OT user manual 
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Love Michael Moorcock’s work - read a lot in my teenage years and early 20s whilst listening to Hawkwind and such. Saw him a few times reading poetry on stage at Hawkwind gigs. I got started with the Corum books.
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Damn, BLOKE! You’re so lucky!
And Corum is one of my favorite incarnations of the EC!
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and @blurrghost
If you enjoy Kurt, you might like Thomas Pynchon, e.g. Gravity’s Rainbow. I found it made a great audiobook.
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Pynchon is to Vonnegut what Tarkovsky is to Nolan, hah! I have read gravity’s rainbow once but I didnt quite understand it. Will have to re-read at some point.
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Currently reading:
- Klara And The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
- How To be An Anti-Captilist in the 21st C, Erik Olin Wright (which I heard about on this forum)
- Invisible Cities, Ital Calvino (cos of the new Winged Victory for The Sullen album)
- Russian Short Stories From Pushkin To Buida
- Programming Rust (for work)
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I love Ballard. Never read Cocaine Nights. I was going to after Super Cannes, but started something else and forgot. You recommend Cocian Nights?
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+1, I just finished a re-read of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World. Couple of years ago I did a full Murakami back catalog read, and recently started from the beginnnig again. Not sure I have the energy to tackle 1Q84 again (yet.)
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He hasn’t written a bad book IMO. Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millennium People are in my opinion a trilogy or a distinct phase, united by thematic elements much like his early Sci-Fi and his later brutalist period were. I’d definitely recommend it, his dismantling of the psychology of upper and middle class mind is very relevant today. I see so much of today in his last three books, from influencers showing us a constant stream of realistic but fantastical pictures of luxury that we then strive to attain by spending our meager income on luxury brands that do nothing to actually make our lives any better. At that point in his career he didn’t try to predict the future anymore, he merely expertly dissected the then current cultural zeitgeist and perhaps inadvertently wrote about the future.
Can you tell I’m a huge, huge fan?
I kind of think there’s only three science fiction authors worth reading: P.K. Dick, William Gibson and J.G. Ballard.
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Not Isaac Asimov?
He was great thinker but perhaps not a great writer. Many of his concepts are relevant today, but his prose and the stories themselves are a bit dated and simplistic.
Probably a bit dated now. Thats the problem with science fiction.
I don’t think it is as bad with the three I mentioned. Especially Ballard, a true visionary and a brilliant writer, he easily transcends genre unlike any other writer generally thought of as belonging in the SF canon.
Thanks great recommendation
Sunburnt audio book narrated by alexi sayle is great if you like your politics left , you’re British and generally pissed off, and you’re old enough to remember when the sun ruled the country
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No ! You can’t get away with that
Ray Bradbury , Aldous Huxley to name just the first two that pop in my head
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I like Ray but he’s kind of just another genre writer with admittedly great ideas. Definitely second tier SF! Huxley is super dated and his admittedly brilliant ideas are so spread now that you don’t necessarily have to read him, as he’s not just dated but archaic.
agree on all five
P K Dick being my personal favorite
PS
Kurt Vonnegut.
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Stanisław Lem…
I would say that given Never Let Me Go, and Klara And The Sun Ishiguro could be a SciFi author. Yeah, There are far too many great SF writers to accept just those three…
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