/lit/ - Literature

>>10399987
I think aspiring writers are better off taking a history course, rather than literature. A writer gets a sense of human perspective and scope by a study of history, of different politics and cultures, and plenty of things to draw inspiration from. It lends itself very well to speculative writing - Roman and Byzantine history alone have fed into Foundation, Lest Darkness Fall, BOTNS. Gene Wolfe is on record saying that the Byzantines were the basis of Nessus, and he is a Grecophile anyway - ditto Robert Silverberg.

>>10400031
>>10400041
>>10400232
I have a hunch the most read SF writer, if not Heinlein (and discounting somebody like Suzanne Collins) could be somebody like HG Wells because he can be filed in the classics section, which brings him out of the SF ghetto and into the wider readership. I would hesitate to call Orwell a bonafide SF writer on the basis of one book.

>>9891159
The prose and plotting of Demon Princes is definitely tauter, less baroque and loquacious than his Dying Earth and some other of his books. So the prose is a deliberate change. They're almost like mid 20thC spy and detective novels but with the imagery/icons of space opera. I think they're understated and wry books; imagine what the same plot would be like in the hands Robert Heinlein, the morality would be more sentimental and Kirth Gersen would be like a boy scout, and the villains would be caricatures. The antagonists in Demon Princes are very clever and multi-layered figures. I think those books are all about the villains.

I'm going to do a thought experiment /lit/,

I'm trying to write about the dangers of orthodox Marxism, but I feel like I'm talking in circles because my own knowledge seems to have been stunted. This is where I came up with a new idea, I'm going to spend 1 week up to a month reading nothing but Marxist literature, even pretending to be one, looking at life through the eyes of a Marxist.

What books should I read to get in the proper mindset, I have Communist Manifesto, Conquest of Bread, and Das Kapital so far.

are there any books in which the storyline is told in such a way as to evoke a dream-like atmosphere? what i mean is, in a dream you have all these weird things going on, but when you're dreaming them they feel like the most rational thing in the world. and currently im working on a story for a graphic novel and im trying to evoke such an atmosphere, but would like examples for similar stuff if they exist.