Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilK
Have never been able to get away with those 3.
Tried reading them and threw the books down in disgust and never picked them up again. Reading some Philip K Dick and Aldiss was an ordeal, and tedious. I did finish the books and never picked another Aldiss, and read only a couple of P.K.D
Give me the so-called "Hard SF" every time.  |
It depends upon what you're reading for.
Dick's underlying theme was "How do you know what's real? Where is the dividing line between reality and fantasy?" Dick had bouts of mental illness, and wasn't always sure himself. The most approachable introduction to Dick is probably _The Man In the High Castle_, an alternate history novel set in a future where the Allies had lost WWII. The United States is partitioned between NAzi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the protagonist lives in a thin unoccupied zone in the Rocky Mountains. It won the Hugo Award in 1963.
Aldiss has been writing SF for many years. He became associated with the New Wave movement, centered around New Worlds magazine edited by Michael Moorcock in the 60's, and served as the experienced older writer helping to raise the standards for the group. One of his you might try is _The Long Afternoon of Earth_ (published in the UK as _Hothouse_.) It's a
very far future novel, reminiscent of Vance's _The Dying Earth_, in a time when the moon has come closer to Earth and slowed in it's path, hanging in a fixed spot over the Earth, and giant spiders have built webs connecting the Earth and the Moon. Another that tickled me was _Barefoot In the Head_, a product of his New Worlds days, set in a Europe recovering from a war. Psychedelic agents were used as weapons, and everyone including UN operatives trying to help rebuild is stoned out of their minds. Aldiss had a best selling UK autobiography called _The Hand Raised Boy_. He also wrote a history of SF called _The Billion Year Spree_.
Ballard is another who has been around a long time. He did a spate of early novels in the "End of the world as we know it" line, such as _The Drowned World_ and _The Wind from Nowhere_, exploring disasters that ended civilization. He was also affiliated with the New Wave, and produced experimental fiction such as the "condensed novel" _You, Coma, Marilyn Monroe_ exploring Western archetypes, and _Crash_ (which became a film by David Cronenburg, and which prompted one SF reviewer to refuse to read anything else Ballard wrote. He was offended by the mature subject matter...
). Ballard also had a best selling autobiography called _The Empire of the Sun_, based in part on his experiences as a boy in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. (His family lived in the Far East, and were interned during the hostilities.)
Aldiss and Ballard are both very much literary writers, who established reputations beyond SF. While they wrote science fiction, you don't read their work for the science. Dick is sui generis, and doesn't fall neatly into any category. He wrote SF, I think, because it provided a vehicle where he could explore the questions that troubled him, there there were a assortment of unsuccessful attempts at mainstream work, like _Confessions of a Crap Artist_.
You can't read just one of any of their works and expect any sort of realistic appreciation of their merits.
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Dennis