Trying to finish up the last of Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi at the moment (even the dregs have interesting ideas). I got through most of it nearly a decade ago, but there are still a few stragglers. Reading Our Friends from Frolix 6, and it’s mostly just nice to hear something written in his tone.
Getting into Robert Aickman, finished The Unsettled Dust and nearly done with Dark Entries (this is after reading his short stories scattered across collections). If you want to know what the halfway point between Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft is, this is about as close as you’re gonna get.
Clark Ashton Smith is another person I’ve read in scattered fragments, but now have been exploring in greater depth. I find that he can be brilliant, but occasionally comes off as a cheap imitation of HPL. His poetry is really fantastic, and I find the focus on his pulpier stories a bit sad in that light. Folks should read The Star Treader if they get a chance.
I finished Andy Clark’s Natural Born Cyborgs which was a bit of a disappointment, some interesting ideas, but I feel like it is too influenced by a lot of bad media “theory”/punditry of the time. I would have preferred he stuck to the harder questions that emerge when considering technology as an extension of the human mind, which he does well in other works, rather than optimistically speculating about the future of technology.
As someone who is desperately avoiding writing his dissertation, I have mostly been avoiding theory. I find so much of it really is “fashionable nonsense” that it is really hard to not feel like I’m wasting my time reading someone masturbating with language.
I find myself more drawn to scientific/technical text regarding sound. Hell, even pop science books like James Gleick’s Chaos have been enlightening.
I’m looking forward to reading through some of the Alan Moore stuff that I’ve missed over the years after the holidays.
As an aside, am I the only one who just doesn’t like fiction from the past decade or so? I can’t think of anything that interests me. Films, television music, games, have all impressed me, but I have yet to find any genre fiction that appeals to me. Seems like old stuff regurgitated in new language and modern situations. Maybe to put another way, nothing grips me sensorally the way Blackwood, Lovecraft, Jackson, Aickman, Ballard, etc. does.
