starlady | Because this has been bothering me since Wiscon

I'd be willing to entertain Delany as outranking Le Guin, except that I *still* haven't read any of his stuff. (Dhalgren is just so... intimidating.)

Wolfe... I've never read any Wolfe either, but I've also never seen his work talked about in any context other than "Best SF writer" - ie nobody talking about how he had an influence or did new and different things or stirred up everybody in the genre or brought them into reading SF, or any of the other things people say about Delany and Le Guin (and Zelazny and Heinlein and a bunch of other non-living ones...) In fact I have no idea what Wolfe wrote about, whereas I have a pretty good idea about Delany just from following fan discussions.

DHALGREN IS AMAZING. READ IT. YOU WON'T REGRET IT.

Also, his Neveryon fantasy stories are incredibly worth it and nowhere near as intimidating.

I'm a sort of admirer of Wolfe in an abstract way, though I've found in practice that actually sitting down and reading him is like taking a dose of your medicine. I will say that we couldn't have had the past thirty years' explosion in non-Tolkien fantasy without him.

See, this is interesting, because I read Neverÿona first of all his books and only then realized that he was fictionalizing critical theory. I think the Neverÿon books may be his real achievement, I love Dhalgren but…Neverÿon will always be first in my affections.

What Wolfe have you read? I think The Book of the New Sun is one of the most mindtrip-y books I've ever read, in a brilliant way.

Don't get me wrong, the Neveryon books are both incredibly brilliant and incredibly intellectually demanding. You're absolutely right that the way he plays with theory without diminishing character at all is stunning and powerful. I'm just saying that the stories aren't as intimidating- they don't have the unpredictable narrative jumps and complicated textual play that I think make Dhalgren an intimidating book to undertake for someone new to Delany.

I think I've read the first three parts of the Book of the New Sun, plus various short pieces of his SF. And I admired The Book of the New Sun greatly but never really enjoyed it, which is why I never finished. It never made me excited to keep reading.

*opens mouth, shuts it again* It's…really hard to characterize The Book of the New Sun, which I think remains his single finest achievement, though some of his other books are also amazing, and some of his other books are godawful. The best I can say is to give the first half of TBoNS a try and see what you think, it's in the U.S. as Shadow and Claw. I think you would probably enjoy it.

I would actually advise you not to start Delany with Dhalgren, brilliant as it is. Nova, The Fall of the Towers, and Babel-17 (which is published with Empire Star in the current edition) are all much fleeter and more obviously SF. Or you could go about it widdershins and start with one of the Neverÿon books, that's what I did.

If you bounce off Wolfe's New Sun books (as I did, several times), you might try The Fifth Head of Cerberus--that is, ideally the book-length work of that name, which consists of three novellas, the first of which is also titled "The Fifth Head of Cerberus." This thing. I find Wolfe much better at shorter lengths (the death/doctor/island stories are of interest as well), though I do appreciate Soldier of the Mist and the recentish Knight + Wizard duo.

And I am never gonna read any New Sun Long Sun Anyshaped Sun properly at this point, and I am okay with that. Life is not long enough.

Interesting! I got two chapters into The Knight (is that the first one?) and decided life was too short for its incomprehensible misogynist bullshit, but I've read The Book of the New Sun and its one-volume sequel (The Urth of the New Sun, I think?) and thought all of it was brilliant. I've hated his shorter length work almost without exception.

:)) Agreed about Knight's misogyny. I appreciate its playing with Norse and farther-south Germanic bits, mostly; it reminds me of Þiðrekssaga.

It may be that the age when one meets Wolfe's work (as for some other writers I can think of) matters re: tolerance. I didn't try New Sun until my mid-twenties.

That's probably true--I was, I think, 14 when I first started The Book of the New Sun.

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Because this has been bothering me since Wiscon

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