A major screed from a writer (whom I've always found somewhat boring) denouncing the Booker process for ignoring the current amazing quality of British SF. He claims that a novel by Adam Roberts (that I read last month and found disappointing) should have been nominated and should then have won... The Guardian covers the controversy here.
Robinson finds a letter from Virginia Woolf to Olaf Stapeldon, regarding Star Maker:
sometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express, much more fumblingly, in fiction. But you have gone much further and I can't help envying you - as one does those who reach what one has aimed at.
He also gives a pretty good list of the current members of the club:
The eight wonderful writers featured here (Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, Geoff Ryman, Nicola Griffith, Stephen Baxter, Paul MacAuley, Ian Watson, Justina Robson) are only a representative sampling of a community of artists so strong that it is hard to explain. Add to these Brian Aldiss, Neal Asher, Iain Banks, Christopher Evans, Alasdair Gray, Colin Greenland, John Courtenay Grimwood, Peter Hamilton, Nick Harkaway, M. John Harrison, Robert Holdstock, Gwyneth Jones, Garry Kilworth, Doris Lessing, Ian R. MacLeod, China Miéville, Richard Morgan, Christopher Priest, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Rohn, Brian Stableford, Charles Stross, Lisa Tuttle - and no doubt others I have forgotten, or am unaware of (sorry) - and one has to ask, how is it that a group of such intellectual power could be working at one time, and our time at that?
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2 comments:
How's "Stan" doing these days? Send him mny best.
That's what they call him.... I can't help it, Dave.
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