Yeah like Dune or the Lord of the Rings.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 18:14 (fourteen years ago) link
Why the Dune hate? Dune and Bill the Galactic Hero are among my favorite SF parodies.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 18:31 (fourteen years ago) link
I don't hate Dune, but I don't think it's particularly interesting or well-written sci-fi classic.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 18:37 (fourteen years ago) link
No feelings on Bill the Galactic Hero?
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 18:41 (fourteen years ago) link
Never read it. Not a big Harrison fan.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 18:45 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 18:55 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― Jack Kirby's Orangutan Surfing Civilization (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Dune's also one of those books which inspired way too much overlong crap.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:09 (fourteen years ago) link
I thought it was a parody of overlong crap! Shorter than Infinite Jest, anyway.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 19:17 (fourteen years ago) link
wait you thought Dune was a parody?
― Jack Kirby's Orangutan Surfing Civilization (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:19 (fourteen years ago) link
if so those are some shitty jokes
nerd humor! (talking bout both dune and infinite jest)
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 19:23 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― lift this towel, its just a nipple (HI DERE), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:24 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Jack Kirby's Orangutan Surfing Civilization (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:29 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― mh, Friday, 20 November 2009 19:31 (fourteen years ago) link
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."
I thought he was goofing on scientology engram purging ninja mysticism.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 20 November 2009 19:33 (fourteen years ago) link
OH MY SIDES
― lift this towel, its just a nipple (HI DERE), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:34 (fourteen years ago) link
why sci-fi pre-1960 was so ridiculously great and why post-oh 1975 or so it is so not that greatHere's one theory, with a different cut-off date: http://www.conceptualfiction.com/moon_landing_and_sci_fi.html
― steenship HOOSiers (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 20 November 2009 21:00 (fourteen years ago) link
I hear Frank Herbert absolutely killed at the Chuckle Hut back in the early 60s
― Jack Kirby's Orangutan Surfing Civilization (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 20 November 2009 21:14 (fourteen years ago) link
xp I don't buy that theory though.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 21:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Then I'm afraid we are going to have to administer some rough lunar justice and put you out of the airlock.
― steenship HOOSiers (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 20 November 2009 21:46 (fourteen years ago) link
That beats reading Infinite Jest.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 20 November 2009 21:54 (fourteen years ago) link
Sorry if my comment was a bit, um, harsh.
― steenship HOOSiers (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 November 2009 05:52 (fourteen years ago) link
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 HistoryHoward Waldrop- All About Strange Monsters of the Recent PastConnie Willis- Firewatch, Impossible ThingsMichael Swanwick- In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Stations in the Tide, Gravity's AngelsNancy Kress- Beggars in SpainBruce Sterling- Crystal Express, GlobalheadMaureen F. McHugh- China Mountain ZhangTerry Bisson- Bears Discover Fire
― President Keyes, Saturday, 21 November 2009 14:22 (fourteen years ago) link
anyone read ken mcleod?
― artdamages, Saturday, 21 November 2009 15:00 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Saturday, 21 November 2009 19:09 (fourteen years ago) link
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?
― Soukesian, Saturday, 21 November 2009 19:56 (fourteen years ago) link
Probably because people who write mostly short fiction get overlooked.
― President Keyes, Saturday, 21 November 2009 20:04 (fourteen years ago) link
You're probably right. He came along too early to be in McSweeny's/
― Soukesian, Saturday, 21 November 2009 20:15 (fourteen years ago) link
You like the Them Bones that much? I have a copy around here and now I will definitely read it sooner.
― bamcquern, Saturday, 21 November 2009 20:17 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Number None, Saturday, 21 November 2009 20:43 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Soukesian, Saturday, 21 November 2009 21:17 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― make love to a c.h.u.d. in the club (Jon Lewis), Saturday, 21 November 2009 22:31 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Sunday, 22 November 2009 01:38 (fourteen years ago) link
Dunno why I thought it was 'Bryn' and not 'Brin'.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Sunday, 22 November 2009 01:59 (fourteen years ago) link
You thought he was Welsh?
― steenship HOOSiers (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 22 November 2009 02:01 (fourteen years ago) link
picked up Shockwave Rider from Borderlands on Sunday and so far (ie, the first 25 pages) its fantastic
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 30 November 2009 18:34 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Monday, 30 November 2009 20:04 (fourteen years ago) link
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)
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 30 November 2009 20:14 (fourteen years ago) link
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.)
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Monday, 30 November 2009 21:08 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― toastmodernist, Monday, 30 November 2009 22:20 (fourteen years ago) link
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)
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:22 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― thomp, Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:26 (fourteen years ago) link
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."
― thomp, Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link
I couldn't get more than 10 pages into Altered Carbon. total crap.
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:31 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:32 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:33 (fourteen years ago) link
― 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
― ankles (s1ocki), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:33 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― jØrdån (omar little), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 18:35 (fourteen years ago) link