Okay so like

[kaberett]

an excellent way to make me SHAKE MY FIST AT THE SKIES and refuse to ever read anything you've written ever again, okay

is to use the metaphor

"dull as rock"

JUST SAYING.

(In fact I'd be less disproportionately irritated by it if it weren't for all the other things in this book that're pissing me off -- Babel-17, Samuel R Delaney, WHY IS IT SO FULL OF REALLY LAZY SIZEISM, WHY, HE CAN CLEARLY WRITE BETTER THAN THAT, and that is not all said the Cat in the hat -- but hey! This is, I think, going to be good shorthand for my frustrations with him. Though, er, anyone feel like telling me whether the sizeism is as rampant and infuriating in his other stuff? Because if it is I'll just continue pretending that Dhalgren is a queer utopia - haven't read it - and read Octavia Butler instead, wah-wah.)

Comments

[jjhunter]

to see magma in a piece of rock...

<3

(I suspect the lazy metaphoring here has much to do with conflating 'dull' with 'inert', but srsly)

[kaberett]

DID THE MAN NEVER MEET A PIECE OF SCHIST etc etc

[davidgillon]

ISTR meeting him very briefly at Intersection in '95, the friend I was with had just done Clarion and he'd been one of the tutors so came over to say 'hi!'. Seemed charming.

Of course 'Seemed charming' and 'uses metaphors that greatly annoy our lithophilic brethren' aren't necessarily mutually exclusive ;)

[liv]

I had forgotten that Delaney is mean to both rocks and fat people. But I find Babel-17 to be a rather weak book compared to some of his other really brilliant stuff. Perhaps I will reread Triton before I lend it to you to check that it doesn't have those problems.

[jesse_the_k]

I remembered NOVA as a formative experience; finally sold it to my book club and was horrified, shocked, & embarrassed by the trope-iness, lazy plotting, stereotyped characters. My memories of Triton and Dhalgren are much more positive, but I think I'm an unreliable narrator in this regard.

Butler, OTOH, just gets better on rereading. Do Lilith's Brood first, as it includes all the reasons why she's so great. *Alien* aliens; reactionary and thoughtful humans; sex, race, gender, species issues explored with subtlety; and SF where the science is biology. Kindred is shorter, just one volume, but requires some familiarity with U.S. Civil war and slavery to follow what's happening in the parallel timelines.