John Sladek--Opinions?

[Tanegashima]

Anybody here read the Complete Roderick or Tik-Tok?

I find that Sladek is very much underrated and he makes great jabs at Asimov in Tik-Tok. Wondering if anybody else here has read his stuff.

 

[The Ace]

An interesting way to spend a few hours, but nothing special.

 

[gully_foyle]

I read the Reproductive System a while ago. I seem to remember it was a lot of fun, whilst having a serious undertone about the age of technology. I've lost my copy of it and would love to read it again.

 

[j d worthington]

I've not read a lot of Sladek, though I've read some. Oddly enough, though I've got Roderick I've not read it (Tik-Tok I don't even have). Come to think of it... most of what I've read by Sladek is from the 1960s-1970s New Wave movement; with that work, though much of it was somewhat pyrotechnic in approach typographically and visually, there was a solidity to it, and an earnestness to the concerns he expressed, that gave it considerable weight; I still think "The Happy Breed" is a memorable indictment of the way modern society was trending... and was pretty much spot-on in its critique.....

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

I read Tic-Tok a few years ago I did enjoy it may read it again if time permits.

 

[High Eight]

I liked The Reproductive System and Tik-Tok very much. Never got around to reading Roderick, though.

Arachne Rising: The Thirteenth Sign of the Zodiac was a brilliant hoax, which took in a lot of new age pseudoscientists and The New Apocrypha is a vicious attack on all things mystic.

Sladek is also well worth remembering for his use of Von Daniken as an intellectual punchbag ("A ruined edifice in Peru bears a weird inscription: two horizontal lines crossed by two vertical lines. In other words, the figure for tic-tac-toe, a game played by the latest giant computers. Likewise the Ankara Museum displays clay tablets pierced with holes -- the same holes used in modern IBM cards." - Space Shoes of the Gods) and his hilarious digs at religious fundamentalists ("There are no apes anyway. The so-called apes in zoos are only men dressed up in hairy suits.")