Re: (Nebula) Nebula Finalists 1975

On 19/03/2024 20:15, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

In article <20240319a@crcomp.net>, Don  <g@crcomp.net> wrote:

Titus G wrote:

William Hyde wrote:

James Nicoll wrote:

Don 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 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"?

>
Lafferty's short stories work for me. Perhaps readers need to fragmen-
tize his longer novels to take thought timeouts between situations.
The idea density in his novels may be unsuitable for long audiobooks.
_Past Master_ may very well need to be read to appreciate it.
    Lafferty's Hopp-Equation Space piques my interest. In the words of
leading Lafferty scholar Ferguson:
>
    Thus [Lafferty] maps the navigation of Hopp-Equation Space
    onto the navigation of Laffertian space; the journey becomes
    a metaphor for reading, well, any of his novels really, but
    for Past Master in particular.
>
And in Lafferty's own words:
>
    The Law of Conservation of Psychic Totality will not be
    abridged. There were four and a half years of psychic
    awareness to be compressed into one month, and it forced
    its compression into these intense and rapid dreams.
>
    There is a great lot of psychic space debris, and when
    one enters its area on Hopp-Equation flight one experiences
    it. Every poignant thing that ever happened, every comic
    or horrifying or exalting episode that ever took place,
    is still drifting somewhere in space. One runs into
    fragments (and concentrations) of billions of minds
    there; it is never lost, it is only spread out thin.
>
My mind sees parallels between Hopp-Equation Space and the supra-
cosmos, orthogonal multi-verse exposition found in Perry Rhodan's
Die Meister der Insel Zyklus.
>
Danke,
>

 As I recall, if you like the Lafferty shorts and not the novels,
_Space Chantey_ may be sort of an in-between point, having been
half of an Ace-Double.
  "It was a damned dumb kid we had meddling with our equipment,"
Bramble complained. "But so far we've figured out a purpose
for everything he did, except the equivalent-day recorder
now, and the Dong button."
  The Dong button was just that, a big green button with the
word Dong engraved on it. You pushed it, and it went dong.
Well, that was almost too simple. Shouldn't here not be a
deeper reason for it? And the small instruction plate over
it didn't add much. It read: "Wrong prong, bong gong."
  "There's no more to the button than is apparent?" Roadstrum
asked Crewman Bramble.

I've wondered whether a button on a spaceship
in _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_,
which space refugee Arthur Dent unnecessarily
presses, causing a sign to light up saying
"Please do not press this button again",
actually did anything else.
It also crosses my mind only now to wonder
how Arthur, who has a telepathic fish living
in his ear for the purpose of language
translation, can read anything.  Including
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Maybe the button extracts the definition of
written language from the button presser's
brain, and to press it again brings about
na hasbeghangr pbafrdhrapr gb gur cerffre.  :-)