This is a brilliant idea! Aaaah but choosing only ten things is so hard. Even if I leave off anything that's already been nominated more than once - Fire & Hemlock! The Xenogenesis Trilogy! His Dark Materials - it's still so hard. :(
Print (single works): 1) Ursula K Le Guin - Always Coming Home 2) Peter Beagle - The Last Unicorn 3) China Mieville - Iron Council Out of the Bas-Lag trilogy The Scar is, perhaps, the better novel, but I'm nominating this one anyway. Because it's bleak and brutal and beautiful, because it is explicitly and unashamedly a novel with a radical political agenda, because it is about resistance and class struggle and the power structures of imperialism and capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Because the action is driven by a revolutionary who is out to find the man he loves as much as he is out to save his city, because the man he loves is named Judah Low, because another protagonist is an illiterate prostitute who starts a fucking revolution. Because there are no heroes and no saviours, but you keep fighting anyway. 4) Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle - The Blazing World "I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which is the cause, That though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second; yet, I will endeavour to be, Margaret the First: and, though I have neither Power, Time nor Occasion, to be a great Conqueror, like Alexander, or Cesar; yet, rather than not be Mistress of a World, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, I have made One of my own." Along with the fantasy setting, The Blazing World has a kind of a Mary Sue, and it's definitely self-insertion, and it's got cutting-edge science and a pretty queer female friendship - and it was written in 1666. It's brilliant! (Cavendish was a conservative monarchist even for the period, and some parts jar a lot, but it's still brilliant!) 5) Tom Stoppard - Arcadia I'm not totally sure about including this? But it's so gloriously, unashamedly driven by a love for science, for ideas, for time and maths and the heat death of the universe - I can't not.
Print (series): 6) Ursula K Le Guin - The Hainish Cycle (which kind of feels like cheating, almost. But how else can you get The Dispossessed AND The Day Before The Revolution AND Four Ways to Forgiveness AND Winter's King AND A Fisherman of the Inland Sea AND Dancing to Ganam, and all the rest?) 7) Tanith Lee - Tales from the Flat Earth (Night's Master, Death's Master, Delusion's Master, Delirium's Mistress, Night's Sorceries) She's written so much, but this is archtypical Tanith Lee for me - fantastical, dark, sexual, grotesque, full of women and queerness and stories that never go quite like you expect. 8) Sheri Tepper - The Arbai Trilogy (Grass, Raising the Stones, Sideshow)
Film: 9) Mononoke Hime/Princess Mononoke
Fic: 10) Rydra Wong's Walked Right Out Of The Machinery Aliens taking over a host body is such an old sci-fi trope, but I've never seen anything do it quite like this.
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Date: 2011-08-14 07:11 am (UTC)Print (single works):
1) Ursula K Le Guin - Always Coming Home
2) Peter Beagle - The Last Unicorn
3) China Mieville - Iron Council
Out of the Bas-Lag trilogy The Scar is, perhaps, the better novel, but I'm nominating this one anyway. Because it's bleak and brutal and beautiful, because it is explicitly and unashamedly a novel with a radical political agenda, because it is about resistance and class struggle and the power structures of imperialism and capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Because the action is driven by a revolutionary who is out to find the man he loves as much as he is out to save his city, because the man he loves is named Judah Low, because another protagonist is an illiterate prostitute who starts a fucking revolution. Because there are no heroes and no saviours, but you keep fighting anyway.
4) Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle - The Blazing World
"I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which is the cause, That though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second; yet, I will endeavour to be, Margaret the First: and, though I have neither Power, Time nor Occasion, to be a great Conqueror, like Alexander, or Cesar; yet, rather than not be Mistress of a World, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, I have made One of my own."
Along with the fantasy setting, The Blazing World has a kind of a Mary Sue, and it's definitely self-insertion, and it's got cutting-edge science and a pretty queer female friendship - and it was written in 1666. It's brilliant! (Cavendish was a conservative monarchist even for the period, and some parts jar a lot, but it's still brilliant!)
5) Tom Stoppard - Arcadia
I'm not totally sure about including this? But it's so gloriously, unashamedly driven by a love for science, for ideas, for time and maths and the heat death of the universe - I can't not.
Print (series):
6) Ursula K Le Guin - The Hainish Cycle (which kind of feels like cheating, almost. But how else can you get The Dispossessed AND The Day Before The Revolution AND Four Ways to Forgiveness AND Winter's King AND A Fisherman of the Inland Sea AND Dancing to Ganam, and all the rest?)
7) Tanith Lee - Tales from the Flat Earth (Night's Master, Death's Master, Delusion's Master, Delirium's Mistress, Night's Sorceries)
She's written so much, but this is archtypical Tanith Lee for me - fantastical, dark, sexual, grotesque, full of women and queerness and stories that never go quite like you expect.
8) Sheri Tepper - The Arbai Trilogy (Grass, Raising the Stones, Sideshow)
Film:
9) Mononoke Hime/Princess Mononoke
Fic:
10) Rydra Wong's Walked Right Out Of The Machinery
Aliens taking over a host body is such an old sci-fi trope, but I've never seen anything do it quite like this.