/lit/ - Literature

>>8585131
That would be a good outcome for the SF contingent, bearing in mind stuff like Frankenstein, 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5 and Fahrenheit 451 are SF as well.

I would have voted Roadside Picnic but I only read it recently. However, the more time has passed, the more appreciative I feel of it, as a unique, subtle, and evocative work, something that is literary as well as having popular appeal.

Non-fic should have been separated.

sailor is the answer - navy, merchant, or trawler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sailors#Writers_and_publishers

>>8584733
Most people do something to excess, but alcohol feels insidious, something that can kill you when you decide to stop.

I wonder if alcoholism is better or worse than any other given thing which people do to excess: smoking, fatty foods, internet, pornography, exercise, gambling, work, sex, idolatry. The tendency is to replace alcohol with another excessive preoccupation.

So is the problem alcohol or the addictive personality?

This is often compared to PKD's books which is why I read it this weekend. A man is troubled by his dreams, which have the power to change the world retroactively; he goes to an oneirologist who begins to manipulate things in his favour, and build a utopia.

Le Guin's prose is less clunky and more poetic than most SF writers, as well as philosophical, with references to Heraclitus and Taoism here and there. She has a good eye for extended metaphors: the wave-flung jellyfish, the wholeness and non-committal block of uncarved wood, the creek whose waters resound like the cries of many children. There are a number of passages which are worth rereading and thinking about.

I was left with the overall impression that I enjoyed thinking about the book more than actually reading it. This is more of a fable than a thriller.

What I want to know is, how does Lathe Of Heaven compare to her other books?

>>8575141
Body Snatchers by Jack Finney is another good horror story from about this time.

>>8575146
>>8575542

It is more overt than I'd remembered:

>He lurched up and started pacing. What am I going to do now? Go through the routine again? I'll save you the trouble. Reading-drinking-soundproof-the-house--the women. The women, the lustful, bloodthirsty, naked women flaunting their hot bodies at him. No, not hot.

>A shuddering whine wrenched up through his chest and throat. Goddamn them, what were they waiting for? Did they think he was going to come out and hand himself over?

>Maybe I am, maybe I am. He actually found himself jerking off the crossbar from the door. Coming, girls, I'm coming. Wet your lips, now.

>>8575146
About half a dozen times the narrator sees the women vampires gyrating, and they are voluptuous etc. It's implied heavily that he is horny and is temped to fuck them, but it is done in the 1950s euphemistic way that is humorous nowadays.

It's still a good book, an entertaining weekend, holiday, 'cozy' read.

Anon is doing a top 100 /lit 2016 poll, presumably to be compiled into a visual chart. Promote literary SF and fantasy so future anons have an alternative to the post-modernists and meme trilogy. Philip K Dick, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, Aldous Huxley, Roger Zelazny, George Orwell, etc, etc.

>>8568820

>>8565522
I meme Robert Silverberg when I can. He wrote a book where the protagonist shares your vocation, only he is also a telepath. Pic related.

>>8565501
I wouldn't be so sure, anime seems to be increasingly popular among young women.

>>8565327
it's about a boy with daddy issues, his flirty housemates, and robots

saged for being barely relevant to lit

>>8564475
Ray Bradbury is up there IMO

>>8565482
ECT is an interesting topic so it's no wonder you'd get paid for a well written personal account

Besides, what matters a few holes. The brain will build new connective pathways around them.

>>8565441
1, because you can take cues and observe the mechanics of a good piece of writing without needing a guide book, and the canon can give you a well of inspiration, and contextualise your own ideas.

>>8565246
this man is a sybarite who bloat like gerard depardieu before long

>>8565262
i just don't like orange and would rather have paintings and art on books

>>8565019
This is a chronologically arranged collection of most of Dick's well known short stories I've been reading http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816494.Human_Is_

In Golden Age SF, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a book of linked short stories. I liked Asimov's I, Robot less so, but it is well regarded by others.

>>8562842
I like that video, I've seen it a couple of times. I read Harlan had assaulted a journalist or publisher or somebody before coming into the studio. I haven't found anything else with Wolfe from the 80's.

>>8562507
That's right. PKD talks about this idea, of perception being reality, in a lot in interviews. I think it comes from his reading of Carl Jung. In a lot of Dick's novels, a constructed or illusory reality is as real and valid as any other.

And it follows that people with authority, resources, or a strong voice, have the power to inflict their realities on other people, particularly the less strong, by changing their subconsciousness and influencing them. Dick shows that happening a lot, by drugs companies, media, bosses, government.

e.g. Mercerism was created to bind the society together after nuclear war. It encourages empathy, community, and humility.

The androids are illusory and appear human, and they might as well be human. But Dick really wanted to discuss what sets people apart from androids, which is empathy -- which is something some real humans lack (e.g. the other bounty hunter who appears to be a robot but is not) and some droids seem to possess.

>>8562506

Animals are fetishised because they are rare, and because there is a stigma against people who don't own animals (they are seen as people incapable of empathy) so they become a fashion commodity to show off like a new car. Dick is just pointing out how daft this kind of consumerism is. Deckard went through all of the book just to get a pet goat to impress his neighbors with, and ends up with a toad. And he can't even tell it's a robot until his partner looks at it.

>>8562507
That's right. PKD talks about this idea, of perception being reality, in a lot in interviews. I think it comes from his reading of Carl Jung. In a lot of Dick's novels, a constructed or illusory reality is as real and valid as any other.

And it follows that people with authority, resources, or a strong voice, have the power to inflict their realities on other people, particularly the less strong, by changing their subconsciousness and influencing them. Dick shows that happening a lot, by drugs companies, media, bosses, government.

e.g. Mercerism was created to bind the society together after nuclear war. It encourages empathy, community, and humility.

The androids are illusory and appear human, and they might as well be human. But Dick really wanted to discuss what sets them apart from real people, which is empathy -- which is something real humans lack (e.g. the other bounty hunter who appears to be a robot but is not) and some droids seem to possess.
>>8562506
Animals are fetishised because they are rare, and because there is a stigma against people who don't own animals (they are seen as people incapable of empathy) so they become a fashion commodity to show off like a new car. Dick is just pointing out how daft this kind of consumerism is. Deckard went through all of the book just to get a pet goat to impress his neighbors with, and ends up with a toad. And he can't even tell it's a robot until his partner looks at it.

>>8562460
Perception is reality, that's what PKD is showing us in regard to the constructed religion having the power to create profound feelings and vivid experiences in its followers. This goes towards validating Mercerism.

>>8562434
It wouldn't have been heroin, you mean amphetamines, uppers. But yes, he wrote nearly everything on speed.

Without having the book to hand, I recall the sleep device having limitations. It is a minor point regardless, and the book is among his more cohesive.

>>8562322
like a god, placid, ethereal, serene.

>>8560904
political memoirs by still-active career politicians, ghost-written and non-ghost-written celebrity memoirs, self-help novels, novelised movies and videogames, most niche erotica, books written by mums wherein they humblebrag about how bad they are at parenting, books which collect columns by click-bait journalists and wind-up merchants

>>8557828
there doesn't have to be a lofty reason, it could be as simple as reading to avoid more destructive vices