| More Reading |
[Nov. 12th, 2010|01:08 am] |
It Walk In Beauty: Selected Stories and Prose of Chandler Davis: This is an absolutely brilliant, stunningly moving book, by probably one of the most underrated science-fiction writers I have had the good luck to chance upon. Not only is the writer - for a want of a better description - unabashedly left wing, but most of his stories were written in the atmosphere of the Red Scare in the US in the 1950s. And so, the science-fiction is shot through with a heady dose of politics, ideology and social commentary. The prose nonfiction is every bit as good - there is a scathing critique of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, essays on academic and intellectual freedom and lastly - and what, for me, is the most precious part of the book - an interview where Mr. Davis talks about his time in the American Science Fiction community, and his interactions with the likes of... John W. Campbell, Philip K. Dick, Frederick Pohl... and so many others I've grown up reading. Absolutely fantastic!
Arthur Miller, The Crucible: I hardly need to point out the connect between this play and It Walks In Beauty. Be that as it may, this is one of those works that I felt compelled to read in one sitting. Gripping and masterly suspenseful, not to mention - some absolutely brilliant characters, at virtually all points of the spectrum. Timeless themes as well - persecution, intolerance, mob mentality, religious/ideological mania... the works.
Philip K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle and Ubik: Oh, Philip K. Dick... eerily, madly, crazily, insanely, subversively brilliant, as always... The Man in the High Castle was a bit of a let-down at the end, but Ubik just took everything to another level. And I now know where that last top-spinning scene in Inception had its inception!
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra: --.
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| Comments: |
From: (Anonymous)
2010-11-12 02:57 pm (UTC)
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just out of curiosity, why 'stories and prose', any idea? isn't prose everything that isn't poetry?
You're quite right. It's only "Selected Prose..." | |
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