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Riders of the Purple Wage
Numsgil:
I read this at one point in my life, I'll reread it again a bit later.
I absolutely loved the new Wave movement (I think that's what it was called) in Sci Fi. "I have no mouth and I must scream", "Repent cried the Tick Tock Man" (both Harlequin, and by far my favorite), "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep" (Philip K. Dick) (hmm, maybe this is my favorite...), "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (I think, I may be confusing it with "Flowers for Algernon") and pretty much most of Poul Anderson that I was ever able to actually get through. Specially "Goat Song". Loved his style to death, but it just makes the stories chug along at half clip.
And "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" to a lesser extent. Probably because it kind of affronted my sense of deity, and that's not a cerebral discordance I like.
It strikes me as incredibly Modernist in its style and subject matter. Modernism is, at least by my definition, aimed at the elites of society and written by the elites. (Not to be confused with Post Modernism, which is written by the Elites, and is actually dumbed down for mass consumption by the literary prolitariot). Which makes it overly stylistic for the lay man.
But now we're getting into my English Essay last year, which I doubt any of you could care less about. Point is, most New Wave stuff is unpalatable to people accustomed to the "sliders" of the modern entertainment world. Not that I'm knocking today's stuff, just that it's a whole different beast.
Back last year, when I was trying to be a scifi writer (and completely unable to prodce a manuscript) this was the sort of style I aspired to. Specifically Poul Andersion and Harlequin. Also Card too, but that's another story...
PurpleYouko:
All fine and dandy but what did you think of the PJF story that Shvarz posted.
Personally I love Greg Bear novels. He has a really cool way of making fictional science seem plausible.
From a fantasy perspective I like Raymond E feist, Terry Goodkind, Peirs Anthony (not the Xanth stories), Janny Wurts, Mercedes Lackey and Ann McAffrey.
From the older style of Sci-Fi I really enjoy reading Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, Asimov, James Bliss, A. E. Van Vogt and Alan Dean Foster.
What I hate more than anything is a story told from a first person perspective. If I pick up a book that starts with a line like...
In the spring of 66 I was a young boy who.............
In such a case I will skip to random spots to see if the perspective has changed. If it doesn't do so in the first few pages then the book goes back on the shelf.
Numsgil:
Science fiction has had three main categories/genereations of science fiction:
1. Golden Age - Up to about 60s I believe. Tends to be straightforward prose with limited symbolism. Pretty much just a good story. Asimov is a clear example. As is Clark.
2. New Wave - Experimentation in style and content. This Farmer story is a clear example of New Wave. New wave happened until about the early 80s I believe.
3. Current "Media" generation - Authors influenced by popular science fiction in film, as well as the more literary New Wave writings. They tend to pull from many sources. This would be Anne McAffery, Mercedes Lackes, etc.
Note that not all authors in the New Wave era really were New Wave authors. It tended to be fewer (it's hard to write it well!). I'm not 100% sure, but I think you just named about every popular author that isn't New Wave.
So it would be plausible that you just don't like New Wave material, which is perfectly understandable. But then that would bias you to any New Wave material you haven't seen yet.
I haven't read this story yet. I'm going to read it tonight. Tues and Thurs I get very little accomplished outside of school.
Carlo:
--- Quote ---If you have not read it yet, it is time (well, it's been almost 40 years since it was written). It is one of the best sci-fi works ever written and I put it up on our web-site for a while. Grab it here, read it and then post your thoughts. It is fairly short, about long-story or short-novella size.
--- End quote ---
It is definitely one of my favourites sci-fi novels. I read it for the first time probably 15 years ago, and immediately loved it. It is funny, prophetic, and the premises are very interesting (what would look like a world without the need to work, where everybody is free to develop his own inclinations). Some of the things I liked most: the tv with thousands of channels where you can watch shit all the time but also gain a degree-level culture, that reminds me of the www. And the phone that rings with the sound of a rare frog grabbed from a tv show, also reminds me of today's world. The motivational analysis used to study the actions of the main characters, is the same used by modern advertising companies to study the promotional campaigns. And the pessimistic, but credible, prediction about the degradation of people just wasting their time playing cards and watching tv - it has much to say about the world we live in, too.
And the style is great, very different from the often flat style of most of the sci-fi novels.
PurpleYouko:
--- Quote ---So it would be plausible that you just don't like New Wave material, which is perfectly understandable. But then that would bias you to any New Wave material you haven't seen yet.
--- End quote ---
That is quite possible. However I have never really attempted to catagorize authors into these groups or paid any attention to catagorizing by others so I really have no idea what it means to be "new wave".
I simply like some stories and dislike others.
I happen to violently dislike everything about the writing style of PJF.
I don't believe this will bias me against other "new wave" writings because I wouldn't recognize one if it bit me.
Can you give me some examples of other writers that are considered "new wave"
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