Recommended best science fiction novels up to 1986
Lonnie Courtney Clay
exceptions they exclude fantasy. I posted them on another forum a
while back, and thought that you on this forum might be interested too
in some classics. The books are the winnowed down list from 4335
titles by 904 authors which I had as of September 86. I might make up
another list in 2006, but someone as omnivorous as I will probably
have created such a list by then. I would be interested to see if
anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
hated and justify each book on the list.....
The books selected are intended to be an introduction to the author.
Where a series was involved the book is generally the first rather
than best of series. At the same time as I made up the list beow, I
made up a list of "no sale" books to keep which included 1462 titles
by 337 authors. If people find the list below helpful, I might type up
the more comprehensive one for your reference if you are a
collector/reader like me, giving ISBN number.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
******************************************************************************
Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring, Starship
Roger MacBride Allen - The Torch of Honor
Chester Anderson & Michael Kurland - Ten Years To Doomsday
Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson - Earthman's Burden
Poul Anderson - Ensign Flandry, Fire Time, The High Crusade, The Man
Who Counts, New America, Operation Chaos, Shield
Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity, Foundation
Michael Banks & Dean R. Lambe - The Odysseus Solution
Pierre Barbet - Baphomet's Meteor
Neal Barrett - Aldair In Albion
T.J. Bass - The Godwhale
Barrington J. Bayley - Collision Course, The Garments of Caean
Greg Bear - Hegira
Gregory Benford - Timescape
Stephen Ames Berry - The Biofab War
Alfred Bester - The Computer Connection, The Demolished Man
Lloyd Biggle - The Light That Never Was, The Still, Small Voice of
Trumpets, Watchers of the Dark, The World Menders
Ben Bova - Millenium, Test of Fire
John Boyd - Sex and the High Command
J.F. Bone - Confederation Matador
Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover Landfall, Endless Universe, Hunters
of the Red Moon, Survey Ship
Reginald Bretnor - Schimmelhorn's Gold
David Brin - The Postman, The Practice Effect, Startide Rising,
Sundiver
John Brunner - The Crucible of Time, Into the Slave Nebula, The Stone
that Never Came Down
Algis Budrys - The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn
Lois McMaster Bujold - Shards of Honor
F.M. Busby - All These Earths
Edward A. Byers - The Long Forgetting
Grant Callin - SaturnAlia
John Wood Campbell Jr - Astounding/Analog editor - May 1938 - June 11,
1971
Orson Scott Card - Hot Sleep : The Worthing Chronicle
Jayge Carr - Leviathon's Deep
A. Bertram Chandler - The Road To The Rim/The Hard Way Up
C.J. Cherryh - Cuckoo's Egg, Downbelow Station, The Faded Sun :
Kesrith, Gate of Ivrel, Hunter of Worlds, Pride of Chanur, Serpent's
Reach
Robert Chilson - The Star Crowned Kings
Jo Clayton - Diadem From the Stars, Drinker of Souls
Hal Clement - Close To Critical, Cycle of Fire, Iceworld, Mission of
Gravity, Needle, Ocean On Top
Alan Cole & Chris Bunch - Sten
Michael G. Coney - The Hero of Downways
Edmund Cooper - A Far Sunset, Transit
Richard Cowper - Profundis
Theodore R. Cogswell - The Wall Around the World
Daniel DaCruz - The Ayes of Texas
Brian Daley - Requiem For a Ruler of Worlds
John Dalmas - Homecoming
Arsen Darnay - The Splendid Freedom
L. Sprague DeCamp - The Glory That Was, Lest Darkness Fall, The
Fallible Fiend, Rogue Queen
Michael DeLarrabeiti - The Borribles
Ansen Dibell - Pursuit of the Screamer
Gordon R. Dickson - In Iron Years, Mission To Universe, Naked To The
Stars, None But Man, Outposter, The Pritcher Mass, Pro, Tactics of
Mistake, Wolfling
David Drake - Bridgehead, Hammer's Slammers, Killer
G.C. Edmondson - The Man Who Corrupted Earth
Suzette Hayden Elgin - Native Tongue, The Ozark Trilogy
Cynthia Felice - Godsfire
Robert L. Forward - Dragon's Egg, Flight of the Dragonfly
William R. Forstchen - Ice Prophet
Alan Dean Foster - Icerigger, The Man Who Used the Universe, Midworld
Leo Frankowski - The Cross-Time Engineer
Raymond Z. Gallun - The Eden Cycle
David Gerrold - A Matter For Men/ A Day For Damnation/ (add A Rage For
Revenge), When Harlie Was One
Alexis A. Gilliland - The Revolution From Rosinante
Stephen Goldin - The Eternity Brigade
Phyllis Gottleib - A Judgement of Dragons
Ron Goulart - HellQuad
Joseph L. Green - Conscience Interplanetary, Star Probe
Roland Green - Peace Company
Russell M. Griffin - The Makeshift God
James E. Gunn - This Fortress World
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War, There Is No Darkness, Worlds
Charles L. Harness - The Catalyst, Redworld, Wolfhead
Harry Harrison - Astounding - John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, The
Deathworld Trilogy* Bill, the Galactic Hero* Make Room! Make Room!, A
Stainless Steel Rat Is Born, To The Stars, West of Eden
Simon Hawke - The Ivanhoe Gambit
Ward Hawkins - Red Flame Burning
Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy, Expanded Universe - The
New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, Friday, Glory Road* Have Space Suit,
Will Travel*, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Orphans of the Sky,
Starship Troopers, Stranger In A Strange Land, Time Enough For Love,
Tunnel In The Sky
Zenna Henderson - Pilgrimage
Frank Herbert - Dune, Hellstrom's Hive, The Santaroga Barrier
P.C. Hodgell - Godstalk
Lee Hoffman - Always The Black Knight
James P. Hogan - The Genesis Machine, Inherit The Stars, Thrice Upon A
Time, The Two Faces of Tomorrow
Bruce T. Holmes - Anvil Of The Heart
Robert Hoskins - To Control The Stars
Edward P. Hughes - The Long Mynd
Zach Hughes - For Texas And Zed, The Legend of Miaree, Seed Of The
Gods, The Stork Factor
Dean Ing - High Tension, Pulling Through, Soft Targets, Systemic Shock
D.F. Jones - Denver Is Missing
J.A. Jones - Blue Lab
Colin Kapp - The Wizard of Anharite
James P. Kelley - Planet of Whispers
Carol Kendall - The Firelings
Gordon Kendall - White Wing
Lee Killough - Liberty's World, A Voice Out Of Ramah
Damon Knight - A for Anything
C.M. Kornbluth - Not This August
Michael Kurland - Tomorrow Knight, The Whenabouts of Burr
David J. Lake - The Right Hand of Dextra
Arthur H. Landis - Camelot In Orbit
David Langford - The Space Eater
Keith Laumer - Bolo, The Long Twilight, Star Colony, Worlds of the
Imperium
Ursula K. Leguin - The Left Hand of Darkness
Fritz Leiber - A Specter Is Haunting Texas, The Wanderer
Edward Llewellyn - Prelude To Chaos, Salvage and Destroy
Barry B. Longyear - City of Barraboo, Manifest Destiny
Ardath Mayhar - Khi To Freedom
Ann McCaffrey - Decision At Doona, The Ship Who Sang
Michael McCollum - A Greater Infinity, Life Probe
Michael P. Kube McDowell - Enigma
Robert McLaughlin - The Man Who Wanted Stars
John C. McLoughlin - The Helix and the Sword
R.M. Meluch - Sovreign, Wind Dancers
Robert Merle - Malevil
Sam Merwin, Jr. - The House of Many Worlds
Walter M. Miller Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz
John Moressey - Frostworld and Dreamfire, The Mansions of Space
Sam Nicholson - The Light Bearer
Larry Niven - The Integral Trees, Protector, Ringworld
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Footfall, Lucifer's Hammer, The Mote
In God's Eye, Oath of Fealty
Andre Norton - Dark Piper, Moon Of Three Rings, Star Rangers, The Zero
Stone
Kevin O'Donnell - War of Omission
Andrew J. Offutt - The Galactic Rejects
David R. Palmer - Emergence
Edgar Pangborn - West of the Sun
Alexis Pansin - Rite of Passage, Star Well
Steve Perry - The Man Who Never Missed
John T. Phillifent - Genius Unlimited, King of Argent, Life With
Lancelot
Wendy & Richard Pini - Elfquest
H. Beam Piper - Little Fuzzy, Paratime
Doris Piserchia - Earthchild, Mr. Justice
Fred Pohl - Black Star Rising, The Coming of the Quantum Cats, The
Cool War, Gateway
Fred Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth - The Space Merchants
Fred Pohl & Jack Williamson - Farthest Star
Jerry Pournelle - A Spaceship for the King, Janissaries, West of Honor
E. Hoffman Price - The Devil Wives of Li Fong, Operation Longlife
Richard Purtill - The Golden Gryphon Feather
John Rackham - Beanstalk
Mack Reynolds - Ability Quotient, Brain World, Lagrange Five,
Rolltown, Section G : United Planets, The Space Barbarians, Trample An
Empire Down
posthumously with Dean Ing - Eternity, Home Sweet Home 2000 AD, The
Other Time
Mike Resnick - Santiago
Walt & Leigh Richmond - The Probability Corner
John Maddox Roberts - Cestus Dei, The Cingulum
Stephen Robinett - Stargate
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Wild Shore
Spider Robinson - Telempath
Joel Rosenberg - Emile and the Dutchman
Christopher Rowley - The War for Eternity
Eric Frank Russell - Next of Kin, Wasp
Thomas J. Ryan - The Adolescence of P1
Fred Saberhagen - The Complete Book of Swords
Jake Saunders & Howard Waldrop - The Texas - Israeli War : 1999
Dennis Schmidt - Way-Farer
Stanley Schmidt - The Sins of the Fathers
James H. Schmitz - Agent of Vega, The Demon Breed, The Eternal
Frontiers, Legacy, The Universe Against Her
J. Neil Schulman - Alongside Night
Melissa Scott - Five Twelfths of Heaven
Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution
Michael Shea - A Quest for Simbilis, Nifft The Lean
Mike Shupp - With Fate Conspire
Robert Silverberg - Collision Course, Those Who Watch
Clifford D. Simak - A Heritage of Stars, The Goblin Reservation, Way
Station
John Slonczewski - Still Forms on Foxfield
Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia
E.E. "Doc" Smith - Triplanetary
George O. Smith - The Fourth "R"
L. Neil Smith - The Probability Broach, Their Majesties Bucketeers
Zilpha Keatly Snyder - Below The Root
Steven G. Spruill - Keepers of the Gates
Brian Stapleford - The Castaways of Tanager, The Gates of Eden, The
Halcyon Drift, Optiman
Christopher Stasheff - A Wizard in Bedlam
John Steakly - Armor
Andrew M. Stephenson - Nightwatch
George R. Stewart - Earth Abides
John E. Stith - Scapescope
Brad Strickland - To Stand Beneath the Sun
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
G. Harry Stine - The Third Industrial Revolution
Jefferson P. Swycaffer - Not In Our Stars
Keith Taylor - Bard
Walter Tevis - The Man Who Fell To Earth
Patrick Tilley - Cloud Warrior
J.R.R. Tolkein - The Fellowship Of The Ring
Robert E. Toomey Jr. - A World of Trouble
Louis Trimble - The Bodelian Way, The City Machine
Wilson Tucker - The Lincoln Hunters
Jack Vance - The Anome, The Blue World, City Of the Chasch, The Dying
Earth, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolf, Rhialto the Marvelous, Star
King
A.E. Van Vogt - The Darkness of Diamondia, The Weapon Shops of Isher
John Varley - Millenium, The Ophiuchi Hotline, Titan
Joan D. Vinge - The Outcasts of Heaven Belt
Vernor Vinge - Grimm's World, The Peace War, The Witling
Ian Wallace - Croyd
Walter Wangerin - The Book of the Dun Cow
George Warren - Dominant Species
Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Cyborg and the Sorcerers, Shining Steel
James White - All Judgement Fled, Hospital Station, Tomorrow Is Too
Far, The Watch Below
Wynn Whiteford - Sapphire Road
Cherry Wilder - The Luck of Brin's Five
John Willett - Aubade for Gamelon
Walter John Williams - Ambassador of Progress
Jack Williamson - Lifeboat
F. Paul Wilson - An Enemy of the State
John Wyndham - Re-Birth
Nicholas Yermankov - Last Communion
Robert F. Young - The Last Yggdrasill
Timothy Zahn - The Blackcollar, Spinneret
Roger Zelazny - Doorways In The Sand, This Immortal
Of the books above, how many people score agreement greater than 100 ?
Konrad Gaertner
>
> These books with a few exceptions include only novels. With a few
> exceptions they exclude fantasy. I posted them on another forum a
> while back, and thought that you on this forum might be interested too
> in some classics. The books are the winnowed down list from 4335
> titles by 904 authors which I had as of September 86. I might make up
> another list in 2006, but someone as omnivorous as I will probably
> have created such a list by then. I would be interested to see if
> anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
> hated and justify each book on the list.....
I was going to take on this challenge, but unfortunately, I've read
fewer than ten of the books on the list.
What follows are my opinions on those I've read:
> Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity, Foundation
I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
> Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover Landfall
Tried and couldn't finish _DL_, haven't tried anything else by her.
> Robert A. Heinlein - Friday
Read it, but can't remember much about it.
> Frank Herbert - Dune
Read it and its sequel before deciding I really didn't care about the
characters.
> Larry Niven - Protector, Ringworld
Mediocre.
> J.R.R. Tolkein - The Fellowship Of The Ring
The best book on this list.
--KG
Bruce Baugh
LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
Your presentation/introduction is far too passive. Who precisely
contributed ideas to this, and to what end? What did they have in the
way of instructions and selection criteria? What's this for?
> Greg Bear - Hegira
You're going to get this comment several times - it's not that the above
work is bad or loathsome or anything, but surely it is not anywhere near
the author's best. For Greg Bear, I wonder why The Forge Of God or Eon
or Blood Music isn't on the list (unless they come after 1986).
> Alfred Bester - The Computer Connection, The Demolished Man
Why the first of these rather than Tiger, Tiger, aka The Stars My
Destination?
> Lloyd Biggle - The Light That Never Was, The Still, Small Voice of
> Trumpets, Watchers of the Dark, The World Menders
Do we actually need that many Lloyd Biggle recommendations, in light of
the better and more important authors who get many fewer citations?
What's the criterion for piling it on?
> Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover Landfall, Endless Universe, Hunters
> of the Red Moon, Survey Ship
The above question will also turn up repeatedly here. Bradley is
undoubtedly important to the history of the field and the development of
fandom. But yeesh.
> David Brin - The Postman, The Practice Effect, Startide Rising,
> Sundiver
The Practice Effect? What's the point? It's practically definitive fluff.
> John Brunner - The Crucible of Time, Into the Slave Nebula, The Stone
> that Never Came Down
Leaving off Shockwave Rider is a crime of some sort. A bit more
seriously, it's _got_ to be on this list if it's at all serious.
> Orson Scott Card - Hot Sleep : The Worthing Chronicle
Yeurgh. Card's done some brilliant stuff, but this isn't it. Surely
Ender's Game is a better pick.
> Gordon R. Dickson - In Iron Years, Mission To Universe, Naked To The
> Stars, None But Man, Outposter, The Pritcher Mass, Pro, Tactics of
> Mistake, Wolfling
Repeat the question about "why so many?".
> William R. Forstchen - Ice Prophet
I'm at a loss. It was a fun yarn, but any significance to it escapes me.
> Leo Frankowski - The Cross-Time Engineer
I don't hate this book, but I _do_ hate some of the sequels, which I
find increasingly pernicious.
> Harry Harrison - Astounding - John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, The
> Deathworld Trilogy* Bill, the Galactic Hero* Make Room! Make Room!, A
> Stainless Steel Rat Is Born, To The Stars, West of Eden
Repeat the question about "why so many?".
> Simon Hawke - The Ivanhoe Gambit
If I were compiling a history of the technothriller and men's adventure
series, sure. I liked it. But...
> Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy, Expanded Universe - The
> New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, Friday, Glory Road* Have Space Suit,
> Will Travel*, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Orphans of the Sky,
> Starship Troopers, Stranger In A Strange Land, Time Enough For Love,
> Tunnel In The Sky
It would be fair to say that I do not regard all these works as
deserving of recommendations, and I'm not sure that any wide-ranging
list really needs more than Moon, Stranger, and one of the juveniles,
for a sense of Heinlein's range.
> D.F. Jones - Denver Is Missing
Why this rather than Colossus, a genuinely influential work thanks to
film?
> Keith Laumer - Bolo, The Long Twilight, Star Colony, Worlds of the
> Imperium
No Retief?
> Ursula K. Leguin - The Left Hand of Darkness
This is one case where I think that some works should be added to the
list.
> Michael P. Kube McDowell - Enigma
Rather than Alternity? Huh.
> Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Footfall, Lucifer's Hammer, The Mote
> In God's Eye, Oath of Fealty
Surely these don't all need to be here.
> Wendy & Richard Pini - Elfquest
No. It's a second-rate novelization of a comic book that hasn't aged
well and which troubles me increasingly in retrospect.
> Mike Resnick - Santiago
That's it?
> Spider Robinson - Telempath
Yeurgh. It'd take Mindkiller over this any day.
> Jake Saunders & Howard Waldrop - The Texas - Israeli War : 1999
I am completely baffled about this making the list and Them Bones not.
> J.R.R. Tolkein - The Fellowship Of The Ring
C'mon. It's one book in three volumes.
Fully half this list is completely unknown to me, and I am reasonably
well-read. I am utterly bewildered as to the point of it all.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
I am what I know / A glacier made from layers of history's snow / And
what I know is what I see / In dreaming and reality / On and on this
cycle goes / Wretchedness and beauty juxtaposed - Jeff Johnson,
"Chambord"
Ethan Merritt
Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> wrote:
>I would be interested to see if
>anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
>hated and justify each book on the list.....
>Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover Landfall, Endless Universe, Hunters
> of the Red Moon, Survey Ship
I have to wonder about your selection filter. This is a truly strange
set of books to take as representative of MZB, and does not seem to
meet your "first in series" criterion anyway. But no hate reviews
here, just an 'eh'.
>Suzette Hayden Elgin - Native Tongue, The Ozark Trilogy
Hated _Native Tongue_, loved the _Ozark Trilogy_.
Native tongue is all prickly feminism and PC demagoguery at a very
strident level. The Ozark Trilogy is by very marked contrast a
gentle spoof, making some pointed comments about male egos and
general human stupidity while maintaining a humorous touch.
Anyone who started in on _Native Tongue_ would probably write off
Elgin as unreadable and not go on to try the _Ozark_ trilogy,
which would be a pity.
>Alan Dean Foster - Icerigger, The Man Who Used the Universe, Midworld
_Icerigger_ is my standard example of a book in which the science is
so bad it could be falsified by an observation 4-year-old.
It's one thing to write SF based on speculative or not-yet proven
high tech; it's quite another to base a plot on simple errors of
everyday experience.
>Joe Haldeman - The Forever War, There Is No Darkness, Worlds
I remember disliking _The Forever War_ enough to remove Haldeman
from my reading list, but perhaps blessedly cannot recall enough
of it to offer a specific critique.
>Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love
I believe I am not the only one here to judge that _Time Enough
For Love_ was written after the point at which RAH had lost
his ability to write a decent story. "hate" may be too strong
a word for my reaction, but I would predict that readers who
enjoy Heinlein's earlier work, up through about _Stranger in
a Strange Land_, may give up and find something else to read
at about the point they hit _Time Enough for Love_.
>Ardath Mayhar - Khi To Freedom
Gee, an Ardath Mayhar that I haven't read. And you say you
are avoiding fantasy in making this list. Does this mean
that Mayhar wrote some non-fantasy? [scribbles hastily on
books-to-find list]
>Jerry Pournelle - A Spaceship for the King, Janissaries, West of Honor
I find Pournelle, at least writing on his own, to be very wearing.
Again "hate" is too strong a word, but I certainly wouldn't recommend
any of these to anyone. His books are opinionated, devoid of any
subtleties of characterization, and generally waste a lot of text
grinding a some very large right-wing political axe.
(often a high-tech axe, admittedly :-)
>Of the books above, how many people score agreement greater than 100 ?
Could you re-phrase that question? I don't follow it as stated.
So no, I didn't find 10 books on your list that I hated or even disliked
strongly. A nice list, actually, including some often-overlooked
treasures.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Elaine Thompson
(Ethan Merritt) wrote:
snipped all around
>>Ardath Mayhar - Khi To Freedom
>
>Gee, an Ardath Mayhar that I haven't read. And you say you
>are avoiding fantasy in making this list. Does this mean
>that Mayhar wrote some non-fantasy? [scribbles hastily on
>books-to-find list]
At least one. We have a copy, and I've read it, but can't remember
much about it. Want the back cover blurb? The main character is a
planetary scout.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> In article <7edd270a.01102...@posting.google.com>,
> LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
>
> Your presentation/introduction is far too passive. Who precisely
> contributed ideas to this, and to what end? What did they have in the
> way of instructions and selection criteria? What's this for?
>
> Fully half this list is completely unknown to me, and I am reasonably
> well-read. I am utterly bewildered as to the point of it all.
****************************************************************************
Aha, as I suspected, in 15 years many of these have been forgotten. To
answer your question, I made up the list by myself based on over 2000
novels read cover to cover from 1979-86 and speed read scanning the
2400 odd others in my collection. To remove the complaint about what
was omitted, I could type up the longer list of books worth keeping
for reading every second or third decade. This list was of books which
I considerered to be a good introduction to the works of each author.
If it was not published before July 1986 then chances were it missed
the list by failure to appear in a bookstore. In 1984-86 I rounded out
my collection by adding 2000 titles scoured from used bookstores. The
list is mainly of interest to book collectors like me who may have
started collecting in the past ten years or so and not know what is
worth buying from used bookstores by older authors. If your appetite
runs to a book per day as mine did, then you catch up on reading the
past ten years of novels within a few years and have to mine the older
titles/authors to satisfy your appetite.
Since the ISBN becomes absolete so quickly with newer publications, I
think that I will cut my work in half and reduce the chances of error
by leaving it off of the comprehensive list. On the other hand if the
response here is uniformly negative then I simply shall not bother to
type it up at all. I would be interested in a list of the top 100
authors and the top 400 books published since 1986 if anyone has made
one up. I have been playing computer games since 1986 and need to
catch up on my reading/collecting.
LCC
Lawrence Person
Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote:
> > Greg Bear - Hegira
>
> You're going to get this comment several times - it's not that the above
> work is bad or loathsome or anything, but surely it is not anywhere near
> the author's best. For Greg Bear, I wonder why The Forge Of God or Eon
> or Blood Music isn't on the list (unless they come after 1986).
Forge of God is 1987, the others are before the cutoff, and much better than
Hegira.
>
> > John Brunner - The Crucible of Time, Into the Slave Nebula, The Stone
> > that Never Came Down
>
> Leaving off Shockwave Rider is a crime of some sort. A bit more
> seriously, it's _got_ to be on this list if it's at all serious.
Not to mention Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.
My stab at a better list, given the criteria and sticking strickly to SF:
Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy (and none of the further volumes in
same...)
Greg Bear - Blood Music, Eon
John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Frank Herbert - Dune (but none of the subsequent books)
K. W. Jeter - The Glass Hammer
Stephen King - The Long Walk (I'm sneaking it on here because, technically, it's
alternate history...)
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Lucifer's Hammer
George Orwell - 1984
H. G. Wells - The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light
--
Lawrence Person
lawrenc...@jump.net
New Lame Excuse Books Catalog in the Works! Ask to receive one!
Current Lame Excuse Books Stock Online at: http://www.abebooks.com
Lawrence Person
> Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote in message
> > Fully half this list is completely unknown to me, and I am reasonably
> > well-read. I am utterly bewildered as to the point of it all.
>
> ****************************************************************************
> Aha, as I suspected, in 15 years many of these have been forgotten.
No, most were forgotten the year after they were published. Your crap filter
needs serious tuning.
Paul
one of his novels (ie Childhood's end) should make it.
Paul
On 20 Oct 2001 11:56:08 -0700, LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay)
wrote:
snip
Bruce Baugh
> Aha, as I suspected, in 15 years many of these have been forgotten.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm 36, and I've been reading sf
nearly as long as I could read at all - working first on my older
brothers' books. When I say that I've never heard of a bunch of these
works, I mean that literally. It's quite a different reaction from "oh,
wow, I haven't thought about that in years", which I had about a bunch
of the others.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> In article <7edd270a.01102...@posting.google.com>,
> Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> wrote:
> >I would be interested to see if
> >anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
> >hated and justify each book on the list.....
>
>
> Hated _Native Tongue_, loved the _Ozark Trilogy_.
> Native tongue is all prickly feminism and PC demagoguery at a very
> strident level. The Ozark Trilogy is by very marked contrast a
> gentle spoof, making some pointed comments about male egos and
> general human stupidity while maintaining a humorous touch.
> Anyone who started in on _Native Tongue_ would probably write off
> Elgin as unreadable and not go on to try the _Ozark_ trilogy,
> which would be a pity.
>
>
>
> Could you re-phrase that question? I don't follow it as stated.
>
> So no, I didn't find 10 books on your list that I hated or even disliked
> strongly. A nice list, actually, including some often-overlooked
> treasures.
******************************************************************************
I considered "Native Tongue" to be satire based upon other Elgin
works. Perhaps you should read it over in that light... Another
misunderstood book (or perhaps I misunderstand the author) is "A Rage
For Revenge" by David Gerrold.....
I am interested in whether anyone else considers at least 100 of the
list to be representative of the time frame (pre 1987). I was 30 years
old in 1986 and wanted a snapshot of what I thought was worth reading
at that point in my life. Since the response seems to be interested
discourse rather than universal condemnation, I will start typing up
the more comprehensive list. I will provide it in installments of one
day's typing. Collectors will find it useful if nothing else. For
specific authors and titles I will respond with ISBN numbers where
requested.
LCC
Tom Beck
Not sure if Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner was mentioned.
Mark Jason Dominus
>to the works of each author.
That's what's so bizarre about your list: It *isn't* a good
introduction to the works of each author. You've included a lot of
marginal books and omitted a lot of important books. Bester only
wrote three or four novels. Almost everyone agrees that two were
exceptionally good and the rest were mediocre. Nobody needs to read
_The Computer Connection_.
--
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*=2)+=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&<$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print
Bruce Baugh
> I am interested in whether anyone else considers at least 100 of the
> list to be representative of the time frame (pre 1987).
This is not a question with an obvious answer, because it points at an
undefined target.
Representative of some consensus of the best in sf?
Representative of the works most influential upon writers? Upon readers?
(These are very different sets.)
Representative of what, in short?
Your prose makes it surprisingly difficult to draw out your intent. I
really wish that you would use less passive voice and more active
declarations of the actors in any given sentence. I currently have the
impression that you're conducting an essentially personal experiment,
tallying up stuff in your collection and/or memory and seeing what
others think, but I'm still not sure of that.
Consider the differences between these statements of intent:
I've gone through the books I have kept over the years and picked out
the ones I think make best introductions to each writer's work.
I've gone through the books I have kept over the years, and filled in
the gaps in my own collection with reference works and online lists, and
picked out the ones I think make best introductions to each writer's
work.
I've been thinking about what I read before my 30th birthday, and
have assembled a list of the books that seem to me to have lasting merit.
I've been thinking about what I read before my 30th birthday, and
have assembled a list of the books that seem to me to have lasting
merit. In some cases this is literary quality, but there are also works
with defects as prose but which I consider important and worthwhile for
ideas, sense of wonder, and the like.
...and so forth and so on. I don't think you're encountering negativity.
I think you're encountering _confusion_, because, literally, many of us
cannot figure out what you're trying to do. Please write in more
personal terms. Skip objectivity - tell us, clearly and simply, what you
want to accomplish and how you went about it.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
>
> I think you're encountering _confusion_, because, literally, many of us
> cannot figure out what you're trying to do. Please write in more
> personal terms. Skip objectivity - tell us, clearly and simply, what you
> want to accomplish and how you went about it.
******************************************************************************
In 1986 at the age of 30 I created two lists of science fiction books
which I had read cover to cover. The short list is given at the head
of this thread. The long list will be given on threads broken down
alphabetically by author. What I propose is an exchange of value. In
exchange for my perspective on sf pre 1987 as written in 1986 and
based upon 4335 titles by 904 authors either read or speed read, I
want a list of recommended books from 1986 to the present. I would
prefer that the person(s) who provide such a list each have read at
least 500 authors and 1000 novels. I would prefer that at most one
book in three of what was read be recommended. I do not want a simple
list of best sellers, because I could obtain such a list from
publishers publications. What I want is a broad swathe cut through the
field of sf to provide 1000 or so books written since 1987 which
represent the field of books available. Then with a budget of
$10-15,000 I could purchase and read those books. Alternatively, I
could continue playing computer games until a three year supply of
novels is available.......
LCC
Lois Tilton
> ******************************************************************************
> In 1986 at the age of 30 I created two lists of science fiction books
> which I had read cover to cover. The short list is given at the head
> of this thread. The long list will be given on threads broken down
> alphabetically by author. What I propose is an exchange of value. In
> exchange for my perspective on sf pre 1987 as written in 1986 and
> based upon 4335 titles by 904 authors either read or speed read, I
> want a list of recommended books from 1986 to the present.
So you are saying that by 1986 you had read all these books, but
subsequently you have read nothing in the field and you wish people to
fill in the missing 15 years with their recommendations?
--
LT
Lawrence Person
> Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote in message
> news:<bruce-baugh-60DD...@enews.newsguy.com>...
> >
> > I think you're encountering _confusion_, because, literally, many of us
> > cannot figure out what you're trying to do. Please write in more
> > personal terms. Skip objectivity - tell us, clearly and simply, what you
> > want to accomplish and how you went about it.
>
> ******************************************************************************
> In 1986 at the age of 30 I created two lists of science fiction books
> which I had read cover to cover. The short list is given at the head
> of this thread.
It's certainly not short enough.
> I want a list of recommended books from 1986 to the present.
Here's my pearls before swine offering (only SF, and only novels):
Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships
Greg Bear - Moving Mars
Octavia Butler - The Xenogenesis Trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rights, Imago)
Pat Cadigan - Synners
Greg Egan - Paramutation City
William Gibson - Mona Lisa Overdrive
William Gibson & Bruce Sterling - The Difference Engine
Christopher Hinz - The Paratawa Trilogy (Leige-Killer, Ash-Ock, The Paratwaa)
Ken MacLeod - The Stone Canal
Ian McDonald - Evolution's Shore (aka Chaga), Terminal Café (aka Necroville)
Linda Nagata - Vast
Patrick O'Leary - Door Number Three
Mary Doria Russell - The Sparrow
Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden
Dan Simmons - Carrion Comfort, Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Phases of Gravity
Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age
Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire, Distraction
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the Long Sun
Lonnie Courtney Clay
****************************************************************************
I have read perhaps 100 books in the past 15 years as they were placed
before me as worth reading by my brother. But he primarily likes
fantasy, so mostly I read very little. As I said, I have been playing
computer games, and thought that by now there should be many good
books available, not necessarily best sellers, but worth reading
regardless. If people will just recommend books then I will make up a
list of books to be read when I gain the money to purchase them. If
you have read less than 100 books, then you will probably just name
everything. What I am looking for is someone who has read many
hundreds so that a better perspective is available. About 1/3 to 1/4
of books read is a reasonable ratio. About 1/2 of books purchased
being read is reasonable. About 1/4 to 1/5 of books seen being
purchased is reasonable. About 1/2 to 1/3 of sf books published being
seen is reasonable. So I suppose that I want the top two percent of sf
books published, more or less, or 300 whichever comes later.
LCC
Nancy Lebovitz
Why not just talk about what you like in science fiction, and then
ask people for their favorite books and/or books that meet your specs
from the past 15 years?
I can answer that sort of question, but I don't keep records of what
I read and don't want to work with long lists.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Margaret Young
wrote:
>Lois Tilton <lti...@shell-3.enteract.com> wrote in message news:<9qvfi2$amm$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>> Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> > ******************************************************************************
>> > In 1986 at the age of 30 I created two lists of science fiction books
>> > which I had read cover to cover. The short list is given at the head
>> > of this thread. The long list will be given on threads broken down
>> > alphabetically by author. What I propose is an exchange of value. In
>> > exchange for my perspective on sf pre 1987 as written in 1986 and
>> > based upon 4335 titles by 904 authors either read or speed read, I
>> > want a list of recommended books from 1986 to the present.
>>
>>
>> So you are saying that by 1986 you had read all these books, but
>> subsequently you have read nothing in the field and you wish people to
>> fill in the missing 15 years with their recommendations?
>
>****************************************************************************
>I have read perhaps 100 books in the past 15 years as they were placed
>before me as worth reading by my brother. But he primarily likes
>fantasy, so mostly I read very little. As I said, I have been playing
>computer games, and thought that by now there should be many good
>books available, not necessarily best sellers, but worth reading
>regardless. If people will just recommend books then I will make up a
>list of books to be read when I gain the money to purchase them. If
>you have read less than 100 books, then you will probably just name
>everything. What I am looking for is someone who has read many
>hundreds so that a better perspective is available.
I find your request very strange indeed. If you have only read an
average of around 7 books a year for the last 15 years then my list
(and the lists of many I know) would be of little use to you, since I
read on an average of 7 books a week.[1] My metric of worth would be
far different than yours (reading is a skill and speed and
comprehension rarely remain constant). If it only takes me 2 hours to
read a book, then I may weight it very differently than I would if it
took me 2 days or 2 weeks. Some of us read professionally, some of us
are gifted amateurs [:-)] but most of the people here are serious
readers and I, for one, cannot imagine taking 15 years off from
serious reading.
>About 1/3 to 1/4
>of books read is a reasonable ratio. About 1/2 of books purchased
>being read is reasonable. About 1/4 to 1/5 of books seen being
>purchased is reasonable. About 1/2 to 1/3 of sf books published being
>seen is reasonable. So I suppose that I want the top two percent of sf
>books published, more or less, or 300 whichever comes later.
>
>LCC
I presume here you mean not 1/2 etc. of the books _I_ have purchased
but of all books purchased. (The selling list of the local bookstore?)
In which case I don't know anyone here who could even begin to fulfill
your request. My local bookstores provide far more books every year
than I could possibly afford. I dropped into Borders last weekend and
dropped several hundred dollars just in the PoliSci section. Meanwhile
my significant other was matching me dollar for dollar in the Math
section. If you are talking about 1/2 of all the books anyone in North
America purchased last year (let alone for the last 15 years) we are
talking about a monumental number of books, many of them so dreadful
that it would be a penalty to force me to read them.
If you are talking about books I have purchased I would be mad as hell
if I only read 1/2 of them.
May I make a practical suggestion though? Go to a library. The books
are free and you can browse without being out of pocket. My dad goes
to the library about every other day (sometimes every day). He is in
the process, as far as I can tell, of reading his way from one end to
the other of a major metropolitan library.[2] He takes out books that
look interesting, brings them home. If they do nothing for him, he
then puts them aside to be returned and picks up the next one. Most he
finishes (since he is a good judge of what he will like/find
interesting). He reads everything, fiction, non-fiction, genre,
non-genre. It costs him nothing and he has a lot of fun.[2]
Margaret
[1] And consequently my list would be both boringly long and
functionally useless to you. Not that I could easily put one together.
[2] This is a man who knows how to have fun in retirement. He golfs in
summer, curls in winter, plays bridge seriously, reads at least one
book, usually more, a day and makes use of his VCR so he doesn't miss
any of the sports he likes to watch on TV. Usually he reads _while_
watching sports.
[3] And he never forgets anything he has read. No matter how long ago
it was. Since he doesn't do research and therefore doesn't need to
have copies of the things he has read, it makes little sense to him to
buy the books. Plus he was military for most of his life and doesn't
feel comfortable when he has a lot of "stuff" to weight him down.
Might have to bug out you know.
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Lonnie Courtney Clay
> Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky
A Fire Upon the Deep - excellent book already read, I will read the
other when I see it. Thanks for the list.
LCC
Raoul Duke
Duke
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Lawrence Person
wrote:
> No Iain Banks?
>
Good writer, but his best work (IMHO), The Bridge, is slipstream rather than SF.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
I, for one, cannot imagine taking 15 years off from
> serious reading.
>
I found that my reading was affecting my judgement. All of my
disposable income was being sunk into buying more books. I was reading
every waking hour. My dreams centered around stories which I had
recently read. I even dreamed about reading books which did not exist.
So I went cold turkey and kicked the habit. I started playing computer
games instead. Then in June this years I realized that I had become
addicted to computer strategy games too! I cut myself off cold turkey
and started serious web browsing, which is free. Now I notice that 8+
hours are spent browsing each day so there is an instant addiction in
process. It occurs to me that the most safe and harmless activity may
be going back to reading books. If you do not like that story then
make up a better one yourself!
LCC
Carol Hague
>
> The books selected are intended to be an introduction to the author.
> Where a series was involved the book is generally the first rather
> than best of series.
> Harry Harrison - Astounding - John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, The
> Deathworld Trilogy* Bill, the Galactic Hero* Make Room! Make Room!, A
> Stainless Steel Rat Is Born, To The Stars, West of Eden
Pointless Pedantry - _A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born_ is not the first
book in the series - it's the first in terms of internal chronology,
yes, but it was written some considerable time after _The Stainless
Steel Rat_ and several of the sequels.
I read them in publication order, and I think that's probably the best
way to do it - TSSR is a much better introduction to the series IMO.
--
Carol Hague
"I was just being a little teapot. It's a bad habit of mine"
- Wyvern, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased).
Htn963
> Margaret Young <mmy...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:<1428tt8c8vte61c0c...@4ax.com>...
> I, for one, cannot imagine taking 15 years off from
> > serious reading.
> >
> *****************************************************************************
> I found that my reading was affecting my judgement. All of my
> disposable income was being sunk into buying more books.
Er, wasn't there a good library within reasonable distance from
where you live? Even in the late 70's when I first started reading sf
as a kid, all the local libraries I've visited were well-stocked with
good sf, albeit they were more often found in the "Young Adult" area.
(And seriously, people, am I in the minority in this newsgroup in
utilizing the library for most of my sf reading? I buy books
sometimes, but only if libraries don't stock them or they're
hard-to-find collector's items from favorite authors. Most books are
_not_ worth keeping.)
>I was reading every waking hour. My dreams centered around stories
which I had
> recently read. I even dreamed about reading books which did not exist.
> So I went cold turkey and kicked the habit. I started playing computer
> games instead. Then in June this years I realized that I had become
> addicted to computer strategy games too! I cut myself off cold turkey
> and started serious web browsing, which is free. Now I notice that 8+
> hours are spent browsing each day so there is an instant addiction in
> process. It occurs to me that the most safe and harmless activity may
> be going back to reading books. If you do not like that story then
> make up a better one yourself!
Don't take offense at this, but I don't think you need an updated
reading list now as much as you need to be treated for
compulsive-obsessive disorder. As a dedicated reader _and_ computer
game player (strategy and rpg's) I understand how one can get caught
up too much in either (or both) of these activities. But I'm sure
you're aware there are many more important things in life than reading
sf or playing computer games.
Might I suggest that you at least set priorities and strive for
some balance in your leisure activities for a healthy lifestyle?
These priorities don't have to be consistent and can be revised
periodically, of course. (I used to spend half my free time reading, a
quarter of the time on computer games, and the rest on miscellaneous
"balancing" activities such as fishing and spending time with family.
Now, computer games head the list. But these balancing activities,
which may not seem as exciting and intense at the time will always be
the more worthwhile time I spent.)
> LCC
--
Ht
Lonnie Courtney Clay
**************************************************************************
"If you do not like that story then make up a better one yourself!"
Either you are a headshrinker or just plain slow on the uptake. It was
a joke!
I do what I please but become bored after too much of any single
activity. On the other hand while learning something I prefer to focus
my attention on one subject at a time. I got bored with sf so I quit
after 7 years. I got bored with gaming after 15 years, so I quit. Now
I am looking around for something else of interest and figured that I
should check up on sf from the past 15 years. But even a fantasy
reader like my brother is better than the group I find here as a
source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
have read less than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
LCC
Nancy Lebovitz
Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> wrote:
>I do what I please but become bored after too much of any single
>activity. On the other hand while learning something I prefer to focus
>my attention on one subject at a time. I got bored with sf so I quit
>after 7 years. I got bored with gaming after 15 years, so I quit. Now
>I am looking around for something else of interest and figured that I
>should check up on sf from the past 15 years. But even a fantasy
>reader like my brother is better than the group I find here as a
>source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
>sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
>have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
>have read less than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
I've read considerably more than 1000 books, but I like reading books
or usenet posts, not dealing with lists. I've already told you what
would be the best way to get recommendations from me--tell me what
you like and what you're looking for.
Andrea Leistra
>source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
>sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
>have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
>have read less than 100.
You'd be wrong.
I'm down in the minority of the less-well-read people here, with only
about 800 books on my shelves. (Age has a lot to do with that; I'm only
25.)
The problem is that "SF" is a very large category, and generic
recommendations to someone whose taste we don't know is meaningless;
your initial list of pre-1986 books was too large to get a sense of your
taste. I certainly wouldn't recommend Gene Wolfe to a fan of military
SF who despises literary stuff and wants unadorned prose, and I wouldn't
recommend Iain Banks to someone who wants cheery bright SF, nor would I
recommend Barry Hughart to a fantasy-hater who only wants hard SF. If
you listed a few of your favorites, people could give you suggestions
more likely to be useful.
>Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
I realize this will mean little coming from someone who fails to
meet your lofty criteria, but buzz off. We aren't here as a
push-button recommendation service.
--
Andrea Leistra
Martin Wisse
<kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Lonnie Courtney Clay wrote:
>>
>> These books with a few exceptions include only novels. With a few
>> exceptions they exclude fantasy. I posted them on another forum a
>> while back, and thought that you on this forum might be interested too
>> in some classics. The books are the winnowed down list from 4335
>> titles by 904 authors which I had as of September 86. I might make up
>> another list in 2006, but someone as omnivorous as I will probably
>> have created such a list by then. I would be interested to see if
>> anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
>> hated and justify each book on the list.....
>
>I was going to take on this challenge, but unfortunately, I've read
>fewer than ten of the books on the list.
>
>What follows are my opinions on those I've read:
>
>> Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity, Foundation
>
>I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
>_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
*sharp intake of breath*
I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
surely Asimov's best novel.
Martin Wisse
--
You can't grep dead goats.
-Jens Kilian, rasfw
Mary K. Kuhner
Perhaps a better place to try would be AlexLit (www.alexlit.com).
You rate the books you've read, and it provides recommendations.
If you just like to look at long lists of books, it will give you all
the lists you could possibly ever want. And no human intervention,
except yours, is needed.
I've read a couple of thousand books over my lifetime (I'm somewhat
older than Andrea) and have about 800 on the shelves now, but
I'm not going to waste anyone's time with unannotated lists.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Bruce Baugh
LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
> I have a feeling that maybe three of you have read over 1000, maybe
> 15 have read 500, and the vast majority have read less than 100. Now
> would the three with over 1000 sf please either disgorge their
> recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
You'd be very wrong about your feeling. This is an extremely well-read
audience.
The real problem is that a lot of us like context for recommendations.
As others have already noted, your lists aren't selective enough to
provide a sense of stuff you probably would or wouldn't like. This is
one of the real drawbacks of lists as opposed to narrative discussion.
We don't really need exhaustive bibliographic data - we need to know
about the works that particularly delighted, fascinated, appalled,
bored, or otherwise affected you.
Konrad Gaertner
I seem to be in tiny minority...
Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
--KG
Eric Walker
[...]
>It is like pulling teeth to get a list of sf books out of you
>people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you have read over
>1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority have read
>less than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off?
I suspect that you are much underestimating the scope of
collective experience represented here. I myself have, in round
numbers, about a thousand s.f. books on my shelves at the
moment, and I estimate that I have not kept over one s.f. book
in ten that I have owned in my life--and that excludes the early
teen years of heavy library use. (Though in those days there
weren't a lot of s.f. books published, period, at least not
compared to today, when the average is close to another s.f.
title published every six hours, around the clock around the
year.)
So that would put me at, very, *very* roughly, about ten
thousand s.f. books read. Averaging a book a day read, which I
believe reasonably represents my long-term average, and
considering my age (a secret, but I am not young), that
estimated grand total crosschecks to about right. Yet I don't
suppose my exposure to be grossly atypical for this forum.
(And, as stated, that is s.f. books only, albeit they are the
mainstay of my reading.)
<TOUT>
But if you want particular suggestions, you can visit--
a site entitled "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works."
</TOUT>
Of perhaps especial interest to you, the list is weighted toward
older works, as I am having a hard time keeping up with the pace
of modern publishing I referred to above.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Nancy Lebovitz
I haven't read any Asimov in long enough that I'm not sure how I'd
rank his books, but I'd at least place the alien section of _The
Gods Themselves_ among Asimov's best.
Mike Schilling
The first third is excellent standard Asimov; it reads almost like one
of the robot stories, in which he introduces a new idea and extrapolates
its consequences.
The middle third, by itself, is one of the best things he ever wrote.
The para-men are a brilliant example of Campbell's "Aliens that think as
well as humans but not like humans." It's also pure emotion, instead of
the usual Asimovian logic -- who knew he had it in him?
The last third is a talky travellogue with a deus ex machina ending. In
retrospect, it foreshadows the plodding pointlessness of his later
novels. It doesn't entirely ruin the book, IMHO, but it puts the whole
well below Asimov's best work.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> said
<snip>
>But even a fantasy
>reader like my brother is better than the group I find here as a
>source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
>sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
>have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
>have read less than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
I've read about 2-3,000, most of which are on an access database.
However the only list I could spit out without some more input would be
'the ones =I= liked best', which are a dead cert not to be the ones you
like best. Nor are these 'pre 1986 only' .. so sue me .. 8>.
Here are the top 100 or so, fwiw.
Book Title Author Name(s)
Hothouse Aldiss - Brian Wilson
The Astounding-Analog Reader Book Two Aldiss - Brian Wilson & Harrison
- Harry
The Ring of Charon Allen - Roger MacBride
Trader to the Stars Anderson - Poul
Sos the Rope Anthony - Piers
Var the Stick Anthony - Piers
Foundation's Edge Asimov - Isaac
Second Foundation Asimov - Isaac
Foundation Asimov - Isaac
Foundation and Empire Asimov - Isaac
Excession Banks - Iain M.
The Player of Games Banks - Iain M.
Half Past Human Bass - T. J.
Eon Bear - Greg
The Demolished Man Bester - Alfred
Tiger, Tiger Bester - Alfred
All the Colours of Darkness Biggle - Lloyd Jr.
Earthman Come Home Blish - James
A Clash of Cymbals Blish - James
Startide Rising Brin - David
The Postman Brin - David
The Mind Thing Brown - Frederic
Who? Budrys - Algis
Barrayar Bujold - Lois McMaster
A Civil Campaign Bujold - Lois McMaster
Sleeping Planet Burkett - William R. Jr.
Speaker for the Dead Card - Orson Scott
No Place Like Earth Carnell - John
The Pride of Chanur Cherryh - C. J.
Downbelow Station Cherryh - C. J.
Kutath Cherryh - C. J.
Kesrith Cherryh - C. J.
Rendezvous with Rama Clarke - Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust Clarke - Arthur C.
Mission of Gravity Clement - Hal
The Road to Corlay Cowper - Richard
Jinx on a Terran Inheritance Daley - Brian
The Varkaus Conspiracy Dalmas - John
Mutant 59 the Plastic Eater Davis - Gerry & Pedler - Kit
A for Andromeda Elliot - John & Hoyle - Fred
Dark Universe Galouye - Daniel Francis
Conscience Interplanetary Green - Joseph L.
Replay Grimwood - Ken
The Reality Dysfunction Hamilton - Peter F.
The Paradox Men Harness - Charles L.
West of Eden Harrison - Harry
The Deathworld Trilogy Harrison - Harry
The Stainless Steel Rat Harrison - Harry
Stranger in a Strange Land Heinlein - Robert A.
The Man Who Sold the Moon Heinlein - Robert A.
The Door into Summer Heinlein - Robert A.
Double Star Heinlein - Robert A.
Glory Road Heinlein - Robert A.
The Past Through Tomorrow Vol.1 Heinlein - Robert A.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Heinlein - Robert A.
Pilgrimage Henderson - Zenna
Dune Herbert - Frank
The Two Faces of Tomorrow Hogan - James Patrick
Flowers for Algernon Keyes - Daniel
The Space Merchants Kornbluth - Cyril M. & Pohl -
Frederick
Wolfbane Kornbluth - Cyril M. & Pohl -
Frederick
Fury Kuttner - Henry
Dinosaur Beach Laumer - Keith
The Magician's Nephew Lewis - Clive Staples
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis - Clive Staples
That Hideous Strength Lewis - Clive Staples
Tuf Voyaging Martin - George R. R.
Dragonquest McCaffrey - Anne
Dragonflight McCaffrey - Anne
Chaga McDonald - Ian
Conditionally Human & Other Stories Miller - Walter M. Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz Miller - Walter M. Jr.
The Long Run Moran - Daniel Keys
Ringworld Niven - Larry
Protector Niven - Larry
A Gift From Earth Niven - Larry
Neutron Star Niven - Larry
Crashlander Niven - Larry
Lucifer's Hammer Niven - Larry & Pournelle - Jerry
Footfall Niven - Larry & Pournelle - Jerry
The Mote in God's Eye Niven - Larry & Pournelle - Jerry
Little Fuzzy Piper - H. Beam
The Light Fantastic Pratchett - Terry
The Thirst Quenchers Raphael - Rick
Code Three Raphael - Rick
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Rowling - Joanne K.
Men, Martians, and Machines Russell - Eric Frank
Three to Conquer Russell - Eric Frank
Wasp Russell - Eric Frank
Empire of the East Saberhagen - Fred
The Telzey Toy and Other Stories Schmitz - James H.
Agent of Vega Schmitz - James H.
TnT: Telzey & Trigger Schmitz - James H.
They Walked Like Men Simak - Clifford D.
Aliens for Neighbours Simak - Clifford D.
All Flesh is Grass Simak - Clifford D.
City Simak - Clifford D.
The Fall of Hyperion Simmons - Dan
Norstrilia Smith - Cordwainer
The Family Tree Tepper - Sheri Stewart
After Long Silence Tepper - Sheri Stewart
Raising the Stones Tepper - Sheri Stewart
The Hobbit Tolkien - John Ronald Reuel
Lord of the Rings Tolkien - John Ronald Reuel
The World of Null-A Van Vogt - Alfred Elton
The Pawns of Null-A Van Vogt - Alfred Elton
The Weapon Makers Van Vogt - Alfred Elton
The Snow Queen Vinge - Joan D.
A Deepness in the Sky Vinge - Vernor
A Fire Upon the Deep Vinge - Vernor
Marooned in Real Time Vinge - Vernor
The Peace War Vinge - Vernor
Darwinia Wilson - Robert Charles
The Chrysalids Wyndham - John
Lord of Light Zelazny - Roger
This Immortal Zelazny - Roger
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Lois Tilton
> You'd be very wrong about your feeling. This is an extremely well-read
> audience.
> The real problem is that a lot of us like context for recommendations.
Also that many of us have never considered the notion of listing the books
we read.
--
LT
Dan Swartzendruber
Thomas Yan
Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Martin Wisse wrote:
-snip-
> > I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
> > surely Asimov's best novel.
>
> I seem to be in tiny minority...
>
> Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
Maybe not his best (I'm not sure what I would put there), but
definitely among his best.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@twcny.rr.com) Note: I don't check e-mail often.
Be pro-active. Fight sucky software and learned helplessness.
Apologies for any lack of capitalization; typing hurts my hands.
Progress on next DbS installment: pp1-24 of pp1-181 of _Taltos_
Lois Tilton
> Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
Among his best.
--
LT
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
>
> Among his best.
I also agree with the earlier poster about the 3-part nature of the
book. More specifically, I'd rate them as: B+, A+, C-.
Sea Wasp
I wouldn't agree. And don't call me Shirley. :)
I'd say his best novels were _The Caves of Steel_ and _The Naked
Sun_.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
david carlton
> It is like pulling teeth to get a list of sf books out of you
> people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you have read over
> 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority have read less
> than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please either
> disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
Your numbers are certainly off here; I won't swear that I've read 1000
sf books, but I'd be pretty surprised if I hadn't, and I've certainly
read more than 500; there are lots of people who have read more than
me.
At any rate, it's too bad that you aren't getting the responses you
wanted. I personally didn't answer you because I tend to skim over
posts including long lists of titles: it's hard to imagine that such
posts would cause me to think about or say anything interesting.
One possible solution would be for you to look at the thread entitled
"Nicoll thread: 10+ per author". If you see authors coming up
repeatedly there that you aren't familiar with, you could try looking
up some of their books. And as that thread gets older, people are
starting to discuss books in it, not just list authors, which might
also be useful.
david carlton | <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/>
car...@math.stanford.edu | Go books: <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/go/>
I want another RE-WRITE on my CAESAR SALAD!!
Lawrence Person
No, but it's the last one he wrote before his novels started to REALLY suck.
--
Lawrence Person
lawrenc...@jump.net
New 2001 Lame Excuse Books Catalog now available! Ask for one!
Julie Pascal
"Lois Tilton" <lti...@shell-2.enteract.com> wrote in message
news:9r4jk1$d6b$2...@bob.news.rcn.net...
Or keeping track at all.
Not since a fourth grade Read-a-thon.
--Julie
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
wrote:
> It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
>sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
>have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
>have read less than 100.
What? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
HoHoHo.
No, really. This is a newsgroup populated by people who read
obsessively - figuring (conservatively) that most of the regulars
started doing this in their early teens, say for the sake of argument
13, and are at an average (pulling a number straight out of my anus)
age of about 30, that works out to 17x52 = 884 at the leisurely rate
of one book a week.
I, for one, went through one a _day_ when I was in High School, and I
suspect that I am probably not in the top quartile of this newsgroup
in terms of book consumption.
>Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
Most people aren't obsessive-compulsive neurotics who keep lists like
you do. Buzz off, or learn to talk to people in a less peremptory
manner.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric D. Berge
(remove spaces for valid address)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad! When the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
- A.E.Housman, "Reveille"
------------------------------------------------------------------
Margaret Young
wrote:
>Either you are a headshrinker or just plain slow on the uptake. It was
>a joke!
>I do what I please but become bored after too much of any single
>activity. On the other hand while learning something I prefer to focus
>my attention on one subject at a time. I got bored with sf so I quit
>after 7 years. I got bored with gaming after 15 years, so I quit. Now
>I am looking around for something else of interest and figured that I
>should check up on sf from the past 15 years. But even a fantasy
>reader like my brother is better than the group I find here as a
>source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
>sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
>have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
>have read less than 100. Now would the three with over 1000 sf please
>either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
>LCC
And I have a feeling that you have no idea how much most of us have
read. I don't have a count of the number of books I _own_ (let alone
those I have read), but I quit keeping track many years ago when it
was over 5 thousand.
I have far better things to do with my time than make a list for you
of "recommended" reads. (For example, reading).
So, as per your instructions above -- buzz off.
Margaret
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
Check out our new Unlimited Server. No Download or Time Limits!
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Lonnie Courtney Clay
*************************************************************************
Thank you for the offer Nancy. About 1996 or so I started through my
brother's collection and made up a list of post 1986 that I liked. I
will try to find that list and provide it on another thread when I do.
It was not very long. I am surprised that nobody keeps a list of books
to be reread every decade or so. I thought that it was an obvious
idea. Apparently I was wrong.....
LCC
Niall McAuley
> So, as per your instructions above -- buzz off.
LCC might like to try the recommending engine at:
Feed it 50 titles you like (the more the better), and then let it
list recommendations for you. It's not exclusively SF, and it has
a bee in its bonnet about Neil Gaiman, but I find it quite good.
--
Niall [real address ends in ie, not ei.invalid]
Margaret Young
wrote:
I reread books for a variety of reasons. I am browsing my shelves and
the book attracts me, I read something else by the author and that
makes me revisit earlier/other works, I read something by someone else
that reminds me of them, a discussion in this or another group reminds
me of them/makes me want to revisit/rejudge them, or I just feel like
it. My favourite books I reread at least once a year. Never
needed/missed having a list.
Most books I read I don't reread. They aren't good enough and there is
only so much time.
About twice a year I have a lost week in which I take all the books
written by particular authors (preferably authors who have written
lots and lots[1]) and read them all in chronological order. Usually
pick one SF author, one Mystery author, one Horror author, and one
19th century novelist either French or English..
Margaret
[1] not necessarily a great writer, but one who I enjoy reading.
Eric Walker
[...]
>I am surprised that nobody keeps a list of books to be reread
>every decade or so. I thought that it was an obvious
>idea. Apparently I was wrong.....
Certainly for me, and I suspect for many others, that "list" is
called bookshelves. I keep no book I consider less than pretty
good, so if it's on my shelves, I think it worth re-reading.
When I get tired of the new stuff I'm working on (and new stuff
sometimes _is_ "work"), I just browse my personal library until
I find the particular door I'm in the mood to go through right
then.
Eric Walker
[...]
>I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of
>Eternity_ is surely Asimov's best novel.
Oh dear. Is that what is meant by "damning with faint praise"?
David Dyer-Bennet
I do. Very clearly, to me.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Thomas Yan
"Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote:
> "Lois Tilton" <lti...@shell-2.enteract.com> wrote in message
> news:9r4jk1$d6b$2...@bob.news.rcn.net...
-snip-
> > [...] many of us have never considered the notion of listing the books
> > we read.
>
> Or keeping track at all.
>
> Not since a fourth grade Read-a-thon.
As I said in another thread, I now wish I had started keeping track
from the very beginning. For example, I'd like to be able to lookup
what books I read in, say, 5th grade -- at this point I have pretty
much no idea.
Nowadays I do keep track, but following a friend's suggestion, I record
only a very small amount of data per book, so that it doesn't feel like
a burden to maintain:
+ author or "reread" or "reskim"
+ title
I group these by year and month.
(A little later, I started doing something similar for movies.)
Lonnie Courtney Clay
**************************************************************************
Thanks for the pointer to alexlit.com. I checked them out and found
that they want about a mil per word for their ebooks! Although that
may not seem like much to you, I had to laugh. Do you realize that
there are tens of thousands of would be authors on the web just
begging people to read their web pages ? Well I am already spoiled.
For a single comment in their guestbook or an email they will crank
out another free story and beg people to read it too. Back to alexlit,
I did not recognize any stories at all on their list of things to rate
which would generate recommendations. What I really need is something
which covers novels, a cross publisher supersite which covers the last
45 years. Perhaps in five years there will be such a site ? In the
meantime I will just browse all that free stuff....
LCC
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> But if you want particular suggestions, you can visit--
>
> http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
>
> a site entitled "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works."
Thank you for the pointer. I visited and bookmarked the site for later
study. It seems to be precisely the sort of thing I want to see. Now
if some more people would point out their sites then I shall go away
happy!
LCC
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> Here are the top 100 or so, fwiw.
were list makers out there, you just needed to have your chain yanked/
cage rattled/ a few words of incitement to riot!
LCC
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> Htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote in message news:<d12cac0f.01102...@posting.google.com>...
> > LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote in message news:<7edd270a.01102...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Margaret Young <mmy...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:<1428tt8c8vte61c0c...@4ax.com>...
> > > I, for one, cannot imagine taking 15 years off from
> > > > serious reading.
> > > >
> > > *****************************************************************************
> > > I found that my reading was affecting my judgement. All of my
> > > disposable income was being sunk into buying more books.
> >
> > Er, wasn't there a good library within reasonable distance from
> > where you live? Even in the late 70's when I first started reading sf
> > as a kid, all the local libraries I've visited were well-stocked with
> > good sf, albeit they were more often found in the "Young Adult" area.
> >
> > (And seriously, people, am I in the minority in this newsgroup in
> > utilizing the library for most of my sf reading? I buy books
> > sometimes, but only if libraries don't stock them or they're
> > hard-to-find collector's items from favorite authors. Most books are
> > _not_ worth keeping.)
> >
> > >I was reading every waking hour. My dreams centered around stories
> which I had
> > > recently read. I even dreamed about reading books which did not exist.
> > > So I went cold turkey and kicked the habit. I started playing computer
> > > games instead. Then in June this years I realized that I had become
> > > addicted to computer strategy games too! I cut myself off cold turkey
> > > and started serious web browsing, which is free. Now I notice that 8+
> > > hours are spent browsing each day so there is an instant addiction in
> > > process. It occurs to me that the most safe and harmless activity may
> > > be going back to reading books. If you do not like that story then
> > > make up a better one yourself!
> >
> > Don't take offense at this, but I don't think you need an updated
> > reading list now as much as you need to be treated for
> > compulsive-obsessive disorder. As a dedicated reader _and_ computer
> > game player (strategy and rpg's) I understand how one can get caught
> > up too much in either (or both) of these activities. But I'm sure
> > you're aware there are many more important things in life than reading
> > sf or playing computer games.
> >
> > Might I suggest that you at least set priorities and strive for
> > some balance in your leisure activities for a healthy lifestyle?
> > These priorities don't have to be consistent and can be revised
> > periodically, of course. (I used to spend half my free time reading, a
> > quarter of the time on computer games, and the rest on miscellaneous
> > "balancing" activities such as fishing and spending time with family.
> > Now, computer games head the list. But these balancing activities,
> > which may not seem as exciting and intense at the time will always be
> > the more worthwhile time I spent.)
> >
> > > LCC
>
> **************************************************************************
> "If you do not like that story then make up a better one yourself!"
> Either you are a headshrinker or just plain slow on the uptake. It was
> a joke!
> activity. On the other hand while learning something I prefer to focus
> my attention on one subject at a time. I got bored with sf so I quit
> after 7 years. I got bored with gaming after 15 years, so I quit. Now
> I am looking around for something else of interest and figured that I
> should check up on sf from the past 15 years. But even a fantasy
> reader like my brother is better than the group I find here as a
> source of recommendations. It is like pulling teeth to get a list of
> sf books out of you people. I have a feeling that maybe three of you
> have read over 1000, maybe 15 have read 500, and the vast majority
> either disgorge their recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
******************************************************************************
It only takes a small stick to whack open a big hornet's nest, and I
seem to have been effective with just a few choice words! Enough
righteous indignation, I knew that I was insulting the group when I
posted it! Think about it, and note that I waited a few days to say
it, after reading the newsgroup a while. So far as
obsessive/compulsive goes, I have to assume that was a joke too.
Otherwise look at that pot calling the kettle black! Otherwise how do
you explain the very long threads in this newsgroup and the obvious
book per day consensus of several posters on this thread. I have news
for you headshrinkers who may be reading. When the behavior of the
normative member of a group is beyond the bounds of the fourth
standard deviation from the norm of the general population, then you
do not call that person crazy. What you do if you have any brains
(which I seriously doubt) is establish a new group to include the
members outside the general population and draw up new means and
standard deviations. Science fiction readers and other genre readers
to a lesser extent are a subgroup "readers" beyond/ outside of the
bounds of the general population which does not in general read, and
of which at least half by your own standards is functionally
illiterate (IQ <=100). Within the group of readers and intersecting
with other groups such as computer users and gamers lies the group
science fiction readers. There are other subgroups of amorphous
character (leaky) which represent passionate readers of specific
authors such as readers of Larry Niven or David Drake or C.J. Cherryh
etc.
So it gets down to group/ set theory and is the proper study of
sociologists/ anthropologists/ mathematicians not psychologists. ESAD
headshrinkers! I doubt that there are any in this group (another
stick) except to study it, because if there were then the individual
involved would become too critical of the fuzzy thinking of collegues
and lose the license to practice. Information alters
consciousness.....
LCC
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> In article <3BD5C014...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > Martin Wisse wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, 20 Oct 2001 19:20:14 GMT, Konrad Gaertner
> > > <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
> > > >_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
> > >
> > > *sharp intake of breath*
> > >
> > > I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
> > > surely Asimov's best novel.
> >
> > I seem to be in tiny minority...
> >
> > Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
> >
> No, but it's the last one he wrote before his novels started to REALLY suck.
****************************************************************************
I included Foundation series in the short list 1986, but generally (as
was just pointed out) as a science fiction author Asimov sucks. Better
that he should stick to science. Just by contrast examine James P.
Hogan or Robert L. Forward. The only way that Asimov could rank as
both is if you took away all the other science fiction authors. He may
have had an influence on other authors by showing how NOT to write
science fiction......
Just my two cents worth.
LCC
Nancy Lebovitz
Lonnie Courtney Clay <LCC...@aol.com> wrote:
>na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote in message news:<9r3uk2$o...@netaxs.com>...
>>
>> or usenet posts, not dealing with lists. I've already told you what
>> would be the best way to get recommendations from me--tell me what
>> you like and what you're looking for.
>
>*************************************************************************
>Thank you for the offer Nancy. About 1996 or so I started through my
You're welcome.
>brother's collection and made up a list of post 1986 that I liked. I
>will try to find that list and provide it on another thread when I do.
>It was not very long. I am surprised that nobody keeps a list of books
>to be reread every decade or so. I thought that it was an obvious
>idea. Apparently I was wrong.....
Making such a list may be an obvious idea (and might be a good one--
I get sufficiently distracted by the flood of new books that I probably
miss out on some rereading that I'd like better), but I run on the
I'll know what I want to reread when I feel the desire and/or see the
book on the shelf and/or see it mentioned in rasfw.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Bruce Baugh
These last couple of years have been fairly demanding ones in various
ways, and I'm way behind on reading new stuff - what time I've had for
non-work-related reading, I've mostly used to re-read old favorites. But
in the new year I'll be working on fewer, longer projects and therefore
be able to cut back ont he constant gear-switching and fresh research
demands that are so common in the life of a freelance game writer.
So I'm looking for recommendations of books that I probably should have
read in the last few years but have missed.
Among those already sitting here on my shelves, waiting for me....
Iain Banks' INVERSIONS and LOOK TO WINDWARD. I dig Banks. 'Nuff said.
Richard Garkfinkle's second one. (ALL OF AN INSTANT, or something like
that?) I absolutely loved CELESTIAL MATTERS, and the blurb and intro for
the new one look great.
Daniel Keyes' Newton's Cannon quartet. I love historical fantasy, and
Tim Powers isn't writing fast enough. :)
Maureen McHugh's current one, the title of which I'm totally blanking
on. While CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG is a particular favorite of mine, she
always satisfies.
Brian Stableford, whatever the first two volumes in his current biotech
future history series are. I don't know if I'll like these or not, but I
find biotech intriguing and I very much enjoyed the Werewolves of London
trilogy.
My tastes range reasonably widely, as the above indicate. I am at this
point not very willing to put up with lousy or even ho-hum writing for
the sake of nifty ideas - prose quality counts. I also value rigor in
world-building, and it doesn't much matter to me whether the premises
are scientifically sound or not, as long as the world unfolds with a
sense of coherence and integrity.
So: please, help me spend the checks I'll be getting in November and
December. :) I will be particularly appreciative for pointers to new
writers, or first books by people who've only done short stories so far.
I should note that I am willing to look at electronic publications. I'm
a regular customer of Peanut Press, an occasional customer of Alexandria
Digital Literaure, and so on. At World Horror this year I bought several
of Lone Wolf's CD anthologies and found them surprisingly readable,
though I really prefer formats I can read on my Handspring Visor. So
online references as well as print citations are just fine with me.
I'm also willing to check out particularly promising anthologies.
Thanks!
(All of the above is, by the way, true. I do have a didactic purpose
here, of showing Mr. Clay one way to get r.a.sf.w readers to open up the
fist time around. But I also mean it, and look forward to learning about
neat new books I'll enjoy next year.)
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
I am what I know / A glacier made from layers of history's snow / And
what I know is what I see / In dreaming and reality / On and on this
cycle goes / Wretchedness and beauty juxtaposed - Jeff Johnson,
"Chambord"
Margaret Young
wrote:
>
>So it gets down to group/ set theory and is the proper study of
>sociologists/ anthropologists/ mathematicians not psychologists. ESAD
>headshrinkers! I doubt that there are any in this group (another
>stick) except to study it, because if there were then the individual
>involved would become too critical of the fuzzy thinking of collegues
>and lose the license to practice. Information alters
>consciousness.....
>
>LCC
And if any student of mine handed in a sentence as remarkably fuzzy
and without meaning as that, I would without hesitation send them back
to try rewriting it in English.
Margaret
James Moar
Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote:
> To demonstrate how to do this _without_ being an insulting twit...
>
> These last couple of years have been fairly demanding ones in various
> ways, and I'm way behind on reading new stuff - what time I've had for
> non-work-related reading, I've mostly used to re-read old favorites. But
> in the new year I'll be working on fewer, longer projects and therefore
> be able to cut back ont he constant gear-switching and fresh research
> demands that are so common in the life of a freelance game writer.
>
> So I'm looking for recommendations of books that I probably should have
> read in the last few years but have missed.
China Mieville's KING RAT and PERDIDO STREET STATION leap to mind,
though the worldbuilding in both is more stylish than rigorous. Also,
George R R Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (starts with A GAME
OF THRONES) if the idea of an Epic Fantasy where all factions are
heavily populated by backstabbing bastards appeals to you.
Unfortunately, I haven't really been keeping up with new stuff that
well myself. I blame lack of time and the good reprints we're getting
over here.
--
James Moar
"Landing thrusters... land-ing thrus-ters... now if I were a landing
thruster which one of these would I be...?" - Londo Mollari, BABYLON 5.
Martin Wisse
>Martin Wisse wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2001 19:20:14 GMT, Konrad Gaertner
>> <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >Lonnie Courtney Clay wrote:
>> >>
>> >> These books with a few exceptions include only novels. With a few
>> >> exceptions they exclude fantasy. I posted them on another forum a
>> >> while back, and thought that you on this forum might be interested too
>> >> in some classics. The books are the winnowed down list from 4335
>> >> titles by 904 authors which I had as of September 86. I might make up
>> >> another list in 2006, but someone as omnivorous as I will probably
>> >> have created such a list by then. I would be interested to see if
>> >> anyone could make up a list of ten (from the list below) which they
>> >> hated and justify each book on the list.....
>> >
>> >I was going to take on this challenge, but unfortunately, I've read
>> >fewer than ten of the books on the list.
>> >
>> >What follows are my opinions on those I've read:
>> >
>> >> Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity, Foundation
>> >
>> >I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
>> >_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
>>
>> *sharp intake of breath*
>>
>> I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
>> surely Asimov's best novel.
>
> I wouldn't agree. And don't call me Shirley. :)
I wasn't, I was calling you surley.
> I'd say his best novels were _The Caves of Steel_ and _The Naked
>Sun_.
You know, I've read them, but I could never really get into them.
Martin Wisse
--
WWFD?
Play Mornington Crescent.
-Erik V. Olson & Loren MacGregor, in rasseff.
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>In article <7edd270a.01102...@posting.google.com>,
> LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
>
>> I have a feeling that maybe three of you have read over 1000, maybe
>> 15 have read 500, and the vast majority have read less than 100. Now
>> would the three with over 1000 sf please either disgorge their
>> recommended lists or tell me to buzz off ?
>
>You'd be very wrong about your feeling. This is an extremely well-read
>audience.
How many books you've read however, is nothing else but an indicator of
how old you are, the speed at which you read and the amount of time you
spend reading. It doesn't say anything about taste.
Why this obsessiveness about numbers?
Why this insistence people should've read a large percentage of all
published sf books or otherwise their opinion isn't worhtwhile?
It's impossible for any person to come even close to reading all or a
significant percentage of sf books published in a year, let alone from
1986 onwards.
>The real problem is that a lot of us like context for recommendations.
>As others have already noted, your lists aren't selective enough to
>provide a sense of stuff you probably would or wouldn't like. This is
>one of the real drawbacks of lists as opposed to narrative discussion.
>We don't really need exhaustive bibliographic data - we need to know
>about the works that particularly delighted, fascinated, appalled,
>bored, or otherwise affected you.
Yes, I didn't get any feeling of personality behind the list, it could
just as well have been selected randomly. But then, if you're compulsive
enough to try and read all science fiction books published, I guess
that's what any list of favourites will look like.
Martin Wisse
<ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 23 Oct 2001 18:29:17 GMT, Martin Wisse wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of
>>Eternity_ is surely Asimov's best novel.
>
>Oh dear. Is that what is meant by "damning with faint praise"?
No...
Explain?
Martin Wisse
--
"Desaad: Master, I have found it! Doom plus Magic plus IRC plus netnews
plus MUDding!"
"Darkseid: You cringing fool! That is *not* the Anti-Life Formula, it is
the No-Life Formula!"--Dave Van Domelen
Lois Tilton
> Maureen McHugh's current one, the title of which I'm totally blanking
> on. While CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG is a particular favorite of mine, she
> always satisfies.
NEKROPOLIS, a fine work.
--
LT
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> On 24 Oct 2001 01:58:30 -0700, LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay)
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >So it gets down to group/ set theory and is the proper study of
> >sociologists/ anthropologists/ mathematicians not psychologists. ESAD
> >headshrinkers! I doubt that there are any in this group (another
> >stick) except to study it, because if there were then the individual
> >involved would become too critical of the fuzzy thinking of collegues
> >and lose the license to practice. Information alters
> >consciousness.....
> >
> >LCC
>
>
> And if any student of mine handed in a sentence as remarkably fuzzy
> and without meaning as that, I would without hesitation send them back
> to try rewriting it in English.
>
If any student of mine (had) handed (or perhaps "were to hand") in a
sentence
(which was) as remarkably fuzzy and without meaning as that (one) ,
(then) I would without hesitation send (mismatched pronoun referencing
student ->>>) them back to ->try rewriting it<- (attempt a rewrite of
it) in (grammatical rather than prosaic) English.
> Margaret
>
>
>
> -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> Check out our new Unlimited Server. No Download or Time Limits!
> -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! ==-----
****************************************************************************
Aha the stick poked a 'teacher'. Specifically, which sentence in the
paragraph quoted was unclear ? Shall I break down what may be your
problem into clauses ?
I doubt that
there are any in this group
(another stick)
except to study it,
because if there were then
the individual involved would become too critical
of the fuzzy thinking of
collegues
and lose the license to practice.
That should be simple enough for a third grader to diagram, which by
the way, I learned parsing and diagramming in the 3-5 grades back in
the early 60's. Are you intellectually challenged by multiple clause
sentences ? Perhaps you are a psychology rather than an English
teacher, if such happens to be the case.
Here is a plug for a priceless product which you may easily find on
the web called "Anagram Genius". Just for example it reveals that
"Margaret Young" is an anagram for many things, amoung which are "Gay
or argument" and "Nag mature orgy". If you do not believe me then
check the letters yourself!
To the remainder of the newsgroup I apologize for this little
excursion, but you can see that I was provoked. Besides, now that I
have found your unmoderated group, the only way for you to lose me is
to bore me to death.....
LCC
Nancy Lebovitz
>
recommendations from....
>These last couple of years have been fairly demanding ones in various
>ways, and I'm way behind on reading new stuff - what time I've had for
>non-work-related reading, I've mostly used to re-read old favorites. But
>in the new year I'll be working on fewer, longer projects and therefore
>be able to cut back ont he constant gear-switching and fresh research
>demands that are so common in the life of a freelance game writer.
>
>So I'm looking for recommendations of books that I probably should have
>read in the last few years but have missed.
>
(......)
>
>My tastes range reasonably widely, as the above indicate. I am at this
>point not very willing to put up with lousy or even ho-hum writing for
>the sake of nifty ideas - prose quality counts. I also value rigor in
>world-building, and it doesn't much matter to me whether the premises
>are scientifically sound or not, as long as the world unfolds with a
>sense of coherence and integrity.
>
Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
pleasure), but his _Diaspora_ offers as fine a sense of wonder as I've
seen lately.
Mary K. Kuhner
>Thanks for the pointer to alexlit.com. I checked them out and found
>that they want about a mil per word for their ebooks! Although that
>may not seem like much to you, I had to laugh. Do you realize that
>there are tens of thousands of would be authors on the web just
>begging people to read their web pages ?
<shrug> AlexLit sells previously-published professional-level
stories; most web page material is not that good. But if it works
for you, hey, you've got free reading material for ever.
>Back to alexlit,
>I did not recognize any stories at all on their list of things to rate
>which would generate recommendations.
Rather than using their list, you can select authors whom you
know you've read (your list-keeping should make this easy) and rate
all their books. This should be enough to get you recommendations.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Brian McGuinness
> It only takes a small stick to whack open a big hornet's nest, and I
> seem to have been effective with just a few choice words! Enough
> righteous indignation, I knew that I was insulting the group when I
> posted it!
Insulting people in a newsgroup, especially people you are requesting
a favor from, is useless and counterproductive. From time to time
everyone becomes impassioned about some topic and posts accordingly.
This is normal human nature, as is responding negatively to attacks.
So you just have to try to stay cool and cut people some slack.
> Think about it, and note that I waited a few days to say
> it, after reading the newsgroup a while. So far as
> obsessive/compulsive goes, I have to assume that was a joke too.
> Otherwise look at that pot calling the kettle black! Otherwise how do
> you explain the very long threads in this newsgroup and the obvious
> book per day consensus of several posters on this thread.
The description of your behavior as obsessive/compulsive appears to
have been based on your own description of your behavior, which
seems more extreme than that of most of us here. This diagnosis may
or may not be correct, but it is plausible.
> I have news
> for you headshrinkers who may be reading. When the behavior of the
> normative member of a group is beyond the bounds of the fourth
> standard deviation from the norm of the general population, then you
> do not call that person crazy.
What quantities are you measuring, and how are you measuring them?
What sample size are you basing your statistics on? Are you saying
that a person is crazy only if his behavior is *within* four standard
deviations of the norm of the general population?
> What you do if you have any brains
> (which I seriously doubt) is establish a new group to include the
> members outside the general population and draw up new means and
> standard deviations.
So you are saying that nobody is really crazy; if someone is acting
bizarrely, we just have to devise a new group to place him in.
> Science fiction readers and other genre readers
> to a lesser extent are a subgroup "readers" beyond/ outside of the
> bounds of the general population which does not in general read, and
> of which at least half by your own standards is functionally
> illiterate (IQ <=100). Within the group of readers and intersecting
> with other groups such as computer users and gamers lies the group
> science fiction readers. There are other subgroups of amorphous
> character (leaky) which represent passionate readers of specific
> authors such as readers of Larry Niven or David Drake or C.J. Cherryh
> etc.
Amorphous (shapeless) != leaky; perhaps you mean intersecting sets.
I have observed a large overlap between the following groups:
science fiction fans, people with scientific and technical
backgrounds,
members of living history groups such as the Society for Creative
Anachronism (of which Poul Anderson and Marion Zimmer Bradley were
members), and role playing gamers (actually, many of these now seem
to be involved in fantasy & science fiction card games). The
description of personality traits in the MIT hacker jargon file
http://tuxedo.org/jargon/ probably applies pretty well to most of
these people.
Yes, this sort of person is not typical of the general population,
but in most cases he can function reasonably well in the everyday
world.
Those who can't function well are the ones who need help.
> So it gets down to group/ set theory and is the proper study of
> sociologists/ anthropologists/ mathematicians not psychologists. ESAD
> headshrinkers! I doubt that there are any in this group (another
> stick) except to study it, because if there were then the individual
> involved would become too critical of the fuzzy thinking of collegues
> and lose the license to practice. Information alters
> consciousness.....
>
> LCC
Note my comment on overlapping groups, above. Many science fiction
fans are intelligent, well educated in mathematics and various
sciences, and able to think quite clearly.
Now, as for your list, I would personally find it much more useful
if it included a brief description of each story so that I could see
which ones I would be likely to find interesting. One sentence would
do. Creating a web page to hold the list would be more useful than
posting it here, since messages tend to vanish from newsgroups in a
relatively short span of time.
At some point I would like to create my own database of short stories
so that I could easily look up information such as what book a given
story appeared in, or what was the name of the story where the
protagonist keeps travelling through time to prevent his own death,
and
each time he fails.
If you are looking for stories that are widely considered to be the
best
by a large number of people, you might try looking up the Hugo Award
winners (voted on by fans) and the Nebula Award winners (voted on by
writers) for each year. This is likely to introduce you to new
writers
you have never heard of but whose work you will enjoy.
--- Brian
Lawrence Person
LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
> Lawrence Person <lawrenc...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:<lawrenceperson-79A...@news.jump.net>...
> > In article <3BD5C014...@worldnet.att.net>,
> > Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Martin Wisse wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, 20 Oct 2001 19:20:14 GMT, Konrad Gaertner
> > > > <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
> > > > >_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
> > > >
> > > > *sharp intake of breath*
> > > >
> > > > I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
> > > > surely Asimov's best novel.
> > >
> > > I seem to be in tiny minority...
> > >
> > > Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
> > >
> > No, but it's the last one he wrote before his novels started to REALLY
> > suck.
>
> ****************************************************************************
> I included Foundation series in the short list 1986, but generally (as
> was just pointed out) as a science fiction author Asimov sucks.
Your lack of perception in reading materials and lack of tact seem matched by
your woefully inadequate grasp of reading comprehension. Read the above sentence
again and see if any light filters into the dim and dingy recesses of your mind.
Asimov's _later_ work indeed sucked, but in his heyday he was a great science
fiction writer. Stories like "Nightfall" and "The Last Question" still retain
their power even today.
--
Lawrence Person
lawrenc...@jump.net
New 2001 Lame Excuse Books Catalog now available! Ask for one!
Current Lame Excuse Books Stock Online at: http://www.abebooks.com
Lawrence Person
wrote:
> Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
> is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
> pleasure), but his _Diaspora_ offers as fine a sense of wonder as I've
> seen lately.
Actually, Egan's prose is quite well honed, and has a pleasing leanness that
matches both his subject matter and his rational materialist philosophical
outlook. A far greater flaw in his work is his occasional habit of building
straw men caricatures of opposing viewpoints only to knock them down (see, for
example, "The Planke Dive.")
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <9r6kij$s...@netaxs.com>, na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
> wrote:
>> Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
>> is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
>> pleasure), but his _Diaspora_ offers as fine a sense of wonder as I've
>> seen lately.
> Actually, Egan's prose is quite well honed, and has a pleasing leanness that
> matches both his subject matter and his rational materialist philosophical
> outlook. A far greater flaw in his work is his occasional habit of building
> straw men caricatures of opposing viewpoints only to knock them down (see, for
> example, "The Planke Dive.")
"Occasional" as in "at least once per story"?
(That has been my experience with later Egan -- I didn't have this
problem with the stories in _Axiomatic_, but nearly everything after
that.)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
> is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
> pleasure),
I think it's been getting better.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Gens una sumus
David Tate
> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> > Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
>
> I do. Very clearly, to me.
I concur. I can't think of anything else that's really close;
certainly not _Foundation_, either singly or taken as a set.
David Tate
Bruce Baugh
James Moar <jw...@st-and.ac.uk> wrote:
> China Mieville's KING RAT and PERDIDO STREET STATION leap to mind,
> though the worldbuilding in both is more stylish than rigorous. Also,
> George R R Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (starts with A
> GAME OF THRONES) if the idea of an Epic Fantasy where all factions
> are heavily populated by backstabbing bastards appeals to you.
Oh, yes, friends have been recommending Mieville to me. He goes on the
list.
As for the Martin, look at the acknowledgements for the first volume.
Bruce Baugh
> Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
> is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
> pleasure), but his _Diaspora_ offers as fine a sense of wonder as I've
> seen lately.
Egan is marvelous. I've read everything of his I can lay hands on except
for Teranesia, I think.
Thomas Yan
LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
> [annoying, insulting stuff]
*plonk*
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>In article <241020011310330748%jw...@st-and.ac.uk>,
> James Moar <jw...@st-and.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> China Mieville's KING RAT and PERDIDO STREET STATION leap to mind,
>> though the worldbuilding in both is more stylish than rigorous. Also,
>> George R R Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (starts with A
>> GAME OF THRONES) if the idea of an Epic Fantasy where all factions
>> are heavily populated by backstabbing bastards appeals to you.
>
>Oh, yes, friends have been recommending Mieville to me. He goes on the
>list.
Good. _Perdido Street Station_ really is an amazing novel. _king Rat_
less so, but as it was his first work, I cut him some slack.
<http://www.ad-astra.demon.nl/rants/perdido.html> for my review.
Are you aware of Ken MacLeod?
If not, do take a look at his novels:
_The Star Fraction_, _The Stone Canal_, _The Cassini Division_ and _The
Sky Road_ form a loosely linked series, _Cosmonanut Keep_ is the first
book in a new series. All are grittily realistic, yet still manage to
evoke that sense of amazement good science fiction does so well, are
drenched in (left wing) politics and are very, very readable.
John Meany may be interesting as well... His first novel was good,
though not as groundbreaking as the blurbs made it.
<http://www.ad-astra.demon.nl/rants/thi.html> for my take on it.
Martin Wisse
--
By 2000 we were supposed to have computers bright enough to argue
with us, but that doesn't mean the way Word does it.
-Jo Walton-
Martin Wisse
>Lawrence Person <lawrenc...@jump.net> wrote:
>> In article <9r6kij$s...@netaxs.com>, na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>> wrote:
>
>>> Have you gotten around to Greg Egan yet? I'm not sure whether his prose
>>> is up to your standards (I think of it as servicable rather than a positive
>>> pleasure), but his _Diaspora_ offers as fine a sense of wonder as I've
>>> seen lately.
>
>> Actually, Egan's prose is quite well honed, and has a pleasing leanness that
>> matches both his subject matter and his rational materialist philosophical
>> outlook. A far greater flaw in his work is his occasional habit of building
>> straw men caricatures of opposing viewpoints only to knock them down (see, for
>> example, "The Planke Dive.")
>
>"Occasional" as in "at least once per story"?
"Border Guards" was incredibly annoying in that aspect. A good story
utterly ruined by a sermon.
>(That has been my experience with later Egan -- I didn't have this
>problem with the stories in _Axiomatic_, but nearly everything after
>that.)
Same here.
Konrad Gaertner
Wow, way more responses than I'd expected.
Okay, so I'm not unique on this. Darn, that means I have to find
something else... how about favorite Pratchett: _The Unadulterated Cat_?
--KG
Bruce Baugh
mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) wrote:
> Good. _Perdido Street Station_ really is an amazing novel. _king Rat_
> less so, but as it was his first work, I cut him some slack.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
> Are you aware of Ken MacLeod?
Oh, yes! Amusingly enough, the first friend to tell me "you must read
this" did so on the very same day that I first noticed that MacLeod
posts here. I've read The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal, and
absolutely loved them, and look forward to the rest.
> evoke that sense of amazement good science fiction does so well, are
> drenched in (left wing) politics and are very, very readable.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist myself, and found the politics very engaging.
Most particularly, I think, I liked the double-barrelled awareness that
lots of things can work when a bunch of folks agree to give them a try
and that people will remain people and can screw up all kinds of things.
I am very annoyed with polemical rants in my fiction, whether left-wing
(Kim Stanley Robinson), libertarian (L. Neil Smith), or what have you.
Essay writing is a noble and worthy calling. It's not the same task as
writing fiction.
> John Meany may be interesting as well... His first novel was good,
> though not as groundbreaking as the blurbs made it.
Altogether new to me, which makes it precisely what I was hoping for.
Thanks!
Lonnie Courtney Clay
> (All of the above is, by the way, true. I do have a didactic purpose
> here, of showing Mr. Clay one way to get r.a.sf.w readers to open up the
> fist time around. But I also mean it, and look forward to learning about
> neat new books I'll enjoy next year.)
I humbly ponder the implications of your lesson and will explore the
consequences of "friendliness" and "humbleness" as opposed to brass
overweening pride.....
LCC
Martin Wisse
Certainly the Pratchett that made me laugh the most. Favourite? No.
I don't really have a favourite Pratchett book.
Martin Wisse
--
Gah. You know there's people apparently paying for pr0n feeds
for their cellphone.
Yeah, I know. I helped build the infrastructure.
Peter da Silva and Matt McLeod, SDM
Jerry Friedman
> Lawrence Person <lawrenc...@jump.net> wrote in message news:<lawrenceperson-79A...@news.jump.net>...
> > In article <3BD5C014...@worldnet.att.net>,
> > Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Martin Wisse wrote:
> > > >
> > > > <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
> > > > >_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
> > > >
> > > > *sharp intake of breath*
> > > >
> > > > I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
> > > > surely Asimov's best novel.
> > >
> > > I seem to be in tiny minority...
> > >
> > >
>
> ****************************************************************************
> I included Foundation series in the short list 1986, but generally (as
> that he should stick to science. Just by contrast examine James P.
> Hogan or Robert L. Forward. The only way that Asimov could rank as
> both is if you took away all the other science fiction authors. He may
> have had an influence on other authors by showing how NOT to write
> science fiction......
> Just my two cents worth.
I wouldn't go that far. _The Caves of Steel_, _The Gods Themselves_,
and some of the short stories are very good science fiction, and
_Pebble in the Sky_ is said to have been revolutionary. But certainly
he made the right treaty with Clarke (that Asimov was the world's best
science writer and Clarke was the world's best science-fiction
writer).
Now if you want to mention worse hard-sf writers, Hogan and Forward
would make my list.
--
Jerry Friedman
Eric Walker
[...]
>And if any student of mine handed in a sentence as remarkably
>fuzzy and without meaning as that, I would without hesitation
>send them back to try rewriting it in English.
Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
That's number 2 on my personal list, right after "importantly."
(Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage group.)
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Eric Walker
[...]
>Shall I correct your grammer for elisions ?
Not until you demonstrate some minimal grasp of the subject, and
of its spelling at that ("grammar").
Elision is one of the most important powers of the English
language, and is a vital, everyday part of its use.
Do as you like, but I get the feeling that you and the rest of
this group have pretty well exhausted each other's capacity for
amusement, and that you might find your time better spent
elsewhere.
Bruce Baugh
LCC...@aol.com (Lonnie Courtney Clay) wrote:
> I humbly ponder the implications of your lesson and will explore the
> consequences of "friendliness" and "humbleness" as opposed to brass
> overweening pride.....
If you're out to set a record for getting into killfiles fast, I must
warn you that the competition over the years has been fierce, and while
your performance in this regard is noteworthy, it's far from star
material. And it's too late now to catch up.
Somewhat less sarcastically (though the above information is true)....
For someone who says that typing is difficult, you sure put a lot of
verbiage into unproductive repetitions and unconstructive responses.
Typing is difficult for a bunch of people I know. Most of them therefore
try to figure out how to cut out the dead weight from their net traffic,
so as to make best use of their limited output. I recommend this
activity to you, possibly in conjunction with a review of the collected
works of Miss Manners.
Notice that in one day I've gotten more actual recommendations than you
have, and that while most of them cover things I'd already had in mind
but forgotten to include in my original post, I'm also getting pointers
to neat new stuff I don't know about. This despite the fact that on
various occasions I have had fairly intense arguments with some of the
people currently providing me information. Honest questions put with a
modicum of care often work very well - not always, but often.
A willingness to apologize helps a lot, though only after one actually
feels contrite over a misunderstanding or unpleasant expression.
Taki Kogoma
to rec.arts.sf.written decree...
>On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 19:01:43 GMT, Konrad Gaertner
><kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>Wow, way more responses than I'd expected.
>>
>>Okay, so I'm not unique on this. Darn, that means I have to find
>>something else... how about favorite Pratchett: _The Unadulterated Cat_?
>
>Certainly the Pratchett that made me laugh the most. Favourite? No.
>
>I don't really have a favourite Pratchett book.
What he said on both counts.
At most, I have favorites in the various sub-series: _Lords and Ladies_
(Lancre), _Feet of Clay_ (Watch), _Thief of Time_ (Death/Susan).
The latest book (_The Last Hero_) has its moments, but the heavy
Rincewind involvement knocks it down several points for me.
Gym "Which reminds me. After I finish the obligatory Tolkien reread,
it's time for _Small Gods_ and _Good Omens_..." Quirk
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk | "I'll get a life when someone
(Known to some as Taki Kogoma) | demonstrates that it would be
quirk @ swcp.com | superior to what I have now."
Veteran of the '91 sf-lovers re-org. | -- Gym Quirk
Margaret Young
wrote:
<snip attempt to sound educated>
You are now one of a very rare group, those in my killfile.
<plonk>
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
>
> That's number 2 on my personal list, right after "importantly."
>
> (Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage group.)
Uh?
Ethan Merritt
>> <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >I didn't care much for _End_, though I wouldn't say I hated it.
>> >_Foundation_ is good Asimov, but _The Gods Themselves_ is better.
>>
>> *sharp intake of breath*
>>
>> I found _Teh God Themselves_ to be weak, but _The End of Eternity_ is
>> surely Asimov's best novel.
>
>I seem to be in tiny minority...
>
>Does ANYONE else here put _The Gods Themselves_ as Asimov's best?
Yes, at least the first third. The middle bit was much weaker.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Eric Walker
>Eric Walker <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>> Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
>>
>> That's number 2 on my personal list, right after
>> "importantly."
>>
>> (Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage
>> group.)
>
>Uh?
First, let me say that I tried to make the post something other
than snappy or smartass, but feel in retrospect that I may have
failed. Assume a smiley emoticon in the original, or enough
words to rightly convey that sentiment. That said . . . .
"Student" is a noun in the singular. English lacks a third-
person-singular neuter pronoun for persons ("it" does for
things), a sore lack that many have bemoaned over the
generations.
"Them" is a third-person-plural pronoun, and thus cannot stand
in for a singular noun. (Though the illiterati are constantly
trying to make it do so[1].) To be sure, normally careful,
literate folk can and do slip and use "them" that way--as in the
sentence above--but such use remains an error.
This is not a case of Miss Thistlebottom trying to preserve an
artificial old usage out of sheer cussedness. When once we
admit "they" and its variants to be of indefinite number, we
create corresponding indefiniteness, and potential confusion:
"The captain looked over the faces of the assembled crew.
'The sheer selfishness many of you are exhibiting, putting
your personal problems, your anticipated career moves,
ahead of the goals of this mission is endangering that
mission. We all need to focus on our common difficulty,
not those personal egos and problems.'"
The crew left the room, each considering their problem."
Had they taken the captain's message to heart or not? *We don't
know*--we *can't* know, unless we are assured that the writer is
in fact using the English that has been the textbook standard
for the last century or so.
The commonest but least creative way to meet the need in
sentences such as the one that started this is to use the
admittedly awkward construction "he or she" (or "she or he"):
"When a student turns in a badly written paper, I always
return it to him or her for further work."
(That's not the exact original, but embodies the instant issue.)
The next commonest way, and usually an easy and perfectly
satisfactory one, is to turn the original noun into the plural:
"When students turn in badly written papers, I always
return those papers to them for further work."
Bryan Garner, in _A Dictionary of Modern American Usage_ (1999),
under the rubric "sexism," gives four other suggestions for
dealing with the problem, which suggestions I will, for brevity,
not expound here.
As to "importantly": it is an adverb. Uses for that adverb
exist, else the word would not, but they are few and unusual:
"The messenger strode importantly into the throne room." The
word is nowadays widely used where the simple adjective
"important" is wanted, apparently for no other reason than to
inject an extra syllable into the sentence on the modern belief
that never using a short word where a longer can be found makes
one seem well educated.
Indeed, we live in a time of The Adverb Plague[2], with false
adverbs commonly being used where adjectives ought to go.
(There are cases where either will do: a person who performs a
task unaided can be said indifferently to have done it
single-handed or single-handedly, though elegance--in the OED's
sense 5 thereof, neatness--wants the shorter form.) The writer
who refers to someone drinking deeply presumably wants us to
understand that the drinking was taking place far underwater.
[1] That is the very small tip of a very large iceberg, the
battle between prescriptive grammarians, who believe that there
are rules to grammar, and descriptive grammarians, who believe
that anything that flows from the mouth--or pen--of any native
speaker of a language is "correct." People who write or speak
for a living are usually prescriptivists, but academia has been
largely captured by the descriptivists (who are but one small
part of a zeitgeist that believes wholeheartedly what The Great
Beats famously held: "Do as thou wilt--that is the whole of the
Law."
[2] A phrase I coined in profoundly admiring emulation of Wilson
Follett's phrase "noun plague," as found in his wonderful book
_Modern American Usage_ (Garner's book is named after it in a
similar homage).
Margaret Young
<ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 22:57:38 GMT, Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
>>Eric Walker <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
>>>
>>> That's number 2 on my personal list, right after
>>> "importantly."
>>>
>>> (Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage
>>> group.)
>>
>>Uh?
>
>First, let me say that I tried to make the post something other
>than snappy or smartass, but feel in retrospect that I may have
>failed. Assume a smiley emoticon in the original, or enough
>words to rightly convey that sentiment. That said . . . .
>
>"Student" is a noun in the singular. English lacks a third-
>person-singular neuter pronoun for persons ("it" does for
>things), a sore lack that many have bemoaned over the
>generations.
>
>"Them" is a third-person-plural pronoun, and thus cannot stand
>in for a singular noun. (Though the illiterati are constantly
>trying to make it do so[1].) To be sure, normally careful,
>literate folk can and do slip and use "them" that way--as in the
>sentence above--but such use remains an error.
>
Except that in many parts of the (English-speaking) world "them" and
"they" have become acceptable [1] because of the lack of a gender
neutral singular. So instead of saying "him" or "her" or "her or him"
one says "them" or "they".
As you no doubt already know, this is an area of great debate in
academic and other circles.
In other words, normally I would agree with you re subject/pronoun
agreement. In this case I waffle mightily.
If I had thought the post to which I was replying was worth it I would
probably have reworded the entire response so as to be plural --
however I honestly didn't think it was worth it.
Margaret
[1] Including people I know would study and teach English.
Eric Walker
[...]
>First, let me say that I tried to make the post something other
>than snappy or smartass, but feel in retrospect that I may have
>failed. Assume a smiley emoticon in the original, or enough
>words to rightly convey that sentiment. . . .
I see by a later post from Ms. Young that apparently I did
indeed fail to express the humor intended. On the rather
acidulous usenet group alt.usage.english (*not* to be confused
with the like-named but much more relaxed, and recomended, group
alt.english.usage), there is what is known, after its
propounder, as "Skitt's Law," which says that in any post sent
to point out an error, the sender will make that or an analogous
error.
As I said elsewhere, "normally careful, literate folk can and do
slip and use 'them' that way"--I do myself at times, and it is
an especial bugaboo with me. If Ms. Young feels that I meant to
portray her as other than normally careful and literate, I did
not, and apologize for any misapprehension.
Andrea Leistra
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@tin.it> wrote:
>Eric Walker <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>> Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
>>
>> That's number 2 on my personal list, right after "importantly."
>>
>> (Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage group.)
Or not. I don't read it and don't care to discuss this with people
I don't know and for whom it's certainly a FAQ.
>Uh?
There are some self-styled defenders of the purity of the English
language (as though there were such a thing) who object to the
usage of "they" and "them" as gender-neutral third-person singular
pronouns.
These people would prefer to say "If a student turned in the homework,
I would send *him* back", rather than "...send *them* back".
This demonstrates nothing so much as a lack of awareness of the history
of this construction and of the evolution of language in general, as
far as I'm concerned. This usage is not, as many of them would like
to believe, a late-twentieth-century feminist construction (though it
undoubtedly has gained in popularity as a result of the recognition that
the Generic Human is not, in fact, male); it appears in Shakespeare
and Jane Austen, and the earliest such use cited in the OED is from
the fourteenth century. (A list of relevant OED citations appears
at http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html).
The prescription against such a usage is more recent, dating to the
same eighteenth century fascination with Latin as the "perfect
language" that labeled split infinitives as bad grammar.
ObSF: _The Left Hand of Darkness_. Particularly Le Guin's essay
about pronouns attached to the recent editions.
--
Andrea Leistra
Aaron Denney
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 22:57:38 GMT, Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
> >Eric Walker <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Noun, "student"; pronoun, "them."
> >>
> >> That's number 2 on my personal list, right after
> >> "importantly."
> >>
> >> (Disagreements may be carried to the alt.english.usage
> >> group.)
> >
> >Uh?
>
> First, let me say that I tried to make the post something other
> than snappy or smartass, but feel in retrospect that I may have
> failed. Assume a smiley emoticon in the original, or enough
> words to rightly convey that sentiment. That said . . . .
>
> "Student" is a noun in the singular. English lacks a third-
> person-singular neuter pronoun for persons ("it" does for
> things), a sore lack that many have bemoaned over the
> generations.
>
> "Them" is a third-person-plural pronoun, and thus cannot stand
> in for a singular noun. (Though the illiterati are constantly
> trying to make it do so[1].) To be sure, normally careful,
> literate folk can and do slip and use "them" that way--as in the
> sentence above--but such use remains an error.
"Them" is not acting as a pronoun, but as bound variable, over the
quantifier "One of my students who turned in a paper ..."
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/s-pinker.html
It has a *long* history of usage in this manner.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html
> [1] That is the very small tip of a very large iceberg, the
> battle between prescriptive grammarians, who believe that there
> are rules to grammar, and descriptive grammarians, who believe
> that anything that flows from the mouth--or pen--of any native
> speaker of a language is "correct." People who write or speak
> for a living are usually prescriptivists, but academia has been
> largely captured by the descriptivists (who are but one small
> part of a zeitgeist that believes wholeheartedly what The Great
> Beats famously held: "Do as thou wilt--that is the whole of the
> Law."
Certainly there are rules, but I'm convinced that most
prescriptivists fail at capturing the rules, and instead
try to impose what they imagine the rules are.
(follow-ups set to me, as this is really drifting off topic, and
lacks the context for a.e.u)
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Margaret Young
Apology accepted. In fact none was necessary. I was in truth
responding to your first and shorter response (re lack of agreement).
As for your second post, no I didn't get the humour [1], however I am
feeling rather humourless at this moment. I have been grading
essays/midterms for days. The essays/midterms focus on the
problems/effects of American media images of minorities.[2] The
student authors have handed in, for the most part, heartfelt and
intense efforts. Although I do not (cannot) ignore grammar this does
not seem the moment to be pedantic when I remember that many are still
in shock, more than one knew someone who died in the WTC and most are
seriously grappling with the issues of racial/ethnic stereotyping for
the first time.
Margaret
[1] Spelling intentional - brought up in Canada
[2] Paper topic was assigned _before_ Sept. 11. It has since become
frighteningly appropriate.