Other SF writers?

Russ Allbery · 13 May 2008, 05:08 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

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From: rra at stanford.edu (Russ Allbery)
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 22:08:06 -0700
Subject: (urth) Other SF writers?
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370805121311g5854a1c6ifae511c94b636e8f at mail.gmail.com>
	(Dan'l Danehy-Oakes's message of "Mon\,
	12 May 2008 13\:11\:17 -0700")
References: <44fb53d10805121235w6f72046et8e146b97a78abbab at mail.gmail.com>
	<1f7617370805121311g5854a1c6ifae511c94b636e8f at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <87skwmn64p.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu>

"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com> writes:

> Equally good, but about as far from Wolfe as you can get artistically or
> philosophically, is Samuel R. Delany. Some of his work, incidentally, is
> <i>not</i> for the easily offended! Good starting places include _Babel
> 17_, _Empire Star_, and his short story collection _Aye and Gomorrah_

Another interesting direction to approach Delany is from the non-fiction
side.  His _About Writing_ was excellent.

> I would recommend, with slight hesitation, James Blish, and especially
> his four-volume trilogy (and that's not a paradox) "After Such
> Knowledge." The first book (_Doctor Mirabilis_) is a historical novel
> retelling the life of friar Roger Bacon; the second, in two volumes
> (_Black Easter_ and _The Day After Judgment_) a contemporary
> fantasy/horror novel, and the third (_A Case of Conscience_) a SF
> novel. Together they are an inquiry into the question whether the quest
> for secular knowledge for its own sake is a valid goal, or indeed
> permissible at all, from a Christian (sc. Catholic) point of view.

I consider _A Case of Conscience_ to be one of the worst, perhaps the
worst, SF novel I have ever read both in terms of quality of writing and
quality of plot, so opinions definitely differ on the score -- to be fair,
I've not read any of the rest of Blish, nor read Blish in the time and
place when he was originally writing.

> As an alternate take on some of the themes in _Case of Conscience_, one
> should also read _The Sparrow_ by Mary Doria Russell, an astonishing
> book in its own right and one that may appeal to Wolfe fans specifically
> for a number of reasons.

This recommendation, on the other hand, I will definitely second.

To offer a recommendation of my own, Geoff Ryman has written some truly
spectacular novels, particularly _Air_ and his non-SF historical novel
_The King's Last Song_.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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