Science Fiction : search and destroy

Oooh oooh oooh, it's way too early to actually anticipate, but Ridley Scott and The Forever War.

Would have been interesting if he had gone straight to that after Alien and Blade Runner for sure. But I'm actually liking the idea of Scott doing this now more for whatever reason.

I thought this was the thread that Ned (or someone) recommended THE PHOENIX AND THE MIRROR, but I guess its not. Anyway, I picked it up based on the recommendation and I enjoyed it a lot. So, thanks!

You're welcome! That might well have been me, given how much I love Davidson.

Okay I think after nearly 15 years of reading virtually nothing but sci-fi written prior to 1980 that I may have exhausted most of the good stuff. Has anything decent been done in the past 15 years? Anything to touch the best Ballard/Brunner/Disch/Silverberg/Tiptree/Wolfe? Any recommendations along those lines welcomed.

School Me On Some Sci-Fi My Astral Brothers And Sisters!

is the thread you're looking for for good recommendations

Light by John M. Harrison.

Also a slightly yawnsome re-recommendation of Bank's Culture books. They really do piss on most modern mainstream space opera though. Dan Simmons is interesting, but I suspect he might be a bit of a loon, and don't read his books if you're expecting explanations for stuff.

I quite like the Alistair Reynolds books.

Also Bester again even though it's at the top of the thread already.

Reynolds is okay, some good ideas and nicely bleak.

I tried reading a Neal Asher, can't remember the name, but gave up halfway because there hadn't been any half-way original concepts up to that point.

second the Light recommendation (altho Harrison is hardly a new writer and the book cribs a lot from earlier sci-fi concepts. still a lot of fun tho)

If you're looking for trashy fun there's always Peter F Hamilton, of course.

I haven't come across any decent new sci-fi writers in years, unless Victor Pelevin counts

Anyone read that newish Neal Stephenson?

I haven't come across any decent new sci-fi writers in years

Seems that fantasy's more in vogue for younger writers now.

Anyone read that newish Neal Stephenson?

Anathem by Neal Stephenson: Kinda Like 'The Name of the Rose' If It Were About Pythagoreans

Ick can't stand the one Simmons book I read. Banks is okay, I can imagine reading more of him. Also have heard people tout Ian McDonald although the one book I read by him years ago (Terminal Cafe) was pretty meh. Can Stephenson actually write now? His early stuff is rough going IIRC.

I'll look out for Light though.

Last 15 years of Hugo Award winners is not giving me much hope here.

read "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds recently and thought it was very good, quite Banks-like.

Anyone read that newish Neal Stephenson?

my wife really loved it. she's been a Stephenson stan since Cryptonomicron. I didn't read it but her description made it sound like Ursula K. Leguin crossed with Canticle for Liebowitz

blindsight by peter watts (originally recommended by james morrison, reading now, quite excellent)

Alex I share yr distaste for Stephenson's prose fwiw

"Seems that fantasy's more in vogue for younger writers now."

I have this suspicion that skills required to write SF are now more lucratively engaged in creating SF. Isn't Anathem supposed to be a kind of fanfiction for the Long Now foundation projects?

Steve Aylett's sci-fi/noir stuff is pretty good, kinda headache-inducing if you try to read too much at once

her description made it sound like Ursula K. Leguin crossed with Canticle for Liebowitz

Well I'm sold.

omar is right: Peter Watts is my favorite genre writer alive. Between his day job of helping with marine biology surveys he finds time to keep us all up to date with the terror of post-humanism that will befall us, as well as recent updates in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. The Rifters quadralogy is also very worthwhile.

All of Peter Watts books are available online under creative commons licence. I bought hard copies just to make sure he still writes for my personal benefit.

Peter Watt's site, with background on his 4 novels, and very, very good weblog he calls a newscrall.

I really enjoyed Anathem; my wife gave up after 40 pages or so.

Just finished Accelerando by Charles Stross, it was pretty ok.

Ha I just read that too. I liked the cat.

I haven't come across any decent new sci-fi writers in years, unless Victor Pelevin counts

Benjamin Rosenbaum? Tobias Buckell? The aforementioned Peter Watts?

Blindsight totally craps out by the end. but yeah, i appreciate v much that it's free online. any other good SF novels that i can read gratis? (cory doctorow doesn't count.)

Here's one: Greg Howell's Light on Shattered Water, one of the best alternative fiction novels I've ever read. I haven't read the prequel (Human Memoirs) or the sequel (Storms Over Open Fields) yet, though.

Blindsight is fantastic. Very chilly and creepy.

I've mostly been reading old stuff like Henry Kuttner/CL Moore lately. A good way of finding new writers is to pick up a recent Year's Best SF (the Dozois one.) If you like a story in there, then go check if the writer has any books out. That's how I found writers like Howard Waldrop, Terry Bisson, James Patrick Kelly, Lucius Shepard, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Nancy Kress, etc.

I wish Matthew Derby would write another book

"I've mostly been reading old stuff like Henry Kuttner/CL Moore lately."

Good move.

By the way if you want to read a great study of why sci-fi pre-1960 was so ridiculously great and why post-oh 1975 or so it is so not that great, I wholeheartedly recommend Barry Malzberg's Engines of the Night.

How about John G. Wright's Golden Age trilogy? I bought this in an omnibus and it looks like it'll be good.

On the old stuff tip, I've accumulated a pretty decent Cordwainer Smith library and I really need to start on those.

why sci-fi pre-1960 was so ridiculously great and why post-oh 1975

lolz but my favorite period is from '60-'85 or so

60-75 is still great (it's telling that I'm asking for recs like the best writers from that period not from prior), but I kind of agree with Malzberg that sci-fi is beginning to the sow the seeds of its eventual decline through there. Post-75, with a few exceptions, is basically the decline. What between 75-85 is so great (please don't say A Scanner Darkly lols)?

Er, Delany?

Okay I'm not going to argue that folks like Delany (or Dick, Pohl, Disch, Ballard, Silverberg, Tiptree, etc) were still putting out some great stuff post-75, but compared to stuff that most of them did prior to 75?

KW Jeter (Dr. Adder, Glass Hammer), first wave of cyberpunk (Sterling's Schismatrix, Gibson's Neuromancer), some of Moorcock's best stuff (The Condition of Muzak, The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century, The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius, The Entropy Tango, The Alchemist's Question, The Steel Tsar, The Dancers at the End of Time cycle, Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, etc), definitely PKD's last flurry of productivity (including what is probably my favorite - ie, the VALIS trilogy), JoAnna Russ' The Female Man, Frederick Pohl's best work (Jem is '79, Merchants' War is '84), WS Burroughs' last novels (which are pretty sci-fi... I'm sure there's more...

I'm not really into Delany

Okay most of that stuff I love (only Jeter can make the claim of being a post-75 talent--the rest are 50-60s through and through) but most of the first wave of cyberpunk is just so poorly written and obvious. Compare Neuromancer w/ Shockwave Rider or "The Girl Who Plugged In" or Dr. Adder, the former seems so tepid and hack-y.

that reminds me I'm kinda irritated I still haven't been able to locate a copy of Shockwave Rider... only Brunner I've read was Stand on Zanzibar, which was okay.

I do have a soft spot for early Bruce Sterling, but I haven't re-read any of the Gibson stuff in years (and I def. read that before I was aware of any precedents).

Other post-75 talent worth mentioning - Gene Wolfe, Jeff Noon, some other folks already mentioned. But I agree there's a massive dropoff in the last couple decades into bland, serialized tedium

but yeah no argument that almost everyone I cited has their roots in earlier eras, I just think they peaked later

I love Wolfe, but I don't think he ever came close to topping 5th Head.

"that reminds me I'm kinda irritated I still haven't been able to locate a copy of Shockwave Rider"

There was one at Aardvark for a while and another at Borderlands, although it might be gone now.

eh I should probably just get it from the library

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky were good. And Orson Scott Card may be a bit of a mentalist but I consider Ender's Game to be a classic.

it's one of those not-very-good classics though

lots and lots of not-compelling backstory and he's doubled-down on the vagueness.

I quite liked it, but it didn't have the real kick I was hoping for. And the explanation for all the weirdness is given in such an offhand way.

it felt like a prequel... huge letdown and not because it didn't explain enough imho... it just didn't seem have a good reason for existing

Lately I've read Lathe of Heaven -- turned off by the broad characterizations, especially of Lelache -- and After Doomsday -- so expository, and the blatant sexism. What classics are there that have more elegant purpose and characters that aren't flat stereotypes?

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Earth Abides by George Stewart

Lathe of Heaven is an odd one as it's basically a Philip K Dick pastiche. Not sure you could accuse The Left of Darkness of having broad stereotypes.

NYC MoMA retro "Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction" has some rarely screened stuff, like the Borges-written Invasión:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3855?locale=en

looks great, bunch of stuff I've never seen. (also some crap, of course, but what can ye do)

Must say I'm curious about this double feature:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3347?locale=en

me too

Haven't clicked. Is On the Silver Globe in there?

not much in English on Rat Savior, here's some

http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/11/Izbavitelj-review.html

http://fredanderson.typepad.com/my-blog/2013/11/the-rat-savior-krsto-papic-1976.html

mercifully no

xp

yeah after googling rat saviour and the damned thing i am pretty sold on that double feature

is colossus: the forbin project rare on a big screen?

p sure it screens in NY now and then, but too cultish to be a perennial

some of the shorts are revelatory; i had no idea there was a Soviet animated film of Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains." Which will be packed, cuz

The Quiet Earth. 1985. Directed by Geoff Murphy
Budet laskovyi dozhd (There Will Come Soft Rains). 1984. Directed by Nozim To’laho’jayev
Monday, August 14, 7:15 p.m.

Presented by astrophysicist
Neil deGrasse Tyson

That soviet bradbury is on youtube.

Not a substitute for the big screen, but for those not in ny.

Invasión is indeed uncanny (the synthetic bird noises!) but it's hardly sci-fi, more like an ultra-abstract political thriller.

Things can be both

It's been a while since I saw that movie but there were no sci-fi elements whatsoever iirc.

Plenty of tango, though, on the soundtrack.

I have just finally read Christopher Priest's Inverted World, discussed at some length earlier in this thread, and I really liked it but I have questions. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW: Can anyone who's read it weigh in on to what degree the physical effects of the "inverted world" described by Hellward (what a name) are "real" and to what degree they're the product of a consciousness warped by the effects of the weird energy field? Because there is some reference to the natives talking about "giants," which would suggest that the energy field has physical effects that are perceptible to people outside it as well as those inside it. But that doesn't quite seem to gibe with the ending, which more or less suggests that the effects are mostly on the perceptions of the people within the city, rather than on the physical world itself. Maybe it doesn't matter because Priest's main points are allegorical, but it did leave me wondering.