Science Fiction : search and destroy

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

Yeah like Dune or the Lord of the Rings.

Why the Dune hate? Dune and Bill the Galactic Hero are among my favorite SF parodies.

I don't hate Dune, but I don't think it's particularly interesting or well-written sci-fi classic.

No feelings on Bill the Galactic Hero?

Never read it. Not a big Harrison fan.

It's very different from Make Room Make Room -- I wouldn't recognize it as coming from the same author. Give it a shot! Quite fun.

I can't say I hate Dune either but I've also never finished it haha

yeah it isn't particularly well written

Lynch's movie version is fun tho

Dune's also one of those books which inspired way too much overlong crap.

I thought it was a parody of overlong crap! Shorter than Infinite Jest, anyway.

wait you thought Dune was a parody?

if so those are some shitty jokes

nerd humor! (talking bout both dune and infinite jest)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

WHAT A KNEESLAPPER

Dune's also one of those books which inspired way too much overlong crap.

totally agree with this btw (and same w/LOTR obviously, altho I genuinely love those books). So many people took it as a sign that if they developed ponderously long stories about a ridiculously detailed fantasy world that the resulting book would be a wonder for all to behold instead of unreadable shit.

Dune is pretty good by itself, but I think I'm better off having just read the one book and none of the sequels. From what I've heard, you don't really get much more out of it until you read at least the next three or four, and I just don't have the attention span for that much Dune right now.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."

I thought he was goofing on scientology engram purging ninja mysticism.

OH MY SIDES

why sci-fi pre-1960 was so ridiculously great and why post-oh 1975 or so it is so not that great
Here's one theory, with a different cut-off date: http://www.conceptualfiction.com/moon_landing_and_sci_fi.html

I hear Frank Herbert absolutely killed at the Chuckle Hut back in the early 60s

xp I don't buy that theory though.

Then I'm afraid we are going to have to administer some rough lunar justice and put you out of the airlock.

That beats reading Infinite Jest.

Sorry if my comment was a bit, um, harsh.

I got into magazine SF in the 80s and it's still my one of favorite eras, so I can't buy that everything post-75 blows. There was a generation of new writers who may have been better at short fiction than massive trilogies. My recommendations from around that time period:

Lucius Shepard- Life During Wartime, The Jaguar Hunter, Ends of the Earth (Not sure why this guy isn't more well known.)
Kim Stanley Robinson- The Wild Shore, Remaking History
Howard Waldrop- All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
Connie Willis- Firewatch, Impossible Things
Michael Swanwick- In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Stations in the Tide, Gravity's Angels
Nancy Kress- Beggars in Spain
Bruce Sterling- Crystal Express, Globalhead
Maureen F. McHugh- China Mountain Zhang
Terry Bisson- Bears Discover Fire

anyone read ken mcleod?

Yep, read Cosmonaut Keep. Didn't think much of it, so didn't bother with the sequels.

Anyone into David Bryn? The two of his I've read were extremely enjoyable.

xpost: I read an anthology of Howard Waldrop's short stories from the library (Them Bones, I think), which were really about as good as the genre gets, and really haven't seen much since - why isn't this guy better known?

Probably because people who write mostly short fiction get overlooked.

You're probably right. He came along too early to be in McSweeny's/

You like the Them Bones that much? I have a copy around here and now I will definitely read it sooner.

Not a huge fan of David Brin but i dig his Uplift books to an extent just cos i really like the idea of talking chimps and dolphins.

The Waldrop anthology was "Night of the Cooters", which is a crap title, but a great collection. "Them Bones" is a novella, and it's also pretty damn good, but not as dazzling as the anthology.

Waldrop has always been known as a 'writer's writer' iirc. For some reason I have it in my head that he makes his bread and butter on TV writing and such.

Haven't really enjoyed the Brin I've read, but all the Greg Bear I've read, speaking of four-letter 'B' authors, has been worthwhile.

Waldrop's stories have a very loose, ragged style, and he has a sentimental streak a mile wide. They work best when you read one or two of them in an multi-writer anthology or a magazine.

Dunno why I thought it was 'Bryn' and not 'Brin'.

You thought he was Welsh?

picked up Shockwave Rider from Borderlands on Sunday and so far (ie, the first 25 pages) its fantastic

Sweet. Did I read you right above that only Brunner you've read before this was Stand On Zanzibar? Cuz you should definitely try to find Sheep Look Up and Squares of the City as well.

oh I forgot about Squares of the City, yeah I've read that - the chess one. Sheep Look Up was the other one the Borderlands guy recommended, but they didn't have that. I thought Stand on Zanzibar was okay, kinda lazy wrt characterization, but Shockwave Rider seems to sidestep that issue so far (helps to have a main character who's just a cipher - altho the guy-with-multiple-identities on the run in a wacky post-apocalyptic world totally reminds me of Jerry Cornelius, in a good way)

I really like Stand (just finished it recently as a matter of fact) but the two leads are probably the weakest part. He fell in love with that multi-character/sidebar saturated structure btw for a bunch of his other books (it appears in Sheep and Jagged Orbit--I've not read the latter, but I've heard its quite good as well, IIRC its his meditation on race.)

Search: Nymphomation by Jeff Noon, pretty much anything by Jeff Noon.

Destroy: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Homophobic, misogynistic and pretty much all round shit.

I love Jeff Noon and am always surprised that he doesn't seem so well known in sci-fi circles. He's kinda diminishing returns tho - output has slowed considerably and he's been kinda recycling ideas for the last few books.

lolz my wife is re-reading Heinlen's Stranger at the moment and said the same thing (we both liked it as young'uns but as an oldster I can't get past Heinlein's politics)

The Scribner's Juveniles are fantastic though. (This used to be er a fairly common opinion in SF circles I guess.)

Noon's good stuff is all so 90s (maybe some of it is millenial, charitably) — the last one I bought new was that road trip one, I was like 19, I had actually completely forgotten about its existence until this moment

I have just read Altered Carbon, 'cause someone pressed a copy on me 'cause I professed a liking for The Steel Remains; though now I look this isn't the SF thread where ppl were talking about that — so nevermind, I guess

I have just read Christopher Priest's A Dream of Wessex which I thought was okay and then I saw something online that suggested it was meant to be read as metafictional and then I realised if anything that makes it slightly worse. I am now reading an anthology for Faber he edited about the same time, and jeez, it really does seem like all the SF writers in the UK just all decided to ... give up ... around 1975. Like, I've read good stuff by Robert Sheckley and Bob Shaw, stuff that would never suggest they're capable of anything as bad as Shaw's story in this, which starts with the rather terrible -

"The retro-thrusters were unpleasantly fierce in operation, setting up vibrations which Bernard Harben could feel in his chest cavity."

- and within a page Bernard Harben is putting moves on his female companion -

"'Let's claim this planet tonight,' he said, referring to a secret game in which love-making established their title to any place in which it occurred.

Her pale lips parted slightly, giving him the answer he wanted."

I couldn't get more than 10 pages into Altered Carbon. total crap.

recylced sci-fi as noir ideas - hard-boiled hero with a grim past, a mysterious heroine-in-distress, lots of babble about genetic engineering biotech blah blah blah. so lame

re: the UK - Moorcock and Ballard cranked out good shit well past '75. Noon's kinda the only recent UK writer I had any time for tho

lolz my wife is re-reading Heinlen's Stranger at the moment and said the same thing (we both liked it as young'uns but as an oldster I can't get past Heinlein's politics)

― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:22 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha im glad i never made it thru the first 20 pages

ps i just read inverted world by christopher priest in basically one sitting and it ROCKED.