Other guys get a facelift or a new car or maybe even a new spouse, but I had a much stranger experience. I returned to the most outlandish books from my childhood.
Good for you. I fully agree about The Book of the New Sun, a towering work of art. I was reading SF by age 10, but I never stopped because I kept reading better and better writers. From writers you cite, I'd come to love Cordwainer Smith, Lafferty and even David R. Bunch (courtesy of a recommendation by Harlan Ellison in Dangerous Visions) while still a teenager. I read Lord of Light, The Female Man, Report on Probability A & Dhalgren as soon as they were first published, and they remain favorite books. But I had also read earlier books by all 4 of those writers, so reading them was a natural progression. I read Dune serialized in Analog before the book publication, but I've always felt that it was overrated. After Judith Merril published England Swings SF, I turned my eyes across the Atlantic and, with a few US exceptions like Connie Willis & Ann Leckie, have read mostly better UK writers such as Iain Banks (both with and without the M), M. John Harrison & Gwyneth Jones ever since. Brian Aldiss & J.G. Ballard had been favorites since the very early '60s, though, and I never abandoned them, even when they wrote ostensibly non-genre fiction. I started reading Michael Moorcock with Elric sword and sorcery potboilers, albeit with unusual philosophical subtexts. But Moorcock, who is insanely prolific, also wrote literary borderline SF such as Mother London and the magnificent 4 volume A History of Europe Between the Wars (aka the Pyat Quartet) which rivals The Book of the New Sun as a literary achievement, as long as you can stomach its horrific 1st person narrator - more unreliable than Severian, and a much darker and deliberately more hateful a figure. According to the author, the point of that exercise was trying to understand how a civilized Europe could have let the Holocaust happen. Reading Moorcock & Ballard and other more literary SF writers led me effortlessly into Pynchon, DeLillo, Barth, John Hawkes, Bill Burroughs, Umberto Eco and others. I don't see much distinction between them and the SF writers who I like. I like McCarthy, but wasn't that impressed by The Road. I think his best is Blood Meridian, or An Evening's Redness in the West.
Loved it as usual! There are some really interesting stories being published right now in speculative fiction magazines, as well, if you're interested in contemporary shorter stories. A good entry point would be the latest Best Short Stories selected by the Nebula Awards, for instance. A lot of it is online and there's much fun to be had!
Good for you. I fully agree about The Book of the New Sun, a towering work of art. I was reading SF by age 10, but I never stopped because I kept reading better and better writers. From writers you cite, I'd come to love Cordwainer Smith, Lafferty and even David R. Bunch (courtesy of a recommendation by Harlan Ellison in Dangerous Visions) while still a teenager. I read Lord of Light, The Female Man, Report on Probability A & Dhalgren as soon as they were first published, and they remain favorite books. But I had also read earlier books by all 4 of those writers, so reading them was a natural progression. I read Dune serialized in Analog before the book publication, but I've always felt that it was overrated. After Judith Merril published England Swings SF, I turned my eyes across the Atlantic and, with a few US exceptions like Connie Willis & Ann Leckie, have read mostly better UK writers such as Iain Banks (both with and without the M), M. John Harrison & Gwyneth Jones ever since. Brian Aldiss & J.G. Ballard had been favorites since the very early '60s, though, and I never abandoned them, even when they wrote ostensibly non-genre fiction. I started reading Michael Moorcock with Elric sword and sorcery potboilers, albeit with unusual philosophical subtexts. But Moorcock, who is insanely prolific, also wrote literary borderline SF such as Mother London and the magnificent 4 volume A History of Europe Between the Wars (aka the Pyat Quartet) which rivals The Book of the New Sun as a literary achievement, as long as you can stomach its horrific 1st person narrator - more unreliable than Severian, and a much darker and deliberately more hateful a figure. According to the author, the point of that exercise was trying to understand how a civilized Europe could have let the Holocaust happen. Reading Moorcock & Ballard and other more literary SF writers led me effortlessly into Pynchon, DeLillo, Barth, John Hawkes, Bill Burroughs, Umberto Eco and others. I don't see much distinction between them and the SF writers who I like. I like McCarthy, but wasn't that impressed by The Road. I think his best is Blood Meridian, or An Evening's Redness in the West.
I'm hooked too.
Loved it as usual! There are some really interesting stories being published right now in speculative fiction magazines, as well, if you're interested in contemporary shorter stories. A good entry point would be the latest Best Short Stories selected by the Nebula Awards, for instance. A lot of it is online and there's much fun to be had!