Author Topic: Science Fiction / Fantasy (Read 385182 times)

PatH · « **Reply #2240 on:** August 27, 2014, 03:28:31 PM »

Science Fiction / Fantasy

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Discussion Leader: PatH

Steph · « **Reply #2241 on:** August 28, 2014, 08:58:15 AM »

I love Pratchett.. neil Gaiman is good. marion Zimmer Bradley was excellent.. but where is Anne McCaffrey who is one of my all time favorite fantasy people.. Some of these fantasy are what I think of as battles in the stars types. Not that fond of them.. Lynn Abbey did not write much, but her two volume horse clan was extraordinary. I also class Charlaine Harris...and several others as fantasy writers.

PatH · « **Reply #2242 on:** August 28, 2014, 02:41:02 PM »

Where indeed is McCaffrey? She certainly is good enough to be there.

To round things out, here's a list of 50 essential science fiction books sent me by Abe Books recently.

50 S-F Books

PatH · « **Reply #2243 on:** August 28, 2014, 02:57:32 PM »

Lots of room for quibbles here. I've read 17:

Brave New World
1984
The Demolished Man
Mission of Gravity
Sirens of Titan
Solaris
A Wrinkle in Time
Dune
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Left Hand of Darkness
Rendezvous wit Rama
The Stand
Ender's Game
Hyperion
Red Mars
Old Mans War
Little Brother

Only one book allowed per author, and it says the choice was sometimes arbitrary. I've read different books than the choice by Asimov, Verne, Bradbury, Christopher, Heinlein, Ballard, Pohl, Banks, Stephenson, Bujold, and Mieville.

I sure wouldn't pick Rendezvous With Rama for Clarke, or The Sirens of Titan for Vonnegut.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2244 on:** August 28, 2014, 03:51:30 PM »

I've read nine of them plus A Handmaid's Tale. I've seen four movies. Even though I tried twice, I just couldn't get past the first half hour of Starship Troopers. Gibson's Neuromancer was a DNF for me.

I would have added Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population (1996) or her Speed of Dark (2003) for which she won the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

I guess Peter Watts (Blindsight) just a bit too weird for the list. It's a wonder I got through it since I found Gibson's Neuromancer a DNF for me. I am not sure I can get through his Rifters series but I will try. Oh, look a new book just out called Echopraxia which is billed as a follow up to Blindsight. Some of the others listed on Amazon look kind of interesting. I didn't realize he wrote so many books. It looks like Wikipedia's list is incomplete.

PatH · « **Reply #2245 on:** August 28, 2014, 04:56:59 PM »

It's cheating for them to have Handmaid's Tale and Neuromancer pictured there when they aren't in the 50. I've read them both. The list seems to focus mostly on classics, so you wouldn't expect many recent books. Sometimes I think I should try Starship Troopers because of it's historical influence, but wisdom always prevails.

Solaris is very strange, and gets kind of tedious. I've seen both the movies, which tighten up the story and add stuff. The earlier, Russian one is better, even if it doesn't have George Clooney.

Don't waste your time on Hyperion; it's dreadful. I read it for my f2f club.

I enjoyed Little Brother, but it's not "50 best" caliber.

I didn't realize Watts had written so much either.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2246 on:** August 28, 2014, 05:07:27 PM »

Wikipedia is pretty skimpy on info about Watts. They list him as also being a marine mammal biologist, but say nothing about a career or job in the field. He gotten necrotizing fasciitis a few years back - nasty. He is Canadian and is now not allowed in the US after a scuffle with the border patrol.

Steph · « **Reply #2247 on:** August 29, 2014, 09:11:06 AM »

Whew.. Philip K. Dick totally defeats me as an author and I don't think of Vonnegut as a SF author.. on the other hand, I live Handmaids tale and sought out and gave me granddaughter a copy several years ago. I think for women that is a must read and understand.
I obviously lean toward fantasy.. James Schmitz is a long gone author who wrote The Witches of Karres and if you ever run on an old battered paperback copy , grab it.. a really funny version of space travel and witches. There was another author that I cannot pull up his name who wrote about a college professor who kept getting pulled back into time and would end up in the middle of mythology.. and Shakespeare. Great fun..

PatH · « **Reply #2248 on:** August 29, 2014, 10:39:10 AM »

Some of Dick defeats me too. I tried four times to read The Man in the High Castle, one of his most admired, and always got stuck pretty fast. Then my f2f club read it. I still couldn't get into it, but I went to the discussion, and nothing they said made me think I should try again. Some of his stuff is light-hearted, though, like Martian Time-Slip.

The Sirens of Titan is definitely sci-fi, since it partly takes place on a moon of Saturn, has spaceships and extraterrestrials. Slaughterhouse 5 has extraterrestrials too, and a tricky time-shifting of living your life all at once.

I totally agree about The Handmaids Tale.

If you think of it, let me know the author of the college professor. It sounds a bit like L. Sprague De Camp.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2249 on:** August 29, 2014, 11:22:25 AM »

I think I read one or two of his short stories, can't tell you what though. They didn't stand out. I just discovered that a number of movies were based on his books. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"), Minority Report (short story by the same name), and The Adjustment Bureau (loosely based on the short story "Adjustment Team") and Paycheck (short story by the same name) are the ones I know of. I couldn't get through Blade Runner but really liked Total Recall. I haven't seen the others.

Dick was a bit of a "head case". It probably shows in his writings. What interests me is that he was born with a twin sister who died about six weeks later. He always felt her presence, and when he died his ashes were buried next to her. When his parents divorced, he found himself in the middle of a custody battle. I read somewhere that he eventually became a paranoid schizophrenic.

PatH · « **Reply #2250 on:** August 29, 2014, 11:31:58 AM »

There were about a dozen movies in all, but I can only come up with 12 Monkeys and A scanner Darkly on top of those you remember.

He was also into drugs, and much of his work seems to me like he was stoned when he wrote it. I'm not really an admirer of him, but like some of his stuff.

As a twin, I find the twin aspect interesting.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2251 on:** August 29, 2014, 11:36:09 AM »

He did 12 Monkeys? Oh, that's another one I liked. Bruce Willis did a wonderful job in the "drool" scene.

I wonder if there is a biography of him somewhere. Will go look.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2252 on:** August 30, 2014, 06:55:42 AM »

Answered my question. Yes indeed, there are biographies of Philip K. Dick. One (In Search of Philip K. Dick) is written by wife number three, Anne Dick; it got mixed reviews. There is also Divine Invasions by Lawrence Sutin and I Am Alive and You Are Dead: Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emile Carrère.

Steph · « **Reply #2253 on:** August 30, 2014, 09:27:15 AM »

Yes, yes L. Sprague De Camp and I used to love him or her. do not know which the author was. They were in all of the old monthly magazines among other things..

PatH · « **Reply #2254 on:** August 30, 2014, 10:55:07 AM »

He was a man. In private life he was also a patent attorney, and he and my father knew each other, were sort of friends. (My father was a big gun in the Patent Office.) I think I met him once for a few seconds. He (De Camp, not my father) died in 2000, age 93.

Steph · « **Reply #2255 on:** August 31, 2014, 09:27:49 AM »

As I remember, he had a great sense of humor in his work.. Went to see The Giver ( lois Lowry) yesterday.. Good movie, Must find the book to see how different it might be. I liked Lois Lowry stuff and recommended to teens when I had the book store.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2256 on:** September 04, 2014, 06:37:53 PM »

I finished Cauldren and am into Starhawk now, the last two of the Priscilla Hutchins series. Cauldren did not get good reviews from readers, but I enjoyed it. I was kind of expecting some kind of definite ending to Priscilla, but not so. I guess she will just fade away. As I understand it, it is the last one. Well, almost. Starhawk goes back to the very beginning of her career, so I guess that makes it a prequel. Here again, I was hoping for a little more of her before she became a star pilot. Not much there. It pretty much starts with her taking her qualifying flight test for her license.

Steph · « **Reply #2257 on:** September 05, 2014, 09:01:13 AM »

Because of the movie,they have reissued The Giver and also issued a four in one book for the books in the quartette.

PatH · « **Reply #2258 on:** September 08, 2014, 03:38:00 PM »

This is mostly a duplicate of something I posted in Blanko.

I just read Rescue Mode, by Ben Bova and Les Johnson, and it has a lot of similarities to The Martian. It deals with the first human expedition to Mars too; the spaceship gets hit by a meteor when it's gone too far to turn back. They manage to repair the damage, but are left with a fuel shortage and, if they do the Mars flyby (which they have to do in order to turn around) and pick up the water stored there for the short stay they meant to have, they still won't have enough to last them all the way home. What to do?

The technical stuff is kept to a minimum, and there is a lot more about the politics of supporting the expedition and whether this will kill future manned expeditions. Johnson works for NASA, as well as writing, mostly factual articles, so he presumably knows only too well how things work there.

It's slicker than The Martian. Weir's inexperience shows, especially at first, while Bova is a practiced old hand. There is more character development and interaction, since we're following 8 people cooped up together. But I found them equally enjoyable. If you liked The Martian, you will probably like this one.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2259 on:** September 08, 2014, 08:16:32 PM »

I Don't think I've ever read Ben Nova.

Just finished an e-book I found hard to put down - Into the Darkness by Thomas A. Mays. Lots of Naval acronyms and procedures, and nuclear reactor and weaponry, plasma propulsion, political footdragging, along with the requisite space battles. I was amused by the reason the aliens wanted to come to Earth, but not by how they planned to acquire what they wanted. Their method of propulsion and the description of their "fleet" was a bit fantastical, as in strange.This is Mays first full length novel.

PatH · « **Reply #2260 on:** September 08, 2014, 10:54:36 PM »

It's Bova, with a B. I'm not sure I've read anything of his either, but he's been around a long time and has written a lot, has a good reputation.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/ben-bova/

Steph · « **Reply #2261 on:** September 09, 2014, 10:22:42 AM »

I have read Bova, but it was years ago.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2262 on:** September 28, 2014, 04:05:27 PM »

I am almost 3/4 the way through a rather long e-book called Not Without My Cat (When Fish is Not Enough). There is the cat (Camille), her owner (a PI), all sorts of strange and not so strange people and events, teleportation, time travel, alternate universes (timeline?), and lots of tea. It is a jumble and it is very poorly edited (what's new?). I am barely following the events, and it is difficult to keep some "who and when straight, but oh, what fun this is to read. I am surprised to find that the author, A. M. Russell, is a female.

A poem is quoted in the book from a book called Ways of Seeing, the author of which does not appear to be credited. I am in the process of trying to track it down. The poem is strange but compelling.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2263 on:** September 28, 2014, 05:33:06 PM »

The only book I found called Ways of Seeing is by John Berger. It is a companion to a BBC program (way back in 1972) of the same name. It is about art, art history, art interpretation. The book is considered a modern classic, and is apparently still used as a textbook. Berger has written many books, both fiction and nonfiction, that center on the art world. You Tube has all four episodes of the program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk I may watch them later.

Steph · « **Reply #2264 on:** September 29, 2014, 09:03:17 AM »

Oh my, the ebooks are sometimes not quite finished.. I would guess first books are hard to deal with without an editor.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2265 on:** October 07, 2014, 07:21:34 AM »

Looks like a super couple of weeks/months with the new list of Scifi books from my library newsletter. Only Watts and Bova are new books this year.

Three books of essays:

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood
Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars by Ray Bradbury
The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination by Ursula K. Le Guin

A new Peter Watts book, companion to Blindsight, Echopraxia

For Ben Bova fans: New Frontiers: A Collection of Tales About the Past, the Present, and the Future

My library wish list is getting entirely too long.

Steph · « **Reply #2266 on:** October 07, 2014, 08:46:28 AM »

I scored some old stuff last year at a closing sale and have been wandering around in the golden age of sci-fi.. Fun in their worlds..

PatH · « **Reply #2267 on:** October 16, 2014, 07:22:37 PM »

Steph--share with us what you're reading so we can reminisce if we've read them, or maybe read them if we hven't.

Frybabe, I'm now on the library waiting list for Echopraxia. The LeGuin sounds like something to have.

PatH · « **Reply #2268 on:** October 16, 2014, 08:11:21 PM »

I've been very tardy about reporting on my s-f/fantasy book club selections.

The selection for the meeting I missed was Jim Butcher's Grave Peril. It's the third in his lengthy, well-respected Dresden Files series. I was glad to be pushed into reading something of his, but he isn't my thing. The narrator is a vampire hunter in Chicago, and the story is a PI type investigation with many mystical elements. It's a very good job, and keeps you reading along, so worth a try if you like this subtype.

The next meeting, we read Stephen King's 11/22/63. The narrator, living in the present, has found a time wormhole that leads back to 1958, landing you in the same New England town he's living in. He ends up deciding to go back and try to prevent Kennedy's assassination, and on the way, while he's living forward to get to '63, prevent a bloody murder in his town.

I don't willingly read Stephen King, but I have to admit that it's a good job. He knows how to spin a tale, and I kept with all 850 pages (brevity isn't his strength). The thing that shines in his book is the narrator's description of his life as a high school teacher. (I think King was a teacher). One of the fellow discussers who went to high school in the flashback time said King was totally accurate in his description.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2269 on:** October 17, 2014, 08:58:10 AM »

PatH, I read Butcher's first Dresden Files book and saw the one and only season of the TV show (too bad it was cancelled). Dresden is a wizard in his own right and sets himself up as a PI of all things occult, especially those of an evil nature.

I just finished The Ship Who Sang by Ann McCaffery. Not bad. I can see why Lock In reminded Beth (my Friday Library partner) of this book.

Currently, I am reading Accidental Flight by Floyd L. Wallace. Accidental, in this case, is what they call people who have been mutilated in accidents or by birth who are able to survive because of technology and extraordinary effort, and who can't, for whatever reason, be brought back up to the standards of normal (or beauty) of the general society. These folks are called Accidentals and are exiled to a "rehab" setting on an asteroid. It is okay, but not the compelling read of Blindsight, and certainly not confusing.

PatH · « **Reply #2270 on:** October 17, 2014, 08:15:17 PM »

Quote

It is okay, but not the compelling read of Blindsight, and certainly not confusing.

I've got one that is as compelling, and not as confusing. It's Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, the November selection for my f2f club. It starts off very reminiscent of Blindsight. All of a sudden one night the stars and moon disappear. There is a barrier around the earth, and time inside and outside are passing at different rates, by a factor of billions. In about 40 years inside, we will reach the heat death of the sun, and presumably be cooked. Who or what is doing this, and why?

Unlike in Blindsight, the characters are standard humans, not bio-engineered wonders, and easy to relate to. The story is ingenious, clever, and suspenseful. The one thing that does make you work is that the story is told in two timelines, one starting near the end of the timeframe of the book, and one starting with the beginning, with a few flashbacks to show where the characters are coming from. They alternate, each proceeding forward, so you have to keep the future in mind when dealing with the present.

It's a very good read.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2271 on:** October 17, 2014, 09:22:07 PM »

I pretty much gave up on Accidental Flight. I skimmed through to the end to pick up highlights and find out the ending. It is actually a rather lengthy short story that was originally published in Galaxy Magazine.

Next up are The Book of Lost Fragrances and The Club Dumas. Neither one is SciFi.

Steph · « **Reply #2272 on:** October 20, 2014, 10:16:31 AM »

Larry Niven. I had forgotten how very good he was. I had two of his in the old stuff I got.. Both were excellent.. Also a kindle book that is fun.. Date night which is only a kindle, but amazingly funny.. Try Harmony or one of those dating sites, but in the future on a world that has robots as well as humans and others.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2273 on:** October 29, 2014, 11:57:59 AM »

Last night I read a short story called "Borden's Pets" by Floyd L. Wallace. It turned out to be finding a cure/preventative for a native disease on a planet just being explored/colonized. The ending is a little sad, but it is a good read. Wallace was the author of "Accidental Flight" which I mentioned earlier. That one would have been a bit better if it hadn't been quite so long, IMO.

Oh good heavens. YouTube as a section of SciFi readings including "Borden's Pets." Can't say I am thrilled with the reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0WrwGfOeO4

This outfit "resurrects" old authors, SciFi, Mystery. They list one SciFi book of stories women SciFi writers.
http://www.resurrectedpress.com/

Steph · « **Reply #2274 on:** October 30, 2014, 08:36:30 AM »

Splurged on a new ( to me) Terry Pratchett yesterday. Will tuck it away for the periodic,, blue periods in my life. He always makes me laugh

PatH · « **Reply #2275 on:** November 12, 2014, 02:09:26 PM »

Of all the sci-fi books on my library waiting list, the one that finally reached the top was the one I'm least interested in--Peter Watts' Echopraxia. Well, better than nothing. I'll have to wait a bit to read it, though, because it smells of perfume. There's a neat trap as you leave, though, 5 carts of donated books for $1 hardback and $0.50 paperback, and they had two Ben Bova books, so now I'm really well-stocked.

Frybabe · « **Reply #2276 on:** November 12, 2014, 02:31:00 PM »

I'm going to have to read Blindsight again before I read Echopraxia.

PatH · « **Reply #2277 on:** November 12, 2014, 04:03:24 PM »

Me too. That's one reason I didn't want to get it now.

Steph · « **Reply #2278 on:** November 13, 2014, 08:30:43 AM »

Frybabe · « **Reply #2279 on:** November 16, 2014, 01:34:41 PM »

The movie,The Martian, from the book by Andy Weir is scheduled to be released in Nov. of 2015. Ridley Scott is directing and Matt Damon will play the lead. Nice article about Andy Weir and The Martian's journey from online serial, to book publication, and finally, to movie.
http://shelf-life.ew.com/2014/11/05/andy-weir-the-martian-author/

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Author Topic: Science Fiction / Fantasy (Read 385182 times)