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Can anyone remember any science fiction titles/writers which Burroughs read and/or thought highly of?

So far we've got:

-"Mind Parasites" by Colin Wilson. I haven't read it yet but "The Occult" by Wilson was an interesting book, if somewhat dated.(Thanks to Supervert for posting the Burroughs' review of this book)
-"Raga Six" by Frank Lauria, has anyone read this?
-"The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. A classic, ahead of its time of course.
-William Gibson (probably "Neuromancer" among others)
-"Fury" by Henry Kuttner
-Eric Frank Russell (not sure which ones)
-the "Berserker" series by Fred Saberhagen
-

Got any more?

I'm pretty sure William also read at least some books by P.K. Dick but I can't varify this. Dick, as I recall, thought highly of Burroughs' work, however this doesn't necessarily guarantee that the feeling was mutual.
My personal favorites by Dick are "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said" and "A Maze of Death".

The as above goes for Robert Anton Wilson. Who I know thought highly of Burroughs, wrote cut-ups and about cut-ups, and I believe was a member of the Nova Convention panel. However, there is no edvidence that Burroughs read any of Wilson's books. My favorites by Wilson are "The Illuminatus! Trilogy", "Masks of the Illuminati", and "The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy".

Does anyone know anything quality-wise about Stanislaw Lem besides the fact that he wrote "Solaris", which as everyone should know was made into an excellent film by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Glad to be a member of this community at last and a lurker no longer.

Cheers,
Dan

I know that William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, is a fan of William S. Burroughs, and when they met each other, Burroughs said to Gibson that he loved his work. William Gibson thinks highly of Burroughs and he is one of his most important influences, has he said.
I only read Neuromancer for the moment, but it is a very good book which can remind easily of some works of Burroughs.

I posted a little paragraph about S. Lem under 'Who Are The Greatest Living Writers?", Mr. P. Maybe that will help.

I know he liked some of the older sci fi writers like Henry Kuttner and Eric Frank Russell. Vale published a long reading list of his at one time. Maybe someone can track that down.

I read Raga Six on Burroughs's rec and I enjoyed it. I remember he also liked the original Conan, and Saberhagen's Beserker books.

"fury" by henry kuttner was a book he mentioned more than once - see the interview with allen ginsberg as an afterword to a one-volume edition of soft machine, nova express and wild boys published by grove in the early 80's.

i also remember him mentioning eric frank russell - can't remember specific titles.

While listening to one of the excellent audio files downloaded from archive.org of Burroughs speaking at the On the Road: Jack Kerouac Conference July, 1982, I heard something interesting:

A member of the audience questions Burroughs on whether or not he has read "Bladerunner", which the member incorrectly attributes to Philip K. Dick (the book in question being of course "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). When Burroughs realizes the audience members' mistake he clearly states "I haven't read that book. I read the original 'Bladerunner'...I didn't read Dickie's book. I don't like...I'm not very fond of his work, frankly, not that I know it very well..." He briskly moves to the next question.

That makes my speculation as to whether Burroughs thought highly of Dick's books solved. His use of the nickname 'Dickie' seems to suggest that had been acquainted (which is easy to verify I believe, maybe there is even a photo of them together?) but the quote clearly states that he didn't particularly like Dick's work or at very least wasn't too familiar with it.

Cheers,
Dan

I was in the audience, and I remember that well. It confirmed my own feelings about Dick's work. I have a number of friends who really love his stuff, but for the life of me I have yet to find anything engaging. I do usually like the film adaptations, and I know Burroughs really liked the film Bladerunner.

I'm in much the same position. I think Dick's SF, like a lot of SF, is actually more interesting to read about than actually read. Philosophically and theologically his work is interesting, but the writing itself fails to hold my attention for long. There are exceptions, of course: "A Maze of Death" is one of my favourite novels by any author, which I guess means it's a bit odd that more of his work doesn't appeal to me.

Agreed. I find Dick's style very pedestrian, like something out of Reader's Digest. But his imagination was astonishing. I don't admire his prose much, but his ideas stick with you long afterward, reverberating in your brain -- and that often makes me wonder if I underestimate his work in general. Maybe the lack of affect in his prose is a strategy that enables his ideas to stun? I wonder...

A great idea man--that's how a friend of mine described him. I haven't tried them yet, but others tell me that his later, gnosis books, when he went around the bend, are amazing.

A really great sci fi novel which I don't know if Burroughs knew about, but Ballard has cited as an influence is LIMBO by Bernard Wolfe.

Yes, the VALIS stuff is definitely interesting. A Scanner Darkly was fun, and I also happened to like Radio Free Albemuth. I've only read about ten of his books, though. How many did he publish? Fifty? Sixty?

From CONVERSATIONS WITH I came across this:

"There is very little science fiction I find that I can read."

"Very rarely does the author manage to convince you that it ever could have happened anywhere."

2 more he did like:
BLOODHYPE by Allan Dean Foster
WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD by Suzy McKee Charnas

One of the things that always puzzles me is how rarely WSB's name comes up in discussion of 20th Century SF, despite his influence on the genre. The Nova Trilogy clearly is SF (Burroughs concedes as much in The Ticket that Exploded) although, of course, it is much more besides. When Nova Express was published Michael Moorcock called it "the kind of science-fiction we've all been waiting for", but most of the entries on Burroughs that I read in science-fiction references books are sketchy at best. Some are downright grudging.

"The main problem with SF seems to be that even though we've had a lot of writers who are dealing with these really strange, remarkable ideas--black holes, the business about relativity and quantum mechanics, machine intelligence, the birth and death of the universe--the way they portray these ideas has been pretty old fashioned. If you're going to treat these really far out ideas seriously, you've got to be willing to try something different stylistically."

William Burroughs

Have any of you guys read KW Jeter's stuff. especially book like 'Dr Adder', 'The Glass Hammer', 'Farewell Horizontal' and his most recent 'Noir'?

'Dr Adder' defintely has the post-human, fascist mind-control, drug fucked thing going on, minus the drug-fucked word spew of WSB.

Jeter can meander a bit, but boy are some of his ideas fantastic.