/lit/ - Literature

>>8688293
Tolstoy talks about death a lot but he is uplifting to read. It's in the way he acutely observes people, and in his fluid prose, even by translation. He puts forward a convincing case for a way of living which disregards materialism and vanity, in favor of a life of selflessness and love that is more in commune with nature.

I recommend one of the short stories collections of his, one which has The Death Of Ivan Ilyich in it. His early soldierly stories are also worthwhile (Three Deaths, The Woodfelling.)

I enjoyed The Feast Of St Dionysus by Robert Silverberg, a novelette of about sixty pages. A burned-out astronaut, after returning a Mars mission, wanders into the Mojave desert, where he encounters a Dionysian/Christian cult.

The story relates calamitous events on Mars, the astronauts breakdown, and his initiation into the cult, in a fragmented third person style. The writing about the cult is the most interesting thing. They venerate Dionysus, Buddha, and Jesus as aspects of the same unity, and aim to unlock the divine unconsciousness ('the God within us') by communal activities of drinking, feasting, and naked wrestling.

It's among the better Silverberg stories I have read, and worth reading if you are interested in Mars, the desert, guilty memories, and the rites of cults.

>>8682804
The English translation by Bormashenko is the newer one. It's a good book that gets its hooks into you, because of the oblique way the story is told.

From what I gather, Bormashenko's translation was a hobby, a labor of love, that got picked up by the publishers.

However, the way Adam Curtis talks about Roadside Picnic as emblematic of the way governments deceive us through illusory and contradictory realities is tenuous. It is a minor subtext of the novel at most, gained by a highly active and selective reading - whereas it is an overt preoccupation of any given Philip K Dick novel.

>>8679726
Roadside Picnic

>>8679902
Well, I can't comment, except to say Donkey is being mischievous. I haven't read any Le Guin outside of Lathe, but I will read The Dispossessed before Christmas, because I have read enough from her to see that she can write well about interesting ideas. Is there layers of philosophical meaning and rereadability in Rowling? I don't know, I've never read Harry Potter, because I was reading Discworld. I never saw the movies either. Although Rowling is a milf whereas Le Guin isn't, but neither will appear on mompov anytime soon.

I don't know anything about Le Guin, except the Lathe Of Heaven is a handsome little book, with good prose, and some Eastern profundity here and there. It's like a less disjointed, more poetic PKD novel.

>>8675322
Naval jargon comes up quite often in literature, in Joseph Conrad, HG Wells, Jules Vern, Moby Dick. I'd argue that knowing what a larboard, forecastle, or mizzen mast means would be quite useful if you read a lot.

>>8674670
You could do worse than reading Homer's Odyssey, as well as Herodotus' histories. They have an insight into the old mindset, which is superstitious. They're also full of myths and morality tales and evocative images to draw inspiration from. Not only does Herodotus talk about civilisied Persia, Egypt, and Babylon, he also talks extensively about nomadic steppe tribes like the Scythians, whose ways will have predated the first city states in Mesopotamia.

The Strugatsky Brother's Hard To Be a God depicts a primeval society being observed by Earth. There's an interesting idea in it that mankind is naturally greedy and brutal, and only the natural course of history, i.e. centuries of war and bloodshed, can change that society.

I realise that both the Greeks and feudal society are both later than you were asking for. But Homer and Herodotus go back as far as the iron age, maybe more in the case of Homer.

To go back further, you'd have to look to Mesopotamia and the Sumerians. It would be instructive to look at the Epic Of Gilgamesh, but also the bas-reliefs left by the brutal Assyrians at Nineveh (pic related.)

>>8653280
It's fun, Silverberg being a non-practicing Jew himself, so he has an arch approach. It's part of an anthology of science fiction by Jewish writers, quite a curio. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?164501

>>8653332
Interesting premise, I haven't read Michael Chabon.

There was an anon asking about Jewish SF recently. Yesterday I read The Dybbuk Of Mazel Tov IV, a 1972 short story by Robert Silverberg, about a group of Jewish refugees who have established a new Israel on another planet. There's a lot of Jewish humor and it's a briskly read piece of entertainment overall. A Jewish ghost possesses an alien native and three groups try to release his soul.

>>8651372
The bereavement is a good prop because it gives the character a weak psyche and the pretext for a transformative experience. This can be through an outside agent (via suggestion) or an inner change (psychological, spiritual.)

Your brief outline has interesting possibilities so now you just have to do the hard part.

>>8651290
It depends how banal you want to be, and whether it is a subjective reality or objective. A subjective reality is more interesting IMO, because it opens things up to psychological and physiological ideas. Otherwise it could be a banal objective reality, like being zapped with a magic wand.

I will add, to nobody in particular, that the mental realm can offer a lot for SF writers as a well of inspiration. Psychosis as living dreams, Jung's ideas about the collective unconsciousness + archetypes, the next stage of evolution as a psychological one, ESP/telepathy, the weak psyche VS subjective realities.

>>8651130
PKD's Martian Time Slip has a similar kind of idea, where an autistic boy has a different perception of time, which makes him unable to communicate with those around him. So he is always viewing things in terms of what they will become, which is mostly decaying bodies and a 'tomb world.'

It's like having access to a time-slip, but with mental illness as a cause. There's many possibilities in the idea.

I've never set down and read HG Wells until I found a cheap copy of The Island Of Doctor Moreau, the short novel from 1896. Here, a young scientist is marooned on a small island for a year, where a vivisectionist is trying to transform animals into human beings. After being transformed, the hybrid man-beasts are discarded from the lab to the rest of the island.

It's written in a first person narrative which reads like a restrained and more lucid HP Lovecraft. HG Wells isn't verbose, but he is ponderous, particularly in the first half of the book. However, the second half (as the beasts revert and there is catastrophe) is more fast paced and eventful, with a strong finish.

>>8642348
Philip K Dick wrote a lot of short stories in this period under the shadow of the nuclear threat, stories of post-fallout societies, or societies turned neurotic by nuclear anxiety. Any collection of his short stories will have a few of them e.g. The Defenders, Second Variety, Foster You're Dead.

I have no doubt that Stevian Heartbound poured his heart and soul, over a decade, into writing his tome of fiction, the first three hundred pages of which are free. I admire writers who have the will to sit down and do the thing, because it's more than I can do.

But, jeez guy, what happened to putting out a few nicely formed novellas or short stories at the start of a writing career? They are far more approachable for the reader, and would improve your craft. Some of my favourite books are novellas, and I believe it is a great format for the time-poor modern age, and for e-readers.

>>8637780
With genres, it's probably best to write what you are interested in. But as for reader's tastes, I suspect a lot of people still enjoy space operas, whereas Lovecraft is a niche in a niche. There are lots of ways to write the same story.

>>8637619
It reminds me of David Icke's idea that Saturn is a large transmitter, constructed by another race, which is broadcasting a matrix-like illusory existence to Earth in order to limit our potential, with Luna as a signal booster.

So there is a well of ideas and myth to riff on, in the PKD fashion or otherwise. I'd rather read that, something mind bending, nutty, and conspiratorial, than something about Lovecraftian monsters in space.

>>8633254
Imagine how boring it would be if every book had to cohere with, or display the politically correct modern culture. The same voices again and again.

I read things like Strugatsky brothers partly because it is a little different, and PKD because he is a nutty voice. And who wouldn't like to read something by this mischievous looking man?

Usually if a book is decades old is still in print, there is something interesting or noteworthy in it, usually an aspect of literature which gives it a universal appeal.

>>8633204
Making charts is pretty fun though. Only self restraint has stopped me from putting it in an OP - because when it comes down to it, I am a humble man who would not wish to inflict my subjective reality onto other people like that.

>>8632216
I might have been anonyposting for a week.

>>8622698
The Hugo award winning novella Nightwings by Robert Silverberg, set on another dying Earth, combines new and old technology like Book Of The New Sun.

>>8619595
>>8619595

There's so many different parts to Martian Time-Slip and that's what makes it interesting. I read it as a look at mental illness and the perception-changing power that domineering people like Arnie Knott have. But with all the bored housewives and mistresses, the ineffectual doctor, and philandering door-to-door salesmen, it also reads a bit like a soap opera. It's easy to forget it's set on Mars.

>>8619113
I've read five of his novels, a novella, and about a dozen of his short stories. Of the novels, Martian Time Slip is the one I enjoyed the most, followed by Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. They both deal with his preoccupations (subjective realities and the human mind) in a satisfying way, without being incoherent.

I read the Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, and they are good books if you are already converted to PKD's style. Stigmata is his big LSD-like analogy, Flow My Tears is a book where everybody else has collectively forgotten a celebrity.

The novel I enjoyed the least was The Man In The High Castle - his only Hugo award winning book, so figure that out.

Of the short stories I have read (none later than 1964) Second Variety, Paycheck, Foster You're Dead, The Mold Of Yancy, and If There Were No Benny Cemoli are standouts. They are stories about cold-war paranoia, robots, false realities, media conspiracies. This is some of his best writing IMO, darkly comic and imaginative, and the more I read of his short stories, the more I think this was his best medium.

I read The Variable Man, his future war/time-slip novella from the fifties, and it is good but not an ideal introduction to his style, more of a curiosity.

I'd like some novel recommendations myself.

>>8612334
Dune is dogshit if you are looking to take writing cues. Except if you want to know what to avoid, which is clunkier prose than PKD, and much worse dialogue.