/lit/ - Literature

Harold Bloom likes Thomas Disch's On Wings of Song and Stanislaw Lem and he wrote fanfiction for A Voyage to Arcturus.

I HAVE READ SEVERAL BOOKS

Camp Concentration from Thomas Disch

not sure what to make of this one, it's a more intellectualized Flowers Of Algernon, with prisoners in a secret state-run prison becoming enormously intelligent by being deliberately infected with a disease, then they die after a few months.... it's a rather strange story that doesn't really go anywhere

The Iron Dream from Norman Spinrad

Someone recently posted this one here - it's a SF novel written by Adolf Hitler from a different timeline, where he emigrated to the US and became a semi-famous SF writer. It's an obvious joke on many 60s/70s SF writers like that retard who wrote Gor - it's similarly preachy, but it's all about a hero who fights the Dominators to save the genetic purity of his race... It started of fun but it's about 100 pages too long.

AND FINALLY

Do no Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

Just recently released, a bunch of stories from a famous neurosurgeon who now retires. It's fun how in his old age, his various "pretentiousnesses" slip off and he reveals how insecure and nervous he's become about operating... not finished yet

>>6426693
Neuromancer isn't that good.

Disch's short stories are pretty good but they seem to be out of print, sadly

Harold Bloom likes Stanislaw Lem, Ursula LeGuin, and Thomas Disch.

>>6294767

Star Maker
The Gods themselves
the dispossessed
Lanark
Pedro Paramo
salmonella men on planet porno
strangehaven
the waves
the good soldier svejk
perfume: the story of a murderer
the green child
the reason i jump
the mind's i
Patrick White (the eye of the storm, voss)
suicide by edouard leve
stoner
the conspiracy against the human race
julius evola
the paradox men
a canticle for leibowitz
heroes & villains
the final programme
the drowned world
j g ballard
the ophiuchi hotline
engine summer
334 (thomas m disch)"
the story of art
the road less traveled
a renegade history of the united states
mount analogue
gods and fighting men
the master and margarita
the moon is a harsh mistress
(william saroyan)
At Swim-two-birds
Wittgenstein's Mistress
american pastoral

>books I have out from the library

The Man Who Fell to Earth - Walter Tevis
The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis
The Lathe of Heaven - UK Le Guin
The Pornographers - Akiyuki Nosaka
The Genocides - Tom Disch
Tamarisk Row - Gerald Murnane
The Mind Parasites - Wilson
Farewell to the Sea - Arenas
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russel
Where the Air is Clear - Carlos Fuentes
The Wind's Twelve Quarters - UK Le Guin
Thieves in the Night - Koestler
All the Names - Saramago
Of Heroes and Tombs - Sabato
The Man of Jasmine - Unica Zurn

gay men or gay women?
you didn't specify
>this is gay women

also just generally check the works of sam delay, tom disch, and james tiptree jr

>>6153736
Most of the most well-known ones are. That's not the same as saying all of them are. Especially since so many sf&f fans have shit taste.

Anyway, Gene Wolfe, Ted Chiang, Chip Delany, Ted Sturgeon, Tom Disch. EXTREMELY James Tiptree. Zelazny a bit. Other people too but that's who comes to mind.

>>6066300
Theodore Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon. maybe the best prose stylist ever in SF. And someone paradigmaticly concerned with the human condition.

Also: Iain M Banks, Tom Disch, Samuel Delany. Gateway by Fred Pohl. Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick. A bunch of Gene Wolfe short stories. I'm not sure James Tiptree necessarily counts but whatever, she owns.

>>6025658
>>6026182

Tom Disch, too.

And if you like more fantasy-oriented stuff, John Crowley.

>>5999527
bloom probably knows of gene wofle, he's friends with thomas disch who is a big gene wolfe fan, he likes le guin, he also knows and loves john crowley, a less well known author than wolfe probably. he's been pretty receptive to sci fi in general, probably more than the average "serious" critic.

>>5976363
>>5976375
>Why is he so bitter?
He's got a massive inferiority complex over not being a first-rate writer either ~literarily~ or in terms of "SF-ness", particularly in comparison to people he hated (e.g. Tolkien), and he tries to make up for his butthurt by being the biggest partisan of the New Wave possible. Which was always pretty dumb but has only gotten sillier since there have been 2 or 3 more significant paradigm shifts in SF since then. Now we're basically hearing some greybeard hippie talking about how awesome Haight-Ashbury was and how Nixon was totally a reactionary pig, man.

Here, this is all you need to know:
>Dick's novels became increasingly incoherent and, for me, scarcely readable. Hacking out book after book, he gave himself no time to discover a more idiosyncratic structure or style, the search for which characterised the so-called SF New Wave and gave us sophisticated American visionaries such as Thomas M Disch, John Sladek and Samuel R Delany.

NEW WAVE GOOD! LITERARY SOPHISTICATION! GOLDEN AGE BAD! HACK REACTIONARIES!

Moorcock, of course, "hacked out book after book" himself for decades, without ever managing to write anything as good as Dick's (or Heinlein's, or Asimov's, or Van Vogt's...) best. He knows this, and he isn't happy about it.

>>5938873
>>5941093
Counterpoint: Camp Concentration is terrible, Disch isn't a strong enough writer to put the premise into practice, and wraps things up with a stupid and unsatisfying reveal.

>>5938509
Thomas Disch fucking owns. Strongly recommend anything by him. Camp Concentration is amazing

>>5935095
I actually have a copy of that collection that my old neighbor gave me when i was younger and they were moving out of the neighborhood. I think he also gave me The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and stuff too and I'm just realizing he was pretty cool maybe a decade later.

Will check it out when I'm done reading VALIS. Also, while we're on the topic, I've read like 4 or 5 PKD's in a row and want something in a similar vein but not by him. Does anyone know if Thomas Disch is any good? PKD name drops him in VALIS and he apparently wrote the original novel of The Brave Little Toaster. Could be interesting.

>>5853258
For Sturgeon I think much of his best work is in his short fiction, so it's hard to give specific recommendations.

For Disch, Camp Concentration and 334.

>>5854334
Snow Crash fucking owns, even if it's not much good from a literary point of view

>>5852885
I haven't read Sturgeon or Delaney, but I've been meaning to for a while! Dhalgren seems like the kind of thing I would really like so I would try that one. What would you recommend by Sturgeon or Disch?

>>5852771
Read Sturgeon at all? or much of the New Wave / relatively immediate post-New Wave guys?

Those are the people I find to be concerned with artistic goals, and hence those with some of the better styles. In particular people like Disch or Delaney.

>>5694183
There's a good review on Goodreads and I pretty much agree with everything said there:

"Wolfe has an almost legendary status amongst fellow authors; Gaiman called him 'a ferocious intellect', Swanwick said he's "the greatest writer in the English language alive today", and Disch called this series "a tetralogy of couth, intelligence, and suavity".

You can rarely trust the popular market to single out good authors, but you'd think it might be safe to listen to the opinions of other writers (especially an assemblage of Nebula and Hugo winners in their own right). I will give his fans one concession: Wolfe is an author who defies expectations. Unfortunately, I was expecting him to be remarkable and interesting.

This book had been sitting on my shelf for months, along with other highly-praised works I've been looking forward to, but I bade my time, waiting for the mood to strike. Few live up to their reputation, but most at least deliver part of the promise.

I would expect any author mentioned in the same breath as Peake to have an original and vibrant style, but I found Wolfe's writing to be simple without being elegant. His language and structure serves its purpose, only occasionally rising above mere utilitarianism, and then he rushes to florid flourishes that fall flat as often as they succeed. Sometimes, it is downright dull. The prose of the second book is stronger than the first, but its plot and characters are more linear and predictable.

I appreciated his 'created language' more than most fantasy authors, but I didn't find it particularly mysterious or difficult, because all of his words are based on recognizable Germanic or Romantic roots. Then again, after three years of writing stories about Roman whores in Latin, I had little problem with 'meretriculous'. Even those words I wasn't familiar with seemed clear by their use."

>>5524362
IDK, but he does like Thomas Disch and Ursula Le Guin apparently.

>>5524362
probably. he apparently at one point basically everything recommended to him and he's friends with tom disch

you should email him though. i hear he responds

Read New Wave and literary science fiction, not the garbage hard science fiction that a bunch of engineering autists think is good because MUH SENSAWUNNA. Also, science fiction is definitely a genre where as much of the best work is done in short stories as is done in novels, so be aware of that.

Some writers that I think are good: Samuel R Delany (Dhalgren, The Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand). Thomas M Disch (The Genocides, Camp Concentration, 334). M John Harrison (Light). James Tiptree (short stories - "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" is a good compilation). JG Ballard. Ursula K LeGuin. Some of Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon's short stories. Maybe a bit of Michael Swanwick or even Iain M Banks.

>still no Disch

You fucksacks are doing it wrong

Olaf Stapeldon and Thomas Disch.