READER Ç DOC Galaxies 9780989239141

TEXT Galaxies

READER Ç DOC Galaxies 9780989239141 á There is a spectre haunting the science fiction genre the spectre of Barry N Malzberg In a genre that with one hand claimed to be the ultimate storehouse of innovation and with the other leveled strict rules for writing and codes of narrative conduct onto its authors Malzberg stuck out like a forked tongueOrk of the Malzberg canon which includes over fifty novels and collections Metafictional absurdist and sardonic the book mounts a concerted attack against the market forces that prescribed SF of the 1970s and continue to prescribe it today At the same time the book tells a story of technology and cyborgs of bureaucracy and tachyons of love and hate and sadness Despite his deviant literary antics Malzberg could not be ignored by the SF community In 1973 he won the first annual John W Campbell Memorial Award which is pr In the ironic cyclical nature of this novel I imagine it only fitting that it ended the way it began both in terms of the way it's presented as well as my own feelings towards it It began with the author stating his intentions for a novel that would at its completion be called Galaxies Of course it went meta the author inserting himself his thoughts into almost every chapter Many it could go this way or it could go that way or maybe even this way At some point it became an amusing at times highly amusing comment on how novels particularly sci fi novels are written What eventually turned this novel upon itself was the repetition of scenes There are 49 chapters many two or three pages at most the occasional lasting a hearty 8 Out of these 49 at least a dozen involved the main character and several subordinates having the same argument Over and over The same dialogue Maybe to prove a point The cyclical nature But dammit to hell it was boring Ideas were pretty good but even at 55000 words the author's estimation it was 30000 too many

PDF ´ ¼ Barry N. Malzberg

There is a spectre haunting the science fiction genre the spectre of Barry N Malzberg In a genre that with one hand claimed to be the ultimate storehouse of innovation and with the other leveled strict rules for writing and codes of narrative conduct onto its authors Malzberg stuck out like a forked tongue composing works of bona fide literature that dwarfed the efforts of his contemporaries and established him as one of science fiction's most dynamic enfant terribles Originally published in 1975 GALAXIES is a masterw Ceci n'est pas une pipe This is not a pipeAnd Galaxies is not a book Or rather it is a book But it is not a book you or I can read It is a hypothetical book And so Galaxies the one that we are reading is a meta book Malzberg is writing a book about writing a book And playfully deliberately and entirely as expected he spends so much time talking about how he plans to write it properly that he never really gets around to actually writing it And yet at the same time he does it is written often artfully so but interwoven with authorial commentary throughoutSo this is a meta book And I am not clever enough to present a meta review of it Suffice to say though fans of science fiction and postmodernism like myself will absolutely adore this skewering of the writing process and particularly the sci fi genre itself in such sly academic ways5 stars out of 5 Compelling and rich with a wonderfully philosophical mien

Barry N. Malzberg ¼ Galaxies BOOK

GalaxiesEsented to the best SF novel of the year by a distinguished committee of SF experts authors and critics Thereafter he received nominations for the Hugo Nebula and Philip K Dick Awards among others Nonetheless his writing has not received the attention it so profoundly deserves GALAXIES is among the works listed in acclaimed SF editor David Pringle's SCIENCE FICTION THE 100 BEST NOVELS published in 1985 With an introduction by Jack Dann this special paperback edition ushers Malzberg's genius into the twenty first centu Meta Not a novel but a set of notes for one from the character of a stuffy bloodless science fiction author trapped in suburbia and desperate to use grand themes and be taken seriously like his literary heroes Cheever and Barthelme Occasionally funny sometimes annoying his stilted abstract dialogue plays like a low rent Waiting for Godot Not bad not great but like all science fiction the hook is in the concept not the characterizationConfused the hell out of me as a teen especially as the cheap paperback cover blurb looks plays it like a straight sci fi novel Now coming back to it after some years I can get it