We appear to the great SF source and get inhalation from their work — along with a salubrious venereal disease of envy , sometimes . It ’s out of the question to read the works of author like Vernor Vinge and Maureen McHugh without wishing we could have pull something like that off . But which work do the great SF writer wish well they ’d drop a line ?
We demand some of our favorite SF author to name the achievements in the musical genre that make them the most envious .
Top effigy : cover prowess of David Brin ’s Kiln People by Jim Burns .
As to SF books I care I had written , Lord , there are so many . set out withThe Time MachineandWe , and go forrad from there … . if choosing just one , I guess I would say Dhalgren , or Wolfe’sThe Book of the Long Sun … . it would change every day . Although I ’m also happy to have avoided all the work those other volume would have required . Doing my own has been enough , in terms of the work cargo !
Karl Schroeder for his tech insights ( eg , Ventus ) .
Charles Stross for his tech insights and humor .
David Brin for any number of stories and novel ( eg , Kiln People ) .
And many years ago , Poul Anderson , who so often came through with vivid idea stories ( eg “ Epilogue ” ) I wish I had done .
I ’m going to reach right smart back , and say Larry Niven’sThe Integral Trees . I remember reading this when I was first getting serious about writing skill fiction — a mates of years before I sold my first story . The world building that went into the Smoke Ring — where everything exists in free downfall — fascinated me , and lead me envious , and admiring .
A Mirror for observer , by Edgar Pangborn . Theodore Sturgeon was Pangborn ’s only real contender for portraying deep human emotion in SF , and Ted was n’t really a novel writer .
2nd seat , The Door Into Summer , by Heinlein .
What sf novel do I wish I ’d written ? That ’s hard . Short story is easier . I ’ve always admired“The Story of Your life sentence ” by Ted Chiangwhich feels science fictional to me down to its grammar . I guess I ’d have to sayUrsula LeGuin ’s The Left Hand of Darkness . The idea of a society where gender is fluid and a fountainhead of state could witness themselves pregnant — what does that do to acculturation and beau monde ? It is a marvelous question and profoundly scientific discipline fictional .
I always wish that I ’d writtenWe Who Are About To … by Joanna Russ . Aside from its word - unadulterated prose ; its acceptance and active use of the impossible vastness of place ( something it partake with ‘ When it change ’ ) , what ingest my breather away as a lecturer is the last section in which we live with the paladin through her own death .
As an SF author , what I look up to is its challenge to one of the central dreams of SF : immortality of the ego , immortality of the species among the stars . Everything go , why ca n’t we accept that ?
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson . I ’m always getting to the end of novels and realise they ’re uncomfortably similar to Snow Crash . I think it ’s because that novel has a thousand ideas in it and I conceive they ’re all magnificent . It ’s just as well I never acknowledge the similarities beforehand because I would never write anything .
As a particular exercise , my next novel Lexicon has brain - hacking via carefully craft language , and I seriously take all the way through that before think a minute and enounce , “ Oh goddammit . ”
I like I had writtenFairyland by Paul McAuley . It ’s just so damnably good . It ’s a glorious integration of science & compelling narrative — one of those books I wished would n’t end . It passed my run for the PRE : Perfect Reading Experience . I was wholly immersed in it and as in all undecomposed skill fiction , the science heighten the fiction and the fiction was worthy of the skill . It deliver the goods the Arthur C. Clarke Award , and definitely deserved it .
I would wish that I had writtenJohn Brunner ’s Stand on Zanzibar . I deliberately aimed for that book ’s wholesale scene of our near time to come , in Both Earth and Existence , so to whatever degree I bomb in those , I would have failed in compose SoZ. A comrade ’s got to admit his limitations . Other utter books that I both look up to and enviousness includeRoger Zelazny ’s Lord of Light , Bradbury ’s The Martian Chroniclesor Silverberg ’s Dying Inside . Oralmost any story by Alice Sheldon . I could then die happy .
That ’s a question I ’m ineffective to answer , offhand . I sometimes wish I could write something * as good as * but never imagine having write another ’s playscript .
The books I most make out and admire , it ’s * because * I could never have written them . They give my mind as my own work ca n’t . Offhand , Womack ’s Random Acts , Crowley ’s “ enceinte Work of Time”,Ackroyd ’s Hawksmoor … A few moment later , three others .
I ’m allergic to Best Ofs , canon of all sorts , ranking , comparison . I love the bottomless Borgesian library .
Am I covetous of the achievements or ideas of others ? No , but I do admire and enjoy them . And too often am remind that there are too many of my novels that I have n’t yet compose , or wo n’t now ever write , or have n’t done my good by .
I guess my creative thinker just does n’t influence that way . I require to save my books , but not anybody else ’s .
When I read the interview with Shirley Maclaine in the Sunday Times a dyad weeks ago I did think , “ When I maturate up I desire to be Shirley Maclaine . ”
But that ’s not quite SF .
BooksUrsula K. Le GuinVernor Vinge
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