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John Clute

January 26, 2023

John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940)[1] is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history"[2] and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of sf in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known."[3] He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982[2] (the others included Malcolm Edwards, Colin Greenland, Roz Kaveney, and David Pringle).

John Clute
BornJohn Frederick Clute
(1940-09-12) 12 September 1940 (age 82)
Canada
OccupationAuthor, critic, writer
LanguageEnglish
GenreNon-fiction, novels

Clute's articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1960s. He is a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with Peter Nicholls) and of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (with John Grant), as well as the author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Related Work (a category for nonfiction). He earned the Pilgrim Award, bestowed by the Science Fiction Research Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship, in 1994. Clute is also author of the collections of reviews and essays Strokes; Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews; Scores; Canary Fever; and Pardon This Intrusion. His 2001 novel Appleseed, a space opera, was noted for its "combination of ideational fecundity and combustible language"[4] and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 2002.[5]

In 2006, Clute published the essay collection The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror. The third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with David Langford and Peter Nicholls) was released online as a beta text in October 2011 and has since been greatly expanded; it won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2012. The Encyclopedia's statistics page reported that, as of 24 March 2017, Clute had authored the great majority of articles: 6,421 solo and 1,219 in collaboration, totalling over 2,408,000 words (more than double, in all cases, those of the second-most prolific contributor, David Langford).[6] The majority of these are Author entries, but there are also some Media entries, notably that for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.

Clute was a Guest of Honour at Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, from 14 to 18 August 2014.

Personal life

Raised in Canada, Clute lived in the United States from 1956 until 1964. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at New York University in 1962 while living with writer and artist Pamela Zoline.

Clute married artist Judith Clute in 1964.[7] He has been the partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996.[8]

Career

Clute's first professional publication was a long science-fictional poem entitled "Carcajou Lament," which appeared in TriQuarterly in 1959. His first short story (one of his few) was "A Man Must Die," which appeared in New Worlds in 1966.

In 1960, he served as Associate Editor of Collage, a Chicago-based "slick" magazine which ran only two issues; it published early work by Harlan Ellison and R. A. Lafferty. During the 1960s and 70s he appeared chiefly in NEW WORLDS, becoming an important contributor of essays and reviews.

In 1977, Clute published his first novel, The Disinheriting Party (Allison & Busby). Though not explicitly a fantasy, this story of a dysfunctional family has a fantasy feel, rather like much postmodern literature. Reviewer Ifdary Bailey wrote that this "everyday story of family life in a revenge tragedy, of relations and revelations, hidden identities and loss of identity, incest and inheritance, all brooded over by the Father Who Will Not Die, carries itself forward swiftly and surely to its conclusion with strength and control."[9]

Clute's second novel, Appleseed (2001), is the story of trader Nathanael Freer, who pilots an AI-helmed starship named Tile Dance en route to the planet Eolhxir to deliver a shipment of nanotechnological devices. Freer meets a man calling himself Johnny Appleseed, who rejoins Freer with his lost lover, Ferocity Monthly-Niece. Meanwhile, a terrifying, data-destroying "plaque" is threatening the galaxy's civilizations. Clute has proposed it as the first novel in a trilogy. Science fiction and fantasy author Paul Di Filippo called it "a space opera for the 21st century."[4] Keith Brooke suggested that Clute himself would be the best reviewer for this multilayered novel.[10]

Reviewing

Clute's first significant science fiction reviews appeared in the late 1960s in New Worlds.[2] He has reviewed fiction and nonfiction in such periodicals as Interzone, the Los Angeles Times, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Observer, Omni, The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, and elsewhere; some of these writings appeared in his early collection, Strokes.

Though Clute is chiefly known for his critiques of fiction, he has also reviewed other modes, such as film. His language can be as blunt and amusing as it is honest; some review columns have such titles as "Nonsense is what good adventure SF makes silk purses out of,"[11] "Prometheus Emphysema,"[12] "An empty bottle. An empty mind. An empty book,"[13] "Book of the Mouth,"[14] and "Mage Sh*t."[15]

Excessive candour

Clute has issued a polemic he calls the "Protocol of Excessive Candour," which argues that reviewers of science fiction and fantasy must not pull punches because of friendship:

Reviewers who will not tell the truth are like cholesterol. They are lumps of fat. They starve the heart. I have myself certainly clogged a few arteries, have sometimes kept my mouth shut out of 'friendship' which is nothing in the end but self-interest. So perhaps it is time to call a halt. Perhaps we should establish a Protocol of Excessive Candour, a convention within the community that excesses of intramural harshness are less damaging than the hypocrisies of stroke therapy, that telling the truth is a way of expressing love; self-love; love of others; love for the genre, which claims to tell the truth about things that count; love for the inhabitants of the planet; love for the future. Because the truth is all we've got. And if we don't talk to ourselves, and if we don't use every tool at our command in our time on Earth to tell the truth, nobody else will.[3][16][17]

His review column of this name began at Science Fiction Weekly and moved to Sci-Fi Wire.

Writing style

Contributing the essay on himself for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute wrote that his "criticism, despite some curiously flamboyant obscurities, remains essentially practical; it has appeared mostly in the form of reviews, some of considerable length."[18] He told an interviewer,

The connections between one sentence and another may be a couple of layers down in terms of the metaphors implied, or stated. And that is not the way English tends to be written, but it is the way I tend instinctively to write. When it goes off it can get absurdly pretentious — it's all various lines of harmony and no music — but when it doesn't, it can be the way that somebody who is at the dawn of a language might feel.[19]

Matthew Davis has written, "Clute stands out, not just because of the depth and breadth of his knowledge, but also for the individuality of his writing; even the most formal sentence plucked from one of his scholastic works is readily identifiable due to his individual judgement and style."[2] SF Site's Rich Horton agreed that Clute is "a man known first and foremost as a critic, and moreover a man known for his formidable intelligence and vocabulary, and his enjoyment in wielding both ... anyone familiar with John Clute's critical work will know that his prose is not simple, though it is precise and at its best exhilarating."[20]

Author Henry Wessells, in a review of The Darkening Garden, wrote:

Those of us who might wish for a minim of Johnsonian directness (a single direct statement like a whack to the head), whether as starting point or as conclusion, really should know better by now. Clute is the master of periphrasis and the circling, reiterated metaphor, employing pyrotechnic diction to summon insights that are at once calculated and spontaneous. ... What is clear from The Darkening Garden is that Clute has read and internalized a vast range of books and cites them with accuracy and precision.[21]

Critical reception

Hilary Bailey, reviewing The Disinheriting Party, wrote,

Clute's comic timing is always right, and like a good racehorse he keeps his wind to the end. Around the strange events — the undying father who impregnates his wives and children with strange fruit, the identities hidden even from the people themselves, the changes of location from New York to Lambeth to the ghastly death ship on which characters crouch and mumble — John Clute keeps his footing, playing over them the strong light of an individual imagination. Images and metaphors, as in poetry, accrete, occur and recur, with not a word wasted. It is hardedged and brilliant, but it may be that John Clute, in trying to avoid slop, sentiment and longueurs, is galloping too hard. Choosing a complicated plot, he may be making the story go too fast to sustain the weight of imagery he puts on it, moving too quickly to reveal everything he idiosyncratically sees.[9]

Describing Clute's criticism, Davis has written,

When his criticism first appeared in New Worlds, his essays were typical of the controversial New Wave fiction they accompanied; they were counter-cultural, implicitly anti-American, deliberately stylized, and they introduced both intellectual jargon and four-letter words. ... SF writers, desperately wanting their reviewers to shill for them, found that Clute's intellectual acumen seemed to be demoting the writers' primacy and appropriating their creative fire. SF reviewing has often had a strong tendency to be plot-oriented or to gush over technological content, whereas Clute's recensions of plot tended to make him appear effortlessly superior to the plodding book in hand, and his expansive loquacity and highly dramatic style of writing could arouse hostile feelings of inferiority in SF fans. ... Clute knew that SF was not only worthy of real criticism, but that it needed it. ... Clute said that Canadian SF writers, like A. E. Van Vogt and Gordon Dickson, wrote about protagonists afflicted with the burden of guiding humanity up the evolutionary ladder, and it might be said that Clute has undertaken a similar responsibility for SF's understanding of itself.[2]

In a review of Look at the Evidence, Douglas Barbour exhorts the reader, "Find this book! You won't be sorry!" and admires

Clute's continuing capacity to oversee the field every year, his willingness to at least check out the dross as well as engage the golden few. Many of us who read so much genre stuff come to a point, or so at least I suspect, of casual acquaintance, and so give fairly 'enjoyment-oriented' reviews that simply say, 'if you like this kind of thing you will like this one.' That Clute has read so much and refused to lower his standards one iota is remarkable. That he continues to publish his opinions with such wit and style is our great good luck. We need him. But we can also enjoy him.[17]

Clute had gained a reputation as a critic before his second novel appeared, and some reviewers admitted that they found it "difficult" to read; others found it "intimidating" to review, as though trying carried the jeopardy of being found failing. Paul Di Filippo was excited by Appleseed, writing,

This book sits at the top of the mountain of achievement in postmodern space opera that has gone before, commenting on all its predecessors (not coincidentally, the name of the vanished alien elders in the book itself) while adding its glittering capstone to the peak. Any reader with even a passing familiarity with SF will unpack scores of allusions in this novel (and not only to SF, but to much other pop culture and literature), layering skin upon skin of meaning to the reading experience, much as the world Klavier itself is formed onion-style.[4]

Some reviewers were of two minds:

Read this book for the often intoxicating pleasure of the prosody — though to some people's taste it may be simply too much of a good thing. Or read it for the heavily recomplicated and well-imagined, if hard to follow, details of the setting and technology. Or for the sense of a truly different future... Or for the occasional funny dialogue — particularly that of Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, the most intriguingly depicted character. (At times I thought I detected echoes of Alfred Bester, in particular.)[20]

John C. Snider, similarly, suggested "Future Classic or Total Gibberish?":

It's a bold, energetic pouring-out of Clute's vision of a future civilization in which social display is an obsession, and where the line between style and substance is blurred. And that's Appleseed's biggest problem. While Clute writes in a poetic and wildly evocative fashion, he sacrifices style for substance. Appleseed comes across as a peyote-powered academic experiment, a fusion of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky... It's never really clear what's going on, or to what end — but it sounds really cool.[22]

and Keith Brooke wrote, "This is not an over-written novel, it's an intensely-written one. At its best it's a fantastically effective technique: a spangly word-portrait that has a real sense of wonder bursting off every page. At its worst, it gets in the way, blinding the reader to Clute's wildly detailed imaginings."[10]

Bibliography

Criticism

  • Strokes [1966-1986] (Serconia Press, 1988), ISBN 0-934933-03-0
  • Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews [1987-1993] (Serconia Press, 1996) [title page misdated], ISBN 0-934933-05-7 (hardcover), ISBN 0-934933-06-5 (paper)
  • Scores [1993–2003] (Beccon Publications, 2003), ISBN 1-870824-47-4
  • The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror (Payseur & Schmidt, 2006), ISBN 0-9789114-0-7
  • Canary Fever (Beccon Publications, 2009), ISBN 978-1-870824-56-9
  • Pardon This Intrusion: Fantastika in the World Storm (Beccon Publications, 2011), ISBN 978-1-870824-60-6
  • Stay (Beccon Publications, 2014), ISBN 9781-870824-63-7

Fiction

References

  1. ^ John Clute at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  2. ^ a b c d e Davis, Matthew John Clute: Yakfests of the Empyrean 21 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Strange Horizons, 18 September 2006.
  3. ^ a b Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan (March 1997). "The Critic". Science Fiction Studies. Greencastle, IN: DePauw University. 24 (71): 139–149. ISSN 0091-7729.
  4. ^ a b c Di Filippo, Paul (18 June 2001). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 25 March 2009. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  5. ^ "Notable Books", The New York Times, 3 December 2002]
  6. ^ Langford, David (24 March 2017). "Statistics". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  7. ^ Clute, John. "John Clute CV". Johnclute.co.uk. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  8. ^ . Locus Online. 27 September 2009. Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  9. ^ a b Bailey, Hilary (24 June 1977). "What we see, what we miss". Tribune. London. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  10. ^ a b Brooke, Keith (17 November 2001). "Appleseed by John Clute". Infinity Plus. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  11. ^ Clute, John (25 January 1999). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 13 January 2008. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  12. ^ Clute, John (31 October 2005). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  13. ^ Clute, John (22 September 1997). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 19 December 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  14. ^ Clute, John (2 December 2002). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 8 March 2008. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  15. ^ Clute, John (23 January 2006). . SciFi.com. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  16. ^ Clute, John (1996). Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 0-85323-820-0.
  17. ^ a b Barber, Douglas (March–April 1998). "SFRA Review". SFRA Review. Science Fiction Research Association (232): 9–11. ISSN 1068-395X.
  18. ^ Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1993). "Clute, John (Frederick)". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St Martin's Griffin. p. 239. ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
  19. ^ Mathew, David (2001). "Losing Our Amnesia: an interview with John Clute". Infinity Plus. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  20. ^ a b Horton, Rich (2001). "Appleseed". SF Site. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  21. ^ Wessells, Henry (March 2007). "The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror by John Clute". The New York Review of Science Fiction. Pleasantville, NY: Dragon Press. 19 (223): 4, 5. ISSN 1052-9438.
  22. ^ Snider, John C. (March 2002). . Scifi Dimensions. Archived from the original on 17 October 2012. Retrieved 31 August 2012.

External links

January 26, 2023
john, clute, john, frederick, clute, born, september, 1940, canadian, born, author, critic, specializing, science, fiction, fantasy, literature, lived, both, england, united, states, since, 1969, been, described, integral, part, science, fiction, history, perh. John Frederick Clute born 12 September 1940 1 is a Canadian born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969 He has been described as an integral part of science fiction s history 2 and perhaps the foremost reader critic of sf in our time and one of the best the genre has ever known 3 He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982 2 the others included Malcolm Edwards Colin Greenland Roz Kaveney and David Pringle John CluteBornJohn Frederick Clute 1940 09 12 12 September 1940 age 82 CanadaOccupationAuthor critic writerLanguageEnglishGenreNon fiction novelsClute s articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1960s He is a co editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with Peter Nicholls and of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy with John Grant as well as the author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science Fiction all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Related Work a category for nonfiction He earned the Pilgrim Award bestowed by the Science Fiction Research Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship in 1994 Clute is also author of the collections of reviews and essays Strokes Look at the Evidence Essays and Reviews Scores Canary Fever and Pardon This Intrusion His 2001 novel Appleseed a space opera was noted for its combination of ideational fecundity and combustible language 4 and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 5 In 2006 Clute published the essay collection The Darkening Garden A Short Lexicon of Horror The third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with David Langford and Peter Nicholls was released online as a beta text in October 2011 and has since been greatly expanded it won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2012 The Encyclopedia s statistics page reported that as of 24 March 2017 Clute had authored the great majority of articles 6 421 solo and 1 219 in collaboration totalling over 2 408 000 words more than double in all cases those of the second most prolific contributor David Langford 6 The majority of these are Author entries but there are also some Media entries notably that for Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens Clute was a Guest of Honour at Loncon 3 the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention from 14 to 18 August 2014 Contents 1 Personal life 2 Career 2 1 Reviewing 2 2 Excessive candour 2 3 Writing style 3 Critical reception 4 Bibliography 4 1 Criticism 4 2 Fiction 5 References 6 External linksPersonal life EditRaised in Canada Clute lived in the United States from 1956 until 1964 He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at New York University in 1962 while living with writer and artist Pamela Zoline Clute married artist Judith Clute in 1964 7 He has been the partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996 8 Career EditClute s first professional publication was a long science fictional poem entitled Carcajou Lament which appeared in TriQuarterly in 1959 His first short story one of his few was A Man Must Die which appeared in New Worlds in 1966 In 1960 he served as Associate Editor of Collage a Chicago based slick magazine which ran only two issues it published early work by Harlan Ellison and R A Lafferty During the 1960s and 70s he appeared chiefly in NEW WORLDS becoming an important contributor of essays and reviews In 1977 Clute published his first novel The Disinheriting Party Allison amp Busby Though not explicitly a fantasy this story of a dysfunctional family has a fantasy feel rather like much postmodern literature Reviewer Ifdary Bailey wrote that this everyday story of family life in a revenge tragedy of relations and revelations hidden identities and loss of identity incest and inheritance all brooded over by the Father Who Will Not Die carries itself forward swiftly and surely to its conclusion with strength and control 9 Clute s second novel Appleseed 2001 is the story of trader Nathanael Freer who pilots an AI helmed starship named Tile Dance en route to the planet Eolhxir to deliver a shipment of nanotechnological devices Freer meets a man calling himself Johnny Appleseed who rejoins Freer with his lost lover Ferocity Monthly Niece Meanwhile a terrifying data destroying plaque is threatening the galaxy s civilizations Clute has proposed it as the first novel in a trilogy Science fiction and fantasy author Paul Di Filippo called it a space opera for the 21st century 4 Keith Brooke suggested that Clute himself would be the best reviewer for this multilayered novel 10 Reviewing Edit Clute s first significant science fiction reviews appeared in the late 1960s in New Worlds 2 He has reviewed fiction and nonfiction in such periodicals as Interzone the Los Angeles Times The Magazine of Fantasy amp Science Fiction The New York Review of Science Fiction The Observer Omni The Times Literary Supplement The Washington Post and elsewhere some of these writings appeared in his early collection Strokes Though Clute is chiefly known for his critiques of fiction he has also reviewed other modes such as film His language can be as blunt and amusing as it is honest some review columns have such titles as Nonsense is what good adventure SF makes silk purses out of 11 Prometheus Emphysema 12 An empty bottle An empty mind An empty book 13 Book of the Mouth 14 and Mage Sh t 15 Excessive candour Edit Clute has issued a polemic he calls the Protocol of Excessive Candour which argues that reviewers of science fiction and fantasy must not pull punches because of friendship Reviewers who will not tell the truth are like cholesterol They are lumps of fat They starve the heart I have myself certainly clogged a few arteries have sometimes kept my mouth shut out of friendship which is nothing in the end but self interest So perhaps it is time to call a halt Perhaps we should establish a Protocol of Excessive Candour a convention within the community that excesses of intramural harshness are less damaging than the hypocrisies of stroke therapy that telling the truth is a way of expressing love self love love of others love for the genre which claims to tell the truth about things that count love for the inhabitants of the planet love for the future Because the truth is all we ve got And if we don t talk to ourselves and if we don t use every tool at our command in our time on Earth to tell the truth nobody else will 3 16 17 His review column of this name began at Science Fiction Weekly and moved to Sci Fi Wire Writing style Edit Contributing the essay on himself for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Clute wrote that his criticism despite some curiously flamboyant obscurities remains essentially practical it has appeared mostly in the form of reviews some of considerable length 18 He told an interviewer The connections between one sentence and another may be a couple of layers down in terms of the metaphors implied or stated And that is not the way English tends to be written but it is the way I tend instinctively to write When it goes off it can get absurdly pretentious it s all various lines of harmony and no music but when it doesn t it can be the way that somebody who is at the dawn of a language might feel 19 Matthew Davis has written Clute stands out not just because of the depth and breadth of his knowledge but also for the individuality of his writing even the most formal sentence plucked from one of his scholastic works is readily identifiable due to his individual judgement and style 2 SF Site s Rich Horton agreed that Clute is a man known first and foremost as a critic and moreover a man known for his formidable intelligence and vocabulary and his enjoyment in wielding both anyone familiar with John Clute s critical work will know that his prose is not simple though it is precise and at its best exhilarating 20 Author Henry Wessells in a review of The Darkening Garden wrote Those of us who might wish for a minim of Johnsonian directness a single direct statement like a whack to the head whether as starting point or as conclusion really should know better by now Clute is the master of periphrasis and the circling reiterated metaphor employing pyrotechnic diction to summon insights that are at once calculated and spontaneous What is clear from The Darkening Garden is that Clute has read and internalized a vast range of books and cites them with accuracy and precision 21 Critical reception EditHilary Bailey reviewing The Disinheriting Party wrote Clute s comic timing is always right and like a good racehorse he keeps his wind to the end Around the strange events the undying father who impregnates his wives and children with strange fruit the identities hidden even from the people themselves the changes of location from New York to Lambeth to the ghastly death ship on which characters crouch and mumble John Clute keeps his footing playing over them the strong light of an individual imagination Images and metaphors as in poetry accrete occur and recur with not a word wasted It is hardedged and brilliant but it may be that John Clute in trying to avoid slop sentiment and longueurs is galloping too hard Choosing a complicated plot he may be making the story go too fast to sustain the weight of imagery he puts on it moving too quickly to reveal everything he idiosyncratically sees 9 Describing Clute s criticism Davis has written When his criticism first appeared in New Worlds his essays were typical of the controversial New Wave fiction they accompanied they were counter cultural implicitly anti American deliberately stylized and they introduced both intellectual jargon and four letter words SF writers desperately wanting their reviewers to shill for them found that Clute s intellectual acumen seemed to be demoting the writers primacy and appropriating their creative fire SF reviewing has often had a strong tendency to be plot oriented or to gush over technological content whereas Clute s recensions of plot tended to make him appear effortlessly superior to the plodding book in hand and his expansive loquacity and highly dramatic style of writing could arouse hostile feelings of inferiority in SF fans Clute knew that SF was not only worthy of real criticism but that it needed it Clute said that Canadian SF writers like A E Van Vogt and Gordon Dickson wrote about protagonists afflicted with the burden of guiding humanity up the evolutionary ladder and it might be said that Clute has undertaken a similar responsibility for SF s understanding of itself 2 In a review of Look at the Evidence Douglas Barbour exhorts the reader Find this book You won t be sorry and admires Clute s continuing capacity to oversee the field every year his willingness to at least check out the dross as well as engage the golden few Many of us who read so much genre stuff come to a point or so at least I suspect of casual acquaintance and so give fairly enjoyment oriented reviews that simply say if you like this kind of thing you will like this one That Clute has read so much and refused to lower his standards one iota is remarkable That he continues to publish his opinions with such wit and style is our great good luck We need him But we can also enjoy him 17 Clute had gained a reputation as a critic before his second novel appeared and some reviewers admitted that they found it difficult to read others found it intimidating to review as though trying carried the jeopardy of being found failing Paul Di Filippo was excited by Appleseed writing This book sits at the top of the mountain of achievement in postmodern space opera that has gone before commenting on all its predecessors not coincidentally the name of the vanished alien elders in the book itself while adding its glittering capstone to the peak Any reader with even a passing familiarity with SF will unpack scores of allusions in this novel and not only to SF but to much other pop culture and literature layering skin upon skin of meaning to the reading experience much as the world Klavier itself is formed onion style 4 Some reviewers were of two minds Read this book for the often intoxicating pleasure of the prosody though to some people s taste it may be simply too much of a good thing Or read it for the heavily recomplicated and well imagined if hard to follow details of the setting and technology Or for the sense of a truly different future Or for the occasional funny dialogue particularly that of Mamselle Cunning Earth Link the most intriguingly depicted character At times I thought I detected echoes of Alfred Bester in particular 20 John C Snider similarly suggested Future Classic or Total Gibberish It s a bold energetic pouring out of Clute s vision of a future civilization in which social display is an obsession and where the line between style and substance is blurred And that s Appleseed s biggest problem While Clute writes in a poetic and wildly evocative fashion he sacrifices style for substance Appleseed comes across as a peyote powered academic experiment a fusion of William S Burroughs Naked Lunch and Lewis Carroll s Jabberwocky It s never really clear what s going on or to what end but it sounds really cool 22 and Keith Brooke wrote This is not an over written novel it s an intensely written one At its best it s a fantastically effective technique a spangly word portrait that has a real sense of wonder bursting off every page At its worst it gets in the way blinding the reader to Clute s wildly detailed imaginings 10 Bibliography EditCriticism Edit Strokes 1966 1986 Serconia Press 1988 ISBN 0 934933 03 0 Look at the Evidence Essays and Reviews 1987 1993 Serconia Press 1996 title page misdated ISBN 0 934933 05 7 hardcover ISBN 0 934933 06 5 paper Scores 1993 2003 Beccon Publications 2003 ISBN 1 870824 47 4 The Darkening Garden A Short Lexicon of Horror Payseur amp Schmidt 2006 ISBN 0 9789114 0 7 Canary Fever Beccon Publications 2009 ISBN 978 1 870824 56 9 Pardon This Intrusion Fantastika in the World Storm Beccon Publications 2011 ISBN 978 1 870824 60 6 Stay Beccon Publications 2014 ISBN 9781 870824 63 7Fiction Edit The Disinheriting Party Allison and Busby 1977 ISBN 0 85031 134 9 Appleseed Orbit 2001 ISBN 1 85723 758 7References Edit John Clute at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database a b c d e Davis Matthew John Clute Yakfests of the Empyrean Archived 21 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine Strange Horizons 18 September 2006 a b Csicsery Ronay Istvan March 1997 The Critic Science Fiction Studies Greencastle IN DePauw University 24 71 139 149 ISSN 0091 7729 a b c Di Filippo Paul 18 June 2001 Appleseed SF s premier critic stands on the shoulders of Cordwainer Smith and A E van Vogt to explore a new universe SciFi com Archived from the original on 25 March 2009 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Notable Books The New York Times 3 December 2002 Langford David 24 March 2017 Statistics The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Retrieved 3 April 2017 Clute John John Clute CV Johnclute co uk Retrieved 25 August 2012 John Clute Fantastika Locus Online 27 September 2009 Archived from the original on 5 October 2012 Retrieved 25 August 2012 a b Bailey Hilary 24 June 1977 What we see what we miss Tribune London Retrieved 30 August 2012 a b Brooke Keith 17 November 2001 Appleseed by John Clute Infinity Plus Retrieved 30 August 2012 Clute John 25 January 1999 Excessive Candour Nonsense is what good adventure SF makes silk purses out of SciFi com Archived from the original on 13 January 2008 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Clute John 31 October 2005 Excessive Candour Prometheus Emphysema SciFi com Archived from the original on 7 January 2008 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Clute John 22 September 1997 Excessive Candour An empty bottle An empty mind An empty book SciFi com Archived from the original on 19 December 2007 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Clute John 2 December 2002 Excessive Candour Book of the Mouth SciFi com Archived from the original on 8 March 2008 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Clute John 23 January 2006 Excessive Candour Mage Sh t SciFi com Archived from the original on 7 January 2008 Retrieved 28 August 2013 Clute John 1996 Look at the Evidence Essays and Reviews Liverpool Liverpool University Press pp 3 4 ISBN 0 85323 820 0 a b Barber Douglas March April 1998 SFRA Review SFRA Review Science Fiction Research Association 232 9 11 ISSN 1068 395X Clute John Nicholls Peter 1993 Clute John Frederick The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction New York St Martin s Griffin p 239 ISBN 0 312 13486 X Mathew David 2001 Losing Our Amnesia an interview with John Clute Infinity Plus Retrieved 30 August 2012 a b Horton Rich 2001 Appleseed SF Site Retrieved 30 August 2012 Wessells Henry March 2007 The Darkening Garden A Short Lexicon of Horror by John Clute The New York Review of Science Fiction Pleasantville NY Dragon Press 19 223 4 5 ISSN 1052 9438 Snider John C March 2002 Book Review Appleseed by John Clute Scifi Dimensions Archived from the original on 17 October 2012 Retrieved 31 August 2012 External links EditOfficial website The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction third edition John Clute at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database John Clute at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction John Clute at the Encyclopedia of Fantasy Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title John Clute amp oldid 1135160868, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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