Science Fiction : search and destroy

Destroy: Anything by the disciples of Larry Niven.

Search: A Canticle For Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr.

Destroy: Frank Herbert

Films to Destroy - anything without bladerunner type shit that has black macs, sunglasses, street samurai, big guns, the net and is described using the word 'dystopian'

actually no - fuck that - lets go widescreen, vast fleets, intrigue and romance, secrets of the ancients, a gathering darkness, a prophecy, laser gunfights with alien bipeds with gnarly faces with names like XXZZ'NNKxQ or The Warlord Black Tanga

British libraries are chock-full of yellow SF shortstory collections from early '70s that shit on all of today's film-wannabe novels.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut gets a big fat yay.

Behold the Man by Moorcock rocked my world when I was a nipper. THese days I dunno if I'd be so impressed. Check out the Oswald Bastable stories though for the origins of Steampunk.

All the short fiction by J G Ballard. All of it bar none.

War with the Newts by Karel Capek

Iain m banks' culture novels. Among the best space operas ever written, although the last, 'Look to Windward' was a little dissappointing.

Dick, obviously.

My personal fave - R A Lafferty - try Not To Mention Camels or The Reefs of Earth for an introduction to this bizarre and beautiful writer.

Oh yes indeedy. Pohl and Kornbluth rock. (or are they more fifties?)

Destroy: most of Spider Robinson's books, late-period Asimov, PKD's super-overrated "The Man in the High Castle," all Heinlein.

An entertainingly bitchy insider's view: Thomas Disch's "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of."

Destroy Asimov (worst prose in SF, which is going some), Doc Smith (unless you are under 14).

Not that I'm not still overrun. Eleven hours and counting!

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

"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

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.

a mysterious heroine-in-distress

fyi there is no such character in this book

what did moorcock do SF-wise that late? those oscar-wilde-at-the-end-of-time books? they were amusing, i guess.

I think you're faulting the noir book for ... trying to be noir, you know? I know the idea's getting a little old. But there's some interesting ideas to it; the main idea is 'how can you complicate murder mystery books if you make your cast immune to death?' it is pretty flabby, though, and his fantasy novel's way better.

xposts there's the woman who spends pretty much the whole novel dead/in storage? There's at least two "mysterious femme fatale" types, though; that would have been a more accurate slam.

like I said I stopped after 10 pages. there was a woman, I remember that much haha

that stopped u in your tracks huh

I am currently enjoying China Mieville's The Scar.

re: Moorcock - loads of Jerry Cornelius books, the last of the Oswald Bastable books, all of the Fabulous Harbours books (I haven't read those), a couple Von Beck books, I think a few more of those Wildean End of Times books, etc. plus my favorite, the Pyat novels (altho calling those sci-fi is sorta stretching it).

he's one of my favorites obviously. he's turned out a fair amount of junk, but his meta-historical sci-fi stuff is almost always great imho.

i think you read the prologue/flashback and not the actual novel...it's basically a very violent, grisly science fiction novel as opposed to a detective story in space.

that stopped u in your tracks huh

*rimshot*

china mieville is dope

best recent noir sci-fi mashup to-date has been Aylett hands down

china mieville is dope

― ankles (s1ocki), Tuesday, December 1, 2009 6:42 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yep, and The Scar is his best book. Those Moorcock books (Dancers at the End of Time) are also my kind of shit.

at the very least, they are really funny

Crackling with great throwaway concepts as well.

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

please tell me there is no Shins connection

The album's title comes from a lyric in the second track, "One by One All Day", and alludes to a line from German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. In his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx blames religion for creating an "inverted world consciousness" that excuses mankind from self-responsibility.

marx will change your life

The Shins were actually referencing the Priest novel. Actually though Hegel was referencing the Shins record in the first place so what goes around &c.

Inverted World was awesome

seconded in a BIG way

The sequels to Altered Carbon are significantly better, but also increasingly over the top with deliberately sadistic ultraviolence. I think I've given up on Morgan, but haven't read 'The Steel Remains'.

Can y'all post the opening sentences to whatever great SF books you have lying around? I figure it's as good a thing as any for seeing if you want to read more.

Here's the opening to Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress:
"They sat stiffly on his antique Eames chairs, two people who didin't want to be here, or one person who didn't want to and one who resented the other's reluctance. Dr. Ong had seen this before. Within two minutes he was sure: the woman was the silently furious resister. She would lose. The man would pay for it later, in little ways, for a long time."

I liked the short story version better, but it's not bad, and the only other SF book I have here is Star Trek: Strike Zone by Peter David

i started IW in an airport in italy and finished it over the atlantic somewhere. the dislocation of travelling really added to it.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner:

"A THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Take 'em an inch and they'll give you a hell."

Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg

"It is nine minutes before sunrise in the great city of Ulan Bator, capital of the reconstituted world. FOr some time now Dr. Shadrach Mordecai has lain awake, restless and tense in his hammock, staring somberly at a glowing green circlet in the wall that is the shining face of his data screen. Red letters on the screen announce the new day:

MONDAY
14 May
2012"

I really need to read more Silverberg actually. I've read like a half-dozen of his books plus one short story collection, but I was just looking on wikipedia and there are at least half-a-dozen more that were Nebula/Hugo/blah blah nominees.

^^^yeah me too. The only stuff I've read of his were Majipoor Chronicles crap that I came across while in high school (totally unaware of his previous "pre-retirement" work)

M. John Harrison, The Course Of The Heart:

"When I was a tiny boy I often sat motionless in the garden, bathed in sunshine, hands flat on the rough brick of the garden path, waiting with a prolonged, almost painful expectation for whatever would happen, whatever event was contained by that moment, whatever revelation lay dormant in it."

Don't no where else to link this, but since he's been mentioned here by me and others:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html

My friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She worked her contacts to get in touch with civil rights lawyers in Michigan, and we mobilized with Caitlin Sweet (Peter's partner) and David Nickle (Peter's friend) and Peter was arraigned and bailed out later that day.

But now Peter faces a felony rap for "assaulting a federal officer" (Peter and the witness in the car say he didn't do a thing, and I believe them). Defending this charge will cost a fortune, and an inadequate defense could cost Peter his home, his livelihood and his liberty.

Peter's friends are raising money for his legal defense. I just sent him CAD$1,000, because this is absolutely my biggest nightmare: imprisoned in a foreign country for a trumped-up offense against untouchable border cops. I would want my friends to help me out if it ever happened to me.

Sf writer David Nickle writes,

Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.

Peter, a Canadian citizen, was on his way back to Canada after helping a friend move house to Nebraska over the weekend. He was stopped at the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan by U.S. border police for a search of his rental vehicle. When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating, restrained him and pepper sprayed him. At the end of it, local police laid a felony charge of assault against a federal officer against Peter. On Wednesday, he posted bond and walked across the border to Canada in shirtsleeves (he was released by Port Huron officials with his car and possessions locked in impound, into a winter storm that evening). He's home safe. For now. But he has to go back to Michigan to face the charge brought against him.

The charge is spurious. But it's also very serious. It could mean two years in prison in the United States, and a ban on travel in that country for the rest of Peter's life. Peter is mounting a vigorous defense, but it's going to be expensive - he's effectively going up against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he needs the best legal help that he can get.

He's got that help, courtesy of one of the top criminal lawyers in the State of Michigan. We, Peter's friends and colleagues here in Canada, want to make sure he gets the help he needs financially to come out of this nightmare whole.

The need for that help is real. While Peter is a critically successful science fiction writer, he is by no means a best-selling author. Without help, the weight of his legal fees could literally put him on the street by spring.

We can't let that happen. So there's going to be fundraising.

We're going to think of something suitable in the New Year - but immediately, anyone who wants to help can do so easily. Peter's website, rifters.com, has a link to a PayPal account, whimsically named the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund. He set it up years ago for fans of the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight and his Rifters books, to cover veterinary bills for the cats he habitually rescues from the mean streets of Toronto. Peter has made it clear that he doesn't want to use the veterinary money to cover his lawsuit. But until we can figure out a more graceful conduit for the legal fund, that's the best place to send donations for now. Just let Peter know that the donation's for his legal defense, and that's where it will go.

Here's the link to the backlist page on Peter's website, rifters.com, or you can just send a PayPal donation to don✧✧✧@rift✧✧✧.c✧✧.

The link to the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund is in the middle of the page. The page also links to Creative Commons editions of all his published work, which he's made available free. Peter would approve, we think, if you downloaded one or two or all of them. Whether you make a donation to the legal fund or not.

Holy shit!

craziness. just read blindsight, liked it a lot.

Watts' own account of the incident

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

update

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=935

Big image with chronological timeline of science fiction heavies:
http://i.imgur.com/FgDzZ.jpg

HA. The Children of Men joke is the same one we made on here 5 years ago.

^^^
ILX is the true prophet, and possibly also the Kwizat Haderach.

just read the house of suns by alastair reynolds - really fun super super epic scifi

now give me something else

I recently re-read Cat's Cradle and think it is a masterpiece but I'd guess everyone has read it.

there are about 1000 other reynolds books (ok, a dozen). Revelation Space is my favourite. Pushing Ice or The Prefect probably closest in feel to House Of Suns. possibly Chasm City. (i need to reread HoS and CC)

Existence by David Bryn is pretty good.

i read most of those other reynolds, not all of them did it for me but house of suns was great

All the Reynolds I've read have been good but not great.

hard sf i mean to get round to:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0e/Marrow_Book_Cover.jpg/200px-Marrow_Book_Cover.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/02/InTheOceanOfNight%281stEd%29.jpg/200px-InTheOceanOfNight%281stEd%29.jpg
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center_Saga)

er... that'll do for now.

i say hard, i mean epic (actress, bishop, etc)

In my second attempt to get through The Fall of Hyperion, it's such a slog compared to the first book.

The Fall was alright... Couldn't get through the Endymion books though. Simmons is a massively talented writer, but a very weird and inconsistent one.

The Terror, which is not really SF, is definitely the best thing I've read by him in the last decade.

I enjoyed Marrow. I really didn't like the sequel.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Inverted_World_cover.jpg

^^^amazing deconstruction/parody of hard sf

just got Charles Yu's "Sorry Please Thank You" from the library, haven't started yet

Wouldn't have described The Inverted World as hard sf parody meself. Not really sure what I would describe it as though.

I would describe it as mindblowing.

well it uh "inverts" all the standard tropes of hard sf. sorta like how Elric is an inversion of Conan

as Clute points out in his afterword, it initially lays out a standard hard sf approach of "that kind of science-fiction tale in which a clearly defined protagonist (almost always male) leaves his endangered home on a great adventure, during the course of which he begins to understand the true nature of his world and, through a clearly defined, science-based cognitive breakthrough, comes to grips with the danger that threatens it", but then goes in the entirely opposite direction

Shakey otm, actually

yeah i can see that, although ultimately i think that makes it not so much parody or deconstruction as just... not hard sf.

lol I see we already covered Inverted World upthread

been idly reading some of wife's old Anne McCaffrey books as well

Really digging Stephen Baxter's Voyage, an alternate history in which NASA heads to Mars immediately after Apollo. Very plausible and well thought-out

inverted world owns

if i loved the middle third of accelerando, hated the first third and was iffy on the last, should i keep going with stross? more interested in sentient pyramid schemes disguised as aliens and lobster neural tissue talking with russian translation software than i am in cory doctorowisms and dilbert refrences

Wait, this is so weird, I totally came into this thread to say that I was reading Accelerando and disliking it, should I persist? Somehow the main character seems to have no qualities except for being right about everything and smarter than everyone, and this bores me. I'm not sure if I'm in the first third since I'm reading it on my phone.

In other news, s1ocki and others are about the amazingness of THE INVERTED WORLD, which makes it it painfully clear how fundamentally NON-WEIRD much contemporary SF is by comparison. Priest's 1970 book Indoctrinaire has many of the same qualities and is worth seeking out. And perhaps craziest of all is Priest's story in the 1983 Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.

Also: 1970s Robert Silverberg is indeed well-worth coming back to. I couldn't get through more than 10 pages of Blindsight. China Mieville is readable and has good world-building but his sentences are in love with themselves in a fundamentally ugly way. Among Others by Jo Walton is a very fine thing indeed, though it presses pretty hard against the boundaries of the genre.

iirc accelerando originated as a series of short stories which is why it may seem uneven. can't tell you anything else about stross as it's the only one i've read (and didn't care so much for).

Priest's story in the 1983 Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.
Is it "The Miraculous Cairn"? Have a copy of The Dream Archipelago but haven't actually read that one yet. Also have a copy of his new one, The Adjacent. Read the first section at the end of last week and started in on the second but haven't had time to get back to it.

Ooh, I just bought The Inverted World today. I'm curious about the new one too.

There's definitely a cairn in it so I'm guessing yes?

Cool. Love that Dream Archipelago stuff, although haven't got round to reading The Islanders either. Been dipping into Ersatz Wine which is his earliest short stories along with a lot of autobiographical information.

Inverted World is so great - the edition w the afterword noting how the book is a satirical inversion of traditional hard sci-fi tropes is eye opening. I may have mentioned this somewhere else around here.

also a big fan of Silverberg's late 60s/early 70s work. Dying Inside, The World Inside, Son of Man (maybe the most genuinely psychedelic sci-fi work ever - just a guy wandering through a constantly shifting, phantasmagoric landscape), Tower of Glass... good stuff!

China Mieville is readable and has good world-building but his sentences are in love with themselves in a fundamentally ugly way

this is also spot on. I find him tiresome.

What is the cutoff date with Silverberg? Thought "Sailing to Byzantium" was ultimately a snooze.

1976

eeph the manfred macx stuff is the first third and i agree its pretty bad. when they get to his daughter and it becomes a space opera set in a VR sim of elizabethan england hosted on a spaceship the size of a can of beans it becomes kinda cool. then it just gets bad again

some funny paralells w Miles Davis - both took the latter half of the 70s off, and both returned in the 80s with much more popular/mainstream work. I read a bunch of his 80s stuff in hs but have no interest in revisiting it now and it all looks pretty boring/pedestrian afaict. Not that all of his 60s/70s books are masterpieces, but in general he was much more wide-ranging conceptually. Was good at just going with the times, I guess.

xp

just a guy wandering through a constantly shifting, phantasmagoric landscape)
Have you read Robert Sheckley's Mindswap or Options?

haven't read any Sheckley

waddaya waiting for?

dunno! Options sounds pretty fun/Malzbergian.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/04/april-fool-not-so-much-dangerous-as-unconvinging-harlan-ellisons-lemgthe-last-dangerous-visionslemg

"What is the cutoff date with Silverberg? Thought "Sailing to Byzantium" was ultimately a snooze."

Basically it was he retired and got burned out. But from 1967-1976 he was amazing. Don't sleep on short story collections from that period either.

Speaking of April 1 announcements,

Bacigalupi and Watts to Collaborate on Depressing Dystopian Shared World Anthology

Paolo Bacigalupi hasn't been mentioned this thread, but he's a nearish-future worldbuilder focused on climate issues, with a dark appraisal of humanity. The collection Pump Six and Other Stories and novel The Windup Girl are recommended, thereafter its diminishing returns. Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities are the young adult novellas for the IPCC report reading teen in your life.

Yeah the Windup Girl is amazing. Rest is okay.

To be honest I also like Mieville and find him very entertaining, but I get the complaints too. City and the City and Embassytown are probably better if you've never read the other stuff though.

“Peter and I got talking about how much we loved shared-world anthologies, like Thieves World or Wild Cards,” said Bacigalupi, “but were put off by the unreasonable optimism of their settings. We think science fiction is ready for a pessimistic future of bleak, uncompromising wretchedness."

I think I need to delve into this guy's work IMMEDIATELY.

Thieves' World was unreasonably optimistic?

We think science fiction is ready for a pessimistic future of bleak, uncompromising wretchedness

uh sci-fi has been mired in this for the last 30 years more or less, I don't really see this as a new or necessary advancement

im super down with the mieville thoughts on this thread. some of his world building is astonishingly good tho. the city and the city is great, particularly if you pretend it's about montreal (it isnt).

dig silverberg's dying inside.

does anyone fuck with hyperion? i think its tremendous.

(the series doesnt quite resolve itself but that first book is amazing)

hyperion is pretty amazing

would make a great miniseries

Dan Simmons?

I like, just finished fall of hyperion after what I guess was 8 months? I still don' tknow how I felt about it. It seems like those two books could have been half as long and still gotten their point across, kind of. I dunno, I was disappointed in the end. Not sure whether to embark on empyrion, since it took me forever and two attempts to do the hyperion books. maybe I should read something else.

recommend me something.

book or movie

oh book please.

fantasy okay too.

i have a trip to the lake coming up.

Inverted World. But maybe you already

Or better yet, The Adjacent

i already inverted. what's the adjacent? same author?

Yes, his latest and greatest

oh that looks cool.

Jon Armstrong's "Thread" and "Grey" are my go-to recommendations for recent quality sci-fi.

maybe obv but the tiptree collectin "her smoke rose up" is unbelievably good

the new vandermeer books are great beach reads too though very "written to be turned into a tv show"

oh man and ann leckie's ANCILLARY JUSTICE, which is so good

*takes notes*

this plot description is hilarious

For Michael Rivers, life is perfect. He is tall, handsome and worshipped by billions of fans around the globe. He is wealthy beyond measure, the heir apparent to one of the high-tech corporations that controls the world. He is fashionable, setting trends with his wardrobe of immaculate designer suits. And Michael is in love with Nora, his beautiful, witty and equally perfect fiancée. When an assassin's bullets pierce Michael's body before the cameras at a press junket, everything changes. Forcibly separated from Nora, his illusions shattered, Michael seeks to uncover the reasons behind the attempted assassination. Michael delves deep into his past, finding that all paths lead to a time when he was the golden boy, dancing furiously to the beat of notorious all-night Rage parties thrown by his father.

i finally got around to 'accelerando' too and ended up liking it a lot, or at least the middle third

People on this borad loving them some Ancillary Justice. Tempted to give it a try but afraid it will turn out to be some Album of the Decade Big and Rich stuff.

this is not sci fi, quite, or maybe it is, but its really great

http://www.amazon.com/The-Revolutions-Felix-Gilman/dp/0765337177

ancillary justice on kindle sale for $1.99 so that's tight

can't remember if i read accelerando, i did read a bunch of his other stuff

yeah idk, im not sure id unreservedly recommend it but its got a lot of cool ideas

being able to get sample chapters on kindle owns so hard

An oldie I like to push on anyone who hasn't read it is Michael Swanwick - The Iron Dragon's Daughter. Kind of a science-debased fantasy, IDK, fucking amazing.

I wish I could combine Priest's plots & ideas with Vandermeer's prose. 'The Adjacent' is great though (just so happens I read it sandwiched in between the Southern Reach books).

xp

have gilman on my todo list already, he was on sale in the Nook store one day.

this plot description is hilarious

the books are v funny

thanks for all the great recs dudes

gilman's two half-made world books are also great

swanwick owns

Jordan didn't you just the other day recommend some relevant stuff on other thread?

OK, went for the $1.99 AJ

aj ends badly but is worth it. i mean idk the last time i read a sci fi book that ended satisfactorily

satisfyingly

I read Marcel Theroux's 'Strange Bodies' and 'Far North' recently, one's a cool modern-day body-switching story (kinda, but I don't want to give anything away) and the other is straight post-apocalyptic survival in Siberia. His sentence-level writing is reaally good and he has that rarest of qualities, he's fucking good at endings.

i p much forgive all writers all their shitty endings forever, it's just the way fiction is most of the time.

i did

Max that was a coincidental xpost (re: ending books), but for real though.

Seconding The Iron Dragon's Daughter -- loved that one.

way upthread, but i'm not sure i agree that vandermeer's new books would be tv-able. also, legal would have to settle with the creators of myst before moving to production.

Pick it up, try the Open At Random Test:
It was as though he were a beggar or deformed, but in that case they would have at least looked away, which was some sort of recognition. Yes, I think I'll read Disch's Echo Round His Bones. A little more skimming confirms It's one of his early novels (1969), but undoubtedly his.

I can't say that Echo Round His Bones is a good book. It is unlike any other science fiction book I've ever read, and for what it is it is well-written and the prose is solid, but the concept that underlies the whole thing is so random and essentially uninteresting (primarily because it has absolutely no bearing on anything relevant to actual life) that it really feels like a pointless exercise. Every other single thing I've read by him has been way better.

if it's an allegory for something it completely passed me by

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett was very good.

way upthread, but i'm not sure i agree that vandermeer's new books would be tv-able. also, legal would have to settle with the creators of myst before moving to production.

― moonstone (soda), Monday, July 14, 2014 6:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not easy, but the structure and plot just give off "film rights bidding war" vibe

i already inverted. what's the adjacent? same author?

aj ends badly but is worth it. i mean idk the last time i read a sci fi book that ended satisfactorily

the fact that it was his birthday makes a HUGE difference.

Because you live in a Francophone town?

grabbed the sample of vandermeer's annihilation last night, immediately dug it, bought it and the next one. also have ancillary justice, and samples of two gilmans (revolutions and 1/2-made world) and the adjacent.

also, the two books i'm supposed to be reading for work/research purposes.

i believe i am ready for the lake folks

Oh what's the Lake Folks about

it's not a book you numskull, i'm talking about the sci-fi-loving naiads who live in our lake and who demand stories from their human visitors

!!!!

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/canadian_aliens1.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0chD8U8fA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYm1Yo5D-bA

dug those southern reach books!!!

are dude's other books that good? was a little alarmed that he also wrote like the idiot's guide to steampunk or something

just started aj. not as immediately drawn in as i was with the SR books but so far so good.

Time Out London sf film poll of pros/experts... Duncan Jones' Moon joins the Insanely Overrated club.

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-sci-fi-movies

I've read 2/3 of the second Southern Reach book, very slowly. Hard to explain why, because it's in many ways similar, but I like it about 1/100 as much as Annihilation, which I really enjoyed. Am finishing it only because I am holding out hope for #3 to be good.

Duncan Jones' Moon joins the Insanely Overrated club

Moon is ok but it's pretty minor. feel like it must get this shine cuz there just aren't that many workmanlike, non-blockbuster-y sci-fi things getting made.

(list is utter garbage btw)

Couple of things on there that I've never heard of that sound interesting, which is kind of the point of lists like this for me.

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.