Another thing that is finite (although it doesn't feel that way the past decade) is speculative fiction titles.
Over the past sixteen years, I have explored a vast-vast amount of what we might call senior speculative fiction—books and writers published before 2000. I've read 1,155 books published prior to the millennium, the overwhelming majority being science fiction and fantasy. It's a lot. What's more, every year the feeling gets stronger the amount is approaching comprehensive. Which is where the seed for this blog post takes root.
Up until 2018, I kept a spreadsheet mapping every book nominated for and winning major and minor speculative fiction awards—Locus to Philip K. Dick, Hugo to Sidewise, etc., etc. (The gods know speculative fiction has a victim mentality made up for by... more awards.) There were 20+ awards I tracked. After reading a book, I would check if it was nominated/awarded, mark my score, and move on. Vice versa, I would sometimes use the lists for inspiration—the next book purchase for a recognized title. More often than not I discovered mediocrity exploring titles in this fashion, but often enough a true gem would emerge. The number of gems is dwindling.
I recount the spreadsheet as, by 2018 I had read somewhere around two-thirds of the titles in the awards lists, and of the remaining third, most were uninteresting. Read one Lois McMaster Bujold and you've read them all. ___Enter Author Name Here___ and repeat. There is no need to beat your head against a wall when you're 100% sure Robert J. Sawyer is not going to suddenly produce the Great Canadian Novel. And I did not confine myself strictly to awards. I was reading a lot beyond, as well. There are innumerable resources for discovering sf of yesteryear. Probably only half of what I read was associated with awards.
This is all a long way of saying, I've read most of the speculative fiction published before 2000 that is of interest, and hundreds and hundreds of titles published in the decades, since. There are still several authors, dead and alive, whose oeuvre I'm interested in finishing, but by and large, if there is a notable sf book from the 20th century, I've probably read it. Couple that with the firehose of politicized fiction being published today, and my reading interest is waning. (If you're wondering why I stopped tracking awards in 2018, that is why.)
To go back to the beginning of the post, my speculative fiction journey is evolving. I don't think the journey will ever end. There will always be a new book to read. But the outlook is significantly diminished compared to the sixteen+ years ago when the blog kicked off. Most of the interesting material is now sitting on the 'finished' shelf, and the current cultural climate, while likewise diminishing, is not likely to give way to non-partisan fiction in the near future. I'm forced to take a hard look at the situation—the speculative fiction blues. Keep reading and writing? Do a re-read project? Strap on a helmet and dive head-first into the fuzzy world of contemporary speculative fiction—romantasy, cozy fantasy, workshopped fantasy, litrpg, and all? Do something different? <drum roll> Produce a top-ten list or two? I've withheld such opinion due to the fact I hate Youtubers who read ten books and make a top ten list—GREATEST FANTASY OF ALL TIME!!! I hadn't consumed enough contenders to feel my lists would approach comprehension, but such is not the case anymore... Maybe?
Looking ahead, there will likely not be any major change in Speculiction content in 2026 and beyond. I keep reading and tapping away. But going forward, the curmudgeon in me will likely rear its ugly head more often—like this post. The world weary tone of I've seen all that shit kids. If you look at 1963... will increasingly show its face. But who knows, maybe I'll strike upon an interesting way of re-contextualizing the 2,108 posts—2,108 posts—blogger tells me are on Speculiction. Top 10s are the low road; maybe there is a high road? A middle road? Another road?
Have you read Iain Banks's Culture novels? Some of them are before your cutoff of 2000.
ReplyDeleteIt appears I have similar tastes to you - I think peak short sf was in the 1950s - and Banks is the one "new" author that I really liked. Try them in publication order.
I enjoy your blog very much.
Thanks for visiting and glad you enjoy the content.
DeleteI have read the Culture books. If I ever make a top 10 space opera list, they'll be there. :) With regards to the best era for short fiction, I would disagree, my personal favorite is the 90s and early 2000s.
Have you read the Aubrey - Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian? They are not speculative fiction, but they are truly, truly wonderful, and if you are feeling worn out and demoralized by contemporary fiction (join the club), the O'Brian books are the remedy. Each book gets better and better because the characterization and the writing are spectacular. I'm on the 16th book and am trying to read more and more slowly so that I can savour them as long as possible. I go to a cafe and read a handful of pages at a time and I feel like I could spend all day thinking about what I have just read.
ReplyDeleteI have not. But on several occasions I have had O'Brian books in a shopping cart and never pushed the button. The fact they are not spec fic does not turn me off at all.
DeleteHaving never read anything by O'Brian, is there a single book you could recommend? Or maybe another way of putting this is, is the first book in the series stand-alone-ish?
Master and Commander is the first book; it can stand alone and is quite good and was made into a movie that I saw many years ago and can't remember much about. It gives hints about what is so great about the series. With each book, the characterization becomes deeper, and the writing more adept. The reader starts to understand what is going on in ways that the characterizes sometimes don't, so there is irony and a lot of humour. The books are hysterical at times, but it's the kind of humour that is based on the deep context of what has gone before. Also, every so often, something will be happening and O'Brian will take his time and describe things in _truly_ breathtaking and beautiful language. By the middle of the series, I felt as if I were reading Chekhov or Shakespeare; O'Brian becomes that skillful at handling his characters. However, it does take a while for this to happen. The strange thing is that these are historical novels and start off as adventure stories, but the plot becomes less and less important and characterization more important as the series progresses. I prefer the middle and later books to the first ones; they become richer as you go along because the world he's created becomes richer.
DeleteIf you read it, don't get bogged down in the naval terminology; it's there for verisimilitude and is historically accurate, but you can just take it as scene-building and let yourself absorb it without trying to visualize exactly what he is describing.
Also, I want to echo what others have said; your recommendations have often been spot on for me, especially books that you like. I am not sure I always agree with you about books you don't like, but when you say you love something, I have always found those books to be well worthwhile. Thank you.
Seconding Aubrey-Maturin. They are very dense and difficult to get used to at first but one of the most rewarding series I've ever read. I think what made me eventually dive into them was a blog post by Philip Reeve (now lost) and the realisation that every author who talked about them - whether they wrote literary fiction or YA or SFF - had nothing but glowing things to say.
DeleteI also enjoy reading your blog. I once asked about your list of the best of the best, and I’m still curious—but why set a fixed goal of the top 10? Let there be as many as there need to be. No more, no less. If that’s 5, let it be 5; if it’s 37, let it be 37. What is worth remembering, what changed you, what was pure pleasure? In short, I’d be interested in your view of the best of the best.
ReplyDeleteSomeday. :) I promise. Every couple of years I tinker with a list of top 100 greatest spec fic, then throw it away as I realize there are still purportedly great books out there I haven't read. That list is now very short - at least comparatively. :)
DeleteJesse, I've been reading Speculiction for a couple years and I always delight in returning to it. I'm 19 years old, and a voracious reader, but I've read such a small fraction of the great books, speculative fiction and otherwise, out there that a knowledgeable guide like you is always welcome. I can't say I have many sturdy recommendations for you that you won't have already encountered, for most of my current and future speculative fiction favorites are among your favorites as well. There are a couple books and series I've enjoyed that I don't see in your review archives that I wonder if you've encountered, and - the ultimate "grain of salt" recommendation - a few books that I myself haven't read but that have piqued my interest enough to make them near-future priorities, and might pique yours as well. For the titles I myself haven't read, I'll also attach reviews that aren't necessarily wholly positive, so you can have a good sense of whether you might be interested. I also think there are some authors that you've covered favorably on here that still have a few more titles for you to explore, but you know that already. I apparently have to split my long comment into a few pieces, so to start, here’s a couple I have read that you might like:
ReplyDeleteThe Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan - You've likely heard of this one, but don't seem to have reviewed it, so I'd love to know if you plan to or simply aren't interested; it's a big commitment, and drags a bunch later in the series, but the first few books are very good, though not necessarily the most unique fantasy titles ever.
A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown - The author is primarily a science fiction writer, but I actually haven't read any of his fiction titles yet; this is a fantastic and thought-provoking piece of environmental writing that is nonetheless heavily informed by the perspective of his science fiction fandom.
Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt - A wonderful and quaint piece of YA fantasy well before YA was a thing; published in the early 1960s by a Dutch author who grew up in colonial Indonesia and was interned by the Japanese in WWII, it's a really heartwarming adventure tale that doesn't break any molds but has a special and undeniable charm.
Hello unknown! :) Glad you like the blog. I'm jealous of all the reading years ahead of you. I might give the left tip of my pinky to start fresh with Jack Vance...
DeleteThe Robert Jordan thing is simple. I can't stand his style. I've tried on two occasions to read Wheel of Time, but after a dozen or so pages, my eyes glaze. He goes so far into the weeds that pace becomes glacial. Secondly, I care more about character; Jordan cares more about lore and worldbuilding. That being said, I generally enjoyed the Wheel of Time tv series, and was disappointed when they cancelled it. All of the minutae in which Jordan spins his wheels (ha!) is different on screen. Costume, physical setting, character appearance, facial expression, etc. are inherent. Instead of paragraph after paragraph of how to tie a shoe, it's an eyeblink and the brain registers who/what/where/why/when, with characters front and center. Though a movie or tv series has never been made of a Brandon Sanderson novel, I think the same would be true. All of the crap prose that Sanderson dumps into thousands of pages would be nicely summed on screen. Anyway, I ramble.
I have never heard of the Christopher Brown or Tronke Dragt. I will take a look.
And thanks for the encouragement. I didn't write to get it, but glad I did. :)
Thanks for the reply. I totally get that about Jordan. His style isn't my favorite, but I don't mind it, and I'm the kind of person that enjoys getting into the weeds the way he does. Still, as I inch closer to the end of the series, it's definitely become a bit of an uphill battle to keep myself engaged. As for Sanderson, I used to really like his books, but I made the decision last year that the only books of his I would read from now on are the last three Wheel of Time books that he completed after Jordan passed away. His own novels no longer hold my interest at all - bad prose that doesn't even have the veneer of sophistication that Jordan possesses, a seriously annoying sense of humor, and the dreaded Marvel-style multiverse crossover that sucks all of the enjoyment out of series that I previously enjoyed as separate entities. Anyway, in my original comment that I had to split up, I also wrote recommendations for a couple books I haven't actually read myself, but that I'm excited to read in the future, and you may be curious about as well. Since I can't vouch for their quality myself, I've linked reviews/analyses for each:
DeleteEl Insomnio de Bolivar by Jorge Volpi - I was reading a review of some alternate history novel recently (I can't recall what it was) and there was a passing reference to this book, which I had never heard of. It seems like a fascinating alternate history of Latin America, and even though the review I'm linking is pretty heavily critical of some aspects of it, I still think it would probably be worth a read: https://americasquarterly.org/fulltextarticle/iel-insomnio-de-bolivar-cuatro-consideraciones-intempestivas-sobre-america-latina-en-el-siglo-xxi-i-by-jorge-volpi/
The Giant's Harp by Robert Hunter - Now this one's obscure and esoteric. Never published officially, and now only available via the Wayback Machine (I'll link it at the end of this comment), the lyricist for my favorite band, the Grateful Dead, built off of the fantastical mythology first established in the lyrics for his songs "Terrapin Station" and "The Eagle Mall" to tell tales of a fictional people living in a village on the edge of a vast desert, with a mysterious ancient monument in their midst. From what I've gathered (and the excerpts I've read), it's a chaotic, sprawling, and somewhat plotless novel, but at the same time a beautiful and evocative piece of storytelling that doesn't deserve to be utterly forgotten. I can also vouch for the excellent quality of the officially (posthumously) published Hunter novel Silver Snarling Trumpet, which wonderfully narrates the early 1960s Palo Alto scene that the Grateful Dead eventually emerged from, but I don't know if you'd be quite as interested in that book's subject matter. Anyway, here's an interesting academic analysis of the Giant's Harp: https://deadstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Proceedings_v2_Runner.pdf; here's the PDF of the book: https://archive.org/details/thegiantsharp/mode/2up; and here's Hunter's personal website on the Wayback Machine, which includes HTML links to the Giant's Harp as well as other delights - poetry, and the Library of the Uncanny, a collection of, well, uncanny happenings told both by Hunter and the readers of his website that emailed him their stories: https://web.archive.org/web/20210303121258/http://hunterarchive.com/files/majorlinks.html.
One more thing: I am thinking of starting my own book review venture, and I'm curious if you have any advice for a young reader and writer like me who hopes to share, simply as a hobby like yours, good recommendations and offer a voice in the intellectual discourse around books.
Just to add to the support, for starters, I want to state your blog and writing style have been an inspiration for my own blog. So thanks for all those reviews - they mean a lot to those of us who are less well & wide read.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read nearly as much as you, and I have felt the speculative blues as well. The last few years, I've started to read other stuff as you have noticed. So I'd love to read some "non-genre" (I hate that word) on Speculiction as well, I'm sure you'll be able to spotlight some worthwhile stuff I hadn't look, or looked at closely.
Out of the top of my head, some recommendations for your blues. I guess they were all on my best of the decade list: Lapvona by Moshfegh, The Deluge by Markley, A Mountain to the North... by Kraznahorkai. Those three could be considered speculative to various degrees. For non-speculative: Independent People by Laxness, The Power of the Dog by Winslow, The Door by Szabo, Radiance by Carter Scholz, Kolyma Stories. I will never stop advocating for these books. All brilliant, all different, all singular.
As for Aubrey Maturin: I have had the first book on my TBR for years, as I once saw KSR say in an interview the series is one of his all-time favorites.
Either way, I hope you will keep sharing your thoughts on books, regardless of genre.
Have you read Ada Palmer’s work.
ReplyDelete