Science fiction

Just finished the new Culture novel last night and.......I have to admit to skimming a lot of the backstory about the political maneuvering between different factions of aliens etc etc blah blah WHEN IS SOMETHING GOING TO HAPPEN. Kind of feel like it could have been condensed some amount without rly losing anything -- is he too famous for an editor, now?

Kind of fell flat for me.

Also it's freaking huge so good luck balancing it in one hand on the bus/train while hanging onto a support bar with the other. I think I have RSI now.

Pity if the new Culture turns out to be shit. Matter built up splendidly, I thought, but the final third was disgustingly lazy.

― A brownish area with points (chap), Friday, November 19, 2010 11:33 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

Also it's freaking huge so good luck balancing it in one hand on the bus/train while hanging onto a support bar with the other. I think I have RSI now.

― I've got ten bucks. SURPRISE ME. (Laurel), Friday, November 19, 2010 11:40 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

LOL it was the first book i bought for my kindle

Oh, this is that fun Passantino thread. Good times.

I like Banks' potted histories when there are dry little fillips, like if a one-sentence summing up of how the historic character met his extremely ironic end is hidden in the lesson, and they buoy you up from one to another. But a good bit of this one just seemed like "You'll need to know this later for the plot to make sense."

i really really want to write a sci-fi novel, i hope i can find the time in my life sometime in the next couple years.

I'm so old-school pedant that I hate the term sci-fi. IT'S "SF" DAMMIT! #tiresomepeopleintheirforties

SORRY I WANT TO WRITE A SF NOVS

actually its SyFy now

aaagghhh

lol

if you're gonna read reynolds i rep for 'house of suns'

that channel's logo is an amazing blood boiler

http://www.fearnet.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201011/syfy_logo.jpg

to say nothing of their utterly shit programming

Tends to rush his endings does Reynolds. The final Revelation Space book is particularly bad for this. Still read most of his stuff, House of Suns and Pushing Ice are pretty decent stand alone works yeah.

thank god for the xpost notification, that allowed me to come to my senses and NOT post the "Sharktopus" trailer

i really really want to write a sci-fi novel, i hope i can find the time in my life sometime in the next couple years.

― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Friday, November 19, 2010 5:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I've tried it is hard.

any tips

Er... Know more about science than I do.

As a Philip K Dick fan I don't necessarily mind if my SF has some wibbling about psychics, supernatural powers and the living dead instead of any science, but I picked up "The Siege of Eternity" by Frederick Pohl and was disgusted to discover (possible spoilers but I think everything I mention becomes apparent fairly early on):

1. the plot devolved into some arsewater about space aliens reviving the souls of everyone who'd ever lived
2. it was the middle of a series with no indication on the outside of the book, and the last page was pretty much just an advert for the next book, which by that point I had no desire to read
3. also, a bunch of gratuitous hokey sex scenes - maybe I'm a prude but with some SF authors a female protagonist is such a red flag - "women only exist to be sexy, and the only notable feature of this flimsy caricature is that she is an intergalactic beacon of sexiness, start dreading the embarrassing sex scenes now"

so, Frederick Pohl is on my bad list, unless someone wishes to tell me otherwise (maybe his older work is better?)

I'm sorry, you said there were embarrassing sex scenes...?

Gateway by Pohl is fantastic. Never read any of the sequels though. Don't think there were any sex scenes, embarrassing or otherwise.

Pohl turned into a bit of a hack as the years have worn on but some of 70s/early 80s work is canonical imho - especially Jem, and the Space Merchants and Merchants' War (great satire of "capitalism in space")

and the Gateway books are uniformly solid

Gateways are dope

been reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons...shit is bananas

any tips

― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Friday, November 19, 2010 1:49 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

just don't forget that There Ain't No Stealth In Space:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth

that whole site's a fun read

dan simmons is bananas overall and pretty inconsistent afaict. read and enjoyed 'the terror', tried to read 'carrion comfort' and wanted to burn the book after 40 pages.

Isn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer also a really creepy concept, when you consider how, throughout literary history, the vampire was an anti-semitic caricature? And then all of a sudden you have an hour on TV a week delighting in a blonde-haired, blue-eyed devil killing racist caricatures of Jews?

― Dom Passantino, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 13:21 (2 years ago)

SMG is a jew

guessing he knew that

The "bazooka" part is accurate, but not the "hiding" part. If the spacecraft are torchships, their thrust power is several terawatts. This means the exhaust is so intense that it could be detected from Alpha Centauri. By a passive sensor.

SNAAAAAAAAAAP

Ha I have just this moment read a Reynolds short story where stealth by way of directional radiation plays a part.

lol @ dom tryna use fancy pants left wing cult-crit theories to rag on nerds. 'cuz the sopranos is totes pc, right?

Dan Simmons is indeed bananas. I like him.

The first and second Hyperion books are the best things of his I've read by some distance.

been reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons...shit is bananas

― glengarry glenn danzig (latebloomer)

They're a blast, just stop after The Fall of Hyperion. I've successfully convinced myself the two Endymion books don't exist but it took a decade.

I really liked The Terror and much of the Ilium/Olympos pair (though some of the racial/ethnic stuff is a huge mess I had to SMH at). I've had Drood for a while but haven't gone back to it after it failed to grab me. As Omar said, incredibly inconsistant writer but chockfull of ideas.

the Ilium/Olympos pair (though some of the racial/ethnic stuff is a huge mess I had to SMH at)

Yeah, there's some right weird stuff about Israel iirc. Still, lots of dazzling things going on in those books. I loved the Proust-loving robot probe thing.

John Crowley's "Great Work of Time" blew my head up this week

Just been to Tate Britain, saw a piece by Gerard Byrne with Dutch amateur actors re-enacting a 1963 Playboy interview with the great and the good of scifi - Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlen, Pohl, Sturgeon, etc, about the state of the world in 1984 and beyond. Very optimistic, albeit lightheartedly, sometimes even satirically, about automation and leisure, longevity, medicine and recreational narcotics, and especially the space race - space travel cheaper than air travel; the moon by the 70s and Mars and Venus by the 80s. Aside from video calls and conferencing, nothing about the information revolution. Makes you wonder what unforeseen transformations await us in the next 50 years.

lasers

cool i can't hardly wait!

they are coming very soon iirc!

Makes you wonder what unforeseen transformations await us in the next 50 years

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jOTDyAXEFv8/SwrkgAOVMRI/AAAAAAAAABo/4B4mXqVaRzE/s1600/waterworld-spotlight.jpg

John Crowley's "Great Work of Time" blew my head up this week

Oh, that is a lovely, lovely story. So good!

Anyone read "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi? Read some froth about it being the SF debut of the year. Amazon reviews look intriguing but make it sound kind of daunting.

That sounds right up my street.

whenever I hear the word quantum, i reach for my revolver

...and end unwittingly causing a typhoon in South East Asia.