The Decline and Fall of SF

[Dexter C. Palmer]

	Like everyone else here so far, I read much less SF in my spare
time than I used to, but I still think that Tolkien is a great writer (if
not for his wonderful landscape descriptions, then the way in which he
actually puts his knowledge as a professor of linguistics to good use).
Frank Herbert's Dune series I also have to vote for, it being on a
generally higher intellectual plane than most other SF, even if it's
polemical and you don't agree with him. 
	I just recently bought Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos: 
Archives", which presents itself as an SF series, except for a couple of
things: it's put out by Vintage International (and has that same
Vintage-type cover) and it's always in the "literature" section of
bookstores, instead of sandwiched between pulp novels in the SF section at
the back of the store where books never get dusted and weirdos with thick
glasses, unkempt hair, and faded Ozzy Osborne T-shirts hang out. Has
anyone else read this, and if so, does he or she have an opinion?

					--Dexter Palmer

(ObPynchon: one of the reasons I first got into Pynchon is that after I'd
just read William Gibson's "Neuromancer," I came across an article in a
magazine (probably Wired. Now I've said way too much about myself.) that
claimed that Thomas Pynchon is the "godfather of cyberpunk." Which is a
bit like David Bowie touring with Nine Inch Nails last year, but...)