Looking for totally strange outrageous original writing!

Status
Not open for further replies.

robotamadeus

Banned
Joined
Nov 9, 2009
Messages
14
Reaction score
0
im looking for something that totally defies categorization and is totally off the wall and inovative. something maybe like the MATRIX on acid mixed with ALICE IN WONDERLAND. or anything that is very original and goes to strange heights. anyobdy know any books out there, science fiction or other wise that are just very unique? thanks alot!
 

Kitty Pryde

i luv you giant bear statue
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 7, 2008
Messages
9,090
Reaction score
2,165
Location
Lost Angeles
House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski--I can't really describe it, but it's very weird and it will make you start thinking weird things. It's not horror but it's quite scary.

Palimpsest, by Catherynne Valente--sexually transmitted cities. Nuff said.

The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde--sci-fi mystery fantasy literary novel, where novel characters escape from their own books and plot devices are for sale, cheap.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, Italo Calvino--it's a book about reading a book called If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which is a book about reading a book called If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which is a book about...

Appleseed, by John Clute--this is space opera very well disguised as something crazy

The Big U, Neal Stephenson--basically a huge battle within a university, RP nerds versus cheerleaders vs faculty vs giant radioactive rats
 

Stormhawk

Angry Bunny Girl
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 6, 2006
Messages
1,191
Reaction score
117
Location
In my head.
Website
www.requirecookie.com
...I'm just wondering about the redundancy of mixing Matrix with Alice in Wonderland when it's admittedly a cyberpunk adaptation, that it's frequently referenced, that it's a large part of the story shaping mythology and naming conventions...
 

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
Have you read Paul Park's Starbridge Trilogy or Celestis and J.G. Ballard's Unlimited Dream Company?

I second Dhalgren, and several other things by Samuel Delaney would also fit the description - I liked The Einstein Intersection and The Balland of Beta Two.
 

Miriel

New kid, be gentle!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 4, 2010
Messages
552
Reaction score
62
There's a book called "The Carpetmakers" that messed with my head. It's also the only non-English SF book I think I've ever read -- the author's German, but TOR printed a wonderful translation of it.
 

CScottMorris

On a coffee fueled writing spree!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
266
Reaction score
17
Location
Deep in Debt
Website
cscottmorrisbooks.com
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanDermeer.
Surreal dark fantasy with a touch or steampunk and horror. Beautifully lush, dark prose. Many times I stopped reading just to say a line out loud and savor the language, or to pause and digest a scene.
China Mieville called it unsettling, and if Mieville found it unsettling, it must be messed up indeed.
 

Fulk

Occasional Contributer
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 2, 2008
Messages
571
Reaction score
40
Location
Illinois
If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, Italo Calvino--it's a book about reading a book called If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which is a book about reading a book called If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which is a book about...

I've been meaning to pick up this book. One of my professors read an excerpt from it, and I thought it was absolutely hilarious.
 

Sai

Book lover/Spy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
2,392
Reaction score
394
Location
Back home
Website
www.kuri-ousity.com
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears- a mystery in 1663 England and told from four different points of view. What makes it crazy is how drastically the book changes depending on whose head you're in.

Pale Fire by Vladamir Nabokov-A novel that's made up of an epic poem and one man's massive commentary on said poem, and footnotes. I love House of Five Leaves, but it's pretty clear that the author took a lot of his ideas from Pale Fire.
 

RobJ

Banned
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
2,678
Reaction score
306
If you're interested in short fiction you could always try The Dedalus Book of Surrealism: The Identity of Things, but it won't suit everyone. Probably a touch more palatable would be the collections by Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories and Sixty Stories.
 

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
I've been meaning to pick up this book. One of my professors read an excerpt from it, and I thought it was absolutely hilarious.
It's a great concept of a book. In practice I couldn't keep reading it because it was like reading one fanfic after another where the author wrote a single chapter and quit, and the rest would never exist.
 

Lhun

New kid, be gentle!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
1,956
Reaction score
137
The laundry novels by Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum)

It's kind of The Office meets a Le Carré spy thriller with a liberal sprinkle of lovecraftian monsters. And interdimensional Nazis.
 

JimmyB27

Hoopy frood
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
Messages
5,623
Reaction score
925
Age
42
Location
In the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable e
Website
destinydeceived.wordpress.com
Anything by Robert Rankin. The first book of his I read (The Greatest Show OFf Earth) began with the hero being abducted by a flying starfish from Uranus to be sold as a delicacy on Venus, continued with a circus that drifts between planets on a Victorian steamship, an end times cult that worships the demonic half-chicken, half-man Sate-hen, and ends with Egyptian gods, a Harley Davidson, and a George Thorogood soundtrack.
Bloody loopy, but awesome.
 

parentj777

Squalms have no place here!
Registered
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Location
Texas
Weaveworld by Clive Barker... pretty much what u are looking for!
 

Paradox11

Registered
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Messages
10
Reaction score
0
Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.

Totally peerless. Has been described as 'Shakespeare on acid.'
 
Status
Not open for further replies.