Science Fiction / Fantasy

[Frybabe]

Science Fiction / Fantasy

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Welcome to the whole universe!  This is where we gather to share our experiences in science fiction and fantasy.  We like everything, from Gregory Benford to Stephanie Meyer—hard science to magic and fantasy. Come in, sit down with us, and tell us what you are reading or have read, what you like or dislike.

Links: Fantastic Fiction, bibliographies of 30,000 authors

Discussion Leader:  PatH

I actually never saw WestWorld., Ginny.

If you want to read a humorous SciFi sometime, I recommend John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars. Here is the free edition, which I believe is the original. http://manybooks.net/titles/scalzijother06agent_to_the_stars.html As I recall from reading one of Scalzi's blurbs about it, it is his first novel and he posted it free online to see if anyone liked his writing. It has since been released as a paid for ebook and is also now in print.

Scalzi also wrote Redshirts. A funny spoof of the StarTrek TV series, it is about a "real life" science/exploration crew who watch the Star Trek shows and begin to notice that happened in the old TV show was happening to them and their crew - exactly. So to save their fellow crewmembers off they go to try to change what the writers and actors come up with. It wond the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. BTW, Wil Wheaton (remember Wesley on Star Trek Next Generation?) is a friend of Scalzi's and is the narrator for both Agent to the Stars and Redshirts on Audiobooks.

[ginny]

Oh my word!!  A new world unfolds (to me, anyway).


Scalzi also wrote Redshirts. A funny spoof of the StarTrek TV series, it is about a "real life" science/exploration crew who watch the Star Trek shows and begin to notice that happened in the old TV show was happening to them and their crew - exactly.

Sort of like a take on  Galaxy Quest? I'll get it too. Thanks for the excerpt here as well, I look forward to reading it. I like the idea he did Agent to the Stars free first.

If you haven't seen Westworld, with Yul Brynner, you might like it, it's old and probably very dated, but it's Disney World in Robots gone berserk.

[Frybabe]

I am still reading Sheltered Lives. and it is engrossing. It is turning out to be more of a political piece than I expected. It is supposed to be a bit of a romance too.

In the meantime, the fourth book in John Ringo's Posleen series has arrived from the library. I'll wait a few days to start that one.

I am bummed about losing one of my ebooks. I've read Daniel H. Wilson's AMPed twice already and would not mind reading it again. I must have accidentally removed it from my library because I can no longer find it. I got it as a freebie from Amazon, but now they are charging $12 for the ebook. Ouch!

[PatH]

Maybe Amazon removed it for some reason?  Bummer.

[Frybabe]

I've wondering about that, Pat. I might just look for Robogenesis, Robopocalypse, and AMPed in one the used book market to add to my print library. Buying books is something of a luxury for me these daysI , but I do succumb on occasion. About once a year I get tired of spending mostly on things I need and do a binge buy. This year I bought this notebook computer (what is the difference between a notebook and a laptop, I wonder) and $55 worth of books on Roman history. Now I am in tightwad mode again.

[Frybabe]

My most recent Publisher's Weekly email lists "The Most Anticipated Books for Fall 2016". One of them is Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation edited and trans. by Ken Liu (Tor, Nov.).

The other is a fantasy, but we might like it, called Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon, Sept.)
They call it  a "...21st-century hymn to Persephone celebrating the cyclic changing of seasons, relationships, and the life of the planet itself."

I am looking forward to reading both. In fact, I may recommend Summerlong to my library.

[PatH]

I'll be interested in what you think of Summerlong if you read it.  Beagle is widely respected, but I couldn't get intothe only thing of his I've tried--The Last Unicorn..  It was well written, though.  I'm impressed by Liu, and would be glad to read more Chinese s-f.

[Frybabe]

I've never read Beagle, but I have read several of Liu's works and like them very much.

[Frybabe]

I just couldn't be without a copy of AMPed even though I already read it twice. Found a new hardcover copy online for around $5.50 and free shipping. Wilson's last book or two have been graphic novels. I hope he switches back to regular writing soon.

Today, I start on the fourth of John Ringo's Posleen series, Hell's Faire. I like the characters and the action even though the Posleen are a rather improbable enemy, horse-like in body with a set of hands and an alligator-like head. This one is the last of the main series, after this one, it looks like they follow Callie, the daughter of Mike (aka: Iron Mike or Mighty Mite) McNeil, who grows up to become an assassin. I have grown rather fond of these characters, a few of which have already met their demise. I am hoping a few of them make it through the wars. There is a CD with the book which says it includes a role playing game that requires a Roleplaying Core Game Book whatever that is. I'll take a look at it to see what else might be on it. I don't do role playing games.

[ginny]

Still reading Arthur C Clarke's huge volume of short stories, trying to fit in (and often failing)one per day. Read, as I said in the Library, the 9 Billion Faces of God, bought the book, then A Walk in the Dark, loved that one. They seem reminiscent at least that last one of some of the old radio shows of the Nostalgia years, like Suspense, I listen to them on the radio. There was a great one last spring when I was picking up my grandson,  very like a Walk in the Dark.

I keep trying to think what appeals to me about this genre. Is it the no holds barred, space, imagination, anything can happen but you can put yourself in the place of the protagonist and try to deal with it ( in opposition to, say Preston and Childs and their monsters), or is it sort of the idea of Apocalypse now, the end of the world Mad Max and Thunderdome type thing? Is it the cold hard science or the speculation? I'm trying to figure out why I like it.

What do real fans of the genre like about it?

[Frybabe]

I am on the third of Lucas 'Bale's Beyond the Wall' series now. You might call it dystopian, but I am not sure that quite fits. There are various worlds of differing societies within the grasp of the Magistratus (the ruling clans/consuls) who live in the Core world. Each book takes a different path. New characters are introduced and followed, some are dropped for a while, but then all meet about 40% of the way through the last book to discover what is really going on. Main characters a 'preacher', a freelance freighter pilot, a navigator/assassin, a detective, a soldier, a convict among the crowd. While spaceships and travel are a part of the series, most of the action is set on ground what ever world it might be. Very well drawn, very well written mystery.

[Frybabe]

I will be picking up Yellow Eyes by John Ringo at the library this afternoon. It is an off-shoot of the Posleen War series set in South and Central America. In the meantime, I've started both Odd Thomas and The Poe Shadow (Matthew Pearl).

Meanwhile I have to wait for the fourth of the Beyond the Wall series since it isn't out yet. The plot and subplots are beginning to twist and turn around each other more tightly and a new development(s) by the end of the third book are bringing the story to a right boil. I hope the author can pull them all neatly together by the end of the fourth. 

[PatH]

My sci-fi reading hasn't been much lately.  I read the latest of Lois McMaster Bujold's seeries about Miles, but it's substandard--looks like tying up loose ends to me.

And my read until you fall asleep book was rereading Terry Pratchett's Thud!  I may have quoted this before, but my favorite footnote , thoughts of Sam Vimes, the righteous head of the Guards, is worth repeating:

"Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts.  Chess in particular had always annoyed him.  It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves."

I've got the paperback of The Three Body Problem, but haven't started it yet.

[Frybabe]

I finished two Scifi books since I last posted. The first is called Teleport This by Christopher M. Daniels and the second is Star Nomad: Fallen Empire. Book 1 by Lindsay Buroker. Both were freebie first books from Amazon.

Teleport This is another humorous read. A couple of nerdie techs get instructions to build a teleport from aliens along with an invite to visit. They do so. Besides the nerds, the characters include an AI (of course), a PI hired by one nerd's Mum to find her son, Mafia-type bad guys, a princess, a guy who is about to turn state's evidence against one of the bad guys (he is also a con and a hacker), and the alien equivalent of a Federal agent. It turns out to be part of a trilogy, but I am not planning to follow their adventures any farther. The other two don't sound as interesting as the first. Worth a read if you like light, funny scifi without much sci in the scifi.

Star Nomad follows the pilot of a freighter. A former pilot for the rebels who won against former oppressive Imperial government, she and her best friend are attempting to get back to their home planet to find her young daughter. Her crew and passengers include a security person who loves to cook and is on the run from the local mafia gang, a science teacher with chickens who sounds a lot like a hippy type, a doctor/monk who has a strange object with him (he isn't what he seems apparently), and a cyborg. The last two have loyalties to the Imperial government which still holds the one planet the pilot is trying to get to. Kind of Firefly like. Of course, they have to take a detour for the cyborg and run into pirates along the way. Like the story. Will have to add it to my list of borrows. It will be a while, because...

Right now I am reading the third of Marco Kloos' Frontlines series. Still a good story. Still like the characters. There are five or six books in this series, all of which I can get from the lending library at Amazon. It really sucks that I am limited to one a month. Evan Currie's next Odyssey series book is also out and it will be a must read too.

[PatH]

I'm glad that one of us is reading sci-to at the moment.  Things are easing up a bit here, so hopefully I'll be able to get back to it.  Those both sound like things I would enjoy.  Firefly like is good.  I really liked that series.

[Frybabe]

I've finished Marco Kloos' Angle of Attack (3rd in his Frontlines series). I couldn't put it down. It is going to be a long wait until next month for the next one since none of his books are on overdrive (I am not even sure they are in print).

Here is something interesting. The second Frontlines book, Lines of Departure, was nominated  by a group called Sad Puppies for a 2015 Hugo Award. When Kloos found out about it he withdrew the book from consideration. There seems to be a fight going on within the Hugo Awards ranks. You can read about Sad Puppies and why so many book Hugo Award book categories ended up being listed as No Award for the 2015 nominations. It looks like they are in for a fight again this year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies

I have so many scifi ebooks downloaded that I've been, for the most part, reading them in order by author. It seems to be working out a little better than trying to figure out which are the oldest I downloaded, and I reduce the possibility of reading any series books out of order. I'll probably have to do the same for the mystery ebooks.

[PatH]

That Sad Puppies fight looks like the effort of a few people to change the mood of award-winning books and make their own books winners.  The first sometimes needs to be DNS, as judges can get into ruts, but I'm suspicious of the second.  I'll watch with interest.

Too many books.  You poor thing.

[Frybabe]

About 145 SciFi downloads, PatH. Some are short stories, but most are full books. The mystery books are edging up there, but I don't think they hit 100 yet.

[PatH]

Whereas I'm in a kind of general reading dearth right now.  Somehow the time-consuming issues of my personal life (nothing bad, just an avalanche of fussy details) have put me in a mood of only wanting to reread things, and not much of that.  This won't last.

[Frybabe]

I know how you feel Pat. When I was working on my Accounting certificater, I did not have the brain power to get into anything that required heavy thinking. That is when I read all those Cat Who... books. They are a light read and something I didn't have to think on.

I was thinking of Steph today. A lot of the SciFi writers that I have been reading are into writing Fantasy too, some of them, like Evan Currie and Jack Campbell, just recently (in the last several years) have switched for a while. Currie just had another of his Odyssey SciFi published after doing several Fantasy novels. Hugh Howey's last published books are a non-fiction series called Wayfinder.

[PatH]

I've been thinking of Steph lately too.  It looks like she isn't coming back, which is too bad.

[Frybabe]

Just finished a Halo Universe series book by Troy Denning called Last Light. At first I wasn't sure I was going to like the book, but once I gave it a few chapters, I was hooked. It starts out as a rather standard crime scene/detective novel, just set on another world. As the story evolves it becomes more SciFi interesting. Of course, it includes a group of Spartans, some of which are at one point or another prime suspects in serial murders as the detective tries to pin it on one of them while telling herself not to be biased. There a coup and the attendant conflict/fighting and a Forerunner artifact to be retrieved. I liked most of the characters.

Troy Denning is the author of numerous SciFi books, many of which are set in the Star Wars universe. This is the first time I've read him. Denning also writes fantasy and is a game designer.

[PatH]

In today's Washington Post, their big gun book reviewer, Michael Dirda, had an article making the case for a Nobel Prize in literature for Ursula K. LeGuin.  He also listed some new books and collections of hers.  I didn't know there was more of the Earthsea series after Tehanu.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/at-86-ursula-k-le-guin-is-finally-getting-the-recognition-she-deserves--almost/2016/10/03/8753524c-8654-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html?tid=pm_entertainment_pop_b

[Frybabe]

Good article. PatH. Thanks for sharing.

I have not read Earthsea. Not surprising since I generally don't care for wizardry stories. I did read  "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names"  from The Wind's Twelve Quarters (from The Wind's Twelve Quarters) out of which Earthsea grew. Ursula Le Guin came to my attention when I saw The Lathe of Heaven on TV. I didn't understand all of it at the time. It wasn't until years later I read the book.

On another note, Margaret Atwood's newest, The Hag Seed, is now out.  I hate the name, but it might be interesting to read. It is described as a modern retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

[PatH]

The Lathe of Heaven is one of my favorite LeGuin books.

I read a rather cranky disapproving revue of The Hag Seed, which didn't tell me anything about whether I wanted to read it.  I don't like all her stuff.  After reading Oryx and Crake, I had no desire to read more of the series.

[Frybabe]

Maybe the reviewer is a "purist" who likes her Shakespeare original. Actually Shakespeare's works have already been modernized, at least in language. I read a few years back about a group in London doing Shakespeare's plays in the original. Doing research, they discovered that some of the humor, etc. was lost when the language was updated.

Here is something interesting from Open Culture:
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/hear-what-hamlet-richard-iii-king-lear-sounded-like-in-shakespeares-original-pronunciation.html

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

[Frybabe]

The other day, I finished John Ringo's The Tuloriad. It is set after the Posleen Wars and follows two groups. One are Posleen survivors searching for their ancient, original home, and the other follows a human group on a mission to spread human religion among the Posleen. Very little fighting, more swearing than I remember is the others of the series that I read. The oddest thing I found about the book was the human manifestation of the ship who is married to the Catholic priest. Oh, and she (the  ship) is Jewish. Rather than a contingent of one army or another, a Swiss Guard unit is assigned to the ship. Religions represented are Catholic, Jewish (via the ship) only, Muslem, Episcopal/Baptist (one Posleen ordain in both), and a Posleen group trying to revive the old native religion as best they could understand it from archeological artifacts.

I tried reading Ringo's The Last Centurion, but it made no sense to me. It is written, as best as I can tell, with a lot of modern day new speak and slang which goes way over my head. Read a few pages and gave up. Couldn't make any sense of it. Looked farther into the book and it appears to continue in that verbiage the whole way through.

Now I am reading an old Alan Nourse SciFi, Star Soldiers. Here we have humans consigned to being mercanaries by the Central Command which oversees the galaxy. They are only allowed to fight at the technical level of the civilization requesting the mercs. There is a conspiracy going on to undermine Central Command by setting the Legions (Mechs, using mechanical armor and advanced weapons) against the Archs (those who fight by sword/blades or rifle only) and to weaken the humans fighting ability. Many humans are not happy about being limited to being the galaxy's fighters and not allowed to explore new worlds or trade with established worlds. Good story.

[Frybabe]

Oops! I did a booboo.

Star Soldiers was written by Andre Norton, not Alan Nourse. Got my AN's mixed up.
It turns out that this is two books in one, the first is titled Star Guards and is what is described below. The second is called Star Rangers.  Star Rangers is mostly about the occupants of a crashed Star Patrol ship on an oddly similar planet to the legendary Terra. The planet is off the star charts, in the backwaters of space. They encounter two groups of "people". One being a group of stranded cruise liner travelers and the nasty dude that took control. They occupy a long abandoned city with advanced technology. The others are small groups of native peoples who live off the land (Native American style or similar) and who believe in Sky Gods.

Surprise! My next two reads are not SciFi. One is a murder mystery and the other is an historical fiction. Poor Odd Thomas keeps getting shunted aside. I am only on Chapter 2.

[PatH]

I like Andre Norton, but don't think I've read those.  I think of summing up her stories as people talking to cats, but that's an oversimplification.

My next fantasy read-to-be was sparked by a long train of thought from the Bob Dylan discussion in the Library, too tedious to repeat.  But it resulted in my learning of a book by S. P. Somtow.  He's a sci-fi/fantasy writer/composer and conductor, and I've enjoyed some of his less far-out books, especially Starship and Haiku.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/s-p-somtow/

It turns out he wrote a book, The Shattered Horse, dealing with the adventures of Astyanax, infant son of Hector, who was supposedly killed by being thrown over the battlement of Troy at the end of the Trojan war.  A cheap used copy is on its way to me.

[Frybabe]

The historical fiction is already history. It turned out to be more like historical fantasy. I haven't determined what time period this is supposed to  be but it is about a Roman legionnaire. The writing was somewhat awkward, but what really got me was that the author used  modern names, modern army ratings and the "Captain" had a "Lieutenant" that is an elf. Ooooookay, I'm outta that one. I lasted maybe ten pages.

[PatH]

Well, at least you didn't waste a lot of time on it.

[Frybabe]

I have finished a book called A.L.I.V.E. by R. D. Brady. It is about a black budget project in genetics and cloning involving alien combined human or animal genetics. Of course, things get a bit out of control. And, of course, this is the first of a series so the bad guy and some of the experiments were spirited away before the final showdown for this book. The good guys were likable. The bad guys were properly despicable. The science was not heavy; the book was centered more on the moral and emotional aspects of the subject vs human interactions.

I am back to reading Odd Thomas now and enjoying Dean Koontz's writing. I am surprised to find out that it was made into a movie in 2013. On checking the cast, the only names I recognize are Anton Yelchin and Willem DeFoe. Yelchin played Checkov in the new Star Trek movies and was, unfortunately, killed in a freak car accident earlier this year.

[Frybabe]

I just finished Chains of Command by Marco Kloos. It is the fourth of a series. I just love the characters. The main character (and narrator) not only fights, but worries over hard choices he has to make like sending his troops to what may be their death, and takes it hard when they do. He doesn't like some of the hard choices his commanders have to make either, but in the end, has to admit that given the circumstances, he would have done the same. The fifth in the series is not yet out yet.

The next SciFi I am just starting to read is called The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart. Again, it is the first of a series. I am to Chapter 4 and so far, I fail to see where it fits into the title. It begins at a research station for new space technologies, primarily for the military. Other than that, I can't say much about it.

[Robby]

Does fantasy here refer solely to that solely in books and/or movies or does it include fantasy in our lives as well?

[PatH]

Robby, it mostly refers to books, but as you've noticed, we tend to range widely, so this would be appropriate.  But you'll only get an audience of two or three in here, so you will be heard better if you put it in the Library, which serves as a place to put everything that doesn't fit elsewhere.  You can put the same post in two places too; that's often done.

[Frybabe]

Oh wow, Robby. You just made me chuckle.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it here, but I have absolutely decided that I am not dying until I see boots on the ground on Mars. I fully expect to be on a space exploration team or a space marine in a future life. Looking forward to it now though my future self won't remember anything of my previous lives.

My scientific side says that matter transforms but does not disappear (unless you collide with anti-matter). So who knows where my atoms and such will end up in some far future. It is one of the reasons I don't want to be buried in a box. Slows the process. I'd rather be cremated and spread around somewhere. Is this a bit morbid or what?

[Robby]

I gave instructions to be cremated and when he asked me where I wanted the ashes to go, I told him it made no difference to me; he could spread them on his front lawn if he wished.  My belief is that the atoms that came together to create me originated somewhere from the stars "out there" and will eventually be there again.  I realize that this is not what others believe and I respect their belief.

[evergreen]

Robby,

Your post reminds me of the following poem by Masefield:

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I  am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on a windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that  there's an end of me.

John Edward Masefield
1878 - 1967

[PatH]

I'm reminded of the ballad The Twa Corbies:

Mony a one for him maks mane
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white banes when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw forevermair.

[Robby]

We use the term "science fiction" but as the years (centuries) pass, more and more of what we thought impossible is coming into being.  Would our nation's founders have considered the internet fantasy?