>>Was it Etienne who couldn't think of much sci-fi
with a hardboiled flavor?
I though Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? was
definitely hardboiled. Not just violent, but tough, too.
Noirish, also. <<
There are several Dick novels which work in this context,
none better than A SCANNER DARKLY.
The key hb/noir novels for me are K.W. Jeter's novels DR.
ADDER, GLASS HAMMER, DEATH ARMS and FAREWELL HORIZONTAL, and
the series featuring Lt. Carlucci by Richard Paul Russo:
DESTROYING ANGEL (the first and clearly the weakest),
CARLUCCI'S EDGE (brilliant) and CARLUCCI's HEART (terrific as
well). The Carlucci novels have just been reprinted in a
convenient omnibus edition.
Jack Womack's AMBIENT sequence fits perfectly -- an easy
starting point is RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE, which is
narrated by a 12 year old schoolgirl in a bleak near-future.
It's unflinching, subtle and very human. M.J. Engh's ARSLAN,
Neal Barrett, Jr.'s THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA and DAWN'S
UNCERTAIN LIGHT, John Barnes' KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY, Russell
M. Griffin's TIMESERVERS and Michael Blumlein's MOVEMENT OF
THE MOUNTAINS are all dark, complex & tough narratives
that are worth any effort to locate and read. None are
"gadget" sf and as such easy for non-sf readers.
--Juha.
-- JT Lindroos Wit's End Publishing www.sendwit.com
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Nov 2003 EST