Algis Budrys Budrys' Inferno (1963)
This is my third Budrys', and I'm beginning to realise why I'm yet to be entirely convinced by his writing. Each time I read his work, the first thing which strikes me is how well written it is, how literate, and so I look forward to becoming engrossed over the next few pages, and yet it never happens and I'm left wondering why. Anyway, I think I've worked it out at long last, having spotted a pattern. On the strength of what I've read, Budrys seems to limit himself to mostly edgy, paranoid characters at war with their surroundings, so the mood is a little relentless and is not conducive to the sort of lighter passages which might render it all a little more palatable. Budrys was of Lithuanian heritage, saw Hitler in a parade as a child, and then his country was annexed by the Soviet Union - although his family were living in America by that time. This seems to have informed his fiction, and out of the short stories collected here, only the somewhat more readable Lower Than Angels seems to be an exception, at least up to a point. That said, Lower Than Angels is predicated on the idea that pre-technological people will tend to regard anyone more technologically advanced as a God, which is unfortunately bollocks, and slightly annoying bollocks - or at least annoying to me every time some wanker claims that the ancient Mexicans believed Hernán Cortés to be the returning God Quetzalcoatl, which they fucking didn't…
Returning to Budrys, yes he could write - on the surface of it. He was very good at close-up detail, but less expressive when it came to the broader thrust of the story, and also somewhat lacking in humour. For me, this has meant scrabbling away at each story, unable to keep my attention fixed to the page because there was never much to draw me in, which left me generally without much idea of what was going on or why. Oh well.
It would be a very boring world if we all liked the same thing.
This is my third Budrys', and I'm beginning to realise why I'm yet to be entirely convinced by his writing. Each time I read his work, the first thing which strikes me is how well written it is, how literate, and so I look forward to becoming engrossed over the next few pages, and yet it never happens and I'm left wondering why. Anyway, I think I've worked it out at long last, having spotted a pattern. On the strength of what I've read, Budrys seems to limit himself to mostly edgy, paranoid characters at war with their surroundings, so the mood is a little relentless and is not conducive to the sort of lighter passages which might render it all a little more palatable. Budrys was of Lithuanian heritage, saw Hitler in a parade as a child, and then his country was annexed by the Soviet Union - although his family were living in America by that time. This seems to have informed his fiction, and out of the short stories collected here, only the somewhat more readable Lower Than Angels seems to be an exception, at least up to a point. That said, Lower Than Angels is predicated on the idea that pre-technological people will tend to regard anyone more technologically advanced as a God, which is unfortunately bollocks, and slightly annoying bollocks - or at least annoying to me every time some wanker claims that the ancient Mexicans believed Hernán Cortés to be the returning God Quetzalcoatl, which they fucking didn't…
Returning to Budrys, yes he could write - on the surface of it. He was very good at close-up detail, but less expressive when it came to the broader thrust of the story, and also somewhat lacking in humour. For me, this has meant scrabbling away at each story, unable to keep my attention fixed to the page because there was never much to draw me in, which left me generally without much idea of what was going on or why. Oh well.
It would be a very boring world if we all liked the same thing.
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