Author Topic: Science Fiction / Fantasy (Read 385112 times)

Frybabe · « **Reply #1640 on:** October 01, 2012, 08:58:38 AM »

Science Fiction / Fantasy

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Discussion Leader: PatH

I don't know about predicting a catastrophic event, but that is as far as their calendar went. Did they actually predict and event or just stop calculating at that date? Could be that people just assumed a catastrophe because they didn't calculate any further.

PatH · « **Reply #1641 on:** October 01, 2012, 09:17:48 AM »

Quote from: Frybabe on October 01, 2012, 08:58:38 AM

Could be that people just assumed a catastrophe because they didn't calculate any further.

I think it's something like that, Frybabe, the calendar goes so far and then resets like the odometer on a car. I have a clipping from the New York Times about it that I haven't read yet. When I find it I'll let you know what it says.

Steph · « **Reply #1642 on:** October 02, 2012, 08:24:26 AM »

Yes, I too think it is the end of their calendar.. Possibly this is when they disappeared and did not get a chance to redo the calendar or some such nonsense.

Babi · « **Reply #1643 on:** October 03, 2012, 08:47:03 AM »

All very good and logical suggestions. As I said, I'm certainly not worrying about it.

Lorac625 · « **Reply #1644 on:** October 03, 2012, 09:02:02 PM »

Don't you think it could figure in a great story? What really caused the Mayan calendar to end on this date was... Aliens? Time travel? Attack of the killer Lovebugs?

Steph · « **Reply #1645 on:** October 04, 2012, 08:42:54 AM »

Hmm. there may well have been some sort of archeology book written on why.. The Mayans were considered an interesting civilization.

PatH · « **Reply #1646 on:** October 13, 2012, 10:17:09 PM »

This has been a rich stretch as far as sci-fi is concerned, some good, some bad.

My f2f group read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. This is a post-catastrophe novel--catastrophe not specified, presumably environmental, with some social breakdown. It's extremely well-written, good characterization of the narrator, etc., and just the sort of thing I find almost too depressing to stand. The protagonist is trying to find a safe way to survive what's happening, and at the end of the book has a bolthole that looks good for the short range. My fellows tell me that things get worse in the next book, Parable of the Talents, and Butler died before she could write the third, so that's it for me, I'm not going to wallow in misery.

I was in Portland, OR recently visiting children, and Powell's Books supplied me with lots of good stuff. I got a used copy of Redshirts. It's not quite as funny as some of Scalzi, but it's very good. What do you do when you realize that not only are you stuck in a Sci-fi television program, but it's a badly written show?

Next month our group will read Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which my SIL describes as James Bond meets H. P. Lovecraft, but Bond is working for the Postal Service. He lent me some of them. The fantasy group, which meets right before the s-f group, will fit in by discussing Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. I got that used at Powell's too, and have already read it--it's short. It seems very old-fashioned (copyright 1936) and I have a lot of quibbles about the archaeology, and the horror is mostly saying something is awful rather than making you feel it, but it definitely has something. I read it eagerly.

I also got my hands on the next Sharon Lee-Steve Miller paperback--Ghost Ship. Theo Waitley is coming to terms with being the proposed Captain of the mysterious ship Bechimo, plus being part of the hunted Korval clan. It moves things on nicely, but doesn't settle anything. I think the next book, Dragon Ship, is out, but not in paperback yet.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1647 on:** October 14, 2012, 07:46:48 AM »

Just finished a short novel called Zero Option by Lindsay H. F. Bramble. It was a good story but with limitations. The most glaring is that the narrator of the story, an intelligence officer, isn't as knowledgeable as you would think he should be. There are a minimum of characters, none of which are really fleshed out much, but given that the story is so short (about 118 pages), that should be expected. I took a look at Brambles' webpage. She (?) wrote this back in the 80's. Apparently she has big issues with her various editors/publishers.

Just started A Fighting Man of Mars continuing the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Babi · « **Reply #1648 on:** October 14, 2012, 08:26:20 AM »

I'm with you, PAT. If I want misery, I can always read the world news. And thank you
so much for alerting me to the new Lee-Miller book. I love them!

Frybabe · « **Reply #1649 on:** October 14, 2012, 07:46:41 PM »

Oops! I meant I started reading A Master Mind of Mars. Kind of Frankensteiny so far what with brain swapping and all.

PatH · « **Reply #1650 on:** October 23, 2012, 01:08:28 PM »

Attention all Fantasy fans! The November book discussion (starting the 12th) is going to be The Hobbit.

The Hobbit November Book Club Online discussion. Join us today! HERE

If a few people are interested, afterwards we could have a short discussion of Pat Murphy's There and Back Again, The Hobbit turned into a Space Opera.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1651 on:** October 23, 2012, 01:53:36 PM »

Well, I've now finished A Fighting Man of Mars which I liked better than Mastermind. Now I am just starting Swords of Mars. It looks like with this one, I have only four books to finish the Barsoom Series.

PatH · « **Reply #1652 on:** October 23, 2012, 03:09:00 PM »

I'm impressed.

Steph · « **Reply #1653 on:** October 24, 2012, 09:01:20 AM »

Better you than me.. I do have another Terry Pratchett and a Sharon Shinn that I found in the old used book store that has mostly older stuff. I am saving them for a down day.

maeve · « **Reply #1654 on:** October 26, 2012, 11:43:08 AM »

Hi, I don't think I have ever posted in this discussion. Sci Fi is not my normal genre although I have read some of the classics. Lately I've decided to look into other books beside Mystery which is my normal read. When I look up Sci-Fi reading lists I come up with a lot, I mean a lot, of Vampire fiction. Not my cup of tea. So, can you recommend something good to start with?

MaryH

Frybabe · « **Reply #1655 on:** October 26, 2012, 03:42:09 PM »

Maeve, I'm with you I don't care for vampire either, nor horror or fantasy for the most part. If you do like fantasy type scifi I am sure Steph and a few of the others can help you out.

I like space type SciFi. If you like funny, try some of John Scalzi's books. Agent to the Stars is hilarious and free on Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.

Elizabeth Moon wrote a good book about an older colonist who stayed behind when the rest of the colonists were removed from their planet. It is called Remnant Population. Moon also wrote the Vatta's War series which essentially was a trade war/corporate war complete with assassinations, sabotage, espionage and the like. I especially liked the very high tech communications used.
Dune, by Frank Herbert, is another trade war/rivalry type book which is long but good. I opted not to read the sequels which I hear get darker.

S.L. Viehl wrote a space medical series which was interesting and irritating at the same time. Her heroine ticked me off some because, for someone so smart, she sure got herself and others into predicaments by being stubborn and acting before thinking things through. But, oh, I had to keep reading to see what she got into next. I didn't think too much of how the series ended.

Urusla La Guin wrote several very good books including The Left Hand of Darkness which we read as a discussion group a while back. If I remember correctly, it was about an emissary from another planet trying to open trade negotiations with the native population. She also wrote a fantasy series, EarthSea, that is very popular.

I am currently reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series which features John Carter on Mars. The first five are good, the last five were written later and have some science experiments that remind me of Frankensteinish experimentation.

Jack Campbell and John McDevitt both write good space military/war type SciFi. Which reminds me to include Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game which is about children recruited and raised for a space war. Surprise ending.

I don't care for Species or Alien type SciFi, so I can't recommend any.

PatH · « **Reply #1656 on:** October 26, 2012, 08:29:30 PM »

Maeve, if you tell us what kind of thing you like, one or another of us could give you better info. As Frybabe points out, Ursula K. LeGuin is very good. The Left Hand of Darkness deals with assumptions about gender roles, questions of trust, and a zen-like philosophy. She is very good, but makes a lot of demands on the reader. She also wrote the Earthsea trilogy (plus followup) which is legendary and magical.

If you like sea battles, Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series is a splendid series of sea battles, fought in 3D in space, strung together with enough story to stick it together. You have to read them in order; the first is Dauntless. The protagonist wakes up to discover that he has survived 100 years in cold sleep, and is now in charge of the fleet. I've fought my way across the galaxy and back with the hero, and am now going on a new adventure with him. Some of Campbell's other series, like Stark's War, aren"t so good.

Terry Pratchett is very funny, with his Discworld universe, magical and fantastical, a bit vulgar. He has a wonderful sense of timing for his jokes; I find myself reading jokes he's made before and laughing my head off.

More later.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1657 on:** October 26, 2012, 10:36:06 PM »

PatH, so far I have collected Dauntless, Fearless and Relentless. I haven't started reading yet.

I wasn't paying attention. I didn't connect Terry Pratchett with Discworld. It is fantasy, but maybe I should look into it.

I really liked the Halo series. Halo, as in the Microsoft game Halo. I don't intend on reading the newer Forerunner section of the Halo series as it is more mythological, and includes something similar to the Pandora's Box myth. There is another segment which is dealing with the aftermath of the Covenant Wars that I may read eventually. I hear there is a new Halo game coming out for the Christmas season. I'm not a gamer, but I do like the story line that has evolved with the game, and I like the artwork.

Also on my SciFi TBR pile are several Greg Bear books, more McDevitt, two William Gibsons, and Daniel Suarez's, Daemon. And then there are all the freebie e-SciFi-books on my Kindle (somewhere around 40, as I recall).

Steph · « **Reply #1658 on:** October 27, 2012, 06:59:27 AM »

I am fond of other worlds and fantasy and adore Terry Practchet...for his craziness.
Anne McCaffrey had a very interesting and complete world in her Dragon series and wrote about several other worlds over a long career. Marion Zimmer Bradley had a complete world in her Darkover series and some of them are stupendous.
Sharon Shinn has a very different world in Archangel series.
On vampires.. Charlaine Harris has a wonderful vampire series.. She is quite a good writer and has always done a lot of mysteries.

Babi · « **Reply #1659 on:** October 27, 2012, 08:49:35 AM »

FRYBABE, you'll never be able to read all those books, esp. if you keep adding
to them. Feel free to leave any of them to me in your will.

Oh,yes, STEPH. No listing of sci/fi greats would be complete without McCaffrey and
Bradley.

maeve · « **Reply #1660 on:** October 27, 2012, 04:20:09 PM »

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going try some of them. The humorous ones sound fun. Other worlds appeal to me also. Anyway, I'll give them a try and see what I think. Thanks again.

Steph · « **Reply #1661 on:** October 28, 2012, 06:39:50 AM »

I am still reading Nimishas Ship by Anne McCaffrey.. Was surprised to find it in a used book store and Ihad honestly never even heard of it.. Not bad.. not the greatest, but not bad.

PatH · « **Reply #1662 on:** November 05, 2012, 07:29:47 PM »

I got a book of Hal Clement's short stories from the library, some new, some I'd already read. These are close to the hard s-f end of the spectrum. The physics is the main point. The protagonist is in a fix somewhere in space and gets out of it by figuring out the physics of a solution, or overcomes the bad guys by a clever application of physics, or the characters are extraterrestrials with totally different properties from ours (but all the characters talk like scientists). The science is well explained, though not so simply. It's the logical product of an astronomer who has been teaching in a boy's school most of his life (which Clement was).

If you like that sort of thing (I do) they're pretty good; if you don't they are pretty stodgy.

Steph · « **Reply #1663 on:** November 06, 2012, 06:27:22 AM »

Considering how I felt about Physics in high school, I believe I will skip them.

Babi · « **Reply #1664 on:** November 06, 2012, 08:54:35 AM »

That would be a clever way to teach physics to a group of boys, PatH. Set them problems that can be solved by a
clever use of whatever physics principle he is teaching at the moment. I would think he was a very popular teacher.
Like STEPH, tho', I'd probably not enjoy them. We moved around so much when I was growing up, I seemed to have
missed some class in basic science. When I got to physics, I was totally at sea. I suspect I only passed because I was
so dutiful about my homework.

Steph · « **Reply #1665 on:** November 07, 2012, 08:26:54 AM »

I got a B.. which floored me at the time.. I did not understand a word out of the teachers mouth.. I have a son who loves all science..He is an engineer, but a total math and science nut.. He says Physics is not nearly as much fun as chemistry, but then again,, he loves that stuff.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1666 on:** November 27, 2012, 08:42:08 AM »

Changed my mind. I've just started Halo: Cryptum by Greg Bear. This is the first of the Forerunner Saga. In it I was delighted to find that one of the greatest of the Forerunner ancestors was called The Librarian. Couldn't help but

.

Babi · « **Reply #1667 on:** November 27, 2012, 09:21:29 AM »

Let me know what you think of it, FRYBABE. I haven't read any of Greg Bear's books, but
I'm always hoping for another really good series.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1668 on:** November 27, 2012, 10:17:49 AM »

Babi, the Halo series started out as a promotional for Microsoft's game series. They stand alone, so whether or not you play the game does not matter. The Forerunner Saga is the second section of the series consisting of three books. Although the series came later, the Forerunners are a prequel to the main series. The Forerunners, who themselves were preceded by the Precursors, came before The Covenant which is at war with humans in the main series. The Covenant is seeking Forerunner relics, which it considers holy, that have been scattered across the universe. The Covenant is a religion based empire which includes several different alien races. I can't tell you much about the Forerunners yet except that they had fought humans and won, and that they (or one of them) let loose The Flood on the Universe. Sounds kind of like Pandora's Box. A Forerunner, interesting in the past and lost treasure, is looking for Precursor relics.

The only book that was iffy was the second of the first set called The Flood. The description of the creature called The Flood reminds me of a viral invasion. It was a bit tedious because the author of that one pretty much mimicked the game itself as far as action was concerned. However, it does add a certain progression to the story. The others diverged from the game enough to develop the characters more and give them a background not included in the game. The first several books are mostly not stop military type action. As far as I am concerned, Greg Bear and Eric Nylund are the best of the collaborative writers in the series (there are others).

I have, but have not yet read, Bear's Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children as well as Moving Mars and Vitals. The first Greg Bear book I ever read was years ago, called Heads. I liked it very much. One of these days I'll get around to reading them, and hopefully, pick up one or two of Nylund's non game related books. (at this point, I should live so long, HAH)

Steph · « **Reply #1669 on:** November 28, 2012, 06:06:30 AM »

Greg Bear. He was very popular when I owned the store. I got a lot of call for his series.. He writes quite a lot.

PatH · « **Reply #1670 on:** November 28, 2012, 08:18:30 AM »

I've read Darwin's Radio and one or two others, but not his series--good quality. Maybe I'll try the series.

Frybabe · « **Reply #1671 on:** November 28, 2012, 09:21:10 AM »

My booboo. Greg Bear did not write any of the original Halo series. However, he is the author of the Forerunner saga trilogy. Halo: Cryptum, Halo: Primordium and Halo: Silentium (to be released in 2013). So far Cryptum is about a Forerunner youth who is interested in looking into past history and is on something of a treasure hunt. What he finds are protected artifacts from a 10,000 year old war. What he learns from what I have read so far is that he was guided there on purpose. Now it really should get interesting.

Babi · « **Reply #1672 on:** November 28, 2012, 09:31:39 AM »

Quote

(at this point, I should live so long, HAH)

I can relate, FRYBABE.
Your description of Halo:Cryptum sounds good. I'll see is my library has it...when they
reopen...in about two weeks! Fortunately, my daughter picked up four books for me in
the nick of time.

Steph · « **Reply #1673 on:** November 29, 2012, 06:10:54 AM »

marking

Steph · « **Reply #1674 on:** December 01, 2012, 05:51:02 AM »

hmm, way way weird.. shoes in the sci fi..whoa.

PatH · « **Reply #1675 on:** December 01, 2012, 07:07:33 AM »

He's a spammer. I reported him, it should be gone soon. When you see something dubious like that, you can report it too. Just click on the "report to moderator" in the bottom right of his post. Jane and Marcie get rid of dozens of them every day before anyone sees them.

Steph · « **Reply #1676 on:** December 02, 2012, 06:20:56 AM »

I figured spammer, but shoes.. Oh well.

PatH · « **Reply #1677 on:** December 02, 2012, 02:48:33 PM »

The shoes aren't as bad as the time someone posted ads for dresses, with pictures. They were all skimpy, tight little black numbers that only came down about half-way to the knees. The man didn't research his target for appropriateness.

Steph · « **Reply #1678 on:** December 03, 2012, 05:53:08 AM »

Very funny indeed. And to think they get paid for doing such stupid stuff. It only made me sure I would never buy the shoes..

Frybabe · « **Reply #1679 on:** December 03, 2012, 07:25:36 PM »