new york times new sf critic likes the cock (but not in that gay way)

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A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
By WALTER M. MILLER JR.
All you need to know about my youth is that I was taught this subversive exegesis of man's religious impulse, wrapped within a story about a post-nuclear future, in the 7th grade, the same year I was studying for my bar mitzvah.

Cat's Cradle (1963)
By KURT VONNEGUT
The perfect, Platonic balance of science and fiction, one that still finds room for merciless satire and a moral that resonates to the present day: that self-destruction is mankind's one true calling.

A Clockwork Orange (1962)
By ANTHONY BURGESS
A lovely little tale of behavioral modification therapy and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so punk-rock that Burgess spent the rest of his life denying that the book had inspired the punk-rock movment.

The Crying of Lot 49 (1965)
By THOMAS PYNCHON
Due to space limitations, I can't offer my complete explanation of why this is a science-fiction book, so for the sake of efficiency let me simply say to anyone who disagrees with my classification of it as such: You're wrong.

Gun, With Occasional Music: A Novel (1994)
By JONATHAN LETHEM
I think this Lethem kid could be a big deal if he'd just give up his highfalutin literary ambitions and embrace his inner sci-fi geek. Hope it all works out for him.

Looking for Jake (2005)
By CHINA MIÉVILLE
I don't pretend to be completely versed in Miéville's work, but what I've read of it so far I find utterly fascinating. At age 33, he is already a master of gothic storytelling.

The Man in the High Castle (1962)
By PHILIP K. DICK
My personal favorite from Dick's paranoid catalog, an unnerving alternate history of victorious Nazis and the I Ching that seems to be reading you at the same time you're reading it.

R is for Rocket (1962)
By RAY BRADBURY
Most readers' introduction to Bradbury usually comes via "The Illustrated Man," but this was the book that taught me all I needed to know about sci-fi. Such as: don't go back in time and step on a butterfly.

The Twilight Zone Companion (1982)
By MARC SCOTT ZICREE
The book that showed me it's possible to take a critical stance on a work of science fiction and love it at the same time. Also, I memorized all of its plot synopses so I could pretend that I've seen every episode of the show.

Watchmen (1987)
By ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS
Want to start a fistfight in a hurry? Walk up to any salesperson at Forbidden Planet and tell them this extraordinary graphic novel about psychologically wounded superheroes in a hopelessly modern world was just another comic book.

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 09:02 (twenty years ago)

i'm so confused

― nervous (cochere), Sunday, 19 March 2006 11:45 (twenty years ago)

its the new york times sf critics list of the top ten science fiction novels of all time

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:07 (twenty years ago)

Want to start a fistfight in a hurry? Walk up to any salesperson at Forbidden Planet and tell them this extraordinary graphic novel about psychologically wounded superheroes in a hopelessly modern world was just another comic book.

I've never been to Forbidden Planet, but ninja please.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:13 (twenty years ago)

what's the thread title about, anthony? I don't understand this idiom.

― soukesian, Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:18 (twenty years ago)

i am suggesting that the critic tends towards phallocentricism in his tastes, that he is a bit patriachal

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:25 (twenty years ago)

Anthony, there is an interesting question here about why SF = men and fantasy = women. If he was *interesting* he'd put Justina Robson on his list, but it's not like he's going to put Yargo by Jacqueline Susann, innit. Also see every "Jim, what is this thing called...kissing?" moment in Star Trek, ever. Sorry if that's glib but I think the reality is that SF is a very *homosocial* genre.

― suzy (suzy), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:47 (twenty years ago)

who wrote those comments?

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:52 (twenty years ago)

the new york times sf critic, Dave Itzkoff, is the putz's name

well yeah, but he doesnt have a lot of hard science on this list either (all meanings of hard meant) and there is SF written by women that might qualify: johanna russ, octavia butler, even fucking marry shelly) and not only is it v. male, its v. white, and v. american. parochial on several levels.

it angers me

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 12:54 (twenty years ago)

hahaha he's a rockdude/Spin writer IIRC and that totally figures. initially I thought the commentery was meant to be a parody of the autobio/diary/blogme school of pop music criticism.

The NYT's ongoing attempts to be hip are both tedious and laughable.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 19 March 2006 13:03 (twenty years ago)

i think he also wrote an expose of his time as editor of maxim, which would explain his female trouble

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 13:16 (twenty years ago)

dude, it's a top 10 list, not a top 100 list. if it were the latter i'd be pretty annoyed about the lack of diversity (and it is a pretty meh list, with a couple interesting choices), but it's just a short list of his favorites. no need to read THAT much into it.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 19 March 2006 13:34 (twenty years ago)

why not
he works for the most impt publication in the states, and hes new, and this is his first column.

its him doing the gautlent throwing not me

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 13:39 (twenty years ago)

maxim "exposed" hahaha (xpost)

couldn't care less abt his choices/lack of diversity, the flippant tone, general air of superiority & forced "humor" is what annoys.

who on earth is this intended for? (no pun)

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 19 March 2006 13:45 (twenty years ago)

the new york times sf critic, Dave Itzkoff, is the putz's name

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 19 March 2006 14:33 (twenty years ago)

Re: list -- a couple of curveballs on the one hand, too much straining for 'I need to show I have *real* writers in here or else all the literati will laugh at me' on the other = yawn.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 19 March 2006 14:43 (twenty years ago)

couldn't care less abt his choices/lack of diversity, the flippant tone, general air of superiority & forced "humor" is what annoys.

OTM!!

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Sunday, 19 March 2006 14:46 (twenty years ago)

but it's not like he's going to put Yargo by Jacqueline Susann, innit

Was that ever released under another title? I seem to remember it being such, could be wrong.

flippant tone, general air of superiority & forced "humor"

See, this to me was the least surprising part of all. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 19 March 2006 14:50 (twenty years ago)

I think my Dad urged me to read A Canticle for Leibowitz when I was 13ish, but I never got around to it.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 19 March 2006 15:01 (twenty years ago)

Yay for Mieville props.

― adam (adam), Sunday, 19 March 2006 15:16 (twenty years ago)

I'm surprised A Canticle for Liebowitz wasn't on my school's reading list!

― suzy (suzy), Sunday, 19 March 2006 16:29 (twenty years ago)

the interesting thing, is that i find all of this, the lack of diveristy, the straining for cred, and what is described as " the flippant tone, general air of superiority & forced "humor" is what annoys." as one in a whole package...and for the paper of record to treat a genre with such dismissial is really interesting.

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 19 March 2006 20:58 (twenty years ago)

i like this ilx world where scifi = hip and the times dismissing it = surprising or interesting.

― j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 19 March 2006 21:04 (twenty years ago)

Also this world in which the NYTimes is the "paper of record" for anything in the arts world. Yes, this is where the good 22nd Century researcher will begin a search for how SF was thought about in 2006: The good ol' Grey Lady.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 19 March 2006 21:50 (twenty years ago)

I can't get past my shock that the NYT employs someone as a sci-fi critic. Didn't really seem like their wheelhouse.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Sunday, 19 March 2006 21:53 (twenty years ago)

Which sf authors do we need here? Ursula Le Guin, maybe? I'm not sure I buy that particular Pynchon work as sf, and The Man in the High Castle mostly gets love because it: a. won the Hugo, b. does the alternative history nazi thing. I don't think I'd rate it as Dick's best sf or even his best work.

I'd go so far as to class most of this as sci-fi, but I think the list does suck.

― mike h. (mike h.), Sunday, 19 March 2006 22:00 (twenty years ago)

nyt book review has had a regular sci-fi review column (once a month or so) for as long as i've been reading it, which is since the early '80s at least. it alternates with the crime-fiction column and a few other things.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 19 March 2006 22:34 (twenty years ago)

the flippant tone, general air of superiority

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Monday, 20 March 2006 03:47 (twenty years ago)

I only read A Canticle for Leibowitz when I found out that it was part of the source material for Fallout(the monks in the atomic church).

see also: Earth Abides(e.g. the post-apoc tribalism)

Anyone have any other suggestions for Fallout & Fallout 2-related tomes? "I Am Legend," tho it is post-apoc, doesn't really qualify.

― kingfish da notorious teletabby (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 20 March 2006 04:39 (twenty years ago)

i read a canticle for leibowitz in junior high while recovering from having my wisdom teeth pulled. it was not a joyful time.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Monday, 20 March 2006 04:43 (twenty years ago)

canticle for liebowitz was douglas adams fav sf book.

― friendship7, Monday, 20 March 2006 05:04 (twenty years ago)

The Crying of Lot 49 is a better novel than Dune, but no top ten all time SCI FI list should feature the former at the expense of the latter. Just screwy. And where the hell is The Left Hand of Darkness, Foundation, Ring World, The Forever War, The Stainless Steel Rat, Hyperion, Illuminatus!, etc. . . . . . . . . . .

― sigh, phooey, Monday, 20 March 2006 05:17 (twenty years ago)

Perhaps they are represented by other, similar books, and this is really more of a list of some of the diversity of what "SF" is. (Hence the single comic book, etc.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 20 March 2006 06:38 (twenty years ago)

i don't get how crying of lot 49 is SF at all - does he think, like, the da vinci code is SF? or foucault's pendulum? or the warren commission report?

not including theodore sturgeon - easily the best "classic" era SF dude - is mental.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 20 March 2006 06:47 (twenty years ago)

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