Re: (Nebula) Nebula Finalists 1975

Titus G wrote:

On 19/03/24 10:49, William Hyde wrote:

James Nicoll wrote:

In article <20240318b@crcomp.net>, Don  <g@crcomp.net> wrote:

James Nicoll wrote:

Which 1975 Nebula Finalist Novels Have You Read?
>
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

>
_Flow_ was read by me. As you can personally attest, PKD isn't for
everyone. Yet he seems to mostly work for me. Presumably PKD's
partially New Wave, given the appearance of "Faith of Our Fathers"
in _Dangerous Visions_?
     Speaking of ambiguous utopia, yesterday a different New Wave
novel was jettisoned by me half way through for failure to follow a
plot, or plotlessness. A leading Lafferty scholar (how many authors
can claim their own personal scholar?) warns as much in his Intro to
Lafferty [1]:

>
[big snip]
>
I do not get the attraction of Lafferty at all.

>
I can understand that, in general.
>
But not even "900 Grandmothers"?
>

 I haven't finished a Lafferty novel

"Past Master" is short, but it was his first novel.  I liked it 50+ years ago but then, I was a young teen at the time.  Do not read it expecting the Thomas More of the novel to be the Thomas More of history.   Lafferty was aware of this also.  The older I get the less its "message" (if there is such) appeals to me.
I read "Arrive at Easterwine" in a state of extreme sleep deprivation. I loved it.  Rereading it while awake, not so much.  I am better at doing cryptics when I am tired than when I am alert.  Perhaps that is relevant.
I find myself unable to describe any of his other novels, some of which I liked but many of which I liked only locally as in "nice paragraph, but what does it have to do with the rest of them?".
  and although I do not read many

short stories, many of Lafferty's short stories are brilliantly clever.
I don't like ghost stories, my favourites of his being con men tales
where the con man can be anything from a woman to a supernatural being.
If I read three in a row, the first is forgotten before the third is
finished!
 I enjoy PK Dick and Flow My Tears which was a little confusing. In your
other post were you referring to the 'song"?

Yes.  I just thought Dick was being poetic.
The funny part was that I had on vinyl a fair amount of John Dowland's work, but not his most famous piece.  So I had no idea that Dick was referencing that remarkable music.
William.