The Great Classic Novella Reading Marathon

I have set myself a goal of plowing through ten science fiction novellas which have near mythic status among fans, or are just very good. They are:

1. Forlesen, by Gene Wolfe ( a story I have been meaning to get around to reading ever since I left my very brief stint at a corporate workplace)

2. The Rose, by Charles Harness, a novella nearly always very widely acclaimed by authors but which no one seems to read much.

3. The Time Machine, by H G Wells. Yes, the one that got the ball rolling. Read this so long ago that it deserves a re-read, especially now that I am a little more well read in the genre.

4. The Voices of Time, by J G Ballard, one of the more enigmatic pieces by Ballard I remember being puzzled by on my first read through

5. The Ballad of Lost C'Mell, by Cordwainer Smith, a slightly longish story about underpeople, or talking animals. Smith and talking animals is ALWAYS a good thing.

6. Engine Summer, by John Crowley. A magnificent author with a gorgeous style. Great Work of Time was excellent. I have high hopes for this too.

7. At the Mountains of Madness, by H P Lovecraft 

8. Vintage Season, by Lewis Padgett 

9. Persistence of Vision, by John Varley

10. The Moon Moth, by Jack Vance

11. The Watched, by Christopher Priest

12. Schrodinger's Kitten, by George Alec Effinger

13. Solitude, by Ursula Le Guin

14. The Big Front Yard, by Clifford Simak

Let the games begin!

Random thoughts

Stories I forget about every time:
A Kind of Artistry
The Waters of Meribah
Tk'tk'tk

Going through Dozois's anthology, I finished Pangborn's The Golden Horn, Zelazny's The Moment of the Storm, Shepard's Salvador and Sterling's Doris Bangs. Doris Bangs will not age well, but it is very well written and does not require a familiarity with the two protagonists to enjoy. Zelazny's story is also excellent, but is nothing you haven't seen before in his stories. Pangborn I am developing a taste for, having enjoyed The Music Master of Babylon previously, and The Golden Horn utilizes that same exquisite feel he has for words to a glorious effect. It is a most haunting story. The standout story for me was of course, the remaining one of the four: Salvador is a masterpiece and I think I have found a new favourite author. 

The Moment of the Storm, by Roger Zelazny

Dozois's anthology is still going strong. Another fine, flowing read. It might be that Zelazny, like Pangborn, had only one voice but it's such a self-sure one, it works every time. This felt like A Rose for Ecclesiastes- lite.

Salvador, by Lucius Shepard

A story like this makes you sit up and take notice of the world around you. It's magnificent, and makes me want to question the skill that went into at least half a dozen of the ones I rated highly on this blog. The language, the imagery, the pacing were all top notch, and it all felt authentic. Very barely SF, this is writing of extremely high caliber. The sort that demolishes boundaries and tired debates of what is SF and what isn't.

Influential Novellas

Forlesen
The Voices of Time
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
Engine Summer
The Rose
The Time Machine
Wang's Carpets
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
The Moon Moth
The Man who bridged the Mist

The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects almost, ALMOST read like a treatise. But it wasn't one. Instead, it ultimately became a touchstone text for me, because it allows me to approach the problem animals pose us philosophically as human beings from a radically new angle.

Let me be a little more clear: I see animals, philosophically, as a certain kind of conceptual space, a buffer space if you will, where you can work out all of man's ontological doubts in a detached manner. In doing so, I am assuming, on the one hand, that animals as we know them are one, fixed unitary being (which they are not; there are as many animals as there are animal behaviours) and, on the other, that they are free from the kind of condescension usually directed at them when it comes to matters of some socio-political importance.

Such a view of animals is essentially using animals to define man. The animal becomes a kind of negative space, which is our default reaction. Unfortunately, modern thought, while striving to get there in fits and starts, still isn't non-anthropocentric. However, if we are to come up with yet another kind of space, namely the semi-sentient digital 'pets' that Chiang postulates and which are already somewhat of a reality, which hover somewhere between animal and man, we are given an opportunity to deny such a use of animals philosophically, while retaining the anthropocentric viewpoint.

Does that make sense?

Still very much at the level of metaphor, nevertheless Ted Chiang's novella teases at such a world. It poses no easy answers, but it constantly hints at an idea which transcends utopian navel-gazing and becomes something sublime.

The Winter Flies, by Fritz Leiber

It didn't help that I was listening to Thom Yorke while reading Leiber's The Winter Flies; a somber, autumnal track the way Yorke does best. It didn't help that I'm a little disturbed with things: a professional disturbance of the very banal kind, but a disturbance nevertheless. Leiber's story, in other words, was the glue that helped join together the disparate parts of my psyche aching under an extreme dullness.

This was a very strange story. I don't know what to make of it. Surreal fiction.