Posted on 08/19/2006 7:09:57 PM PDT by Hacksaw
There have been several science fiction threads floating around in the near past - and I thought it would be good to hash out the books.
Here are my thoughts:
Almost anything by Larry Niven is worth it - especially stuff from the Known Space series. Jerry Pournelle is also good, but under-rated. His Janissaries books were a good read, along with Starswarm.
RAH - most of his books are very enjoyable. His later stuff (which some consider his classics) I didn't like at all, especially that one about a guy getting his brain transplanted in a womans body. I didn't make it 1/3 of the way through before I gave up.
Ben Bova - readable. Not great, but still a page turner.
Star Trek books - unfortuneately, many of these are BORING. Notable exceptions are those written by by Diane Duane or Michael Jan Friedman. JM Dillard also seems good.
Asimov - almost always worth it.
Orson Scott Card - most of the time worth it. The Enders Game series was very good.
Saberhagen - good read. His berserker concept has also been picked up by other authors.
Kim Stanley Robinson - bleech. I kept wishing the characters in his books would get killed. Unfortuneately they were the heroes. Picture a bunch of disciples of Hugo Chavez colonizing Mars and you get the picture.
AC Clarke - very entertaining. Safe bets.
Other thoughts?
I just read Ensign Flandry and really enjoyed it. I have three others in the series but have been told there are even more.
He doesn't seem to be read much these days, except for his Star Trek novelisations. His A Case of Conscience and the Cities in Flight books are great reading. He never seemed to live up to his potential, and died too soon.
How are the sequels?
Communion: Whitley Strieber
Too bad HE doesn't think that's sci fi.
I think this is very much the case--the "sf" section is crammed with dragon and elf crap, and Buffy-rip off crap.
I live near several stores with large sf sections and it's depressing. I think my problem is not keeping up with the field so I don't know who to LOOK for, as opposed to what's plopped on the shelves.
Fantasy is childish, to me, and SF is adolescent, for the most part, so I have to really look hard for SF that is aimed at serious concerns. Most of that, though, is liberal-bias junk, or like China Mieville--all style with commie politics holding it together.
Most of the last bunch of sf novels I've read were all by writers who are dead.
I can't believe that with the human life span being so limited, and all the great books out there, anyone reads a novel "inspired by" a movie or TV show.
Doesn't he do "supernatural detective" stuff? His books look very Lovecraft-derived, but I'd be willing to check his stuff out based on the blurbs--any suggestion as to one to start with?
I'd be interested in reading your thoughts as to why.
I finally watched it and thought 'THIS is what everyone's been going on about?' I couldn't believe how lame the stories were--in one, no one can figure out (SPOILER) why they can hear a character's voice coming through the ship, and I thought, 'Maybe because she's in the other ship connected to it and is talking through the speaker system?' When this is revealed it's this big revelation. (END SPOILER) I liked the cast, some cute lines, and the "no sound in space" policy, but it was just a western in space, which we've seen over and over. Farscape was far superior--it was WEIRD, which is what SF should be.
I find LRHubbard's SF unreadable, but if you're a fan you must check out "Fear".
If it's convenient (and safer) for you to believe that, go right ahead. If you don't think the self-loving descriptions of the hero, the fact that he gets into fistfights within one page every time a woman's sexual desires are mentioned in the book (EVERY time), and that he gets off on watching men whipped are all just part of being soldiers, you need to meet more real soldiers.
First of all I resent the "(and safer)" remark... it is uncalled for. I am perfectly comfortable with my heterosexuality, thank you.
Convenience has nothing to do with it... truth does. If you were to submit a book report citing the above as evidence of "gay undertones" in Starship Troopers you would get an "F" from me.
Those comments, besides being wrong, are totally asinine. They are, in fact "strawman arguments" because they do not represent the reaility of what is in the book.
You must be one of those postmodernist critics. Please provide "the self-loving descriptions of the hero" in Startship Troopers you claim are there and somehow suspect. One of the hallmarks of Heinlein's fiction is that he does not describe his heros. He does not write: "Juan Rico's chiselled visage, gray eyes and slim, muscular physique turned every eye as he entered the ward room." Minor characters might be described but that is rare. Most of the time Heinlein leaves it for your imagination to fill in the details... or the description is developed over time. For example, it isn't until 1987's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" do we learn that Andrew Libby, inventor of the star drive in 1958's "Methusalah's Children", is black. Heinlein writes his heroes so that his readers can insert themselves into the picture and vicariously live the story.
Your assertion that the Startship Troopers' hero gets into "fist fights" within one page "every time" a woman's sexual desires are mention is also false. Aside from training bouts where there are no women around, I can recall one fist fight... it occurs on the recruits' first leave from boot camp when some merchant marines encounter them in a bar and pick a fight. The fight is not even described. No women within several pages of that one.
Your assertion that the hero "gets off on watching men whipped" is exists only in your imagination. The first time Juan Rico is forced to watch corporal punishment, several recruits faint and Juan Rico vomits immediately afterward. If you think that is "turned on" then you have a strange idea of "on". Rico did feel that it was indeed right to hang the child rapist/murderer who had gone AWOL from his class, but then so do I.
Your interpretation makes me think you have not read Starship Troopers but are instead spouting some idiot-with-an-agenda's book review.
Well, it was "later"--his books from the mid-sixties to the end of his life were more sex-obsessed than those published before. The key word being "published"--as you point out, For Us... was not published until much later. So why is it so hard to believe that he had sex on the mind throughout his career, even though it didn't come out till later?
My point was that Heinlein did probably have sex on his mind... but could not get it past the editors. There was a sea-change in publishing in the early to mid-sixties. What once was "Banned in Boston" was suddenly permissible. At least half of Heinlein's works before the 60's were Juveniles... originally written to be serialized in Boy's Life magazine. Sex was specifically forbidden.
His adult works throughout his career contained sex and veiled references to sex... suitable to the mores of the publishing industry at the time. For example "Puppet Masters" (1951) had both men and women walking around naked in public, "Beyond This Horizon" (1942) has some references to outside-the-norm relationships, "Methusalah's Children" (1958) again had nudity and nontraditional relationships, "The Door Into Summer" (1957) featured casual nudity both in 1970 and 2000. "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961) as Heinlein first submitted it, was unabashadly sexual (including some hints of homosexuality) but did not make it past the censors. "Glory Road" (1963) contained enthusiastic sex, nudity, and hints of sex with pre-pubescent girls ("...big bare, little bare, and littlest bare...") which, when Oscar declined, mortally insulted his host, the father of the potential sex partners. As you have pointed out later Heinlein adult novels had even more sex... including Mother/Son incest.
I cannot agree that the books were "sex obsessed" because sex was merely an aspect of the stories Heinlein wrote and did not make up a large portion of any of the books' narratives. Heinlein proposed alternatives to traditional sex just as he proposed traditional societies and traditional relationships. He explored what changes in society, technological advancements (the pill?), different environments, would do to social structures and traditions. The polygamous chain marriages in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "The Cat Who Walked Through Walls", and "Time Enough For Love", are all examples of what might happen when society bends to the pressures of living forever, living in a pioneer environment, etc.
I find it amusing that you think that Heinlein, who lived his life as an enthusiastic and unrepentant heterosexual, suddently decided to write "Starship Troopers" with "gay undertones" and also that you seem to think that "gay undertones" includes "getting off" on watching whippings, having fist fights, and "self-loving descriptions of the hero." In what way are those anymore part of a "gay" lifestyle than they may be of a perverse "straight" lifestyle?
For all my complaints about certain of these authors, they really had the ability with the "sense of wonder," which is considered an insult in some corners. Not me; that's why I still read it when I do, and why so little current SF interests me. I love that sense, while reading, of possibilities I'd never thought of, revealed in a story, as opposed to a science article.
Sturgeon's complete short stories are being collected; they're on volume TEN! I am considering buying them all, just because he was such a master. The Cosmic Rape is a terrific alien invasion story--though like Clarke, Sturgeon seemed enthralled by the hive mind concept, or the gestalt or whatever.
He wrote the single most moving SF story, IMO, "The Crate". It's absolutely brutal for most of its length, but the ending never fails to make even a mean old bastard like me water up.
What a pathetic response--after all your self-righteous blowhardiness, you conveniently forget YOU were the one who sniffed about liberal postmodern critics and fascism first--now you get all huffy about ME making comments you don't like (and calling them 'asinine').
You're obviously way too uptight about this subject--why else would you go on at such length? I could easily refute your points but why bother? You contradict yourself throughout--admitting that Heinlein had sex on his mind, denying homosexuality was part of that, and conveniently forgetting the homosexual references in the post-ST books. (I guess I "made those up" too, huh?)
Sorry to touch on a subject that's obviously making you crazy. Your rage is pretty self-explanatory.
Hear, hear!
Clarke's "The City and the Stars" is pure poetry.
My favorite Heinlein's are "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "The Door Into Summer" followed by "Starship Troopers" and then "Time Enough for Love".
Dang, I've been thinking about pulling my old copies of E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books out of storage and re-reading them. I wish someone would make the "Lensman" series using today's special effects abilities... Like the Lord of Rings Trilogy, it's time. Jackson are you reading this????? They would blow Star Wars out of the box office if done right. Who could they get to play Kimball Kinneson???
BTW--I wasn't calling your heterosexuality into question. It's really bizarre that you went that far out in left field to play the offended party. I meant safer in a sense that it's unnerving to REH's fans to question HIS interest in such things, which prevails in, say, I Will Fear No Evil.
But it sure is interesting you read that into it. And informative.
Whoops, RAH, not REH--different writer altogether (with some similarities...)
Agreed, Dune and the series are required reading. If you haven't yet, check out Feintouch's (sp?) series. It's been a while since I've read, but they're good.
Kind of preachy, kind of weird at time. But a good military/sci-fi read anyways. Start with Midshipman's Hope!
What a pathetic response--after all your self-righteous blowhardiness, you conveniently forget YOU were the one who sniffed about liberal postmodern critics and fascism first--now you get all huffy about ME making comments you don't like (and calling them 'asinine')... ... Sorry to touch on a subject that's obviously making you crazy. Your rage is pretty self-explanatory."pathetic response". . . "self-righteous blowhariness"... "sniffed"... "too uptight"... "crazy"... "your rage"
If you can't argue with facts, attack the opponent.
I thought we were having a discussion. I refuted your argument. I did not attack you.
I could easily refute your points but why bother?
Because YOU claimed the points I refuted exist in the first place! I have stated that your reasons and examples you cited to conclude that "Starship Troopers" has "gay undertones" do not exist in the novel. YOU made specific claims such as: "the fact that he gets into fistfights within one page every time a woman's sexual desires are mentioned in the book (EVERY time)." You stressed the "every time." It's so specific that it means that Robert Heinlein deliberately wrote it that was to give that message. That's pretty specific... so specific that it begs to be proved. It's so specific that someone who has not read the work would conclude that you know what you are talking about because you studied it and are citing facts.
Basically, I've challenged you to come up with the facts, Darkwolf. Cite pages and paragraphs where Heinlein's Juan Rico describes himself with "self-loving". Cite the fistfights (EVERY one of them) within one page of a woman expressing sexual desire. Give pages numbers. Quote exactly the scenes where Juan Rico "gets off" on watching men being whipped. It is asinine to make comments about something that is not in the book as a criticism of the book. Get out your copy of ST and cite your examples.
Quite frankly, I have had this discussion with people before... and it is almost always the liberals who make the claim that Starship Troopers has a fascist theme and then they claim it also is an underlying homosexual novel. After talking with them, invariably, I find they have NOT READ THE BOOK but are merely repeating something they were told by someone else.
You have the unique position of actually giving some reasons why you think it has "gay undertones" but your examples do not jive with my reading of the book. So you get challenged to prove your assertions.
I've cited examples of why I made my conclusions about Heinlein's lifelong inclusion of sex in his adult works. You need to cite yours for your conclusion that ST has "gay undertones."
Do you have a problem with comprehending what I wrote? You have mischaracterized what I have written several times. My original point was that Heinlein wrote sex into his novels and stories from the very first novel in 1939. I said in Post 92
"Also if you think that Heinlein's obsession with sex was "later" you should read his first novel... the first written in 1939 but the published in 2003... For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs in which the major characters spend much of their time naked. Also read the un-Bowdlerized version of "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961) where sex is much more explicit than in the original edited version."
The point, which you seemed to have missed, was that Heinlein wrote on adult themes, including sex, throughout his career, from the very first. To which you replied:
So why is it so hard to believe that he had sex on the mind throughout his career, even though it didn't come out till later?
How you could construe me demonstrating that Heinlein's very first novel had sexual themes in it as accusing me of finding it "hard to believe he had sex on the mind throughout his career" escapes me.
Now you have me "admitting" what was my original thesis to you, that Heinlein had sex on his mind," as though I denied it. It was my point. What I denied was that Starship Troopers had an underlying homosexual or fascist (something you did not claim) theme. I still maintain that is something postmodernist critics choose to read into it when it was not intended at all. Heinlein himself was pissed off when people claimed it was a "homosexual" or "fascist" work.
You contradict yourself throughout--admitting that Heinlein had sex on his mind, denying homosexuality was part of that, and conveniently forgetting the homosexual references in the post-ST books. (I guess I "made those up" too, huh?)
You did not "make up" any homosexual references in post-ST works because you neither cited nor claimed any. I did. My point was and is that Heinlein wrote sex into his novels throughout his life, not just his "later" works.
Apology accepted. But I did not question his interest in sex... just your implication that he placed homosexual messages in ST. I pointed out his use of fringe sexual images in his later novels... and even earlier ones. Heinlein was a sexual person... heterosexual. Nothing in his life indicates anything else.
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