borzoi

Well-known member
apparently dune was partially written as sort of a response to it, he didn't like the idea of history running along this predictable path. by consequence dune feels a lot richer and has actual characters w/ wants and needs instead of generic forces of history.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
i just suffered thru isaac asimov's foundation and holy shit the man could not write
I read the first two story collections - which is the initial series, then he tacked on sequels later - when I was 12 or so

and yeah his prose is terrible but you do have to account for the times for a bit too

it's very Golden Age of SF, very square, late 40s-early 50s, the great age of conformity, men in gray flannel suits, McCarthyism

what Philip K Dick began his career writing response to - PKD the early herald of the 60s New Wave, when things start getting weird
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
but also Asimov was a scientist and concerned with science, characters are just mouthpieces

I recall the robot stories being even worse in terms of dialogue, characterization etc

a bunch of those dudes in Golden Age SF had Spengler leanings

James Blish - Cities In Flight etc - was a very explicit Spenglerian
 

woops

is not like other people
martin amis (yes, i know) describes his two volumes of autobiography which are incredibly colossal and include absolutely forensic detail on everything that has ever happened to him, ever
 

borzoi

Well-known member
yea it's not that i didn't expect a certain amount of woodenness in golden age sf, some of the sentence choices are just so baffling. i did enjoy a few parts though. it's basically like watching someone play a game of stellaris in prose form.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
i just suffered thru isaac asimov's foundation and holy shit the man could not write. it's like reading wet cardboard. even for pulp sci fi how do you write this badly.

(describing life on a planet under a big metal dome where the sun never shines):
Interesting cos when I was little I read - or tried to read - Asimov and I really didn't like the way it was written and I've never gone back. Maybe it wasn't just me.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Reading Manuel delandas one thousand years of nonlinear history, vimothy reccomended it sometime ago as an accessible introduction to d&g and I would agree with that. It's a little dry/pedestrian at times but some good bits too. Absolutely tons and tons about autocatalytic positive feedback loops and also a few interesting paragraphs on pandemics and what they've done/how they've been reacted to throughout history. He's got somed gruesome metaphors. He talks about the Spanish killing the aztecs with infectious diseases and liken it to the way an insect might use an enzyme vomited over prey to break it down.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Amalgamemnon by Christine Brooke-Rose came in

Its pretty cool, not what I expected. sci fi esque in a Burroughs fashion- lots of interdicsiplinary neologisms, musing on the incoming collapse of society delivered in its own contrived grammar. The actual text is the lamentations of a soon to be laid off professor gone mad, the way its written you get the sense her mind is scrambling as her humanties orientation is repurposed for the cold pragmatism of a STEM driven regime.
Reminds me a bit of ccru writing, there's a fixation on the future, its prediction and how to account for it, how the blend of globalized politics and technological apparatuses form structures effectively from the future. And shes a British writer and the book is from 1994, drinking from the same well here. Its all delivered fairly poetically though which keeps it from getting too cute or nerdy.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Amalgamemnon by Christine Brooke-Rose came in

Its pretty cool, not what I expected. sci fi esque in a Burroughs fashion- lots of interdicsiplinary neologisms, musing on the incoming collapse of society delivered in its own contrived grammar. The actual text is the lamentations of a soon to be laid off professor gone mad, the way its written you get the sense her mind is scrambling as her humanties orientation is repurposed for the cold pragmatism of a STEM driven regime.
Reminds me a bit of ccru writing, there's a fixation on the future, its prediction and how to account for it, how the blend of globalized politics and technological apparatuses form structures effectively from the future. And shes a British writer and the book is from 1994, drinking from the same well here. Its all delivered fairly poetically though which keeps it from getting too cute or nerdy.
Sounds interesting
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
give us an extract if you can

“For although like you I could be a spokesman denying rumours from below that predefer to be stifled till the return of the repressed prodigal, I could also be a streetsweeper cleaning up the unmanuring dung dropped from above, which will have to be collected up and sorted out and recycled maybe into serviceable goods, as in psychoanalysis, a genie from a plastic bottle. When the magic cycle of genuine shit will have been replaced by the chemicycle of pure electronic thought ever expanding, more and more unbiodegradable, the heart of the earth will stop, shrivel to a curled up foetus to be ejected lifeless and wither to a moon without even the attracting planet to encircle except the distant sungod dead because unseen unfelt by anyone.”
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Picked Theatre by Somerset Maugham off my shelves. Enjoyed the preface but you can tell I'm kinda scraping the bottom of the battle... so I've ordered book five in Wheel of Time and also Roadside Picnic which I've never read.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Got a decent haul for my recent birthday to work through:

books.jpg

Basically:
* mystery cults
* fungi
* drugs made from fungi
* mystery cults probably based on drugs made from fungi
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Picked Theatre by Somerset Maugham off my shelves. Enjoyed the preface but you can tell I'm kinda scraping the bottom of the battle... so I've ordered book five in Wheel of Time and also Roadside Picnic which I've never read.
That was a bit harsh actually, I've read a couple of his other books which I enjoyed so...
 

catalog

Well-known member
amanita nightmares! the guy i met yesterday said that eating the amanita would kill me!! the folklore around that cap is truly astonishing.
 

catalog

Well-known member
he told me about a spot nearby where you can get 'carrier bagfuls' of liberty, and i meant to go today but bastard work
 
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