great SF books

[flies]

just read ender's game and enjoyed it quite a bit. Only mildly imaginative, but compellingly rendered. The denouement is great. I am like 20 pages into speaker for the dead - doesn't grab you like the first book.

also wanted to express my love for the Dune series. The only thing is: the second book is by far the worst in the series - several people i've recommended the series to got turned off by how dull it is. My recommendation is to skim it and hold your breath for children of dune. God Emperor is probably the best, but the 5th and 6th books are also excellent (books 4-6 develop the civilization far into the future with intriguing results). The first book is the most fun/exciting, and it's very impressive in how well developed the setting is, but the 4th book will be the favorite for anyone who prizes the nifty idea component of Science Fiction.

I liked the original dune series so much that I read the Legends of Dune prequels by Brian Herbert (son of Frank) and Kevin J. Anderson. Not recommended.

[Dohol]

I liked the original dune series so much that I read the Legends of Dune prequels by Brian Herbert (son of Frank) and Kevin J. Anderson. Not recommended.

Damn right there...What an injustice to his old man's legacy.

What Herbert did that was so wonderful was building a coherent, believable world out of his imagination..I haven't re-read Dune in a long time (I dove into it a lot wayback in the 70's) Maybe I should dig it out again..

[will]

I'm re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy at the moment, and am enjoying it, though parts of it feel a bit too much like book reports (on sociobiology, the fact-value distinction, industrial-era mysticism), but the combination of massive scale and attention to detail is quite interesting. His rendering of leftie American scientists is pretty spot on, though his takes on other nations and cultures can fall off into a bit of caricature, and detracts from the flow of the story. I read Years of Rice and Salt when it was first published, and liked it, but because of the sort of blocky writing of cutlures in the Mars trilogy, I'm hesitant to return to it (it's an alternate history premised on Europe's having largely succumbed to the Plague, and the fates of the different imperial powers that rise as a result). If anyone has gotten through the California trilogy (same topics, different place), I'd love some feedback / guidance. I've read parts of each of the books in the series, but tend to tire of the unfolding plots before finishing.
I like some of Ken MacLeod's novels as well, he really pushes the ramification of political stances emerging from present conditions as a core theme (and in so doing avoids the sort of moony post-consumerist Utopian thing that always bugged me about Banks' Culture novels), though best to keep to the Fall Revolution series, and avoid the massively bad pot-smoking dinosaur / flying saucer / hyperintelligent squid mess that followed. Newton's Wake has an interesting extrapolation of Juche + computational singularity, though, and the funniest thing I've ever read about fiberglass statues of Marxist heroes and people yelling at each other through low quality translators.

Long story short, I like science fiction that takes politics seriously, but also has some awesome space lasers or whatever.

[Stevo]

I was turned onto that Kim stanley robinson Mars series by somebody after they'd seen me with Gavin Menzies' 1421.
i enjoyed it, so glad to hear there's more. Will look out for this california thing.

[negative potential]

almost all of these guys are pretty lousy writers when it comes down to it, that's how I think of William Gibson (good ideas, shitty prose)

This gets it ass-backwards. Yes, most SF writers are ideas-based and not prose stylists. But weirdly enough, you choose to single out the one example that is actually an excellent prose stylist. I mean, Gibson's got some cool ideas too, but stylistically he's at the top. That's why CompLit grad students who couldn't care less about SF all love Gibson, whereas a more hardcore ideas guy like Bruce Sterling is more beloved by genre fans.

[jon abbey]

yeah, I'm sticking by that opinion, Jeff Noon is much better in the same area (not Vurt as much as some of his later stuff), and Gibson is shockingly clunky in the books I've read. if he's the best the area has to offer, that's pretty sad.

[billygomberg]

almost all of these guys are pretty lousy writers when it comes down to it, that's how I think of William Gibson (good ideas, shitty prose)

This gets it ass-backwards. Yes, most SF writers are ideas-based and not prose stylists. But weirdly enough, you choose to single out the one example that is actually an excellent prose stylist. I mean, Gibson's got some cool ideas too, but stylistically he's at the top. That's why CompLit grad students who couldn't care less about SF all love Gibson, whereas a more hardcore ideas guy like Bruce Sterling is more beloved by genre fans.

yeah, I'm sticking by that opinion, Jeff Noon is much better in the same area (not Vurt as much as some of his later stuff), and Gibson is shockingly clunky in the books I've read. if he's the best the area has to offer, that's pretty sad.

but you suggest Childhood's End? to qualify. I'm not huge on Gibson either - I don't think he's a great writer either (period), but I found Childhood's End to be a half-baked parable straight out of the 50s ideas bin. we can argue "classic" or not but I groaned through the whole thing.

as such, I also disagree that SF is "all about ideas, man" - I've read some TERRIBLE SF that was rec'd to me b/c of the great ideas at play in the story. the best books I've read, SF or no, are well written as books. I think SF especially has a bad rep for being poorly written stories w/flat characters, but "cool ideas," and I think that SF often earns that rep.

[jon abbey]

but you suggest Childhood's End? to qualify. I'm not huge on Gibson either - I don't think he's a great writer either (period), but I found Childhood's End to be a half-baked parable straight out of the 50s ideas bin. we can argue "classic" or not but I groaned through the whole thing.

I made a point of saying I hadn't read any of those in decades, all the Clarke and Heinlein and Bradbury and Asimov I read was when I was in high school.

[billygomberg]

but you suggest Childhood's End? to qualify. I'm not huge on Gibson either - I don't think he's a great writer either (period), but I found Childhood's End to be a half-baked parable straight out of the 50s ideas bin. we can argue "classic" or not but I groaned through the whole thing.

I made a point of saying I hadn't read any of those in decades, all the Clarke and Heinlein and Bradbury and Asimov I read was when I was in high school.

ok that makes sense.

[Dohol]

Octavia Butler...The Xenogenisis series is a good place to start.



M. John Harrison.



Almost everything this man has done is great.. (Although, only a fairly small bit of his output can be described as "science fiction")

[jenn devious]

i loved Snow Crash and, not to get off topic, but I just watched the episode of Party Down where Kyle is trying out for a role as Vitaly Chernobyl (nuclear fuzz grunge!). That show is AWESOME.

[frozen reeds]

Now someone mentioned JEFF NOON in this thread?

It started off so well too... Talk about false hopes!

[jon abbey]

Vurt wasn't very good, but Needle in the Groove is quite good, better than any William Gibson I've read. have you read that one, or are you being a giant cock for no reason?

[Dohol]

Vurt wasn't very good, but Needle in the Groove is quite good, better than any William Gibson I've read.

I actually liked Vurt better than his later books. Not that I didn't enjoy any of them, they just didn't pull my string..

I can understand your dislike of W Gibson. But I really did enjoy Neromancer.. CountZero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Idoru..not. Pattern Recognition and Spook Country were alright, but not great.

I don't look at him so much as a Science Fiction writer..He's more of a Noir/hardboiled novelist...with 22nd century window dressing.

[jon abbey]

I don't look at him so much as a Science Fiction writer..He's more of a Noir/hardboiled novelist...with 22nd century window dressing.

well, I'm a huge fan of that area, and he's a worse writer than even second-tier guys like Charles Willeford and David Goodis, let alone the giants like Chandler, Hammett, Thompson. maybe I heard too much hype before reading Neuromancer, but I found it really disappointing.

I should probably stop posting on this thread, though.

[frozen reeds]

Vurt wasn't very good, but Needle in the Groove is quite good, better than any William Gibson I've read. have you read that one, or are you being a giant cock for no reason?

No. I read Vurt and Pollen over a decade ago. Only the promise of a quality hike without historical precedent is going to convince me to read another word of his.

My reason for being "a giant cock" (first time I've had that phrase directed at me, I'm sorry to say) is sincere disappointment at the taste levels in general evidence here when it comes to SF literature.

If this thread were about music:

Starts off with the title "Great Jazz records" with the first poster asking whether dipping into Coltrane is going to get them places. On page two, Jelly Roll Morton is getting namedropped alongside Kenny G and (God alone knows why) John Mayall, then you pop up on page three and start talking about Claire Martin or some shit.

[jon abbey]

goddamn, you're a condescending fuck. thanks for illuminating us all, without actually illuminating us one bit.

[jon abbey]

and I love that this crap is your example of great writing. again, thanks for the literary lesson.

Gene Wolfe is head and shoulders above most of the writers mentioned on this thread, including fucking Pynchon.


Gurloes was one of the most complex men I have known, because he was a complex man trying to be simple. Not a simple, but a complex man's idea of simplicity. Just as a courtier forms himself into something brilliant and involved, midway between a dancing master and a diplomacist, with a touch of assassin if needed, so Master Gurloes had shaped himself to be the dull creature a pursuivant or bailiff expected to see when he summoned the head of our guild, and that is the only thing a real torturer cannot be. The strain showed; though every part of Gurloes was as it should have been, none of the parts fit. He drank heavily and suffered from nightmares, but he had the nightmares when he had been drinking, as if the wine, instead of bolting the doors of his mind, threw them open and left him staggering about in the last hours of the night, trying to catch a glimpse of a sun that had not yet appeared, a sun that would banish the phantoms from his big cabin and permit him to dress and send the journeymen to their business. Sometimes he went to the top of our tower, above the guns, and waited there talking to himself, peering through glass said to be harder than flint for the first beams. He was the only one in our guild - Master Palaemon not excepted - who was unafraid of the energies there and the unseen mouths that spoke sometimes to human beings and sometimes to other mouths in other towers and keeps. He loved music, but he thumped the arm of his chair to it and tapped his foot, and did so most vigorously to the kind he liked best, whose rhythms were too subtle for any regular cadence. He ate too much and too seldom, read when he thought no one knew of it, and visited certain of our clients, including one on the third level, to talk of things none of us eaves-dropping in the corridor outside could understand. His eyes were refulgent, brighter than any woman's. He mispronounced quite common words: urticate, salpinx, bordereau. I cannot well tell you how bad he looked when I returned to the Citadel recently, how bad he looks now.

[Gaendaal]

I have to admit that the Wolfe quote put me off reading him too. Talk about clunky.

I liked Jeff Noon when I was back at Uni but haven't read any of his stuff in years. I think that a lot of his appeal then was that I was spending a lot of time in Manchester and the idea of a virtual reality Rusholme was hilarious to me.

[faster]

I'd not like to have a horse in this race, but yeah, that excerpt isn't the kind of thing that appeals to me.