great SF books

[jon abbey]

just take the first two sentences there, the second one is entirely unnecessary and adds absolutely nothing that the first one didn't already say.

anyway, I'm recommending Needle in the Groove specifically, nothing else. it's actually an especially good rec for IHM as Noon has a genuine understanding of experimental music, even if it's pretty Wire-centric. David Toop worked with Noon on a CD for the book in which Toop did the music and Noon read from the book (I haven't heard this, just adding info).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_in_the_Groove

[P. Wretch]

sincere disappointment at the taste levels in general evidence here when it comes to SF literature.

'Taste levels'? Surely the majority of contributors to this forum would reject the notion of objective evaluation of taste. De gustibus... etc.

As for SF, I don't have many insights to add to the conversation. Didn't get into it as a teenager, which seems to have been a decisive factor for many readers, but have investigated some of the classics latterly. Not a fan of many of the canonical post-war American authors - agree with the assertion, whoever made it, that too much SF reads like it was written by robots, about robots, for robots. Intrigued by the bits of Wolfe's Book of the New Sun I've glanced at, but that's usually categorised under 'fantasy', is it not? (Of course the SF/fantasy split is another contentious debate - some prefer the pre-modern category of 'romance', be it scientific, planetary, etc.).

I prefer the pioneering work of H.G. Wells to the majority of what came later, but some 20th C. favourites include Ursula Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, and Jack Vance, most of whom have written both SF and fantasy stuff. Other things on the to-read pile - partly on the basis of Moorcock's recommendations - include the aforementioned M. John Harrison, and the planetary romance stories of Leigh Brackett (who was a screenwriter on The Big Sleep and several other Hawks films, and, for better or worse, wrote the original draft of The Empire Strikes Back, in which Darth Vader lived in a castle). Another promising recent discovery is The Rediscovery of Man, a collection of 50s/60s stories by Cordwainer Smith, published in Gollancz's broadly reliable SF Masterworks series.

[frozen reeds]

'Taste levels'? Surely the majority of contributors to this forum would reject the notion of objective evaluation of taste. De gustibus... etc.

You're correct, I'm sure: it was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to Project Runway.

[Vincent Kargatis]

Some comments on Gene Wolfe. The Book of the New Sun is purely a science fiction work - there are no fantastic elements in it (regarding the SF/F genre division). It bears a (I think deliberate) very casual overall resemblance to a fantasy milieu, but that's as far as such a comparison goes.

I don't consider Jon's criticisms of that previously quoted passage quite legitimate. Generally, Wolfe rather stringently adopts the voice of a chosen character in his works - the writing style of the novel is the character Severian's, not "Wolfe"'s per se. If you can't get around that style in Book of the New Sun, so be it, but there's a lot to be missed, for sure. I'd honestly be surprised if anyone familiar with Wolfe's work didn't consider him a world-class writer. That's certainly the consensus on him that I'm aware of.

John Crowley's another wonderful writer not yet mentioned here. He typically works in fantasy, though he has written a wonderful short SF novel Engine Summer. His most (and justly) famous novel is the fantasy Little, Big (read an excerpt here).

Other SF authors not yet mentioned that I like: Greg Egan and Greg Bear. Egan especially likes dealing with Big Ideas - Permutation City's a good starting point. My favorite Bear is Queen of Angels.

Another favorite, if you allow fantasy here, is Tim Powers. His novels are a blast of well-constructed thrillers inserting the occult into "secret histories". Last Call is a great introduction.

[jon abbey]

I'm just talking about that excerpt, which is terribly written in and of itself. I don't think I'd ever heard of Wolfe before then, but this thread has reminded me I don't actually like SF very much (the idea/s are often great, the execution usually not so much).

[P. Wretch]

Some comments on Gene Wolfe. The Book of the New Sun is purely a science fiction work - there are no fantastic elements in it (regarding the SF/F genre division). It bears a (I think deliberate) very casual overall resemblance to a fantasy milieu, but that's as far as such a comparison goes.

I made that assumption since Gollancz published it in their 'Fantasy Masterworks' (rather than 'SF Masterworks') line, a series that, incidentally, also includes work by Powers and Crowley. I don't think there necessarily have to be 'fantastic' elements - as in magic, monsters, defying of the laws of physics - for something to be classified as fantasy, at least if one looks at it as the inheritor of the 'romance' genre. Often, a fictional medieval or ancient world setting - or a future one which emulates one of these - seems to suffice, especially when combined with a deliberately arcane or archaic writing style (e.g. Peake's masterful Gormenghast books).

On the basis of the excerpts I've read, I don't think Wolfe is stylistically as great a writer as Peake, but certainly of interest to anyone with a taste for that kind of craggy prose (yes Jon, it might seem 'terribly written' according to the criteria of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the modern American novel, but that wasn't the style he was aiming for).

[jon abbey]

yes Jon, it might seem 'terribly written' according to the criteria of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the modern American novel, but that wasn't the style he was aiming for.

again, just judging the actual excerpt, which is badly written by any standard. if it needs all these disclaimers, maybe it shouldn't have been posted to begin with.

[Gaendaal]

Other SF authors not yet mentioned that I like: Greg Egan and Greg Bear. Egan especially likes dealing with Big Ideas - Permutation City's a good starting point.

I thought this was surprisingly dull, given the interesting concept.

[Alastair]

i'm a big fan of Alfred Bester's two 1950s novels "The Stars My Destination" and "The Demolished Man"- they really are ahead of their time- very fast-paced and inventive.

+1

[orangettecoleman]

I'll second the Gene Wolfe recommendation. It's one of the few series I've kept around to reread after reading it once... I don't have a problem with his prose style in that work, in the context of the novel it's appropriate. I'm not any kind of literary critic - I can recognize that Asimov isn't any great shakes in the prose department, so I have some ability to discern whether someone can put together a decently written paragraph, but I don't spend my spare time reading John Updike by any means so take my opinion for what it's worth. In any case, I heartily recommend all H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to start with for anyone interested in the genre, Ray Bradbury and some Clarke as well (Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End in particular) but skip Asimov - his contribution to the genre was great but he's certainly not the writer that Bradbury or Clarke were (and neither of them were top-flight writers by any means, but they were serviceable). I personally go for the "Hard Sci-Fi" stuff like Stephen Baxter (Manifold series and Xeelee sequence in particular). As a writer he's good enough to communicate his ideas without detracting from them with overly clumsy writing (for me in any case) and it's an absolutely narcotic feeling to read storylines revolving around plausible scenarios for the evolution of humanity and the universe extended billions of years into the future. I love that kind of ambition. A lot of these guys, like Baxter and Alistair Reynolds, are trained scientists and it's really thrilling for me to get a peek into their imaginations regarding these things, and some (like Reynolds) are quite capable writers, even if they aren't as polished as writers of "serious literature". The most important thing for me isn't that a writer can turn out beautiful prose, it's that they have enough capability to communicate their ideas and tell their stories without distracting me with their clumsiness or attempts to draw attention to their writing ability. Honestly, I get really irritated when writers try to do more than is necessary to tell their stories effectively, it's the literary equivalent of listening to Yngwie Malmsteen IMO... If you're getting into sci-fi or any "genre" fiction, you have to be comfortable with being satisfied with writing that is "good enough" at best in exchange for stories or ideas that really float your boat. In any case, I'd also recommend "Blood Music" by Greg Bear and a lot of Vernor Vinge for sci-fi, and Raymond E. Feist's "Magician" series if you want some easy-reading, fast-moving fantasy.

[Charon]

...I personally go for the "Hard Sci-Fi" stuff like Stephen Baxter (Manifold series ...

YES

[Dohol]

[walto]

You want some nice excerpts? I got 'em right here! (from M.T. Anderson's Feed)

I missed the feed.

I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.

People were really excited when they first came out with feeds. It was all da da da, this big educational thing, da da da, your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, closer than their fingertips, etc. That's one of the great things about the feed--that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.

It's more now. its not so much about the educational stuff but more regarding the fact that everything that goes on, goes on on the feed. All of the feedcasts and the instant news, that's on there, so there's all the entertainment I was missing without a feed, like the girls were all missing their favorite feedcast, this show called Oh? Wow! Thing!, which has all these kids like us who do stuff but get all pouty, which is what the girls go crazy for, the poutiness.

But the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are. It can tell you how to get them, and help you make buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one that's keyed just to you, and then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and they can get to know what it is we need, so all you have to do is want something and there's a chance it will be yours.

Of course, everyone is like, da da da, evil corporations, oh they're so bad, we all say that, and we all know they control everything. I mean, it's not great, because who knows what evil shit they're up to. Everyone feels bad about that. But they're the only way to get all this stuff, and it's no good getting pissy about it, because they're still going to control everything whether you like it or not. Plus, they keep like everyone in the world employed, so it's not like we could do without them. And it's really great to know everything about everything whenever we want, to have it just like in our brain, just sitting there.

****************************

[S]ometimes trying to say the right thing to people, it's like some kind of brain surgery, and you have tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it's more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown.

****************************

When I asked her what her dad did, she said, "He's a college professor. He teaches the dead languages."

"People study that?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

Okay. So what are the dead languages?"

"They're languages that were once important but that nobody uses anymore. They haven't been used for a long time, except by historians."

"Like what languages?"

"You know, FORTRAN, BASIC."

"What does one sound like?".....

002110 Goto 013500
013500 Peek 16388, 236
013510 Poke 16389, 236

She read it to me. I could tell the numbers fine.

"So what does that mean?" I asked.

"It's the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day," she said. "It means, 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'"

[orangettecoleman]

Just finished the "Revelation Space" trilogy by Alastair Reynolds - it was excellent once it got going (which took a few dozens of pages). The ending seemed kind of rushed but the other books set in the timeline/universe of Revelation Space flesh those events out apparently... I might let those wait a few months though, after a few months and 2000 pages spent in the Revelation universe. Digging into Greg Egan's "Distress" right now - in his post-human future there are five distinct genders. I'm curious to see if he does something interesting with that. I'm glad to have scored a couple of his books at a local used bookstore since most of his stuff is out of print in the States...

btw: I wanted to emphasize that that really wasn't a very good example of Gene Wolfe's writing ability, since it was written in an idiom specific to that character. Hopefully that doesn't put anyone off his work - which is among the best in SF/Fantasy... on the other hand, if that's not your thing, Gene Wolfe isn't likely to convince you otherwise...

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

There's a new Banks due in October, and it's a Culture novel...





"The title is Surface Detail, which refers to a number of things, not least one of the principal characters, who is covered, externally and internally, with congenitally administered tattoos."


back cover blurb:

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.

It begins with a murder.

And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.

Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality.

It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

[Vincent Kargatis]

I found Egan's Distress the weakest of his novels I've read, though it has its enthusiasts.

Yeah, Banks is a highly reliably entertaining and substantive SF writer.

[billygomberg]

SO PUMPED FOR NEW IAIN BANKS

[will]

I wasn't too moved by Matter, Banks' recent novel, it felt a little flat, but I'm happy to see that he's diving into the Culture again in Surface Detail.

Reynold's Revelation Space was not a bad traditional science fiction series, I liked the basic conceit, that faster-than-light travel is impossible, though it was weird that he chose to include a lot of other impossible technologies after sticking to that one hard sf principle (as in the magically powered engines that propel ships to near light speed). His enthusiasm for bizarre / gross details was nice too, disturbing the otherwise clean setting for his stories. By and large, though, i dislike the disengaged quality of most of his work, the stories he tells tend to have little sociopolitical context, which both (appealingly) draws the geeky interest in the explication of physics to the fore and (annoyingly) fails to really say much about the societies they shape.
Of course, Reynolds' work is largely a sub-genre exercise, and space opera is really not a frequently used venue for thinking overtly about the political implications of technology / science. As such, he writes some fun novels.

China Mieville's most recent book, The City and The City, on the other hand, was an interesting speculative work, and the less operatic use of fantasy and sci-fi tropes made for a more compelling story. The references to divided Berlin and contemporary Israel / Palestine were really well done, and the exploration of distributed governance and accountability was quite interesting.

[Dohol]

Reynold's Revelation Space was not a bad traditional science fiction series, I liked the basic conceit, that faster-than-light travel is impossible, though it was weird that he chose to include a lot of other impossible technologies after sticking to that one hard sf principle (as in the magically powered engines that propel ships to near light speed). His enthusiasm for bizarre / gross details was nice too, disturbing the otherwise clean setting for his stories.

Agreed...Reynolds is almost always a very fun read.

(as in the magically powered engines that propel ships to near light speed)

The secret behind those engines is bizarre and gross indeed..

By and large, though, i dislike the disengaged quality of most of his work, the stories he tells tend to have little sociopolitical context

I disagree, but I can't argue..

China Mieville's most recent book, The City and The City, on the other hand, was an interesting speculative work, and the less operatic use of fantasy and sci-fi tropes made for a more compelling story. The references to divided Berlin and contemporary Israel / Palestine were really well done, and the exploration of distributed governance and accountability was quite interesting.

Truth...I'm looking forward to reading Kraken.

[hnismokehash]

the other books set in the timeline/universe of Revelation Space

i forget what the title of the book was, 'cause i read it a while ago, but the one that dealt with the colonization of Sky's Edge (the planet where that khouri character from revelation space came from) was a really fun read