Lovecraft’s modern post-Christian nihilism really stands out to me after spending some time in the neo-reacto-sphere. He’s clearly doing something interesting, even if it’s flawed.

And I wouldn’t consider it “prole” so much as “geeky” to seek out “playgrounds of the mind” — and no one around here is going to cast the first stone on that point.

I agree with regards to Space Viking. It seems like Piper had two modes, one where his characters suffered but the political/historical aspect was very well developed and another in which his characters were well developed and the political/historical context is less filled in. For a good example of the former (and the acme of reactionary scifi, in my opinion) try Uller Uprising. Little Fuzzy on the other hand is representative of the second mode. If Piper had a major weakness, it was titles.

The New Sun novels are a real slog, but in the same way Dostoevsky can be. It’s… intellectually nourishing I suppose is the closest I can come to a meaningful description. And a masterwork of prose; I once read the same chapter in Book of the New Sun four times in a row and got four completely unique narratives that were each equally but independently illuminative of the main plot.

I think what separates people who love Lovecraft from people who can’t stand him (I’ve rarely found another category) is how impacted they are by that “unspeakable something.” In my case I discovered his writings at the same time I was seriously academically studying metaphysics, quantum mechanics, and the limitations of general relativity. Some of the things he was getting at seemed and still seem very important to me, though I honestly struggle to get it into words.

I haven’t read Skylark, but I have read (most of) E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen novels, which aren’t so much good as influential. Really, just about everything in sci-fi comes from Smith’s space operas.

It’s fitting that you’d mention Gene Wolfe in a tribute to Jack Vance — but I never much enjoyed his New Sun novels. I guess Vance’s dark humor makes such dark post-apocalyptic futures palatable.

Lastly, Lovecraft’s writing has a certain unspeakable something, but I wouldn’t call it good. And kudos for using rugose as your example. I’m so used to eldritch, cyclopean , non-Euclidian, etc.

Stranger in a Strange Land made little sense to me a year or two after I first read Starship Troopers, and I reconfirmed that I still don’t grok it.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls never worked for me.

Glory Road was… fine.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress seemed like it should be right up my alley, but it was… jusk OK.

Farnham’s Freehold was… OK.

Prior to that I read pretty much every sci-fi story I could get my hands on, quite a lot of it from the Golden Age. Not much of it was up to Gene Wolfe’s writing standards, but I remember only rarely putting things down because of that kind of unreadability.

Then again I might just be weird. I like Lovecraft’s prose, for instance. Could never understand all the criticism over things like using “rugose” to describe something that was… well, rugose.

(When exactly is the Golden Age of science fiction? The joke is that it’s 13 years old.)

What a great life. Thank you for telling me the back story.

So much of classical SF is unreadable today. One thinks especially of Heinlein, which I read entire. But Vance is still readable. What happened? Is it us?