Reddit reviews Dhalgren

It was brutal. I wasn't that good. But there were many people who were superb. It was such a pleasure watching them perform.

Here are some sci-fi recommendations (you may have read them already, but I thought I'd offer anyway):

Serious Scifi:

Anathem the "multiverse" (multiple realities) and how all that works
Seveneves feminism meets eugenics—watch out!
The Culture series by Iain Banks, esp Book 2, the Player of Games Banks is dead, but wrote some of the best intellectual scifi ever

Brilliant, Visionary:

Accelerando brilliant and hilarious; and it's not a long book
Snowcrash classic
Neuromancer another classic

Tawdry yet Lyrical (in a good way):

Dhalgren beautiful, poetic, urban, stream of consciousness, and more sex than you can believe

Underrated Classics:

Voyage to Arcturus ignore the reviews and the bad cover of this edition (or buy a diff edition); this is the ONE book that every true scifi and fantasy fan should read before they die

Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett, Jr. I can't find this on Amazon, but it is a book you should track down. It is possibly the WORST science fiction book ever written, and that is why you must read it. It's a half-assed attempt at a ripoff of Dune without any of the elegance or vision that Herbert had, about a giant worm that eats people on some distant planet. A random sample: "A few days later when I went to the edge of the grove to ride the Bhano I found him dead. I asked Rhamik what could have happened and he told me that life begins, Andrew, and life ends. Well, so it does."

Lucian's True History might be the earliest "sci-fi" but it's certainly the first gay SF story.

The great Theodore Sturgeon wrote a number of stories that broke taboos (hell, breaking taboos was pretty much his whole oeuvre). From teh wiki:
>"The World Well Lost" (1953),[c] first published in Universe magazine, homosexual alien fugitives and unrequited (and taboo) human homosexual love are portrayed. The tagline for the Universe cover was "[His] most daring story";[31] its sensitive treatment of homosexuality was unusual for science fiction published at that time, and it is now regarded as milestone in science fiction's portrayal of homosexuality.[32] According to an anecdote related by Samuel R. Delany, when Sturgeon first submitted the story, the editor (John W. Campbell) not only rejected it but phoned every other editor he knew and urged them to reject it as well

Speaking of Samuel Delany - who everyone needs to learn more about - Dhalgren has gay and bi characters.

Back to Sturgeon,
>Sturgeon would later write Affair with a Green Monkey, which examined social stereotyping of homosexuals, and in 1960 published Venus Plus X, in which a single-gender society is depicted and the protagonist's homophobia portrayed unfavourably

Not usually put in the SF genre, William S. Burroughs' - another person of great interest to everyone here - Naked Lunch and The Wild Boys are rife with faggoty faggy fags. Having sex.

On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch - yes, the author of The Brave Little Toaster books! - has a gay protagonist. You know what? Tohmas M. Disch is another person (and whose works) everyone should know more about.

Joanna Russ introduced radical feminism to science fiction. The Female Man had a female only society.

Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage features a gay couple as the main protagonists.

David Gerrold wrote a couple LGBT themed works, most notably The Man Who Folded Himself.

More from teh wiki:
>Geoff Ryman has produced a string of award-winning novels and short stories that prominently feature LGBT characters: The Child Garden's (1989) protagonist cannot conform to the future society due to her resistance to genetic manipulation and her lesbian nature, which leads her into a relationship to a similarly outcast lesbian polar-bear. Lust follows a gay man who finds that his sexual fantasies are magically coming true. Was (1992) includes a gay actor with AIDS and a mentally-challenged abused child, linked by their connection to The Wizard of Oz books and film.[84] In a Locus magazine interview Ryman claimed that the gay and SF genre markets are incompatible: “In 1990, if you had asked me which was the worst thing to be labeled as, gay or an SF writer, I'd have said gay: kills you stone-dead in the market. Then Was came out.... They had it in the gay section of bookstores and they had stuff in gay magazines, but they didn't say SF — at which point I realized that being a science fiction writer is worse than being gay."[16]

>The Nightrunner Series, by Lynn Flewelling, is a fantasy series about a spy/thief and his protégé who become embroiled in political intrigues and magical mysteries in the fictional land of Skala. The two main male characters, Seregil and Alec, eventually form a romantic relationship by the ending of the second book, Stalking Darkness.

Cthulhu, the 2007 film has a gay protagonist.

And HELLO, TORCHWOOD? ;)

Also too, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT-themed_speculative_fiction

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany (bi main character with many gay or bi characters). There is a few sex scenes, and sexuality is a theme, but there are larger and more important themes.

Dhlagren is also one of the best novels in the last 50 years, imo. I enjoyed it enough to get this: http://i.imgur.com/vGbwx.jpg

I enjoyed it. But then, my favorite book is just as weird in different ways.

I'm sorry you were underwhelmed. I was pretty taken with it, even though I thought some of the experimentation was kind of gimmicky.

The house-void was pretty compelling horror, to me, as was the faceless presence that pursued JT. It's been awhile, but I remember some very uncomfortable moments.

I also enjoyed the density of the frame tale and found the thinly-veiled commentary on reality TV thought provoking, especially given that the book was written in 2000.

I wish you better luck with the next book you read. I would recommend Samuel R. Dealny's Dhalgren for a similarly eerie (and superior) read - I wouldn't call it horror, but I'm not sure what to call it.

The Raw Shark Texts.

Dhalgren.

I'm old enough to remember when it was published. It made an impression, to say the least. Here's Amazon's review page.

Lanark by Scottish writer/muralist/political agitator Alasdair Gray.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Darkmans by Nicola Barker