Re: Clarke Award Finalists 1988

Titus G wrote:

On 11/03/25 14:49, Cryptoengineer wrote:

On 3/10/2025 9:24 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

Which 1988 Clarke Award Finalist Novels Have You Read?
Drowning Towers (variant of The Sea and Summer) by George Turner
Fiasko by Stanislaw Lem
Ancient of Days by Michael Bishop
Grainne by Keith Roberts
Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H. F. Saint
Replay by Ken Grimwood
AEgypt by John Crowley

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Only the Lem.
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pt

 Replay earned one star from me.
 I thought that Keith Roberts' Pavane was brilliant but I have never
heard or read any of his other novels. Fantastic Fiction lists many.
Does someone please have a recommendation? Thank you.
 

How embarrassing.
I was a huge Roberts fan, but somehow I stopped reading him about 1990. No idea why. So much to read, so little  time!
Next to Pavane, my favourite work of his is a novelette, "Weinachtsabend".  Very dark.
There's quite a bit of early work, when he was perfecting his trade and/or paying the bills.  The Anita series is about a teenage witch and her grandmother, "The Furies" is a Wyndham-style disaster novel, and so forth.  All very readable and he would still be remembered if he'd carried on in this vein.
"The Chalk Giants" is another linked set of stories, this time set around an apocalypse.  I read most of the stories as they came out in New Worlds so I'm not sure how they work when read all together.  For what it's worth, I liked them.
"Molly Zero" is written in second person.  I probably preferred it to anything except "Pavane" among his writings, but I am relying on old memories here as I've not reread it.
And aside from various short stories that, alas, is where my knowledge stops.
William Hyde