(urth) Book of the New Sun won the contest!

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Tue, 8/2/11, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
>> 
> I'd say a lot of the most admired male authors before the
> 70s--Heinlein, Asimov, 
> Van Vogt (who I don't like), Anderson, Bradbury, Pohl,
> Kornbluth--were extremely 
> didactic, with pragmatic, realistic purposes.  Clarke
> might be an exception.  

It's funny, you named all my least favorite authors there except Bradbury, his summoning of innocence and the gathering its subtle but mature sinister loss always interested me.  never liked most of those guys  . . . tedious to me for some reason.  I liked some of Clarke.  I don't think those guys were really artists (call me a snob).  Asimov I liked as a childrens author, and he had one or two works that surpassed his usual output.

My favorites were probably more likely to be labeled as science fantasists, Zelazny, Philip K Dick, R A Lafferty, Abraham Davidson, Cordwainer Smith, etc. I liked Theodore Sturgeon though.

Just personal opinion to some degree,  I suppose, like preferring Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy or Sterne to Richardson.