Because this has been bothering me since Wiscon

[starlady]

Poll #7183 Greatest living SF writer?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 35

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Greatest living SF writer?

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Ted Chiang (source: owner of Dreamhaven Books)
0 (0.0%)

Samuel R. Delany (source: me)
2 (5.9%)

Ursula K. LeGuin (source: me)
28 (82.4%)

Gene Wolfe (source: Neil Gaiman)
0 (0.0%)

someone else I will name below
4 (11.8%)

Write-in candidate?

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I just can't believe someone would put Ted Chiang over the woman who coined the term 'ansible,' but maybe I shouldn't be all that surprised.

Comments

[coriana]

So, I have to confess I don't think I've read any of these people except Le Guin -- I don't actually read much "in the genre," I'm just an unabashed devotee of UKL. But I very much appreciate your posting this poll, because the struggle everyone's going through in the comments suggests I should go to the library tomorrow and check out some Delaney!

(Suggestions about where to start?)

~ c.

[lnhammer]

My suggestion is Nova -- it's the most coherent and accessible of his science fiction, without losing any of the intelligence. Linguistics geeks are also directed to Babel-17. If you've ever thought "Gosh, I wish Finnegan's Wake had been written in plain English with the psychosexual stuff as text instead of subtext," then Dhalgren's for you.

(Using "subtext" advisedly, as Joyce's tale is so weighted under the language that the basic plot is arguably a subtext.)

---L.

[starlady]

…Y'know, I read Dhalgren, and I had no idea about the FW connection, but it makes sense. I should really read those books before I reread Dhalgren, shouldn't I?

[lnhammer]

The FW connection is half a joke, but only half -- notice, for example, that the last sentence is incomplete and is finished by the fragmentary first sentence.

---L.

[starlady]

I started with Neveryóna, which is in some ways a very peculiar place to start, though not a bad one, but it's from his 70s/80s fantasy period as opposed to his earlier SF. On that front I'd recommend Nova, Babel-17, or The Fall of the Towers--they're all really great, though TFoT is still a younger work. If you like those you can move on to his other books!

Yay Delany! He is so, so, so awesome.