The science fiction/fantasy novels thread

[Drew_Sutton]

Here's the last sci-fi book I tried to read recently:



This book was awful and not just because it was advertised Libertarian propaganda. I put it down to re-read a book about East Germany.

Before that, I read Face On The Horizon, a book my uncle has been trying to get published for several years and finally got it. He had a manuscript I tried to read way back when I was something like 12 or 13 but I wasn't able to get through it. I liked the book and not just because I know the author.

Since we're talking about Idoru{/u], I'll give it a thumbs up, too. It was my first Gibson book (what a coincidence) and I liked it quite a bit. I've also read Neuromancer, which I liked a lot but I think because it was a weird let-me-read-about-Internet-stuff-that-was-written-well-before-it-was-plausible. I have the sequels to the Sprawl Trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive but haven't read them yet.

I've read a few Heinlein books, too; I've started both Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Variable Star. Star was taken from a mostly-written manuscript prior to Heinlein's death and touched up by Spider Robinson. I'm not real familiar with Robinson, so I am not sure how much of his tone comes through Heinlein's words but it doesn't seem too out of place compared to Moon or Starship Troopers, which I have read. Also have a copy of Stranger In A Strange Land that I need to read.

Last but not least, I have a couple of John Brunner's books. I would like to read through Stand On Zanzibar again and I have a copy of The Shockwave Rider, which describes computer viruses before they were created. Lots of stuff to read and I keep putting other things in front of them.

[davemerrill]

I hauled out my old library hardback of Heinlein's BETWEEN PLANETS recently and that one still holds up. I find his sweet spot to be anywhere from the late 1940s to MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS; after that things go south pretty fast. I read STRANGER once in high school and found it self-important and tiresome.

STRANGER is Heinlein's version of Jesus, more or less. It's light on the science fiction and heavy on the societal aspects of what would happen if somebody with super-human abilities and an extra-human philosophy existed; some view him as a threat, some view him as the savior, some take advantage of him, etc. The interesting parts of the story get buried in lots of expository lecturing by several characters (something that took over more and more of his work after this point) and the story spends a lot of time on the shocking-for-the-time free-love aspects of the alien movement, which is something else that would take over more and more of his work after this point.

It's one of the books that consistently gets praised as a must-read, top-10 SF books of all time kind of thing, and that may have been true in 1966-1975, but time hasn't been kind to it. I think his reach was exceeding his grasp somewhat with this one. His next book was MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, which is just as sexually and politically experimental, but much more readable. In my opinion, of course, I know there are a lot of people who think STRANGER is the bee's knees.

It's not SF, but I'm working my way through MEETING WITH JAPAN by Fosco Maraini; he was an Italian writer, photographer and mountaineer who wound up interned in Japan in 1943 and returned to the country in the early 50s, and this book is the result. I picked it up at a flea market and it was stuffed with pamphlets from a Toronto area Buddhist society, which was kinda cool. I figured the book would be pretty dry, but Maraini has a wonderful descriptive style and it's fascinating to see what's changed and what hasn't in Tokyo in the past sixty years.

[Drew_Sutton]

I took a look at one of my bookshelves with a bunch of SF on it, I found yet another trilogy I started long ago. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Red is the first of the Mars trilogy and about the first manned mission(s) to Mars, ultimately with the goal of setting up long-term research station and colony. The subsequent books Blue Mars and Green Mars, which I have not read yet, continue exploring social and environmental themes related to terraforming the planet (according to reading about the books). Robinson uses his background as an engineer to write a compelling hard-science novel, reminiscent of Asimov and Heinlein from the late fifties and early sixties.

[_D_]

Stapledon! Best work was Last and First Men. That would make an epic series of movies. A bit dated but influenced many scifi writers over time. Pulled out all my H.P. Lovecraft books intending to sell them but sold 13 Philip K. Dick books. And that was a struggle since so many people want you to part with them for no money. But I ended up selling to a fellow Canadian, so both he and I are happy. Still have a couple left from an estate sale where I got hundreds if books, mostly in virtually unread condition. I'll never read them or all the old 1950s to 70s magazines so its time to let them go...