is a major character;
>so is a giant flying shark.  If that doesn't grab you, forget it,
>the book's not for you.  If it does -- the book is a major hoot.

Funny this should come up today, as I was just handed a package of sf
recomendations, partyly done by a group of people, partly by Robert J.
Sawyer for a Toronto newspaper and partly printed out from
www.sfsite.com/listswhoto01 to whoto07.htm Funnily enough, Gene Wolfe gets
*no* recommendation from *any* of them (to exonerate them to a degree, the
first thing is called "Entry Level Science Fiction), though in another
appendage printed from a book called -Science Fiction Writers Can't Write
for Sour Apples- he is one of a list suggested for the classroom. The whoto
is one of those "if ya like this guy then ya'll like that one" things.
Patrick O'Leary's -Door #3- (hey, Patty, you still out there?) makes it
three times: he is akin to O.S. Card, Jonathan Carroll and Charles De Lint,
apparently. Er-em--bedfellows?

Anyway, I'm going to edit this down according to mine own tastes and throw
out some of what they call "Higher Quality Writing, Ambitious Stylistically
or Thematically" (My, Mabel, look at them sour apples). Delaney, Dick,
Gibson, Haldeman, Russell Hoban's -Riddley Walker- (I should think any Wolfe
fan would love this, actually) LeGuin, Paul Preuss (I've never read him, any
comments?), Lucius Shepard's -Life During Wartime-, Silverberg's -Dying
Inside-, a couple of James Morrow books and a couple of Connie Willis's.

Oh, now I feel like a creep. I edited out -Timescape- by Benford; -Parable
of the Sower- by O. Butler; -The Gate to Women's Country- by Sheri Tepper (I
myself have written appreciatively about Tepper, but this is a clunky book).
This was for style, not for theme.

>Say:  what ever happened to the idea of "Wolfe" and "Lupine"
>lists...

I, for one, think Ranjit made the right decision, to let it lie. This list
serves very well for a general freeforall, the other will pick up when the
first Short Sun book appears (Jan. '99 from what I hear).

-alga

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