The Science Fiction book thread

www.Freerepublic.com | 8-19-06 | "Hack"

[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?

[Old Student]

"You have to be older than dirt to remember "SLAN", a classic for it's time."

Guilty as charged. Good story, too.

[Old Student]

""AC Clarke - very entertaining. Safe bets."
By that I assume you mean overblown hack."

You'd be wrong. You also owe much of the real world to Mr. Clarke. He was a communications engineer, and is the person who first suggested geosynchronous communications satellites. Once upon a time, they called it the Clarke Belt. Perhaps his best story, IMHO, is "Childhood's End."

[Old Student]

"I just read Ensign Flandry and really enjoyed it. I have three others in the series but have been told there are even more."

IMHO, Fire Time is Anderson's best, but it's a stand-alone. So is Tau Zero, and also Star Fox, but they're his #2 and #3, to me.

[nuke rocketeer]

Conservative SF writers I know of:

Poul Anderson (RIP)
Jerry Pournelle
Larry Niven


RAH was more of a Liberterian

All the rest seem to run lib

[Old Student]

"imho the best military sf ever written was S.M. Stirling's "The Domination"."

Nah. Scariest, I'll buy. It's good, too, but not by far the "best". Fascinating, yes... The first few times I read them (Marching Through Georgia, ???, and The Stone Dogs) I was both repelled and fascinated. I could all too easily imagine myself as one of the Draka, or as one of the rebellious slaves, or as an Alliance agent...

[Old Student]

"Does anyone else who has read Heinlein find such a theme running through his work???"

Not freaking likely. Normal, boring people might starve, but the smart ones will find some way out of it, or any other problem they might encounter. THAT is the sort of story Heinlein wrote, until his brain went away on him...

And even then, his stuff was well written, just no longer to my taste.

[Old Student]

"One premise of "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" was that China and India remain in a state of perpetual near-starvation, requiring lunar slaves to keep them supplied with protein."

Nope. That the Lunar Authority, which controls the Lunar Colony, uses Lunar rice and wheat to "play politics with hunger" and keep themselves in power.

[Darkwolf377]

HIs son didn't start the prequels until over a decade after Herbert's death. This fall, the final book Frank Herbert outlined, which comes after Chapterhouse, is coming out in TWO books--they sure are milking it.

[Swordmaker]

"Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" -

Did you know that "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" is availalbe on line?

[Swordmaker]

You have to be older than dirt to remember "SLAN", a classic for it's time.

It's good but not as good as "The World of Null A" and "The Weapon Shops of Isher".

[cgbg]

I share your frustration with the Scifi channel and also enjoyed that "Think Like A Dinosaur" Outer Limits episode.

The New Outer Limits made another episode based on George RR Martin's "Sand Kings" that was one of the most frightening hours ever to be seen on television imho.

Every short story on my list should be made into an hour long show--they would all be heads and shoulders above both the scifi and other drek that waste air time on that channel.

I also would love to see my short story made into an The Outer Limits episode (would an opening shot of a factory in the West Texas plains cranking out giant Martin Luther King statues be freaky or what?--well, everybody needs a dream. :-) )

[Paradox]

Orson Scott Card is pretty conservative, even though I believe he is a Democrat. Dan Simmons is relatively conservative as well, at least in regards to the WOT and Global Warming.

[upier]

Just read the thread-see you listed Donaldsen-Have you read the first book of his latest Covenant Series?

Yes I have. It was pretty good. It seems like it will be an interesting series. Definitely worth a read if you like the previous books.

[upier]

Conservative SF writers I know of:

Poul Anderson (RIP)
Jerry Pournelle
Larry Niven

Add Terry Goodkind.

[Pietro]

I'm not a big sci-fi guy, but I'm reading a novel now that is excellent; "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phil Dick.

I highly recommend it.

[Darkwolf377]

Thanks for suggesting Brin and Bear. I will check them out--I think I have couple of Brin books in my voluminous "unread" archives already.

Do you like Greg Benford's books?

[Darkwolf377]

FEAR is a terrific horror novel. It's funny how many people I've encountered who trash Hubbard's writing and then add "Except Fear, THAT was good."

[Little Ray]

The Baen Mafia:

David Weber
David Drake
Travis Taylor
John Ringo
Steve White
Eric Flint (even though he's a commie pinko)

Baen generally puts out SOMETHING I want to buy, at least once per month.

[Darkwolf377]

Thanks for your comments on Firefly. Too many people who liked it just said to me "You didn't LIKE IT?! What's WRONG with you?!"

I borrowed the whole run of the show and watched all but one or two eps which I couldn't see because the DVD was damaged. I enjoyed a lot of the one-liners, and the characters showed potential, but I just didn't see a lot of There there. You mention, for example, Ron Glass's character maybe not being a Shepard. OK, but is that really anything beyond the most basic characterization? Someone presents himself as one thing, but may be a former soldier or spy or something--well, that's not particularly deep, or original.

I liked how there was no sound in space, for example, but then they have people shot with hand-held rifles and go flying like they'd been hit with rockets. Silly. That every planet looks like the same "old west" setting is beyond silly. Planets just don't all look the same or have the same conditions.

The "special" girl/boy cliche is so unbelievably tired by now that I was getting really frustrated with that character and her wimpy brother. It's always funny to me in these post-Buffy times to see hot or cute chicks kicking all kinds of ass. It's a nice girl-empowermentfantasy but I was led to believe this show tried a more believable approach to space opera. It didn't, its cliches were just different from the ones, say, Star Trek uses.

I'm not hating the show, btw--I think it's OK. But it's just nothing special. I think it's too bad the eps were run in the wrong order, and have no idea why the network didn't try to give the show some support. But to be honest, if I were running the network, I wouldn't see a reason to continue it, either. It just wasn't all that interesting to me because the potential that is clearly there was not used in those opening 13 episodes. Usually when a show takes forever to get going, it isn't really going anywhere.

I will see the Serenity movie, though, just to see if there's any sense of conclusion to the story. And thanks again for your thoughtful post.

[Mad Dawgg]

"Conquistador: A Novel of Alternate History S.M. Stirling was fun, but it dragged in some parts."

If you liked that one, try Island in the Sea of Time it is a far better book, I have read it several times and love all the books in the series as well as the "flipside" story Dies the Fire.

Also another excellent series (so far) is Weapons of Choice (The Axis of Time Trilogy) by John Birmingham.

All of the above are excellent alternate history novels.