Science Fiction : search and destroy

This does remind me that I didn't mention ENDER'S GAME, though...

Obviously they're not going to be Classics like EG, but I enjoyed them (at least until the fourth book got too bogged down in his universal love-mysticism crap, including the most recent two.

Destroy: the 40s. Peter F. Hamilton. lightsabers. aliens who look like humans in masks. The Handmaid's Tale.

Search: John Brunner's "Stand On Zanzibar", "The Shockwave Rider", and "The Sheep Look Up". RA Lafferty, Lem's "The Futuralogical Congress", Gene Wolfe, Neal Stephenson, Avram Davidson, Theodore Sturgeon, PKD, Ballard, John Shirley, Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land" (ONLY that Heinlein though), Ray Bradbury, Ian MacDonald (especially "Desolation Road"), LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War", any George R.R. Martin short story collection (look for "Sandkings"), Tim Powers, K.W. Jeter, Kim Stanley Robinson's Orange County and Mars trilogies, and any of the Damon Knight-edited "Orbit" short story collections.

Destroy: Most everything else.

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

yeah there's some randomly intriguing entries

World on a Wire sounds cool for example, anyone seen it?

Or 'Seconds'?

Both amazing, must-see films (and I hate Fassbinder)

seconds is so great

in addition to their being some external associations that add a certain resonance to it (Hudson's closeted gay life; film inducing a breakdown in Brian Wilson) it really is just incredibly striking visually and tonally; it is a genuinely disturbing film, probably Frankenheimer's best, and there are a lot of layers to it, about guilt, identity, our capacity for denial and self-delusion.

I love Fassbinder, WoW is good nuff

I wrote about Seconds

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/seconds

i didnt liek the 2nd southern reach book nearly as mcuh as the first

xpost Excellent Morbius coverage of the excellent and scary-ass Seconds.

i really got into the 2nd southern reach book's little details of a crumbling, half-mad bureaucracy, though it was slow at points

i'm not super into ancillary justice. it's now caught up with the "present" and i find it's plateaued a bit. but i'm still reading.

Just watched Seconds and really enjoyed it (apart from the excruciatingly drawn out naked grape party). Particularly liked the Kafkaesque Company halls.

haha yeah Morbz is otm about the pagan wine party fail

I also thought that the crumbling half-mad bureaucracy parts of Authority are really good. The family drama bits (and the associated reveals) though drag it down a bit. First book definitely stronger and I suspect that third will be weakest as I don't think there is a satisfying resolution here. Comparing it in my mind to the similarly structured Fifth Head of Cerberus and this pales.

after loving the first two southern reach books i am finding the third one a real slog

A couple of people have said that... I'm still waiting for my copy.

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.