Lapsed SFfans

[Mike Weaver]

I reckon that my move from SF to crime as my preferred easy read was a part
of my emotional development.  There is little emotional pain in SF and once
I had accepted its inevitability I became dissatisfied with the conceptual
substance which is SF's strength. I wanted realistic characters who hurt as
well as acted and talked.
         I'm part of a circle of people who pass around books, all of whom
used to read a lot of science fiction (and some still do)  but have all
moved on to crime fiction as a preferred medium, mainly feminist and the
likes of Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosely and James Ellroy.  We are all utterly
loyal to only one SF author, C.J.Cherryh.   I'm not into her fantasy much
tho The Brothers one of her shorter faery pieces is an excellent moral
fable.  Her future history is a magnificent advance on Heinlein or any of
the earlier writers of that sub genre and her development of character puts
most other SFauthors in the shade.  The economics and politics (personal and
macro scale) of her books ring so very true that as one reviewer put it
reading her books is as close as any of us is likely to get to experiencing
space travel.  I agree.

Monte Davis wrote

>The endless rows of serial novels on the SF shelves, the miles of sword &
>sorcery Tolkien wannabes, are ample proof that whatever the majority of SF
>and fantasy fans may be, they're not very selective within the genre.

 Going through a Piet Hein patch so you'll have to bear with me (Piet Hein
was a Danish polymath who wrote little poems, rhymed epigrams).  He wrote
one about bad writers prospering and good ones fading away into obscurity...

  'because writers who can't write are bought by readers who can't read.' 

 There is good and popular SF being written but the market dictates that
shelves are stocked with what sells.  The dumbing of the popular culture
produced by the U.S.A., another aspect.   Lafferty, with whom I started this
thread, is only kept in print by some of his admirers running small presses.
Not available to be seen let alone bought by yer average punter.

 David Casseres wrote 

>"Dune" series back in the 60's: I thought the first one was 
>wonderful, never finished the second, and never gave a glance to the 
>third one.

I haven't read the Dune trilogy for a long while but reckoned on an
intellectual level the third, The Children of Dune' far outshone the other
two.  Dune was planned as a four book series, first two bits were published
as Dune.  Frank Herbert said he wrote the first three parts to the plan he
worked out in the late fifties,but completely replotted the third part in
the seventies.   The common reaction to the second Dune book bore a strong
resemblence and I believe similar derivation to the reaction to Vineland.
Dune ends with an heroic climax,  full orgasmic cycle stuff and the reader
basks in the afterglow.  Dune Messiah has the messiah understanding it ain't
possible to be a messiah and splitting the scene with no "Dig you Later" and
reality intrudes in the form of messy ol' politics which then concerns the
rest of the novel.  Everyone was disappointed, they all wanted another
heroic epic. Same thing with Vineland.  We all wanted another GR in terms of
density and we got something much smaller,simpler, quieter. Since what I
want from TP in the light of GR is political/philosophical sharpness of
perception I value  Vineland just highly as GR or rather simply see it as
the latest chapter in Tom Pynchon's story which will cease on the last page
of his last book and which I will probably follow to the end, mine or his.
IMO Vineland was essentially an elegy for the radicalism of the sixties and
an acknowledgement of the continuity of the American left this century.  I
hope it wa a clearing of the decks for him, finishing up of old business in
readiness for attention to the new.  We shall see shan't we.

Joe Varo wrote
>So let's have it, all of you lapsed SF fans -- what SF works were
>important to you?

Still are.
Of the fifties
Tiger Tiger aka The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester:  What a book,
like being shot from a cannon,  I was speechless for half an hour after I
finished it, a non stop several hour stint.  The ultimate space opera.  A
fine revolutionary climax that Alan Moore (a Pynchonhead of note and fine
comic writer) payed homage to at the end of V for Vendetta his antifascist
graphic novel (one of the few comicbooks that deserves the name).

Theodore Sturgeon
More Than Human and not a few short stories.  A people lover when most
others were fetishising machines.

The sixties
The usual sixties new wave gang Ellison, Delany, Zelazny (pre bloody Amber),
Brunner and in utter contrast to all this hard SF Andre Norton's Witch World
books.

Cordwainer Smith 
Ballad of Lost C'mell, Drunkboat, Dead Lady of Clown Town and others.  Much
of his short fiction is wonderfully poetic and of sophisticated
construction.  Up there with TP as a wordweaver. 

James Tiptree Jnr. Pen name of Alice Sheldon.  Again short stories: pain and
humour abounding. Collections: 
10,000 Light Years From Home, Warm Worlds and Others, Star Songs of an Old
Primate, and Out of Everywhere 
I'll Be Waiting  For You When The Swimming Pool Is Empty is a great
deflation of liberal minded imperialism. 
 Out Of Everywhere is IMO composed mostly of feminist horror stories, the
pain intensified and the humour  bitterly dark.  After this her writing lost
its bite and in 1985 we found out why when she shot to death her Altzheimers
ridden husband and then herself. RIP  

seventies to date
C.J.Cherryh (Carolyn Cherry, like Lafferty an Okie)
Merchanter's Luck and Voyager In Night.  Her shorter stuff I can reread with
pleasure, not the tomes she mostly produces.  The latter book is different
from the bulk of her work in thestrong predominance of psychology over
politics, the two are usually evenly present and skillfully blended.

I hope anyone who checks any of this lot out gets as much satisfaction as I
have from them.

Cheerio from the longwinded Weavercreature.


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      Our choicest plans have fallen through,
      Our airiest castles tumbled over.
      Because of lines we neatly drew, 
      And later neatly stumbled over.
             Piet Hein                       
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