I liked Dune until the Harkonnens killed all the Atrides. Then, it's just battle in the desert and ride a worm, blah blah. And god help you if you try to read the sequels.
I thought Paul Kincaid’s review of the version of Last Dangerous Visions that came out recently (http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/who-is-in-danger/) was really good and contextualized both earlier volumes for me: “In both books there were good stories, in both books there were some very good stories, but they each mattered less than they did as part of the rebel army.”
Nova is a fascinating book; my darling M John Harrison gave it a negative review in New Worlds for sticking too rigidly to heroic narrative, but I have to dissent from him there. It is imo very clearly the kind of book you write before lapsing into a seven-year silence from science fiction and returning with Dhalgren.
The Alia stuff in Dune is simply so funny. In Dune Part II I could visibly see Villeneuve decide “I really do not want to deal with this right now” and so the movie remains a series of grand darkling tableaux of imperial decadence, uninterrupted by the appearance of the world’s most ridiculous assassination scene, which I think is a shame.
Ohhhh thank you. I am probably not going to read TLDV for a while, but I did read Christopher Priest's pamphlet (?) about how it was not coming out ever and if you have not read that it's very much worth it: https://christopher-priest.co.uk/books/the-book-on-the-edge-of-forever (You can find it online.)
I like to imagine one day Alia will appear on the big screen looking like that creepy baby they didn't use for Twilight lol. Though I guess she's supposed to look totally normal? That the Baron actually says like "yeow!" right before he dies is so funny. I guess another theme in Dune is that sometimes the best defense is being weird—walking weird protects you against sandworms, yelling "I'm not going to use that code word" in the middle of a battle is so weird that you end up being able to kill your opponent because he's trying to figure out what the hell you mean, etc.
Re: Judith Merril's defensiveness about SF - I've mentioned this before, but it's important to remember how dramatically the economics of publishing SF changed after Star Wars in 1977. Kurt Vonnegut became one of the most important authors of the '70s when his publisher was able to get his work reviewed as serious fiction rather than SF. In the '80s, writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling could become recognized public intellectuals without ever leaving the SF ghetto.
The most poignant example of this change is the career of Philip K. Dick - PKD was desperate for the kind of money and respect he felt his work deserved, but could never get so long as he was stuck writing SF. The trouble was that his mainstream work didn't sell at all. But the same year he died, 1982, he started to become one of the most well-known and financially successful writers of the late 20th century, when the movie Blade Runner came out.
If you don't take into account the fact that pre-Star Wars SF was produced in a writing market where the SF publishers paid badly, and there were prestigious, high-paying markets for literary short stories as well as novels, you may miss nuances of why they were upset or happy about different things. For instance, Merril's remarks about Delaney seem telling, given that Delaney was as much a creature of Lower Manhattan bohemia as a member of SF culture. A gay man of color who's using his money from publishing short stories to live in Greece is going to write from a different perspective than an editor who is trying to maintain a middle class life in the publising industry.
FWIW, I like Delaney's mid-to-late '60s stuff the best. "Empire Star", "Babel-17", "Ballad of Beta-2", and "Time as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones" all hit the sweet spot for me, while "Nova", "Triton", and "Dhalgren" strike me as overworked.
Yes, I agree about the economics side—this is also why you have people like Alfred Bester just leaving the field altogether for a long time.
I just wonder if that situation, while not ideal, inculcated some qualities that make the world of speculative fiction healthier now that mainstream fiction is in a weaker position. For instance, the establishment of SFWA with its minimum rates that publications had to pay and its legal assistance when publishers didn't hold up their end of the deal—people who could still make good money in the fifties writing short stories for the mainstream magazines didn't need something like that. But… that's not really the focus of my research so I don't know the answer!
It makes sense that the SFWA would be good for the field. As well as the organization of writers, the fact that SF fans were organized was also good for the field. Conventions and fanzines create an infrastructure for publicity and training future professionals that can be very useful when mainstream economic arrangements become a problem.
A lot of what gets ascribed to a culture of blockbusters or franchises in Hollywood has to do with fan culture taking on responsibilities for publicity and talent scouting that the studios did in-house before they were broken up the Paramount decision in 1948. People complain about comic book movies, but it would cost too much for distribution or production companies to pay for a lot of the functions that can be taken care of by promoting a movie at Comicon.
So yeah, I think that it's very plausible to believe that institutions that professionals and fans worked out to distribute and promote SF writing were beneficial when the mainstream fiction markets collapsed.
As for "The Milk of Paradise", it is actually one of my favorite Tiptree stories, though it made less impact on my recent rereading that it did the first time around. But like so much Tiptree it is very much about sex (especially exogenous sex) and death.
It's true that Merril's impact is far greater as an anthologist and critic than as a writer. I'd suggest "Daughters of Earth" and "The Deep Down Dragon" as better examples of her work but, really, none of it is truly brilliant.
I have to admit I am in the camp that considers "The Word for World is Forest" too preachy. The ending is good -- that is, the moral vise the aliens end up in is truly and honestly excruciating. But the bad guys are too cartoonish. The point would have been made much better if a bunch of Terrans who thought they were being kind of good (even while stealing resources and such) and who didn't do things like import a bunch of women just for sex, still ended up wholly destroying the innocent aliens. (Also, the idea of importing WOOD from a planet light years away is just silly.)
A couple of years ago I reread "The Word for World is Forest" and "When it Changed" (because I was rereading all the award winning SF published in 1972) and compared to what my 14 year old self who first read the stories thought, "The Word for World is Forest" was less good, but "When it Changed" was MUCH better. (Also, "In the Barn" was still about the stupidest and ickiest story I'd ever read.)
Yeah, I agree that it would be a better story if the Terrans weren't so evil and if they were more like the anthropologist but slightly worse (still stealing resources, preying on the women, etc). But I do remember reading the beginning of her mother's book about Ishi… which I'm just realizing I forgot to pack… and feeling genuinely ill at some of the atrocities against the native California tribes documented there. So a part of me does feel like if she'd made the Terrans less bad she might have been less true to life.
I was talking to a friend earlier this year who ran across either "When It Changed" or The Female Man as a kid when she was just reading science fiction in the library and her response was a mix of "am I allowed to read this?" and fascination haha.
I liked Dune until the Harkonnens killed all the Atrides. Then, it's just battle in the desert and ride a worm, blah blah. And god help you if you try to read the sequels.
Few covers promise an incoherent time to the extent the cover of God Emperor of Dune does.
I thought Paul Kincaid’s review of the version of Last Dangerous Visions that came out recently (http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/who-is-in-danger/) was really good and contextualized both earlier volumes for me: “In both books there were good stories, in both books there were some very good stories, but they each mattered less than they did as part of the rebel army.”
Nova is a fascinating book; my darling M John Harrison gave it a negative review in New Worlds for sticking too rigidly to heroic narrative, but I have to dissent from him there. It is imo very clearly the kind of book you write before lapsing into a seven-year silence from science fiction and returning with Dhalgren.
The Alia stuff in Dune is simply so funny. In Dune Part II I could visibly see Villeneuve decide “I really do not want to deal with this right now” and so the movie remains a series of grand darkling tableaux of imperial decadence, uninterrupted by the appearance of the world’s most ridiculous assassination scene, which I think is a shame.
Ohhhh thank you. I am probably not going to read TLDV for a while, but I did read Christopher Priest's pamphlet (?) about how it was not coming out ever and if you have not read that it's very much worth it: https://christopher-priest.co.uk/books/the-book-on-the-edge-of-forever (You can find it online.)
I like to imagine one day Alia will appear on the big screen looking like that creepy baby they didn't use for Twilight lol. Though I guess she's supposed to look totally normal? That the Baron actually says like "yeow!" right before he dies is so funny. I guess another theme in Dune is that sometimes the best defense is being weird—walking weird protects you against sandworms, yelling "I'm not going to use that code word" in the middle of a battle is so weird that you end up being able to kill your opponent because he's trying to figure out what the hell you mean, etc.
Re: Judith Merril's defensiveness about SF - I've mentioned this before, but it's important to remember how dramatically the economics of publishing SF changed after Star Wars in 1977. Kurt Vonnegut became one of the most important authors of the '70s when his publisher was able to get his work reviewed as serious fiction rather than SF. In the '80s, writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling could become recognized public intellectuals without ever leaving the SF ghetto.
The most poignant example of this change is the career of Philip K. Dick - PKD was desperate for the kind of money and respect he felt his work deserved, but could never get so long as he was stuck writing SF. The trouble was that his mainstream work didn't sell at all. But the same year he died, 1982, he started to become one of the most well-known and financially successful writers of the late 20th century, when the movie Blade Runner came out.
If you don't take into account the fact that pre-Star Wars SF was produced in a writing market where the SF publishers paid badly, and there were prestigious, high-paying markets for literary short stories as well as novels, you may miss nuances of why they were upset or happy about different things. For instance, Merril's remarks about Delaney seem telling, given that Delaney was as much a creature of Lower Manhattan bohemia as a member of SF culture. A gay man of color who's using his money from publishing short stories to live in Greece is going to write from a different perspective than an editor who is trying to maintain a middle class life in the publising industry.
FWIW, I like Delaney's mid-to-late '60s stuff the best. "Empire Star", "Babel-17", "Ballad of Beta-2", and "Time as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones" all hit the sweet spot for me, while "Nova", "Triton", and "Dhalgren" strike me as overworked.
Yes, I agree about the economics side—this is also why you have people like Alfred Bester just leaving the field altogether for a long time.
I just wonder if that situation, while not ideal, inculcated some qualities that make the world of speculative fiction healthier now that mainstream fiction is in a weaker position. For instance, the establishment of SFWA with its minimum rates that publications had to pay and its legal assistance when publishers didn't hold up their end of the deal—people who could still make good money in the fifties writing short stories for the mainstream magazines didn't need something like that. But… that's not really the focus of my research so I don't know the answer!
It makes sense that the SFWA would be good for the field. As well as the organization of writers, the fact that SF fans were organized was also good for the field. Conventions and fanzines create an infrastructure for publicity and training future professionals that can be very useful when mainstream economic arrangements become a problem.
A lot of what gets ascribed to a culture of blockbusters or franchises in Hollywood has to do with fan culture taking on responsibilities for publicity and talent scouting that the studios did in-house before they were broken up the Paramount decision in 1948. People complain about comic book movies, but it would cost too much for distribution or production companies to pay for a lot of the functions that can be taken care of by promoting a movie at Comicon.
So yeah, I think that it's very plausible to believe that institutions that professionals and fans worked out to distribute and promote SF writing were beneficial when the mainstream fiction markets collapsed.
As for "The Milk of Paradise", it is actually one of my favorite Tiptree stories, though it made less impact on my recent rereading that it did the first time around. But like so much Tiptree it is very much about sex (especially exogenous sex) and death.
It's true that Merril's impact is far greater as an anthologist and critic than as a writer. I'd suggest "Daughters of Earth" and "The Deep Down Dragon" as better examples of her work but, really, none of it is truly brilliant.
I have to admit I am in the camp that considers "The Word for World is Forest" too preachy. The ending is good -- that is, the moral vise the aliens end up in is truly and honestly excruciating. But the bad guys are too cartoonish. The point would have been made much better if a bunch of Terrans who thought they were being kind of good (even while stealing resources and such) and who didn't do things like import a bunch of women just for sex, still ended up wholly destroying the innocent aliens. (Also, the idea of importing WOOD from a planet light years away is just silly.)
A couple of years ago I reread "The Word for World is Forest" and "When it Changed" (because I was rereading all the award winning SF published in 1972) and compared to what my 14 year old self who first read the stories thought, "The Word for World is Forest" was less good, but "When it Changed" was MUCH better. (Also, "In the Barn" was still about the stupidest and ickiest story I'd ever read.)
Yeah, I agree that it would be a better story if the Terrans weren't so evil and if they were more like the anthropologist but slightly worse (still stealing resources, preying on the women, etc). But I do remember reading the beginning of her mother's book about Ishi… which I'm just realizing I forgot to pack… and feeling genuinely ill at some of the atrocities against the native California tribes documented there. So a part of me does feel like if she'd made the Terrans less bad she might have been less true to life.
I was talking to a friend earlier this year who ran across either "When It Changed" or The Female Man as a kid when she was just reading science fiction in the library and her response was a mix of "am I allowed to read this?" and fascination haha.