Not Pynchon but SF is Plist topic and somethin' mightta happened here. "gift" to "the whole of our culture" !!?? and a 3-time winner.!!!! And not the first o'ertopping praise I've seen either.

[Mark Thibodeau]

O'ertopping definitely sounds like what's going on here, though I
haven't read the works (despite hearing about her in equally glowing
terms a couple years back, and also in relation to the Sad Puppies
Gamergate style fiasco), so who knows? Maybe she writes incredible,
game-changing SF and I'm gonna have to seek her out.

For now tho, seeing as SF has been temporarily recognized as P-list
adjacent... anybody else here read Delillo's ZERO K yet?

I finally got around to reading it through after a few false starts,
and I rank it as the equal to Point Omega among his post-Underworld
output, and easily among the best of his work in general (my faves are
Ratner's Star, Libra, White Noise and Point Omega, for reference).

It strikes me that ZERO K hasn't received the buzz it deserves among
the wider reading public, nor has it been recognized as an entry in
that oft derided genre, 'the "Serious" Writer's Sci-Fi Novel'.

As with McCarthy's The Road, Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, and Cloud
Atlas, I think ZERO K deserves to be included in the "successful"
column of that literary ledger's list of sf novels by mainstream
writers. It's not timid about thinking big thoughts "out loud", it
does so in an intriguing, often disturbing (even horrifying?) fashion,
and packs a couple of real wallops at key moments.

Of course, it's Delillo, so mysteries abound. But ZERO K isn't utterly
inscrutable in the way that, say, The Body Artist, or even Falling
Man, were to me. For all the literary and linguistic innovation they
contained, I couldn't quite see the point. Not so for ZERO K. I feel
like I know exactly why he wrote that one, and why he wrote it the way
he did.

Anyway, I'm seriously craving other folks' opinions on this novel.
What do y'all got for yer old pal Jerky? :-)

Cheers!
YOPJ

P.S. ~ Bunch of updates over at my "political" blog, Daily Dirt
Diaspora (http://www.DailyDirtDiaspora.blogspot.com)... mostly
suggested readings and some humorous infographics not of my own design
(altho some of those are coming, too). Check it out if you should feel
so inclined!


On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 1:26 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  I'm gonna put Roth down and zeitgeist the reading of. "An example of
> zeitgeist is the free love and progressive thinking of the 1960s."
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/24/the-guardian-view-on-science-fiction-the-broken-earth-deserves-its-hugo
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l