Why don't I like science fiction and fantasy anymore?
Gene
when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
my early 30s) and tried to find what the “best” recently
published work was and read that. Sad to say I just don’t like
the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
Age” is 13 is correct.
In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
fiction now saturates the popular culture, and its tropes are seen in
all media and familiar to all. I do not find most of the ideas in
science fiction to be intellectually interesting. I would say the
science fiction book that I enjoyed the most was Vinge’s
“A Fire upon the Deep” and even that I did not love. For
whatever reason, it just seems that the science fiction I read as a
teenager was so much better.
In terms of fantasy, it seems that there is a massive amount of
repetitive hack work in this genre. Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks, Feist,
whatever. Much of the writing in this genre is just plain bad. The
fantasy book(s) that I have enjoyed the most are the “Song of
Ice and Fire” by George Martin because it is such a departure
from the standard hack work. As with science fiction, I think the
tropes of fantasy have become so saturated in the popular culture that
there is nothing special about them and they are in fact banal.
When I was a teenager I never would have believed this but I find that
I enjoy “mundane” fiction more than science fiction and
fantasy. The value of fantastic fiction is in its ideas, its ability
to transport you to another world to use that cliché. When the ideas
and the other worlds just seem silly, what else is there left? The
best mundane fiction actually does a better job in creating other
worlds because the best fiction is based on acute observation of how
real people and their societies function, which frankly fantastic
fiction has always been lacking in.
I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
can’t.
Htn963
<Snip well- thought and eloquent sentiments on being jaded with science
fiction>
I agree with nearly everything in your post[1], except that I haven't read
the Earthsea Trilogy yet, and all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving
me nuts. Please do something about your newsposting font.
[1] Which is perhaps why I'm reading more fantasies than SF these days: to
regain that childhood sense of delight and wonder. Myths are timeless, while
cool sfnal ideas are often spent after one short story.
--
Ht
|Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"|
Chuck Bridgeland
>I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
>when I was a teenager. . . . Sad to say I just don’t like
>the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
>Age” is 13 is correct.
>
>In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
>seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
. . .
>I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
>trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
>can’t.
It's not science fiction that's changed, it's you. I think the process is
called "growing up".
I'm in a similar situation. I find most of what I try to read to be not
worth my time at all, and my time is quite a bit more valuable to me now.
I'm very, very picky about what I read.
(BTW, you might try Vinge's _Deepness in the Sky_.)
--
"May your operating system chip and shatter."
chuck bridgeland, chuckbri at computerdyn dot com
http://www.essex1.com/people/chuckbri
Lee Ann Rucker
<htn...@cs.com> wrote:
> I agree with nearly everything in your post[1], except that I haven't
> read
> the Earthsea Trilogy yet, and all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving
> me nuts. Please do something about your newsposting font.
It's not the font, he's got "smart quotes" turned on. They aren't part
of the ASCII set and don't belong on Usenet.
Gene
> Gene wrote:
>
> <Snip well- thought and eloquent sentiments on being jaded with science
> fiction>
>
> I agree with nearly everything in your post[1], except that I haven't read
> the Earthsea Trilogy yet, and all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving
> me nuts. Please do something about your newsposting font.
>
Oops, here it is again.
I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
my early 30s) and tried to find what the best recently published work
was and read that. Sad to say I just don't like the stuff anymore.
Perhaps the saying that the Golden Age is 13 is correct.
In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
fiction now saturates the popular culture, and its tropes are seen in
all media and familiar to all. I do not find most of the ideas in
science fiction to be intellectually interesting. I would say the
science fiction book that I enjoyed the most was Vinge's A Fire upon
the Deep and even that I did not love. For whatever reason, it just
seems that the science fiction I read as a teenager was so much
better.
In terms of fantasy, it seems that there is a massive amount of
repetitive hack work in this genre. Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks, Feist,
whatever. Much of the writing in this genre is just plain bad. The
fantasy book(s) that I have enjoyed the most are the Song of Ice and
Fire by George Martin because it is such a departure from the standard
hack work. As with science fiction, I think the tropes of fantasy
have become so saturated in the popular culture that there is nothing
special about them and they are in fact banal.
When I was a teenager I never would have believed this but I find that
I enjoy mundane fiction more than science fiction and fantasy. The
value of fantastic fiction is in its ideas, its ability to transport
you to another world to use that cliché. When the ideas and the other
worlds just seem silly, what else is there left? The best mundane
fiction actually does a better job in creating other worlds because
the best fiction is based on acute observation of how real people and
their societies function, which frankly fantastic fiction has always
been lacking in.
I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation trying
to recapture the magic but finding that you can't.
Bill Snyder
wrote:
WTF are "smart quotes?"
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Gene
> On 30 Dec 2001 21:36:37 -0800, Gene <ege...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
> >when I was a teenager. . . . Sad to say I just don’t like
> >the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
> >Age” is 13 is correct.
> >
> >In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
> >seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
> . . .
> >I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
> >trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
> >can’t.
>
> It's not science fiction that's changed, it's you. I think the process is
> called "growing up".
>
> I'm in a similar situation. I find most of what I try to read to be not
> worth my time at all, and my time is quite a bit more valuable to me now.
>
> I'm very, very picky about what I read.
>
> (BTW, you might try Vinge's _Deepness in the Sky_.)
I've read Deepness in the Sky and did not like it as much as Fire upon
the Deep. Science fiction is not an inherently juvenile genre. If
it's appeal is lost when one is becomes an adult, then I think the
genre is not what it should be.
J.B. Moreno
> Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> >Htn963 <htn...@cs.com> wrote:
> >
> >>[...] all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving me nuts. Please
> >>do something about your newsposting font.
> >
> >It's not the font, he's got "smart quotes" turned on. They aren't part
> >of the ASCII set and don't belong on Usenet.
>
> WTF are "smart quotes?"
Smart quotes are when the the characters curl in the right way --
hopefully these will show up correctly "<- and ->".
Anyway, the problem is that the original poster is posting through
Google, which I believe has a problem with IE, resulting in some fairly
unreadable junk (unicode to html, unlabled and mixed up with the regular
text).
I *think* the OP can fix this on his end, but I'm not exactly sure how
(other than switching browsers). Probably a preference somewhere in IE
or Windows.
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
TMW
These days, there's plenty of good stuff out there. There's just very
little great stuff. But I wouldn't want to give up on SF just because of
that.
TM Wagner
http://www.sfreviews.net/
Bill Snyder
Moreno) wrote:
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> wrote:
>
>> Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Htn963 <htn...@cs.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>[...] all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving me nuts. Please
>> >>do something about your newsposting font.
>> >
>> >It's not the font, he's got "smart quotes" turned on. They aren't part
>> >of the ASCII set and don't belong on Usenet.
>>
>> WTF are "smart quotes?"
>
>Smart quotes are when the the characters curl in the right way --
>hopefully these will show up correctly "<- and ->".
Thanks. (Actually, they both show as non-directional on my system,
but I get the idea.)
Christopher M. Jones
> I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
> when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
> Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
> to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
> my early 30s) and tried to find what the “best” recently
> published work was and read that. Sad to say I just don’t like
> the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
> Age” is 13 is correct.
>
> In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
> seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
> fiction now saturates the popular culture, and its tropes are seen in
> all media and familiar to all. I do not find most of the ideas in
> science fiction to be intellectually interesting. I would say the
> science fiction book that I enjoyed the most was Vinge’s
> “A Fire upon the Deep” and even that I did not love. For
> whatever reason, it just seems that the science fiction I read as a
> teenager was so much better.
Blah, blah, blah. I've heard the same bleat countless times and
it never gains in credulity. It all boils down to the same ol'
lament of "This new _whatever_ is all crap. Why, in *my* day!..."
Ultimately it comes back to you. You have probably become set in
your ways and do not like things that challenge that (as it
becomes, in a way, a challenge to your identity). You begin
reading a new book with the mindset of "this probably sucks",
which nearly invariably is self-fulfilling. And then you go back
to your comfortable security blanket of familiarity where you can
reconnect with your lost childhood. And then you bemoan the lack
of quality in modern literature with nebulous statements
amounting to "well, it's just not as good, that's all". No
specifics of *why*, of what's missing. No explanation of how the
new is "intrinsically" less good. Of course, appreciation of any
work of art is inherently subjective. But then again it was you
who tried to put this whole shebang on an abstract "this is good,
this is bad" level.
Additionally, comparing the collected greatness of decades past
to the average quality of contemporary works will quite
obviously come off rather lop sided. Simple arithmetic will tell
you that. I'll tell you a secret, in all times there has always
been a great manner of shlock, crap, and refuse, a surprisingly
lot of it quite popular in its day. It is not remembered because
it was not memorable.
As for me, I continue to find much I like in the newest of the
new in literature, art, music, TV, film, etc. Sure, there is
much I don't like, but there has always been much I don't like, I
try to take as little notice of it as I can and hope it dies a
painful, lingering death (as it often does).
Magic and wonder is as much about the reader as it is about the
book. You need to open up your heart to let in the wonder.
--
'T is a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd.
Thomas Yan
ege...@hotmail.com (Gene) wrote:
> I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
> when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
> Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
> to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
> my early 30s) and tried to find what the best recently published work
> was and read that. Sad to say I just don't like the stuff anymore.
> Perhaps the saying that the Golden Age is 13 is correct.
How did you determine the "best"? Which books did you try besides
Vinge's?
> When I was a teenager I never would have believed this but I find that
> I enjoy mundane fiction more than science fiction and fantasy. The
> value of fantastic fiction is in its ideas, its ability to transport
> you to another world to use that cliché. When the ideas and the other
> worlds just seem silly, what else is there left? The best mundane
> fiction actually does a better job in creating other worlds because
> the best fiction is based on acute observation of how real people and
> their societies function, which frankly fantastic fiction has always
> been lacking in.
I disagree. I think much of the best SF also accurately depicts real
people.
> I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation trying
> to recapture the magic but finding that you can't.
I got bored with classic Clarke/Asimov/Bradbury/Herbert SF while I was
in college and branched out to other authors (Butler, Baudino, Tepper).
Here are some tentative suggestions of authors or books to try.
(Unfortunately, some are out of print. Grr!)
David Weber Honor Harrington series
Er, ok, maybe the people here aren't so realistic, but I thought it
was nice escapist fun. Some readers like the copious technical
details. Readers with a good grounding in real history like seeing
the parallels.
Pamela Dean Tam Lin
I'm a fan of all of Dean's books, but _Tam Lin_ seems to be the
most popular. A subtle fantasy set at a small liberal arts college,
which is lovingly revealed to be a fantastical setting in its own
right.
Lois McMaster Bujold the Vorkosigan books
I find the characters quite compelling. Note that the early Miles
books have him rely a lot on luck and wild improvisation, which
annoys some readers. He's more mature in the most recent books,
but some readers are mildly annoyed because they feel that Cordelia
has become too infallible.
Laurell K Hamilton Guilty Pleasures [Anita Blake series]
The characters are pretty interesting, although some readers have
found the later books to be disappointing.
Octavia Butler Lilith's Brood [or maybe try _The Parable of the Sower_]
I like how Butler shows ordinary (according to her!) people trapped
in awful situations rising up to the occasion and doing
extraordinary things.
Gael Baudino Gossamer Axe [or the Dragonsword trilogy]
I also like her Starlight/Natil series, but the later books are not
nearly as good as the early ones.
Patricia McKillip Cygnet and the Firebird, The
I used to hope that I loved all of McKillip's books. While that is
not true, when her books do work for me, they are terrific. I
haven't read her most recent books, but the one above is relatively
recent and is one of my favorites. (I'm afraid that her lovely
prose is partly wasted on me: I tend not to notice writing style.)
Neal Stephenson ??? maybe: Cryptonomicon [not SF, but SF-like]
Orson Scott Card ???
Sheri Tepper ???
Steven Brust ???
These authors have written lots of different kinds of books or I've
so far read only one of their books, so I'd want more information
before recommending a specific book. Note that Card's series tend
to flounder after terrific starts, some people find Tepper's more
recent books to be too strident, and I've heard (I think) that many
of Stephenson's books have weak endings.
Roger Zelazny
& Jane Lindskold Donnerjack
Some here seem to feel this is a weak(ish) imitation of the best of
Zelazny, but I classify it as one of my favorites. A nice mixture
of science fiction and fantasy sensibilities.
Patrice Kindl Owl in Love
Patrice Kindl Woman in the Wall, The
Use google to find descriptions. For the first, look for Micole
Sudberg's description, which also includes the opening paragraph.
While it seems like most here don't like the second book so much,
I've found to my surprise that I now find it more entertaining than
the first.
Dorothy Dunnett Game of Kings, The [the Lymond Chronicles]
This historical fiction series is neither recent nor SF, but it's
great. It felt a lot like fantasy to me.
Peter Dickinson Eva
An interesting look at the implications of transplanting a human
child's brain into a primate. I think it makes an interesting
Paired Reading with "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy (I think).
Jack Womack Random Acts of Senseless Violence [part of a series]
Perhaps an interested Paired Reading with Butler's _Parable of the
Sower_: the grim story of a girl trying to cope with a society that
is falling apart. (I haven't read the rest of the series yet.)
Joanna Rowling Harry Potter series
I'm a bit annoyed at all the hype, but I do think these books are
quite good. (I also like Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, but
thought it started a bit weakly and had a disappointing ending that
did not fulfill promises in and implied by earlier books.)
P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
will step up.
Gregory Maguire Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch
of the West
An entertaining revisionist look at the Wicked Witch, who is sadly
misunderstood.
Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat (series, collected in Dangerous Angels)
A modern fairy tale. Alas, I did not like the sequels as much as the
first story.
Mike Resnick Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia
Deeply affecting modern fairy tales.
Pat Califia Doc & Fluff
(Not for people uneasy about graphic BDSM sex!) An enjoyable tale
with surprisingly affecting love affairs.
Vonda McIntyre Starfarers tetralogy
A thoughtful look at life on and the adventures of the first
starship.
--
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: pp1-38 of pp1-181 of _Taltos_
JavaJosh
news:654Y7.380$li6....@news.uswest.net...
> Blah, blah, blah. I've heard the same bleat countless times and
> it never gains in credulity. It all boils down to the same ol'
> lament of "This new _whatever_ is all crap. Why, in *my* day!..."
The OP has a genuine problem that he has shared. Other's, including myself,
have had similiar experiences, and your characterization is incorrect. I
believe that as you age, you learn, and part of that learning process
involves recognizing story-telling patterns and 'tropes'. As time goes on,
it becomes easier to read a story as a sort of 'fill in the blanks'
exercise, and so the story looses much of its appeal.
It is the author's task to break out of this pattern in some substantive
way. Essentially it boils down to doing something unexpected at varying
degrees of granularity within the story, at every level from language to
theme. Personally, I think it is good to challenge the author!
The science fiction genre is relatively young, and is still maturing in many
ways. In particular, the gadget laden sf of the 50's gave way to the social
theory laden sf of the 60's and 70's and finally there were some real
artists in the 80's and 90's (not to mention the artists sprinkled
throughout the preceding decades). SF elements are becoming less and less of
a centerpiece, and more and more being used for their strengths: inspiring
hope and awe. Good storytelling cannot rely on gadgets. Gadgets can enable a
plot or add a perspective to a character and their relationships, but they
are fundamentally secondary to the human element. At least, those are my
criteria for good story.
phil hunt
Degenerate BillyShit nonsense, designed to make BillyShit computers
subtly incompatible with standard computers, so that people will be locked
in to giving BillyShit more of their money.
The omral is: use a standared computer, i.e. one that complies with
standards, such as ascii.
--
*** Philip Hunt *** ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk ***
dbi...@mediaone.net
<josh...@yahoo.antispam.com> wrote:
>"Christopher M. Jones" <christ...@spicedham.qwest.net> wrote in message
>news:654Y7.380$li6....@news.uswest.net...
>> Blah, blah, blah. I've heard the same bleat countless times and
>> it never gains in credulity. It all boils down to the same ol'
>> lament of "This new _whatever_ is all crap. Why, in *my* day!..."
>
>The OP has a genuine problem that he has shared. Other's, including myself,
>have had similiar experiences, and your characterization is incorrect. I
>believe that as you age, you learn, and part of that learning process
>involves recognizing story-telling patterns and 'tropes'. As time goes on,
>it becomes easier to read a story as a sort of 'fill in the blanks'
>exercise, and so the story looses much of its appeal.
>
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that Science Fiction&Fantasy
are in no way, shape, or form inferior today compared to the way they
used to be. If anything the opposite. I mean, even garbage novels
today have a modicum of prose style to pick just one way in which the
field has moved way beyond 30+ years ago.
Have you *read* A.E. Van Vogt lately? Brrrrr. And Doc Smith...
(please, rabid Lensmen attack weasels, I know some people think his
style is fine. I am only speaking for myself).
Hey, 1999 was probably the best year for SF&F *ever*. That's only 2
years ago. What it boils down to is that, for many people, the Golden
Age of SF is indeed "13", and it always will be.
-David
Nicholas Ryan
Egan. Each of Greg Egan's books has a plot that centers on a certain
scientific concept such as cellular automata or quantum physics. From
this perfectly plausible starting point he will weave the most
insanely complex speculations and bizarre plot twists that you've ever
encountered in a science-fiction book. He's perhaps the highest-IQ
science-fiction writer alive today (with the possible exception of Wil
McCarthy, who's so smart that he adds an _index_ of ideas to some of
his novels).
I suggest you start with 'Quarantine', and then proceed to his later
books such as 'Permutation City'.
ege...@hotmail.com (Gene) wrote in message news:<d250964f.01123...@posting.google.com>...
Captain Button
> On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 11:08:43 -0600, Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> wrote:
>>On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 08:03:26 -0800, Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>In article <20011231034340...@mb-fe.news.cs.com>, Htn963
>>><htn...@cs.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree with nearly everything in your post[1], except that I haven't
>>>> read
>>>> the Earthsea Trilogy yet, and all your 8217's, 8220's and 8221's are driving
>>>> me nuts. Please do something about your newsposting font.
>>>
>>>It's not the font, he's got "smart quotes" turned on. They aren't part
>>>of the ASCII set and don't belong on Usenet.
>>
>>WTF are "smart quotes?"
> Degenerate BillyShit nonsense, designed to make BillyShit computers
> subtly incompatible with standard computers, so that people will be locked
> in to giving BillyShit more of their money.
Well, actually, I first encountered them on computers on a Mac
in the mid-80s. A friend of mine wrote the standard algorithim
for deciding where to put them, IIRC.
Not that this is intended to be an MS endorsement, of course.
> The omral is: use a standared computer, i.e. one that complies with
> standards, such as ascii.
IMHO, "omral" really should be a word....
ObSF: The guys in the "New Sun" books who only talk in quotations.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
William Davis
>I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation trying
>to recapture the magic but finding that you can't.
What worked for me is not trying. I spent about five years - basically
late high school to the end of college - where I read little to no
science fiction. I branched out, explored other types of fiction, read
those classics I'd put off in favor of another Heinlein or Asimov and
the new litfic stuff I had shunned.
I gained a new appreciation of reading and got a better feel for what
type of writing I really liked. When I did crack open one of my old
used bookstore SF treasures, it was often a painful experience.
Then I started to pine for the genre. I did research, found out what
the best stuff was and read it. Some of it stank - or at least paled
in comparison to what people were doing in the mainstream - but a lot
of it was good. In fantasy, people like George R.R. Martin, Neil
Gaiman and Guy Gavriel Kay were writing real novels that happened to
be fantasy. In SF, Bujold, Stephenson, Wolfe, V. Vinge and Jonathan
Lethem were doing the same. Through the gems, I even gained a new
appreciation for the guilty pleasures like Anita Hamilton and Glen
Cook.
Science fiction and fantasy still makes up only a small percentage of
my reading material - but I enjoy each individual book I do read a lot
more than I did when I only read inside the genre. And I have a better
appreciation of both the craft of writing and the talent of the
field's better writers.
erilar
>I
> believe that as you age, you learn, and part of that learning process
> involves recognizing story-telling patterns and 'tropes'. As time goes
> on,
> it becomes easier to read a story as a sort of 'fill in the blanks'
> exercise, and so the story looses much of its appeal.
This is particularly true if you read a LOT 8-) I'm harder to please
than I was decades ago. My attitude on encountering a new writer,
however, is always hopeful. In science fiction I have continued to find
new writers whose worlds, societies, and characters interest me, though
I DO demand a plot. Sometimes I encounter writers who are so consciously
"literary" that all of the above, and especially plot, suffer badly.
They go right on to my "never buy again" list.
When it comes to fantasy, there is an enormous amount of absolute
junk being published along with some excellent work one sometimes has to
search carefully to find. Along with the sf requirements listed above, I
really like innovative systems of magic, and will often forgive other
faults for a really good one. Imitation Tolkien has long since ceased to
trap my dollars, and books apparently plotted with D&D dice such as some
Dragonlance books I once read are even worse. When I see a blurb
comparing any book to Tolkien, I immediately presume hackwork and seldom
look further.
>
> It is the author's task to break out of this pattern in some substantive
> way. Essentially it boils down to doing something unexpected at varying
> degrees of granularity within the story, at every level from language to
> theme. Personally, I think it is good to challenge the author!
Quite true. There are several contemporary authors up to this challenge,
too.
My real problem nowadays is finding good historical fiction: I've rean
too much history 8-(
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
Actually, I think even M$ junk can be forced to use ascii.
Lee Ann Rucker
erilar <erila...@SPAMchibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
> > Degenerate BillyShit nonsense, designed to make BillyShit computers
> > subtly incompatible with standard computers, so that people will be
> > locked
> > in to giving BillyShit more of their money.
> >
> > The omral is: use a standared computer, i.e. one that complies with
> > standards, such as ascii.
>
>
> Actually, I think even M$ junk can be forced to use ascii.
But it can't be forced not to show HTML.
(I had to use Windows & OE last week at my Mom's for xmas, I'm not yet
over the trauma)
Peter H. Granzeau
wrote:
>Here are some tentative suggestions of authors or books to try.
>(Unfortunately, some are out of print. Grr!)
[snip]
>Steven Brust ???
>
> These authors have written lots of different kinds of books or I've
> so far read only one of their books, so I'd want more information
> before recommending a specific book.
[snip]
Most Brust is a single series, the "Vlad Taltos" series. Jhereg,
Yendi, Taltos, Teckla, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, Dragon, and Issola, in
publication order. You can read them in that order if you aren't anal
retentive about chronology, those of us who read as books are
published enjoy them just as much. Two of his books, The Phoenix
Guards, and Five Hundred Years After, are written in the style of a
19th century translation of the works of Alexandre Dumas fils. Great
fun, based on the various Three Musketeers novels, and more a-coming.
He's written others: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars for Terri
Windling's "Fairy Story" series (it's an adult novel nevertheless),
for instance, I didn't like all of them, but YMMV.
Sea Wasp
>
> In article <zA4Y7.1110$5X.4...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, "JavaJosh"
> <josh...@yahoo.antispam.com> wrote:
> >I
> > believe that as you age, you learn, and part of that learning process
> > involves recognizing story-telling patterns and 'tropes'. As time goes
> > on,
> > it becomes easier to read a story as a sort of 'fill in the blanks'
> > exercise, and so the story looses much of its appeal.
>
> This is particularly true if you read a LOT 8-) I'm harder to please
> than I was decades ago.
How much is a LOT? I averaged a book per day from age seven through
graduating with my bachelors' degree. I've slowed some since then, what
with graduate school daring to interfere by requiring some work, and
then getting a life involving a wife and kids, but I still read a fair
amount.
Yet I haven't really noticed this phenomenon you and the prior poster
seem to take for granted. I first read Doc Smith, for instance, when I
was about 10, and I still enjoy his work and similar material.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Johnny1A
> when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
> Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
> to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
> my early 30s) and tried to find what the “best” recently
> published work was and read that. Sad to say I just don’t like
> the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
> Age” is 13 is correct.
It's not the age, it's the experience.
It's a question of space (no pun intended). SF requries a lot of page
space to explore it's ideas, while mundane fiction can take the
physical world around us for granted, and spend that space and writer
energy on character development and interaction, etc. I suspect that
an SF work would _have_ to be proportionately bigger (literally
speaking, I'm talking about number of pages) to get the same level of
characterization and social richness that a mundane work can.
Furthermore, an SF writer who wants to do it right has to at least
take a shot at considering how the speculative events and technology
would affect society, adding further complexities and taking up even
_more_ space.
>
> I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
> trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
> can’t.
No, not exactly. I still _like_ the SF I used to like, though I read
it with a more critical eye than I did as a teen. And yes, my
appreciation of good fantasy has increased over the years. In my teen
years, I tended to like medium hard SF, and as I've gotten older, my
appreciation for mundane fiction _and_ fantasy has increased, because
the characterization is often (not always) better.
Fantasy, BTW, has the same advantage mundane fiction does in terms of
space. When a writer draws on a familiar myth or mythic setting,
usually it's familiar _enough_ that extensive descriptive passages are
not required. Most people know what the popular idea of a medieval
village, a duke, or a wizard is.
Now, if the fantasy writers wants to get the medival age _accurately_,
he/she is back in the same boat as the SF writer in terms of space.
Most people's ideas about the Middle Ages, feudalism, the role of the
Church and the monasteries, and 'real world' beliefs about magic are
totally out of tune with what the reality of the times was, for ex.
Johnny1A
>
> >I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
> >when I was a teenager. . . . Sad to say I just don’t like
> >the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
> >Age” is 13 is correct.
> >
> >In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
> >seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
> . . .
> >I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
> >trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
> >can’t.
>
> It's not science fiction that's changed, it's you. I think the process is
> called "growing up".
No offense, but I want to take a slight exception to this. One of the
reasons, IMO, that SF has a hard time improving in some areas is
precisely the perception that it's 'for kids', not 'mature adults',
usually said in a slightly patronizing tone. (I am not accusing you
of this.)
It's perfectly possible to read Asimov, Heinlein, etc as an adult and
take pleasure in it. They do read _differently_ to an adult, of
course. Sometimes, too, the 'juvenile' works age better than those
specifically targeted for an adult. I find Heinlein's 'juveniles'
appeal to me much more in my thirties than do the works we wrote later
where he was free to indulge himself. "Blowups Happen", "The Man Who
Sold The Moon", etc, are still interesting reads to me.
I _still_ find "The Long Watch" to be very mature reading, in its few
pages. Would _I_ have the nerve to do that? I doubt it, though I've
not been put to the test.
I do have a theory. Many of us come to SF in our teens, and soak it
up like a sponge, and then, in the natural course of events, we gain
experience and realize that the stories are necessarily simplified
where people and characterization are concerned. That can have the
effect of making you overreact, and _underestimate_ the interest of
the remainder of the story.
If one came to the stories _as_ an adult, you'd know from the get-go
about both the limitations of the story and its strengths, and be able
to evaluate them more clearly.
Also, teenagers tend to have very strong ideas about How Things Work,
How They Should Work, etc. Often, these ideas are wrong, and when
they are not, they are incomplete. As an adult, one begins to
perceive the countless little gray areas that SF doesn't usually have
the time or space to address, and one wants to see a story that
addresses them. Mundane and fantasy fiction do this better than SF
simply because they have more space to do it in.
Finally, the last part of my theory is that teenagers have less
emotional investment in the Here and Now than adults do, and so ideas
of far off places and other ways of doing things are more interesting.
As an adult, they may still be interesting, but the adult is invested
Here and Now, usually. SF fan adults may be a shade less so than
most, but even they are so.
Shermanlee
William Davis
wrote:
>
>Finally, the last part of my theory is that teenagers have less
>emotional investment in the Here and Now than adults do, and so ideas
>of far off places and other ways of doing things are more interesting.
> As an adult, they may still be interesting, but the adult is invested
>Here and Now, usually. SF fan adults may be a shade less so than
>most, but even they are so.
I think a lot of SF - especially golden age SF - falls into the traps
of centering around wish fulfillment or simplistic "good versus evil"
conflicts. This is cool as a child, but many people begin to want more
nuanced drama after spending time in the adult world.
It doesn't help that much of the 50's SF was written in a time when we
had a much different view of technology than we do today. Most people
spend their time with computers, live in cities suffering from bad air
quality days and deal with the ease and frustration of being in
contact with the world at every moment - creating a more nuanced
appreciation of the benefits and downsides of scientific progress.
Gene
> space to explore it's ideas, while mundane fiction can take the
> physical world around us for granted, and spend that space and writer
> energy on character development and interaction, etc. I suspect that
> an SF work would _have_ to be proportionately bigger (literally
> speaking, I'm talking about number of pages) to get the same level of
> characterization and social richness that a mundane work can.
> Furthermore, an SF writer who wants to do it right has to at least
> take a shot at considering how the speculative events and technology
> would affect society, adding further complexities and taking up even
> _more_ space.
> >
> it with a more critical eye than I did as a teen. And yes, my
> appreciation of good fantasy has increased over the years. In my teen
> years, I tended to like medium hard SF, and as I've gotten older, my
> appreciation for mundane fiction _and_ fantasy has increased, because
> the characterization is often (not always) better.
>
> Fantasy, BTW, has the same advantage mundane fiction does in terms of
> space. When a writer draws on a familiar myth or mythic setting,
> usually it's familiar _enough_ that extensive descriptive passages are
> not required. Most people know what the popular idea of a medieval
> village, a duke, or a wizard is.
>
> Now, if the fantasy writers wants to get the medival age _accurately_,
> he/she is back in the same boat as the SF writer in terms of space.
> Most people's ideas about the Middle Ages, feudalism, the role of the
> Church and the monasteries, and 'real world' beliefs about magic are
> totally out of tune with what the reality of the times was, for ex.
One of the problems I find is that science fiction and fantasy books
do not have "hooks" that works for me any longer. I recall that when
I used to love science fiction, I would start reading the book, and
there would be something about the underlying idea or world that would
make me think "wow" and so I would keep on reading. But I think I
have read so much science fiction, plus the media is so saturated with
it, that I know all the standard tropes and they don't appeal to me.
My typical experience with reading a science fiction novel now will be
to read the first hundred pages, find that I am not interested in the
underlying idea - it does not strike a "chord" with me - and plus I
have no interest in the characters who do not seem real to me. So I
will put it down at this point because it has not "hooked" me.
I do find that "mundane" fiction can hook me if it gets its characters
and settings right - this draws you into its fictional world. In this
sense, mundane fiction can be much more "escapist" than science
fiction and fantasy since I find that I need to connect in some sense
to the fictional world in order to escape. Besides the space issues,
it is harder for science fiction and fantasy to get the characters
right as the fantastic setting just detracts from the
characterization. To sum it up I would say that science fiction and
fantasy has very artificial feel to me which distances me from the
work.
I do find it interesting that when I was a teenager I could not even
imagine reading mundane fiction for pleasure, yet of all the books I
have read in my 20's and early 30's, my favorite books are almost all
mundane fiction. Perhaps this is related to the maturation process,
but then I wonder how other "adults
can read science fiction and love it.
James Nicoll
Robert Rogoff <r...@sff.net> wrote:
>
>_White Heat_ by William Barton and Michael Capobianco display
>character insights so sharp they hurt.
Not _White Light_? The one with the star-stud, his mistress,
his dog, his mistress' daughter, his ex, her son and the schub? And
the kids rarely seem to interact with the parental units, even when
they are all trapped together in the all together on cosmic spagetti?
That one?
James Nicoll
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one
god. They're just this far away from atheism."
Wayne & Schuster
Konrad Gaertner
>
> One of the problems I find is that science fiction and fantasy books
> do not have "hooks" that works for me any longer. I recall that when
> I used to love science fiction, I would start reading the book, and
> there would be something about the underlying idea or world that would
> make me think "wow" and so I would keep on reading. But I think I
> have read so much science fiction, plus the media is so saturated with
> it, that I know all the standard tropes and they don't appeal to me.
> My typical experience with reading a science fiction novel now will be
> to read the first hundred pages, find that I am not interested in the
> underlying idea - it does not strike a "chord" with me - and plus I
> have no interest in the characters who do not seem real to me. So I
> will put it down at this point because it has not "hooked" me.
Have you tried Brust yet? Tor's website still has the sample
chapters from _Dragon_ [http://www.tor.com/sampleDragon.html].
Try the first chapter to see if it hooks you. It should at least
show that not all fantasy is cliched. If you do get hooked, try to
start with _Jhereg_ or _Taltos_ (or the prologue of _Jhereg_ then
_Taltos_, then _Dragon_ skipping interludes then _Yendi_ then rests
of _Dragon_ and _Jhereg_ then the remaining novels in published
order).
--KG
JavaJosh
news:3C3220...@wizvax.net...
> Yet I haven't really noticed this phenomenon you and the prior poster
> seem to take for granted. I first read Doc Smith, for instance, when I
> was about 10, and I still enjoy his work and similar material.
In a way I admire this. You have described the Buddist ideal of always
seeing things with fresh eyes. I am not being facetious here. I would have
an easier time being entertained if I too could see things through fresh
eyes. Too often I (and others, I believe) fall prey to that nagging pattern
recognizer in our brains, rendering the story-telling experience into a
predictable waste of time.
Alas, I demand that my author's transport me, and teach me something, either
about a place, a time, a person, or even about storytelling itself.
Certainly the escapist pleasure is primary, but I also cherish the edifying
residue left behind by great fiction.
As I grow older, I find my concept of 'context' to be changing. As a child I
am awed by the fierce bears at the zoo. As I grow older, I find myself
marveling at the ecosystem itself, or a small patch of bark that has been
worn away by a bird, things which would have bored me to tears as a youth.
It is the same way with fiction: as a child, anythign about a
post-apocolyptic Earth was great, or anything about space and deep time.
Now, I see that the subject matter is less important than the evolution of
the story itself. A written story is like a score of music: on its face, it
is linear, each not fixed in time like a fly in amber. A written story fixes
each word in space, in a long line from beginning to end. The words and the
subject dance together before you, making more complex structures than you
could not anticipate from a simple string of words.
The subject matter is still important, and is why I still read SF. Despite a
strong stigma, science fiction offers a wonderful stage (perhaps the best
stage) on which to describe both the large and the small human phenomena,
exploring possibilities which are all but in inaccessible to mundane
fiction. But there is a big difference between the subject and the
expression.
I require my speculative subject matter to be trussed in a structure which
itself excites and inspires me. I am not interested in rough sketches or
'cool ideas', only to have them laid bare before me like cold tuna fish to
be eaten straight out of the can.
mundane fiction: see spot run
science fiction: see spot the robot dog run
fantasy: see spot fly
This is not what fiction is for, and while I respect your ability to enjoy
these forms, I cannot wish this ability for myself.
Kind regards,
Josh Rehman
Johnny1A
> On 1 Jan 2002 14:51:54 -0800, sherm...@hotmail.com (Johnny1A)
> wrote:
> >
> >Finally, the last part of my theory is that teenagers have less
> >emotional investment in the Here and Now than adults do, and so ideas
> >of far off places and other ways of doing things are more interesting.
> > As an adult, they may still be interesting, but the adult is invested
> >Here and Now, usually. SF fan adults may be a shade less so than
> >most, but even they are so.
>
> I think a lot of SF - especially golden age SF - falls into the traps
> of centering around wish fulfillment or simplistic "good versus evil"
> conflicts. This is cool as a child, but many people begin to want more
> nuanced drama after spending time in the adult world.
Oh, I can still appreciate a good vs. evil story, but now as an adult
I have a rather clearer idea of how those concepts work. INHO,
Tolkien actually approaches the adult understanding of good and evil
far more subtly in LOTR than any SF I've ever read. He does it, also,
while holding the form and shape of a simple black and white balance.
I never did fully appreciate how much detail and thought he put into
the philosophical background of his works until I read them as a grown
man.
>
> It doesn't help that much of the 50's SF was written in a time when we
> had a much different view of technology than we do today. Most people
> spend their time with computers, live in cities suffering from bad air
> quality days and deal with the ease and frustration of being in
> contact with the world at every moment - creating a more nuanced
> appreciation of the benefits and downsides of scientific progress.
True, but I suspect that the optimism/pessimism factor is actually
cyclical. We may yet see a resurgance of the former attitude, though
it won't last forever, either.
Shermanlee
Micole Sudberg
>Patrice Kindl Owl in Love
>Patrice Kindl Woman in the Wall, The
>
> Use google to find descriptions. For the first, look for Micole
> Sudberg's description, which also includes the opening paragraph.
> While it seems like most here don't like the second book so much,
> I've found to my surprise that I now find it more entertaining than
> the first.
How did you like *Goose Chase*? I'm fond of it, despite the wilfull blindness
of the protagonist, but the vagueness of the background keeps it from being as
memorable as *Owl in Love* for me.
>Jack Womack Random Acts of Senseless Violence [part of a series]
>
> Perhaps an interested Paired Reading with Butler's _Parable of the
> Sower_: the grim story of a girl trying to cope with a society that
> is falling apart. (I haven't read the rest of the series yet.)
RAoSV is my favorite of them. I'm still not sure how I feel about *Going
Going Gone* which does something ... very odd to the previous books. It ought
to feel like emotionally cold intellectual trickery, and somehow it doesn't;
but I'm not still not sure it was a good idea.
>P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
>
> Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
> will step up.
You could quote the bit about the bread growing internal organs. That seems
to be the favored excerpt.
>Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat (series, collected in Dangerous Angels)
>
> A modern fairy tale. Alas, I did not like the sequels as much as the
> first story.
I didn't like the sequels as much as *Witch Baby*, which I liked a lot better
than the first book; Block does seem to stick to the same territory. I think
she tries to break out of it in *Echo*, but she doesn't focus enough on the
character development, and the plot wisps off into too-easy resolution.
Of the recent books, I'm most impressed by *The Rose and the Beast* (re-told
fairy tales), where being able to dispense with plot means she can concentrate
on imagery and theme, and *Violet and Claire*, which is harsher and more
realistic about emotional consequences than most of her books. But I can't
deny that she mostly does the same thing over and over again. It's a thing I
like, but I can see how it would become wearing.
Have you read Emma Donohue's *Kissing the Witch*? It's a collection of
re-told fairy tales with a feminist and lesbian slant, where each story is
told by one woman to another, who then tells her own story to someone else,
who then tells her own story to someone else ... you have the sense of falling
infinitely through history. And the stories themselves are witty and sensual.
>Vonda McIntyre Starfarers tetralogy
>
> A thoughtful look at life on and the adventures of the first
> starship.
I'm afraid that one went solidly in the 'worthy but dull' category for me.
--m.
Micole Sudberg
>One of the problems I find is that science fiction and fantasy books
>do not have "hooks" that works for me any longer. I recall that when
>I used to love science fiction, I would start reading the book, and
>there would be something about the underlying idea or world that would
>make me think "wow" and so I would keep on reading. But I think I
>have read so much science fiction, plus the media is so saturated with
>it, that I know all the standard tropes and they don't appeal to me.
I agree with everyone else who mentioned Greg Egan, though I prefer his short
fiction to his novels. You might also want to try Liz Williams' *The Ghost
Sister*, a first novel which just came out last year, good anthropological sf
a la Le Guin, about the different ways societies conceive of their
relationships to their physical environments. The end's a little weaker than
it should be, because the author plays favorites, but there's still a very
well-worked-out human-gone-alien society and spare and lovely prose.
I don't know if the list of classics you originally cited was complete--have
you tried some of the other "classic" writers, like Sturgeon, (early)
Zelazny, C.L. Moore, Dunsany, McKillip?
In terms of hard sf (I think you'd originally cited Asimov and Clarke, yes?),
you may want to try Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which brings so many
elements of older sf together that it seems astonishingly new. Ian McDonald
isn't hard sf, but he does write quite genuinely strange things, if you can
find anything in print. You might want to try Geoff Ryman's *The Child
Garden*, too; he tends to write sf sometimes and fantasy sometimes and
mainstream sometimes, and you may find his treatment of character congenial.
--m.
David Tate
> Alas, I demand that my author's transport me, and teach me something, either
> about a place, a time, a person, or even about storytelling itself.
> Certainly the escapist pleasure is primary, but I also cherish the edifying
> residue left behind by great fiction.
My personal take on this is to become more and more focused on the
manner of the telling, as opposed to the thing told. I find myself
increasingly drawn to Avram Davidson, Barry Hughart, Theodore
Sturgeon, Jack Vance, Lucius Shephard, Lord Dunsany, G. K. Chesterton,
or even Steven Brust -- people with a mastery of the language that
lets them have fun with it gracefully and transparently.
This is not to say that nobody ever writes anything that still fires
my "wow, cool" synapses -- Greg Egan, Mary Doria Russell, Raphael
Carter, Ted Chiang, Vernor Vinge, and Neal Stephenson have all
accomplished it recently.
David Tate
David Tate
> I was beginning to feel the same way you do until I discovered Greg
> Egan. Each of Greg Egan's books has a plot that centers on a certain
> scientific concept such as cellular automata or quantum physics. From
> this perfectly plausible starting point he will weave the most
> insanely complex speculations and bizarre plot twists that you've ever
> encountered in a science-fiction book.
While this is frequently true, I insist that the strength of Egan's
work lies not just in the cool extrapolation from bio/physics/math
ideas, but even more so in the extrapolation of the philosophical and
psychological consequences of these things. My favorite Egan stories
are works like "Closer", "Oceania", "The Moral Virologist", "Unstable
Orbits in the Space of Lies", "Worthless", and "Axiomatic" -- stories
where the what-if mathematical or technological or biological premise
serves only as a springboard to deep questions about the nature of
personal identity, belief formation (including the nature of religious
beliefs), ethics, the value of a person, etc.
To put it another way: Piers Anthony could get the same idea,
extrapolate the same speculations and plot, and still write a mediocre
story with characters you don't care about. Egan is not merely
extremely imaginative; he's also an excellent writer with an eye for
the tricky philosophical questions.
David Tate
David Tate
> One of the problems I find is that science fiction and fantasy books
> do not have "hooks" that works for me any longer. I recall that when
> I used to love science fiction, I would start reading the book, and
> there would be something about the underlying idea or world that would
> make me think "wow" and so I would keep on reading. But I think I
> have read so much science fiction, plus the media is so saturated with
> it, that I know all the standard tropes and they don't appeal to me.
I think most of us read sf in part because we're looking for those
great hooks, and the "wow, cool" that comes when they are explored
intelligently. After all, great storytelling exists in all genres,
but I at least feel that there is the potential in (F&)SF for an extra
dimension of intellectual and emotional satisfaction from the
exploration of a Way Cool Idea (tm).
With that in mind, I'd like to open the floor for nominations: great
sfnal 'hook' ideas, in 2 categories: those taken at the flood, and
those squandered. Examples might include...
Capitalized upon:
Many Greg Egan ideas, but especially the 'brain jewel'.
Vernor Vinge's 'zones'.
Alfred Bester's crime in a world of telepaths (_The Demolished Man_)
The premises of Asimov's "Nightfall"
Ursula LeGuin's 'effective dreams' (_The Lathe of Heaven_)
Randall Garrett's reversal of science and magic ("Lord Darcy" stories)
Ted Chiang's take on 'nomenclature' ("72 Letters")
The Malthusian world of _The Mote in God's Eye_
Brin's "Thor Meets Captain America", "The Giving Plague", and
"Piecework"
Susan Petrey's "Varkela" stories
Stinkers (bad fiction with great hooks):
Piers Anthony's society based around "The Game" (Apprentice Adept
series)
Farmer's "Riverworld" effluvia
Brin's "Uplift" universe and Dickson's _Wolfling_[1]
_Queen of the Damned_
etc.
Additions and/or corrections?
David Tate
James Nicoll
David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>
>Stinkers (bad fiction with great hooks):
>Piers Anthony's society based around "The Game" (Apprentice Adept
>series)
>Farmer's "Riverworld" effluvia
>Brin's "Uplift" universe and Dickson's _Wolfling_[1]
>_Queen of the Damned_
>etc.
>
idea for a setting (Biological entities adapted for space), so-so
story, crap science. I esp like the part where the spaceship recaptures
its roacket exhaust material for re-use later.
Thomas Yan
mic...@aya.yale.edu (Micole Sudberg) wrote:
> In article <tyan-7CC6C1.1...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, Thomas Yan <ty...@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >Patrice Kindl Owl in Love
> >Patrice Kindl Woman in the Wall, The
-snip-
>
> How did you like *Goose Chase*? I'm fond of it, despite the wilfull blindness
> of the protagonist, but the vagueness of the background keeps it from being as
> memorable as *Owl in Love* for me.
It was a good book, but from her first two books above, I hoped for a
great book, so I was a bit disappointed. Also, like you, I found the
background dissatisfying, but I'm not exactly sure why. I do think one
of the appeals of the first two is that they are mostly set in
consensual reality.
(I reread *TWitW* while my brother was visiting. I laughed aloud so
much that he read it after I had finished rereading it and enjoyed it a
lot, but felt that that the resolution was much too easy for Anna. He
then started *OiL*, which he didn't like as much, and didn't seem very
interested in *GC*, remarking that its fantasy setting made it sound
much less appealing to him.)
> >Jack Womack Random Acts of Senseless Violence [part of a series]
> >
> > Perhaps an interested Paired Reading with Butler's _Parable of the
> > Sower_: the grim story of a girl trying to cope with a society that
> > is falling apart. (I haven't read the rest of the series yet.)
>
> RAoSV is my favorite of them. I'm still not sure how I feel about *Going
> Going Gone* which does something ... very odd to the previous books. It ought
> to feel like emotionally cold intellectual trickery, and somehow it doesn't;
> but I'm not still not sure it was a good idea.
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Before reading
*RAoSV* and maybe the opening pages of _Heathern_, I didn't realize
that the books did not all share the same main characters, which put
temporarily put me off the series. (As a kid, I was annoyed with
McCaffrey's _Dragondrums_ because it was advertised as being part of
the _Dragonsong_/_Dragonsinger_ trilogy, which implied to me that
Menolly would again be its main character.)
Hm. I dislike spoilers, but it's become quite clear to me that it
would really help me if I had the "right" frame of mind before starting
a new-to-me book, and that sometimes the book jacket would supply it.
(I didn't read the jacket for Butler's _Parable of the Talents_ for
fear of spoilers, so I ended up unprepared for how depressing and grim
it was. I still might not have liked it very much, but I probably
would have liked it more than I did.)
> >P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
> >
> > Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
> > will step up.
>
> You could quote the bit about the bread growing internal organs. That seems
> to be the favored excerpt.
Heh. I'm not sure which excerpt I would choose as my favorite, but one
tidbit that springs to mind is the gargoyle in "Bones": It can move
very quickly, but only if no one is watching it, so blink, and it can
be in a totally new spot. (Which reminds me of the would-be superhero
in the movie "Mystery Men", who claimed he could turn invisible -- but
only if no one was watching.)
> >Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat (series, collected in Dangerous Angels)
> >
> > A modern fairy tale. Alas, I did not like the sequels as much as the
> > first story.
>
> I didn't like the sequels as much as *Witch Baby*, which I liked a lot better
> than the first book;
Now that you mention it, I think I did like *Witch Baby* quite a bit,
but felt the last sequels were not as good, plus (as I guess I
mentioned) the accumulated effect of reading them one after the other
was a feeling of repetitiveness. (I dearly love Zenna Henderson's
People stories, but I suspect that reading all of _Ingathering_ would
have a similar impact for me.)
-snip-
> Of the recent books, I'm most impressed by *The Rose and the Beast* (re-told
> fairy tales), where being able to dispense with plot means she can concentrate
> on imagery and theme, and *Violet and Claire*, which is harsher and more
> realistic about emotional consequences than most of her books. But I can't
> deny that she mostly does the same thing over and over again. It's a thing I
> like, but I can see how it would become wearing.
I think that I might well like them; I'll just have to take care not to
read them in quick succession.
> Have you read Emma Donohue's *Kissing the Witch*? It's a collection of
> re-told fairy tales with a feminist and lesbian slant, where each story is
> told by one woman to another, who then tells her own story to someone else,
> who then tells her own story to someone else ... you have the sense of falling
> infinitely through history. And the stories themselves are witty and sensual.
No, thanks for the recommendation! That sounds interesting.
-snip-
(Hm. I just read _The Summer Book_ by Tove Jansson (of Moomin fame),
which seems to me to be a sort of sibling to a fairy tale. I'll
discuss it in a separate thread/post.)
--
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: pp1-38 of pp1-181 of _Taltos_
Timothy A. McDaniel
>sfnal 'hook' ideas, in 2 categories: those taken at the flood
Lois McMaster Bujold, _Ethan of Athos_: a thriving obstetrician on an
all-male planet (worth the price of admission alone), who has to go
out into the Galaxy to deal with *gasp* _women_, and who comes home
again wiser but unconverted. (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
all to heterosexuality.)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles books: a military-obsessed mutant
enthusiastically serving a planet that largely hates mutants.
--
Tim McDaniel is tm...@jump.net; if that fail,
tm...@us.ibm.com is my work account.
"To join the Clueless Club, send a followup to this message quoting everything
up to and including this sig!" -- Jukka....@hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
Konrad Gaertner
>
> _The Sword and the Helix_ by John McLoughlin. Interesting
> idea for a setting (Biological entities adapted for space), so-so
> story, crap science. I esp like the part where the spaceship recaptures
> its roacket exhaust material for re-use later.
Maybe its operating in a very _small_ universe...
--KG
Lee Ann Rucker
<tm...@jump.net> wrote:
> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> all to heterosexuality.)
That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
Smith's all-male one.
James Nicoll
_Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
planet populated entirely by women.
And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
Shaad M. Ahmad
>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
>
>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
>> all to heterosexuality.)
>
>That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
>Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
>amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) Jr's "Houston, Houston, do you read?"
had a crew of three male astronauts arriving at a future earth populated
only by women, with two of the astronauts making the expected assumption.
- Shaad
David Eppstein
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> >The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
> >Smith's all-male one.
>
> _Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
> planet populated entirely by women.
>
> And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
> am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
Also Bujold's Athos (all-male again).
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Fred Galvin
> In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>,
> Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
> >In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
> ><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
> >
> >> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> >> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> >> all to heterosexuality.)
> >
> >That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
> >Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
> >amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
> >
> >The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
> >Smith's all-male one.
>
> _Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
> planet populated entirely by women.
>
> And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
> am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
Theodore Sturgeon, _Venus Plus X_.
Philip Wylie, _The Disappearance_.
John Reese
> How much is a LOT? I averaged a book per day from age seven through
>graduating with my bachelors' degree. I've slowed some since then, what
>with graduate school daring to interfere by requiring some work, and
>then getting a life involving a wife and kids, but I still read a fair
>amount.
I'm not sure that qualifies as a lot.
Richard Horton
wrote:
>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
Try Poul Anderson's _Virgin Planet_, which embodies the cliche in its
straight form.
Also, Avram Davidson's _Mutiny in Space_.
And a few pulp stories I've read in early 50s Planet Stories issues,
or other pulps of that time. (One played with the cliche by having a
mission sent to Venus, which as it turns out is inhabited only by the
surviving daughters of a mad scientist who had previously gone to
Venus. The mission includes a few normal spacemen, and a stowaway who
turns out to be a real jerk. While enroute to Venus, a nuclear war
destroys life on Earth. They get to Venus, discover the girls -- and
then at the end it turns out that "normal spacemen" have all been
neutered (for some reason like reducing tensions during long voyages),
so that the jerk stowaway gets all the girls for himself, and gets to
be Adam to their Eves.)
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Nyrath the nearly wise
> _The Sword and the Helix_ by John McLoughlin. Interesting
> idea for a setting (Biological entities adapted for space), so-so
> story, crap science. I esp like the part where the spaceship recaptures
> its roacket exhaust material for re-use later.
Are you sure? I don't have the book at hand but I was
under the impression that the exhaust material was
captured by a facility sited at the spaceship's origin,
not the spaceship itself.
But in any event it is a splendid book, one that I
enjoy re-reading periodically.
David Tate
> James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) Jr's "Houston, Houston, do you read?"
> had [NB: massive spoiler deleted].
Wow, Shaad, you really really should have flagged that one.
Dave Tate
Captain Button
> In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>,
> Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
>>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
>><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
>>
>>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
>>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
>>> all to heterosexuality.)
>>
>>That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
>>Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
>>amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
>>
>>The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
>>Smith's all-male one.
> _Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
> planet populated entirely by women.
> And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
> am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
_Alph_ by Charles Eric Maine, IIRC, although the planet is Earth.
All males died out for some implausible reason I forget, but
human parthenogensis (sp?) is invented just in time. Several
centuries later, a researcher working with tissue samples from
a frozen man in Antarctica creates a viable male zygote.
Events ensue.
Not real good, as I recall it, though.
This theme does come up in low quality TV and Movie SF a number
of times, I believe.
There was an episode of "The Starlost" which dealt with a
male-only biosphere which used artificial wombs to reproduce.
Also the movie "Fire Maidens from Outer Space", I think.
Wasn't there some bit in The Odyessy about an island like that?
or somewhere in Greek or Roman mythology.
This bit keep getting reused in SF. Like David Drake's
_Cross the Stars_ IIRC.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Randy Money
>
> In article <9d67e55e.02010...@posting.google.com>,
> David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
> >With that in mind, I'd like to open the floor for nominations: great
> >sfnal 'hook' ideas, in 2 categories: those taken at the flood
>
> Lois McMaster Bujold, _Ethan of Athos_: a thriving obstetrician on an
> all-male planet (worth the price of admission alone), who has to go
> out into the Galaxy to deal with *gasp* _women_, and who comes home
> again wiser but unconverted. (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> all to heterosexuality.)
Maybe also a reaction to those novels of all genres that have a lesbian
"turned" by the intrepid hero? (_Goldfinger_ comes to mind.)
Randy M.
mstemper - emis . com
>In article <9d67e55e.02010...@posting.google.com>, David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>>With that in mind, I'd like to open the floor for nominations: great
>>sfnal 'hook' ideas, in 2 categories: those taken at the flood
>Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles books: a military-obsessed mutant
He's not a mutant! The solotoxin damage had no effect on his germ plasm.
(Unless Lois has a surprise waiting for us when he finally has kids.)
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED)
mstemper - emis . com
On top of all of the other examples given so far, I'll throw in Keith
Laumer's "The War Against the Yukks".
Sea Wasp
>
> In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>, Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> writes:
> >In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel <tm...@jump.net> wrote:
> >
> >> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> >> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> >> all to heterosexuality.)
> >
> >That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
> >Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
> >amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
> >
> >The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
> >Smith's all-male one.
>
> On top of all of the other examples given so far, I'll throw in Keith
> Laumer's "The War Against the Yukks".
Lyrane, from "Second-Stage Lensmen" *had* males, but they were purely
for reproductive purposes and the Lyranians were working hard to
eliminate that particular requirement.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
mstemper - emis . com
>In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>, Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> writes:
>>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel <tm...@jump.net> wrote:
>>
>>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
>>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
>>> all to heterosexuality.)
>>
>>That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
>>Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
>>amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
>>
>>The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
>>Smith's all-male one.
>
>On top of all of the other examples given so far, I'll throw in Keith
>Laumer's "The War Against the Yukks".
No sooner did I post this than I thought of another single-gendered
planets (although there was no mention of any homosexual orientation):
Lyrane: All female except for a few runty males who were "bred to a
hundred or so persons over a year and then had their brains blown
out." Okay, there were males, but they weren't even considered people.
And, the Lyranians were working on some technology to eliminate the
need for even those few. _Second Stage Lensman_, E.E. "Doc" Smith
I was going to throw Kalonia in here, too, but they were pretty egalitarian
compared to Lyrane. (By necessity, not by virtue.)
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
COFFEE.SYS not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?
Timothy A. McDaniel
Michael Stemper <mstemper @ siemens - emis . com> wrote:
>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, tm...@jump.net (Timothy A.
>McDaniel) writes:
>>Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles books: a military-obsessed mutant
>
>He's not a mutant!
You know that. I know that. For all that Miles says "iatrogenic, not
heritable", Barrayar neither knows or cares.
>Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of
>this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED)
Ahh, a breath of the First Age. It makes me feel almost young again.
Dorothy J Heydt
Michael Stemper <mstemper @ siemens - emis . com> wrote:
>
>Lyrane: All female except for a few runty males who were "bred to a
>hundred or so persons over a year and then had their brains blown
>out."
No, that was the nature of the Lyranian humanoid species. The
birth ratio was about 100 females to 1 male, and the males were
congenitally stupid, violent, and pint-sized. Points to Smith
for NOT having the female Lyranians immediately succumb to the
sight of rather better-favored Tellurian males.
Okay, there were males, but they weren't even considered people.
>And, the Lyranians were working on some technology to eliminate the
>need for even those few.
Considering what their males were like, you can't blame them.
>I was going to throw Kalonia in here, too, but they were pretty egalitarian
>compared to Lyrane. (By necessity, not by virtue.)
Oh no they bleeding weren't. There's a scene where a Kalonian
male meets a Lyranian female and the dialogue is on the order of
"I despise you, you despise me, we have to work together anyway,
let's get on with it." Where do you get the impression that
Kalonian females (assuming there were some, which I assume since
they were so humanoid otherwise) were any better than Lyranian
males?
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Matthew Austern
> In article <a14p7i$7k6$2...@daymark.empros.com>,
> Michael Stemper <mstemper @ siemens - emis . com> wrote:
> >In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, tm...@jump.net (Timothy A.
> >McDaniel) writes:
> >>Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles books: a military-obsessed mutant
> >
> >He's not a mutant!
>
> You know that. I know that. For all that Miles says "iatrogenic, not
> heritable", Barrayar neither knows or cares.
And note that Miles may be deceiving himself. We don't know anything
except that Miles is very certain that there was no genetic damage.
Does he have a rational basis for that certainty?
Nancy Lebovitz
Gene <ege...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I used to love reading science fiction and fantasy more than anything
>when I was a teenager. I remember reading books like the Foundation
>Trilogy and the Earthsea Trilogy that just enthralled me. I returned
>to reading science fiction and fantasy in the past few years (I am in
>my early 30s) and tried to find what the “best” recently
>published work was and read that. Sad to say I just don’t like
>the stuff anymore. Perhaps the saying that the “Golden
>Age” is 13 is correct.
Have you tried rereading the books you used to love? It was called
the Good Old Stuff for a reason, and on the whole, it was more concise
and more wildly imaginative than recent sf.
Also, you may be comparing the best of the past to the whole of the
present--and you have to sort through a lot of average stuff to
find the best.
Two relatively recent recommendations: _Perdido Street Station_ by
China Mieville (energetic fantasy in a Victorian London with magic
and non-human races--plot is a little weak but passable, and the setting
is spectacular) and _Diaspora_ by Greg Egan--(the human race is mostly
living as computer programs--to say much more would be spoilers, but
it had enough large-scale sense of wonder to delight me.)
>
>In terms of science fiction, the sense of wonder is gone. It all
>seems so trite and banal. I suspect this is partially because science
>fiction now saturates the popular culture, and its tropes are seen in
>all media and familiar to all. I do not find most of the ideas in
>science fiction to be intellectually interesting. I would say the
>science fiction book that I enjoyed the most was Vinge’s
>“A Fire upon the Deep” and even that I did not love. For
>whatever reason, it just seems that the science fiction I read as a
>teenager was so much better.
Imho, another problem for sf is that the cutting edge science is
much harder and stranger--it's difficult to figure out how to write
good plots with it.
And we have the problem that in some ways, we're living in the future
already and it's clear that it doesn't live up to the simple hopes
and fears of much past sf. For example, computers don't lead to utopia,
aren't running the world, and haven't declared war on the human race, and
even though they may be rational in detail, their total effect is just
more chaos.
>In terms of fantasy, it seems that there is a massive amount of
>repetitive hack work in this genre. Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks, Feist,
>whatever. Much of the writing in this genre is just plain bad. The
>fantasy book(s) that I have enjoyed the most are the “Song of
>Ice and Fire” by George Martin because it is such a departure
>from the standard hack work. As with science fiction, I think the
>tropes of fantasy have become so saturated in the popular culture that
>there is nothing special about them and they are in fact banal.
>
>When I was a teenager I never would have believed this but I find that
>I enjoy “mundane” fiction more than science fiction and
Recommendations?
Sometimes I find myself preferring non-fiction to sf. The real
world is more peculiar than a lot of sf. Frex, _The Orchid Thief_
(orchids as obsession--sf fans aren't nearly as weird) and _Shoes
Outside the Door_ (a fairly detailed account of the Zen Center (the
first major Zen community in US) and how it dealt with serious problems
from misuse of authority, sex, and money, not to mention an unsound
economic basis--there could and should be more sf about the difficulties
of establishing institutions: it's prime human comedy/tragedy).
>fantasy. The value of fantastic fiction is in its ideas, its ability
>to transport you to another world to use that cliché. When the ideas
>and the other worlds just seem silly, what else is there left? The
>best mundane fiction actually does a better job in creating other
>worlds because the best fiction is based on acute observation of how
>real people and their societies function, which frankly fantastic
>fiction has always been lacking in.
>
>I was wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation –
>trying to “recapture the magic” but finding that you
>can’t.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
100 new slogans! 12/01
David Johnston
>
> In article <a14p7i$7k6$2...@daymark.empros.com>,
> Michael Stemper <mstemper @ siemens - emis . com> wrote:
> >In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, tm...@jump.net (Timothy A.
> >McDaniel) writes:
> >>Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles books: a military-obsessed mutant
> >
> >He's not a mutant!
>
> You know that. I know that. For all that Miles says "iatrogenic, not
> heritable", Barrayar neither knows or cares.
Technically he's a teratogenic monster. Think he'd prefer that terminology?
Nancy Lebovitz
>
> This historical fiction series is neither recent nor SF, but it's
> great. It felt a lot like fantasy to me.
In that case, I'll recommend _The Persian Boy_ by Mary Renault. It
builds a distinctive ancient world, and I never would have thought
I could get so involved in the difficulties of establishing a combined
Persian/Macedonian empire.
>Peter Dickinson Eva
>
> An interesting look at the implications of transplanting a human
> child's brain into a primate. I think it makes an interesting
> Paired Reading with "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy (I think).
>
Also, see Dickinson's _The Blue Hawk_--well-designed ancient empire
with some fantasy elements.
>P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
>
> Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
> will step up.
Some of the best heroic fantasy I've read--an excellent combination
of humor and horror.
Nancy Lebovitz
William Davis <wis...@weblnk.net> wrote:
>
>It doesn't help that much of the 50's SF was written in a time when we
>had a much different view of technology than we do today. Most people
>spend their time with computers, live in cities suffering from bad air
>quality days and deal with the ease and frustration of being in
>contact with the world at every moment - creating a more nuanced
>appreciation of the benefits and downsides of scientific progress.
There was dystopian and anti-technological sf in the 50's, though
perhaps more short stories than novels. I strongly recommend
_His Share of Glory_, the complete short fiction of C. M. Kornbluth,
published by NESFA.
Mark Atwood
>
> >Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of
> >this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED)
>
> Ahh, a breath of the First Age. It makes me feel almost young again.
McElwaine is Third Age, I would think.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Brenda W. Clough
Matthew Austern wrote:
Is not Mark his clone? Since Mark is (or was, until they futzed with him)
a more or less normal person physically, I would say that clinches it.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Micole Sudberg
>In article <XR_Y7.6011$ym....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>,
> mic...@aya.yale.edu (Micole Sudberg) wrote:
>> Have you read Emma Donohue's *Kissing the Witch*? It's a collection of
>> re-told fairy tales with a feminist and lesbian slant, where each story is
>> told by one woman to another, who then tells her own story to someone else,
>> who then tells her own story to someone else ... you have the sense of
> falling
>> infinitely through history. And the stories themselves are witty and
> sensual.
>
>No, thanks for the recommendation! That sounds interesting.
I got the spelling wrong: it's Emma Donoghue.
>(Hm. I just read _The Summer Book_ by Tove Jansson (of Moomin fame),
>which seems to me to be a sort of sibling to a fairy tale. I'll
>discuss it in a separate thread/post.)
Hmm. Despite your lukewarm opinion of it, you make me mildly regretful I gave
away my copy of it without reading it.
--m.
Thomas Yan
na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <tyan-7CC6C1.1...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>,
> Thomas Yan <ty...@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >Dorothy Dunnett Game of Kings, The [the Lymond Chronicles]
> >
> > This historical fiction series is neither recent nor SF, but it's
> > great. It felt a lot like fantasy to me.
>
> In that case, I'll recommend _The Persian Boy_ by Mary Renault. It
> builds a distinctive ancient world, and I never would have thought
> I could get so involved in the difficulties of establishing a combined
> Persian/Macedonian empire.
Ah, yes, Renault is on my "read lots more by" list of authors.
> >Peter Dickinson Eva
> >
> > An interesting look at the implications of transplanting a human
> > child's brain into a primate. I think it makes an interesting
> > Paired Reading with "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy (I think).
> >
> Also, see Dickinson's _The Blue Hawk_--well-designed ancient empire
> with some fantasy elements.
My impression is that I should sample lots of Dickinson's books. I'm
told his YA books span a remarkably wide range.
> >P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
> >
> > Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
> > will step up.
>
> Some of the best heroic fantasy I've read--an excellent combination
> of humor and horror.
What did you think of _Seeker's Mask_? I liked it, but didn't feel it
was as good as the previous (two) installment(s).
--
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: pp1-38 of pp1-181 of _Taltos_
Leif Magnar Kj|nn|y
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>tm...@jump.net (Timothy A. McDaniel) writes:
>>
>> >Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of
>> >this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED)
>>
>> Ahh, a breath of the First Age. It makes me feel almost young again.
>
>McElwaine is Third Age, I would think.
He's still around, anyway. Not as active as he used to be, and he seems
to be in "output-only" mode. Same content as before.
--
Leif Kj{\o}nn{\o}y | "Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
www.pvv.org/~leifmk| That it carries too far, when I say
Math geek and gamer| That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
GURPS, Harn, CORPS | And dines on the following day." (Carroll)
Nancy Lebovitz
Thomas Yan <ty...@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
>In article <a14upc$9...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>> >P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
>> >
>> > Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully others
>> > will step up.
>>
>> Some of the best heroic fantasy I've read--an excellent combination
>> of humor and horror.
>
>What did you think of _Seeker's Mask_? I liked it, but didn't feel it
>was as good as the previous (two) installment(s).
I haven't read it yet.
Micole Sudberg
>In article <a14upc$9...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>> In that case, I'll recommend _The Persian Boy_ by Mary Renault. It
>> builds a distinctive ancient world, and I never would have thought
>> I could get so involved in the difficulties of establishing a combined
>> Persian/Macedonian empire.
>
>Ah, yes, Renault is on my "read lots more by" list of authors.
I think *The Persian Boy* is my favorite of her novels; I'm also very fond of
*Fire from Heaven*, though the romanticization of Alexander (without the
excuse of being screened through someone else's pov) bothers me more now than
it did when I first read the books.
I can't judge *Funeral Games* because it's too bleak to bear re-reading.
[P.C. Hodgell]
>> Some of the best heroic fantasy I've read--an excellent combination
>> of humor and horror.
>
>What did you think of _Seeker's Mask_? I liked it, but didn't feel it
>was as good as the previous (two) installment(s).
I'm somewhat unhappy with this series because each installment seems have less
world-building and to advance the overall arc less than the last. *Seeker's
Mask* is fun, and it's a lot better than most fantasy adventures out there,
but it tells you less about the Kencyrath than *Dark of the Moon*, which tells
you less than *Godstalk*. And it's not as if there isn't more to
tell--Hodgell keeps dropping hints, and there's clearly an immense culture and
detailed backstory there. In *Dark of the Moon*, at least you get several
major new characters introduced and developed; *Seeker's Mask* doesn't even do
that much. I can forgive it a little for starting off with the reader in the
same position as Jame, i.e., excluded from the Highborn women's secrets so
thoroughly it's not at first apparent they even have secrets--but I think
Hodgell could have compressed this more and done more with the fate of the
worlds, the status of the battle against Perimal Darkling, and the nature of
Raskillian.
*Seeker's Mask* feels too middle-book, that's it, and it's particularly
frustrating because you don't when or if the series will be completed.
I like "Stranger Blood" a lot, and I'd like the sense that the books will one
day *get* there.
--m.
Brenda W. Clough
Micole Sudberg wrote:
> >
> >Ah, yes, Renault is on my "read lots more by" list of authors.
>
> I think *The Persian Boy* is my favorite of her novels; I'm also very fond of
> *Fire from Heaven*, though the romanticization of Alexander (without the
> excuse of being screened through someone else's pov) bothers me more now than
> it did when I first read the books.
>
> I can't judge *Funeral Games* because it's too bleak to bear re-reading.
>
Interestingly, the Renault I find myself re-reading the most often is THE PRAISE SINGER, possibly because
it's a stand-alone that's fairly ungrim. Some of the bits (trying to get into the back door of a Greek
villa by offering to recite Euripides) are a hoot.
Lois Tilton
> Interestingly, the Renault I find myself re-reading the most often is THE PRAISE SINGER, possibly because
> it's a stand-alone that's fairly ungrim. Some of the bits (trying to get into the back door of a Greek
> villa by offering to recite Euripides) are a hoot.
Mine is and will probably always be THE LAST OF THE WINE, but any Renault
is worth re-reading.
--
LT
Shaad M. Ahmad
Oops! Sorry, David. Mea culpa. I have to consciously remind myself
sometimes that there are always new readers for an old classic.
- Shaad
Taki Kogoma
to rec.arts.sf.written decree...
Well, he spent most of the first 20-odd years of his life going out of
his way to make the distinction in terms not too different that
that...
--
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
J Greely
>I'm somewhat unhappy with this series because each installment seems
>have less world-building and to advance the overall arc less than the
>last.
Yes to the latter, perhaps, but a big "huh?" to the first part of
that. Dark and Seeker bleed world-building (and Kencyr-building) out
of every page. Indeed, my biggest complaint about Seeker is that it
crams far too much into the available space.
>In *Dark of the Moon*, at least you get several major new characters
>introduced and developed; *Seeker's Mask* doesn't even do that much.
Yeah, it just turns Jame's understanding of how the world fits
together upside down and gives it a good shake, several times, as well
as rounding out the character of half a dozen or so people introduced
in the first two books, at least one of whom is a major player.
>but I think Hodgell could have compressed this more and done more
>with the fate of the worlds, the status of the battle against Perimal
>Darkling, and the nature of Raskillian.
Ah, you're looking for the "epic". Can't help you there. Reaching the
grand final battle (which the available evidence suggests is quite a
few years away) would after all mean that the story was over, and I'm
not done enjoying it yet.
-j
Bruce Baugh
na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> _Perdido Street Station_ by China Mieville (energetic fantasy in a
> Victorian London with magic and non-human races--plot is a little
> weak but passable,
I won't be able to actually finish this for a while, but it occurs to me
to post, in an extra-textual sort of way, that Perdido Street Station
occurs in between changes somewhere in the middle of Great Work Of Time,
by John Crowley.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
http://trasaric.livejournal.com/ for ramblings du jour
http://www.tkau.org/ for durable pieces
Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
Thomas Yan
mic...@aya.yale.edu (Micole Sudberg) wrote:
> In article <tyan-CDDAAD.1...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, Thomas Yan <ty...@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
> >In article <XR_Y7.6011$ym....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>,
> > mic...@aya.yale.edu (Micole Sudberg) wrote:
>
> >> Have you read Emma Donohue's *Kissing the Witch*?
-snip-
> I got the spelling wrong: it's Emma Donoghue.
Noted, thanks.
> >(Hm. I just read _The Summer Book_ by Tove Jansson (of Moomin fame),
> >which seems to me to be a sort of sibling to a fairy tale. I'll
> >discuss it in a separate thread/post.)
>
> Hmm. Despite your lukewarm opinion of it, you make me mildly regretful I gave
> away my copy of it without reading it.
I do think many people would get a lot more out of it than I did.
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
>
>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
>> all to heterosexuality.)
>
>That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
>Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
>amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
>
>The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
>Smith's all-male one.
The Keith Laumer short "War Against The Yukks" always seemed to me to
be a parody of an existing cliche.
--Craig
Robert A. Woodward
but...@io.com (Captain Button) wrote:
> Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on 3 Jan 2002 23:24:18 -0500,
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> > In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>,
> > Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
> >>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
> >><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> >>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> >>> all to heterosexuality.)
> >>
> >>That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
> >>Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
> >>amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
> >>
> >>The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
> >>Smith's all-male one.
>
> > _Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
> > planet populated entirely by women.
>
> > And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
> > am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
>
> _Alph_ by Charles Eric Maine, IIRC, although the planet is Earth.
> All males died out for some implausible reason I forget, but
> human parthenogensis (sp?) is invented just in time. Several
> centuries later, a researcher working with tissue samples from
> a frozen man in Antarctica creates a viable male zygote.
>
> Events ensue.
>
> Not real good, as I recall it, though.
>
>
> This theme does come up in low quality TV and Movie SF a number
> of times, I believe.
>
> There was an episode of "The Starlost" which dealt with a
> male-only biosphere which used artificial wombs to reproduce.
>
> Also the movie "Fire Maidens from Outer Space", I think.
>
> Wasn't there some bit in The Odyessy about an island like that?
> or somewhere in Greek or Roman mythology.
>
> This bit keep getting reused in SF. Like David Drake's
> _Cross the Stars_ IIRC.
Just about everything in the _Odyessy_ got reused in _Cross the Stars_.
--
robe...@drizzle.com http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw/
rawoo...@aol.com
Eflint46312
>From: Fred Galvin gal...@math.ukans.edu
>Date: 1/4/02 3:18 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.21.020104...@titania.math.ukans.edu>
>
>On 3 Jan 2002, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> In article <030120021950419207%lru...@mac.com>,
>> Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@mac.com> wrote:
>> >In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
>> ><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
>> >> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
>> >> all to heterosexuality.)
>> >
>> >That's a cliche? The only author I know who's done that was Joanna
>> >Russ, and the women were definitely *not* converted, though they were
>> >amused at the male astronauts assumptions that they should be.
>> >
>> >The only other all-one-gender planet I can think of was Cordwainer
>> >Smith's all-male one.
>>
>> _Virgin Planet_, Poul Anderson. Cordy agent ends up on a
>> planet populated entirely by women.
>>
>> And I _think_ Chandler did one as well, and I don't think I
>> am thinking of _Spartan Planet_.
>
>Philip Wylie, _The Disappearance_.
Laumer did a version of the idea in his short story "War With the Yukks."
Eric
Joe Bernstein
news:<zA4Y7.1110$5X.4...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>...
> "Christopher M. Jones" <christ...@spicedham.qwest.net> wrote in message
> news:654Y7.380$li6....@news.uswest.net...
> > Blah, blah, blah. I've heard the same bleat countless times and
> > it never gains in credulity. It all boils down to the same ol'
> > lament of "This new _whatever_ is all crap. Why, in *my* day!..."
>
> The OP has a genuine problem that he has shared. Other's, including myself,
> have had similiar experiences, and your characterization is incorrect. I
> believe that as you age, you learn, and part of that learning process
> involves recognizing story-telling patterns and 'tropes'. As time goes on,
> it becomes easier to read a story as a sort of 'fill in the blanks'
> exercise, and so the story looses much of its appeal.
>
> It is the author's task to break out of this pattern in some substantive
> way. Essentially it boils down to doing something unexpected at varying
> degrees of granularity within the story, at every level from language to
> theme. Personally, I think it is good to challenge the author!
>
> The science fiction genre is relatively young, and is still maturing in many
> ways.
Unsnipped thus far because I didn't want to misrepresent you, but I
*really* think you're underselling your argument. I didn't like the
post you were answering, but I also didn't like the way you answered
it.
Good reasons have been given in this thread why sf and fantasy tend to
appeal to teenagers. Historically, these genres as English-language
categories always *have* appealed to teenagers; that's what guys like
Asimov *were* when they started writing SF, guys who are now dead
revered masters. And historically, many of those teenagers have
always outgrown SF, some giving it up for good, others returning
later.
What's intrinsic to SF in all of this is that it gets associated with
the teenaged years, and so becomes one of the things that people's
reactions to change towards as they age, in a fairly consistent way.
But there's nothing intrinsic to SF about any of the rest of it. The
relevant changes are changes *within individuals*, not changes in the
genres.
It's true that a lot of really early SF was Really Badly Written, but
even then there were exceptions, and once you get to the Campbell era,
even, the good stuff was everywhere to be found. In fantasy this is
still more true: there has been *far* more really bad fantasy
published in recent years than even as recently as the 1960s, albeit
the editing standards are a notch higher so the worst is a little bit
better. (But the rest of this post is going to be about science
fiction.)
So I was moved to post by the following:
> In particular, the gadget laden sf of the 50's gave way to the social
> theory laden sf of the 60's and 70's
WHAT?
Um. Short history lesson here; I wasn't there, and corrections
welcomed, but this is anyway the way I've heard things were. John W.
Campbell was the editor of a magazine called <Astounding>, from the
late 1930s until sometime in the early 1960s. <Astounding> was, up
til 1950, easily the premier SF magazine, under his editorship.
And then in 1949, Anthony Boucher and J. F. McComas (name?) started a
magazine now known as <The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction>,
and the next year Horace Gold started <Galaxy>, and there was serious
competition for the title of The Best.
Now, Campbell did not take this entirely lying down, and one way he
reacted to the social-scientific focus of <Galaxy> and the blatantly
literary approach of <F&SF> was to emphasise the hard sciences more
and more. In the course of so doing, he gradually changed the name of
his magazine, over the early 1960s, until it was known simply as
<Analog>.
And, um, maybe I'm on thin ice here, but I had the *distinct*
impression that the number one venue for publishing gadgetry stories
in the last forty years had been, um, <Analog>.
Whereas the stereotypical Leading Magazine of the 1950s was the
*social theories* hangout, <Galaxy>.
I'm not going to argue that SF hasn't, decade by decade, gotten more
adult, more sophisticated, etc., etc., at least at its better levels.
I'm not going to claim that the 1960s were some kind of regression.
But to stereotype the 1950s as gadget story years and the 1960s as
social theory ones is just, how can I put this, *bizarre*.
> and finally there were some real
> artists in the 80's and 90's (not to mention the artists sprinkled
> throughout the preceding decades).
I think "Art" as an aspiration was probably significantly more common,
percentage-wise anyway, among SF writers of the late 1960s and early
1970s than among SF writers today. My understanding of the
one-word-per-decade way-oversimplified history of SF, in fact, would
be something like this:
1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
gadgets Campbell social artsy feminist cyberpunk
It's true that in the 1980s and 1990s truly artistic SF, especially at
novel length, became much more common. This is partly because SF in
*general* became much more common; but I suspect it's also because,
with SF selling so much better than it used to, after <Star Wars>,
trained writers looking to make a living gave it a try, not just
people who Really Loved It. Their strength, obviously, would be in
their art, not in their science-fictional knowledge.
> SF elements are becoming less and less of
> a centerpiece, and more and more being used for their strengths: inspiring
> hope and awe.
I really think you should read more of the older stuff that you seem
to have missed, or stop talking this way.
I'm tempted to offer particular writers, such as Cordwainer Smith, as
artists who were also interested in society, and who put science Way
Down There in comparison. I'm also tempted to be contrarian and tell
you you should look at Heinlein again, or better, at Poul Anderson.
But what I really want to do is suggest you look at some of the
anthologies that are more widely representative of the 1950s and
1960s, to get some sense of what was out there that maybe isn't Asimov
(whose Foundation stories, by the way, are *much* older, except for
the sequels that he published in, oops, the 1980s and 1990s...) or
whoever else you're stereotyping as "gadget" writers. (The Foundation
books, creaky as they are, are emphatically *not* about gadgets, argh,
though I'll admit they are largely about sfnal ideas.)
I want to suggest:
<Galaxy>, a retrospective published in 1980 and edited by Frederik
Pohl and others.
Any of the *many* anthologies from <F&SF>, there's been roughly one a
year for over forty years now, and occasional 10- or 20-year
retrospectives.
Some of the best-of-the-year books. This isn't an especially helpful
recommendation, as they're hard to find, but anyway the editors will
be Bleiler & Dikty (early 1950s); Judith Merril (late 1950s and early
1960s); Terry Carr and Donald Wollheim, first together then separately
(1960s through 1980s; these are the easiest to find).
The early volumes of the Hugo winners. This will give you a sense of
what was most praised within the field at the time.
I don't know if Asimov's anthology series (whose name I'm spacing on)
reaches into the 1950s, but that's a best-of-the-year selection from a
much later perspective, which would also make sense for you to try.
Once you've read a few of those, and have a clearer sense of what
happened when in SF, you might find you've read a lot more than I have
and be well equipped to tell me I'm full of it. For all I know,
you're already well equipped and will come back with a detailed
analysis of the 1956 Hugos vs. the 1966 ones to prove this
gadgetry-to-social-theory transition; I'm not claiming to be an
all-knowing expert, and it's certainly possible I'm wrong. But I
*think* you're just buying into a simplistic version of SF's history
that you heard somewhere, and I think you'd be surprised at some of
what that simplistic version has been denying you.
Asimov and his pals were teenagers when they started writing, in the
1930s, yes, but by the 1950s, they were all full-grown adults, and
some of them were writing that way too.
Alfred Bester, for one. <The Stars My Destination> is not a book
about a faster-than-light drive.
I don't spend a lot of my time reading the Old Stuff, and I don't
demand that you do or you're worthless. But I do think if you're
going to talk about it, you should read enough of it that you can talk
sensibly.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com
by courtesy of The Stars Our Destination bookstore
<http://www.sfbooks.com/> but I don't speak for them
my own site, <http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/>
James Nicoll
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>
>> In particular, the gadget laden sf of the 50's gave way to the social
>> theory laden sf of the 60's and 70's
>
>WHAT?
>
>Um. Short history lesson here; I wasn't there, and corrections
>welcomed, but this is anyway the way I've heard things were. John W.
>Campbell was the editor of a magazine called <Astounding>, from the
>late 1930s until sometime in the early 1960s. <Astounding> was, up
I correct you only be polite: JWC ran Astounding/Analog until
his death in the early 1970s.
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one
god. They're just this far away from atheism."
Wayne & Schuster
Jim Cambias
Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote:
> In article <a14udc$8...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
> > _Perdido Street Station_ by China Mieville (energetic fantasy in a
> > Victorian London with magic and non-human races--plot is a little
> > weak but passable,
>
> I won't be able to actually finish this for a while, but it occurs to me
> to post, in an extra-textual sort of way, that Perdido Street Station
> occurs in between changes somewhere in the middle of Great Work Of Time,
> by John Crowley.
Oooh, I'll bet the Otherhood hit DELETE on that timeline _real_ quick.
And not just because of the soul-sucking moths either. Scientists having
affairs with beetle-headed women? Disgraceful!
I just thought of something. Charles Darwin probably would have gone for
the Khepri (in the Biblical sense). He was a pretty obsessive beetle
collector in his youth, and at one point mentions holding extra specimens
in his mouth (_living_ specimens, that is), so he wouldn't be too
squeamish.
Cambias
David Tate
fastest irreversible hijacking of a thread?
David Tate
James Nicoll
Nyrath the nearly wise <nyr...@projectrho.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> _The Sword and the Helix_ by John McLoughlin. Interesting
>> idea for a setting (Biological entities adapted for space), so-so
>> story, crap science. I esp like the part where the spaceship recaptures
>> its roacket exhaust material for re-use later.
>
> Are you sure?
Oh, I'm sure. I am absolutely convinced.
Which isn't to say I might not be wrong.
JavaJosh
news:dbc8daca.0201...@posting.google.com...
> Unsnipped thus far because I didn't want to misrepresent you, but I
> *really* think you're underselling your argument. I didn't like the
> post you were answering, but I also didn't like the way you answered
> it.
Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
>
> Good reasons have been given in this thread why sf and fantasy tend to
> appeal to teenagers. Historically, these genres as English-language
> categories always *have* appealed to teenagers; that's what guys like
> Asimov *were* when they started writing SF, guys who are now dead
> revered masters. And historically, many of those teenagers have
> always outgrown SF, some giving it up for good, others returning
> later.
>
> What's intrinsic to SF in all of this is that it gets associated with
> the teenaged years, and so becomes one of the things that people's
> reactions to change towards as they age, in a fairly consistent way.
> But there's nothing intrinsic to SF about any of the rest of it. The
> relevant changes are changes *within individuals*, not changes in the
> genres.
>
> It's true that a lot of really early SF was Really Badly Written, but
> even then there were exceptions, and once you get to the Campbell era,
> even, the good stuff was everywhere to be found. In fantasy this is
> still more true: there has been *far* more really bad fantasy
> published in recent years than even as recently as the 1960s, albeit
> the editing standards are a notch higher so the worst is a little bit
> better. (But the rest of this post is going to be about science
> fiction.)
I'm not sure I follow this argument clearly, but it doesn't sound too bad.
>
> So I was moved to post by the following:
>
> > In particular, the gadget laden sf of the 50's gave way to the social
> > theory laden sf of the 60's and 70's
>
> WHAT?
Oh, I said, "In particular, the gadget laden sf of the 50's gave way to the
social theory laden sf of the 60's and 70's."
> Um. Short history lesson here; I wasn't there, and corrections
> welcomed, but this is anyway the way I've heard things were. John W.
> Campbell was the editor of a magazine called <Astounding>, from the
> late 1930s until sometime in the early 1960s. <Astounding> was, up
> til 1950, easily the premier SF magazine, under his editorship.
Ah yes, I recall hearing something about that.
> And then in 1949, Anthony Boucher and J. F. McComas (name?) started a
> magazine now known as <The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction>,
> and the next year Horace Gold started <Galaxy>, and there was serious
> competition for the title of The Best.
God Bless Capitalism!
> Now, Campbell did not take this entirely lying down, and one way he
> reacted to the social-scientific focus of <Galaxy> and the blatantly
> literary approach of <F&SF> was to emphasise the hard sciences more
> and more. In the course of so doing, he gradually changed the name of
> his magazine, over the early 1960s, until it was known simply as
> <Analog>.
Hmm. This is very instructive and interesting. Go on...
> And, um, maybe I'm on thin ice here, but I had the *distinct*
> impression that the number one venue for publishing gadgetry stories
> in the last forty years had been, um, <Analog>.
>
> Whereas the stereotypical Leading Magazine of the 1950s was the
> *social theories* hangout, <Galaxy>.
OK. Was/is written SF defined by magazine content?
> I'm not going to argue that SF hasn't, decade by decade, gotten more
> adult, more sophisticated, etc., etc., at least at its better levels.
> I'm not going to claim that the 1960s were some kind of regression.
> But to stereotype the 1950s as gadget story years and the 1960s as
> social theory ones is just, how can I put this, *bizarre*.
I often find other people's opinions bizarre, but am typically too polite to
mention it. Perhaps this is a character flaw; I don't know.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain (an ancient relative of mine), there are
3 kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. What are the major trends
in the genre over the last century? I am just guessing, and perhaps guessing
less intelligently and with less information than others. I am happy to hear
other opinions, but fundamentally the averaging/trending process is a
statistical one, and hence counts as that third kind of lie.
> > and finally there were some real
> > artists in the 80's and 90's (not to mention the artists sprinkled
> > throughout the preceding decades).
>
> I think "Art" as an aspiration was probably significantly more common,
> percentage-wise anyway, among SF writers of the late 1960s and early
> 1970s than among SF writers today. My understanding of the
> one-word-per-decade way-oversimplified history of SF, in fact, would
> be something like this:
>
> 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
> gadgets Campbell social artsy feminist cyberpunk
>
> It's true that in the 1980s and 1990s truly artistic SF, especially at
> novel length, became much more common. This is partly because SF in
> *general* became much more common; but I suspect it's also because,
> with SF selling so much better than it used to, after <Star Wars>,
> trained writers looking to make a living gave it a try, not just
> people who Really Loved It. Their strength, obviously, would be in
> their art, not in their science-fictional knowledge.
That's an interesting take, and doesn't sound implausible.
>
> > SF elements are becoming less and less of
> > a centerpiece, and more and more being used for their strengths:
inspiring
> > hope and awe.
>
> I really think you should read more of the older stuff that you seem
> to have missed, or stop talking this way.
I understand that you disagree, but do you realize how badly this sort of
statement hurts your otherwise reasonable cause? The problem is that you are
powerless to enforce such a demand, and so it comes off as ineffectual and
somewhat immature whining. Maybe if I knew you better this would be an
appropriate chiding sort of response, but as it stands it is not
appropriate.
Thanks for the suggestions, and you very well might be right. In fact, I
think there is a book called "Trillion Year Spree" about SF I've been
meaning to read.
>
> Asimov and his pals were teenagers when they started writing, in the
> 1930s, yes, but by the 1950s, they were all full-grown adults, and
> some of them were writing that way too.
>
> Alfred Bester, for one. <The Stars My Destination> is not a book
> about a faster-than-light drive.
>
> I don't spend a lot of my time reading the Old Stuff, and I don't
> demand that you do or you're worthless. But I do think if you're
> going to talk about it, you should read enough of it that you can talk
> sensibly.
There you go with the ad hominim attacks again, Joe, and just when things
were looking up.
Regards,
Josh
William December Starr
mic...@aya.yale.edu (Micole Sudberg) said:
>> P C Hodgell Dark of the Moon (series)
>>
>> Hm. I don't know what to say about this book; hopefully
>> others will step up.
>
> You could quote the bit about the bread growing internal organs.
> That seems to be the favored excerpt.
Let's not. I love the book, but that particular bit always makes my
stomach think about relocating its contents.
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
William December Starr
r...@sff.net (Robert Rogoff) said:
> Before you give up, try _Moving Mars_ by Greg Bear and _Diaspora_ by
> Greg Egan. Also Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ and Bruce
> Sterling's _Distraction_ or _Holy Fire_. From there you can branch
> out to Wil McCarthy's _Collapsium_, _Vast_ by Linda Nagata, or
> Robert Charles Wilson's _Darwinia_. These books are just some I've
> read in recent years that are chock full of sense 'o' wonder.
As in, wondering what the hell Wilson was *thinking* when he wrote the
book? (Sorry, but color me unimpressed with both the Big Twist _and_
just about everything that followed it.)
Jorj Strumolo
JN> Oh, I'm sure. I am absolutely convinced.
> Which isn't to say I might not be wrong.
What strikes you as terrible about the notion? My understanding
of orbital mechanics no doubt leaves a lot to be desired (like,
nearly everything), but I tend to think it would be possible
to recycle reaction mass. Consider a ship as a mass driver.
(This doesn't really work if you're using jets.) It throws
chunks of whatever out the back so it can go forward. But it
doesn't have to throw any chunk it a particular direction or
speed. If it throws chunk one a bit off to the left, and chunk
two a bit off to the right, it still manages an average of
straight ahead. So those chunks can be aimed without destroying
your ability to go anyplace you want. It's just a hit in
efficiency. And as long as the chunks are thrown out with less
than escape velocity for the system, they're in an orbit that
will eventually taken them someplace. It's just a matter of
details, it seems to be. The orbits are likely to be centuries
long. I doubt you could work them out in advance, given
perturbations by other bodies. The efficiency hit might be so
huge as to be insane, even if one's doing this for essentially
religious reasons. But for the sake of an interesting image,
you could probably handwave such details away.
Derek Bell
> Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on Mon, 31 Dec 2001 20:29:17
> +0000, phil hunt <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> > The omral is: use a standared computer, i.e. one that complies with
> > standards, such as ascii.
>
> IMHO, "omral" really should be a word....
>
> ObSF: The guys in the "New Sun" books who only talk in quotations.
I wonder if they ever had to deal with the Unicodians? :-)
Derek
Richard Horton
P. S. I'm glad to see you back, Joe, I always enjoy your posts.
>
>Um. Short history lesson here; I wasn't there, and corrections
>welcomed, but this is anyway the way I've heard things were. John W.
>Campbell was the editor of a magazine called <Astounding>, from the
>late 1930s until sometime in the early 1960s.
Early '70s -- he died in harness, as it were, in, IIRC, 1971.
><Astounding> was, up
>til 1950, easily the premier SF magazine, under his editorship.
>
>And then in 1949, Anthony Boucher and J. F. McComas (name?) started a
>magazine now known as <The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction>,
>and the next year Horace Gold started <Galaxy>, and there was serious
>competition for the title of The Best.
>
>Now, Campbell did not take this entirely lying down, and one way he
>reacted to the social-scientific focus of <Galaxy> and the blatantly
>literary approach of <F&SF> was to emphasise the hard sciences more
>and more. In the course of so doing, he gradually changed the name of
>his magazine, over the early 1960s, until it was known simply as
><Analog>.
>
The Astounding to Analog change occurred over a period of some 6 or 8
issues in 1960.
>And, um, maybe I'm on thin ice here, but I had the *distinct*
>impression that the number one venue for publishing gadgetry stories
>in the last forty years had been, um, <Analog>.
>
>Whereas the stereotypical Leading Magazine of the 1950s was the
>*social theories* hangout, <Galaxy>.
>
>I'm not going to argue that SF hasn't, decade by decade, gotten more
>adult, more sophisticated, etc., etc., at least at its better levels.
>I'm not going to claim that the 1960s were some kind of regression.
>But to stereotype the 1950s as gadget story years and the 1960s as
>social theory ones is just, how can I put this, *bizarre*.
>
Right. Though many of the "social theories" stories in Galaxy in the
'50s were distinctly "gadgety" in that the social notions put forth
were gadgets in every sense but the mechanical.
>> and finally there were some real
>> artists in the 80's and 90's (not to mention the artists sprinkled
>> throughout the preceding decades).
>
>I think "Art" as an aspiration was probably significantly more common,
>percentage-wise anyway, among SF writers of the late 1960s and early
>1970s than among SF writers today. My understanding of the
>one-word-per-decade way-oversimplified history of SF, in fact, would
>be something like this:
>
>1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
>gadgets Campbell social artsy feminist cyberpunk
>
"Gadgets" seems not fair to describe the 30s -- "Adventure" would be
closer to my one word description.
I agree entirely with the burden of your argument, I should say.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Johnny1A
> In article <a14s2u$d44$4...@daymark.empros.com>,
> Michael Stemper <mstemper @ siemens - emis . com> wrote:
> >
> >hundred or so persons over a year and then had their brains blown
> >out."
>
> No, that was the nature of the Lyranian humanoid species. The
> birth ratio was about 100 females to 1 male, and the males were
> congenitally stupid, violent, and pint-sized. Points to Smith
> for NOT having the female Lyranians immediately succumb to the
> sight of rather better-favored Tellurian males.
Smith rarely does get the credit he deserves for imagination and
thought, especially given the time in which he wrote. During the
whole Lyranian sequence, Smith uses it as a springboard to ponder the
idea that the whole essence of human culture is based on the fact that
the human race is divided into two sexes of equal intelligence and
ability.
(Smith's universe had no female Lensmen, but that's a subset of his
belief that combat was properly a male function. Clarissa is the only
female human Lensman, her daughters don't count, as they aren't
human.)
As for not being turned by the irresistable Tellurian, the fact that
Lyranian males were as different as they are implies that both
Lyranian sexes were probably pretty alien internally anyway. OTOH, if
you raised a female Lyranian from infancy on Tellus, I wonder what the
result would be?
The stories in SF about one-gender human worlds never did make any
sense to me (either gender), however, genetically or socially. I
still don't see what sort of natural selection would ever produce a
form of human in which one sex is physically identical to Earth's
version, and the other so bizarrely different.
Most secondary sexual charactistics of each sex are adapted to some
degree specifically with regard to the other sex. The female
Lyranians shouldn't look the way they do, given their racial biology.
>
> Okay, there were males, but they weren't even considered people.
> >And, the Lyranians were working on some technology to eliminate the
> >need for even those few.
>
> Considering what their males were like, you can't blame them.
>
> >I was going to throw Kalonia in here, too, but they were pretty egalitarian
> >compared to Lyrane. (By necessity, not by virtue.)
>
> Oh no they bleeding weren't. There's a scene where a Kalonian
> male meets a Lyranian female and the dialogue is on the order of
> "I despise you, you despise me, we have to work together anyway,
> let's get on with it." Where do you get the impression that
> Kalonian females (assuming there were some, which I assume since
> they were so humanoid otherwise) were any better than Lyranian
> males?
Because Kinnison, upon encountering the Lyranians, doesn't compare
them to the Kalonians, with whom he is familiar. He seems somewhat
surprised, as if he's never encountered humanoids with that particular
life-cycle pattern. I suspect that the Kalonians are simply a more
conventional race of humanoids in which the Eddorians amplified sexual
discrimination to heights rarely matched in real-world Earth. I
wouldn't be surprised if there are humanoid races in Smith's world
where females oppress fully sentient males in the mirror image of
Kalonia, either. Eddore would use either one quite willingly.
Ironically, the Eddorians themselves are the ultimate
equal-opportunity employers. They really _don't care_ if you are male
or female, as long as you are useful to them. They'll oppress both
sexes with equal indifference.
Johnny1A
> ege...@hotmail.com (Gene) wrote in message news:<d250964f.02010...@posting.google.com>...
> > One of the problems I find is that science fiction and fantasy books
> > do not have "hooks" that works for me any longer. I recall that when
> > I used to love science fiction, I would start reading the book, and
> > there would be something about the underlying idea or world that would
> > make me think "wow" and so I would keep on reading. But I think I
> > have read so much science fiction, plus the media is so saturated with
> > it, that I know all the standard tropes and they don't appeal to me.
>
> I think most of us read sf in part because we're looking for those
> great hooks, and the "wow, cool" that comes when they are explored
> intelligently. After all, great storytelling exists in all genres,
> but I at least feel that there is the potential in (F&)SF for an extra
> dimension of intellectual and emotional satisfaction from the
> exploration of a Way Cool Idea (tm).
>
> With that in mind, I'd like to open the floor for nominations: great
> sfnal 'hook' ideas, in 2 categories: those taken at the flood, and
> those squandered. Examples might include...
>
> Capitalized upon:
> Many Greg Egan ideas, but especially the 'brain jewel'.
> Vernor Vinge's 'zones'.
> Alfred Bester's crime in a world of telepaths (_The Demolished Man_)
> The premises of Asimov's "Nightfall"
> Ursula LeGuin's 'effective dreams' (_The Lathe of Heaven_)
> Randall Garrett's reversal of science and magic ("Lord Darcy" stories)
> Ted Chiang's take on 'nomenclature' ("72 Letters")
> The Malthusian world of _The Mote in God's Eye_
> Brin's "Thor Meets Captain America", "The Giving Plague", and
> "Piecework"
> Susan Petrey's "Varkela" stories
>
> Stinkers (bad fiction with great hooks):
> Piers Anthony's society based around "The Game" (Apprentice Adept
> series)
> Farmer's "Riverworld" effluvia
> Brin's "Uplift" universe and Dickson's _Wolfling_[1]
> _Queen of the Damned_
> etc.
>
> Additions and/or corrections?
>
> David Tate
I have to ask _which_ Uplift books. The first two, _Sundiver_ and
_Startide Rising_ were excellent. Brin took his story hooks and ran
with them, painting an interesting and complex galactic society, and
managing to produce an unusual society and unusual interactions with
the Terragens.
The third book, _The Uplift War_, is not as good, but still OK to
fair, good in spots. (Though every time I re-read it, the song
"Tarzan Boy" goes through my head!) I really liked the character of
Fiben, and Brin's Gubru aliens were creative and interesting. Their
method of government had a definite note of alienness about it.
Later, he came out with the second Uplift trilogy, which is...I'll be
charitable and call it boring. It's continuity doesn't match the
first trilogy, his entire viewpoint on the universe he created is
different, the characters are utterly unlike themselves from the
previous trilogy, the 'resolution' of the story is utterly
nonsensical, and he can't seem to resist planting thinly disguised
versions of his raving screeds against all religion and tradition on
every other page or so. Then, just to compound the offense, he went
back and re-wrote some of his earlier work to make it (sort of)
compatible with the later works. He also re-wrote perfect adequate
descriptive sentences for no apparent reason.
Shermanlee
J.B. Moreno
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
> JN> Oh, I'm sure. I am absolutely convinced.
> > Which isn't to say I might not be wrong.
>
> What strikes you as terrible about the notion? My understanding
> of orbital mechanics no doubt leaves a lot to be desired (like,
> nearly everything), but I tend to think it would be possible
> to recycle reaction mass. Consider a ship as a mass driver.
> (This doesn't really work if you're using jets.) It throws
> chunks of whatever out the back so it can go forward. But it
Hmn, interesting -- this raises the image of the "mass" being a
spherical ball and the ships being tubular: the ship is aligned so as to
have the mass enter at the top and then accelerated out along the length
of the ship, speeding both the mass and the ship on their way...
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Nancy Lebovitz
Johnny1A <sherm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>The stories in SF about one-gender human worlds never did make any
>sense to me (either gender), however, genetically or socially. I
>still don't see what sort of natural selection would ever produce a
>form of human in which one sex is physically identical to Earth's
>version, and the other so bizarrely different.
A lot of one-gender human worlds in sf (Whileaway, "The Crime and
the Glory of Commander Suzdal", _Ammonite_, Athos) are the results of
one gender being absent + enough tech to reproduce anyway.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
100 new slogans! 12/01
Joe Bernstein
> >>In article <iY3Z7.1659$0s5.1043014@news20>, Timothy A. McDaniel
> >><tm...@jump.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> (Nice twist on the old cliche of a lone
> >>> male astronaut coming (!) upon a planet of women and converting them
> >>> all to heterosexuality.)
> Wasn't there some bit in The Odyessy about an island like that?
> or somewhere in Greek or Roman mythology.
The island of Lemnos.
The story as I remember it goes that the men of Lemnos were away doing
the usual raiding thing and wiped out some other settlement and took
all their women captive. But the women were prettier than the Lemnos
ones, or some such, so they took 'em all home as concubines, rather
than the usual approach of selling them on the slave market. The
women of Lemnos did not approve of this arrangement and proceeded to
do a mass slaughter one night.
After this, the <Argo> is sailing along when it gets an invitation
from Lemnos. Events, as you say, ensue. The idea is not that the
women of Lemnos want permanent mates, just that they want children so
there'll be a next generation. Jason, with his usual inexplicable
success with dangerous women, knocks up the leader of the mass
slaugher, Hypsipyle. All of the men do sail on again.
This story is certainly in Apollonius's version of the <Argonautica>,
of which there are now a bunch of translations, and I *think* it's in
Valerius Flaccus's (of which there are not now a bunch of
translations; try the Loeb Classics version if you must). I don't
know whether it's in the so-called Orphic <Argonautica>, of which I've
never seen a translation. It's also told in retrospect by Hypsipyle,
now an impoverished old woman, in Statius's <Thebaid> (which I
recommend in general anyway, as 1- the first work I know of to operate
like modern fantasy, and 2- rather more fantastical than ancient epic
usually was anyway, to anyone who can take an extremely grim long
poem; translated by A. D. Melville for Oxford). I don't know where
else it might be told and in particular don't know whether it is, like
so many Greek stories, glancingly alluded to in Homer.
I don't know of any earlier versions, so as stories go, it's pretty
hoary, but probably not at the outer limit.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com
by courtesy of The Stars Our Destination bookstore, Evanston, IL
<http://www.sfbooks.com/> (but I don't speak for the store)
my own website: <http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/>
Joe Bernstein
> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:dbc8daca.0201...@posting.google.com...
> > Unsnipped thus far because I didn't want to misrepresent you, but I
> > *really* think you're underselling your argument. I didn't like the
> > post you were answering, but I also didn't like the way you answered
> > it.
>
> Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
I agree that my post was several times intemperate; I owe you an
apology.
I spend a lot of my time doing historical research (although I'm not,
in fact, a trained historian). Much of what I've been doing the past
several weeks is in fact a chronology of Usenet, and a lot of what
I've been finding, there as elsewhere but (because the topic is new)
more so, is that earlier historians got things wrong, often in
stereotyping ways. (An example: Gene Spafford is well-known to lots
of people as a Founding Father of Usenet, originator of a great many
important things. He was certainly extremely important, but I'm
finding, over and over, that things he's identified with had prior
originators who have been forgotten, because stereotypically, by the
time people were writing historically about Usenet at all, Gene
Spafford had been there forever doing so many things...) Of course,
it's also true that non-historians routinely get things wrong in
stereotyping ways.
So I'm a bit more sensitive, especially right now, to
pseudo-historical stereotypes, than I might otherwise be. And the
idea that most SF until the fairly recent past was about gadgets is an
extremely stereotypical one in some people's ideas about the history
of SF, and has been for, oh, decades; it's been very common for people
to assume that the gadget stories they read and remembered as kids
were all that was out there, in contrast to the wider range of stuff
that catches their adult attention.
Your post came off as so reasonable and mature - in sharp contrast to
the one you were answering - that I found your repeating this
stereotype insidious, and forgot that the context wasn't even a
historically-oriented Usenet discussion, let alone an actual history.
And I wasn't feeling particularly like restraining myself, as I should
have.
I'm sorry.
> > Um. Short history lesson here; I wasn't there, and corrections
> > welcomed, but this is anyway the way I've heard things were. John W.
> > Campbell was the editor of a magazine called <Astounding>, from the
> > late 1930s until sometime in the early 1960s.
Just wanted to take the chance to note that this was *not* an error.
John W. Campbell did not edit a magazine called <Astounding> after the
early 1960s, he edited a magazine called <Analog> after the early
1960s. Maybe if I'd noted when he died it would have made this
clearer, and it is my fault that I didn't reach for the SFE and get
the actual name-change dated better, but I wasn't being careless.
> > And, um, maybe I'm on thin ice here, but I had the *distinct*
> > impression that the number one venue for publishing gadgetry stories
> > in the last forty years had been, um, <Analog>.
> >
> > Whereas the stereotypical Leading Magazine of the 1950s was the
> > *social theories* hangout, <Galaxy>.
>
> OK. Was/is written SF defined by magazine content?
Um, depends on how you define "written SF".
Relatively little "within-genre" science fiction was, according to
what I've read - again, I wasn't there - published in the US in the
1950s without first being published in magazines (at least excerpted
there). I have the impression that outside-the-genre SF was
*extremely* uncommon in the US at that time, but am even less secure
in stating that. (Before the 1950s, within-genre SF was almost
*wholly* magazine-published, and outside-the-genre SF was more common
within magazines, but not, I think, elsewhere. The distinction was
which magazines, mostly.)
Science fiction in Britain had been in books as well as magazines from
getgo, it had never given books up, and as I understand this the
disaster novels of the 1950s were sort of the transition in which the
British sf book tradition finally sort of married the US sf magazine
tradition, sort of.
Unfortunately, the disaster novels get us right back to social
theories, so I'd say my take on the 1950s stands regardless. But I
could, as noted before, be wrong. I should note anyway that the 1950s
were when a *lot* of older stuff first appeared in book form, which is
actually some justification for your statement: not that the older
gadget-stories or their moral equivalents should in fact be attributed
to the 1950s, but it's easy to just look at the copyright date on the
revised-for-book-form version and think so.
Digression: One thing I was trying to convey but couldn't fit within
the structure of the post as I posted it is that a certain kind of
gadget-story is a New Thing, something that is much *more* prominent
in the genre than it was say forty years ago. It's not really fair to
stereotype hard sf as being gadget-stories, but it is fair to say that
many gadget stories are hard sf, these days, and hard sf is one of the
branches of sf that developed after the 1950s, to some extent in
response to the more-famous developments (the "artsy" New Wave,
feminist sf, cyberpunk [1]) that I did mention. There is SF of the
1990s that is *much* harder than anything published in the 1920s or
1930s, let alone the 1950s. And it seems to me that the whole
"techno-thriller" sub-genre is nothing *but* gadget stories, and has
developed basically since oh, maybe the mid-1970s?
(One could argue that this sub-genre isn't really sf, and I'm not sure
what exactly I'd answer, but to judge from how many techno-thrillers
we got in used at the bookstore when I worked there, a lot of sf
readers think they're sf...)
This was my point in bringing up <Analog> - many of whose worse
stories were nothing but gadget-stories, last time I checked - but the
existence of the techno-thriller market category is a sign that the
trend extends well beyond the magazines.
> > My understanding of the
> > one-word-per-decade way-oversimplified history of SF, in fact, would
> > be something like this:
> >
> > 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
> > gadgets Campbell social artsy feminist cyberpunk
The correction 1920s "gadgets", 1930s (as another poster suggested)
"adventure" would, in fact, be a more accurate description of the
Stereotyped History of Science Fiction.
Joe Bernstein
[1] Early cyberpunk writers and others explicitly attributed some of
cyberpunk's ancestry to hard sf, but hard sf has also changed in
response to cyberpunk; just noting this to forestall more
corrections...
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com
by courtesy of The Stars Our Destination bookstore, Evanston, IL
<http://www.sfbooks.com/> - but I don't speak for the bookstore
David Tate
> > Stinkers (bad fiction with great hooks):
[...]
> > Brin's "Uplift" universe and Dickson's _Wolfling_[1]
Wow, thanks for reminding me that I forgot my footnote earlier. See
below.
> I have to ask _which_ Uplift books. The first two, _Sundiver_ and
> _Startide Rising_ were excellent. Brin took his story hooks and ran
> with them, painting an interesting and complex galactic society, and
> managing to produce an unusual society and unusual interactions with
> the Terragens.
As always, mileage varies. _Sundiver_ was reasonably self-contained,
but only by ignoring 90% of the interesting part of the 'hook'. And
it was not a particularly strong effort, IMO.
_Startide Rising_ is far better-written, but not self-contained --
it's only the opening chapters of a longer story, and raises far more
questions than it answers. Brin was still elaborating on the hook.
> The third book, _The Uplift War_, is not as good, but still OK to
> fair, good in spots. (Though every time I re-read it, the song
> "Tarzan Boy" goes through my head!) I really liked the character of
> Fiben, and Brin's Gubru aliens were creative and interesting. Their
> method of government had a definite note of alienness about it.
I enjoyed _TUW_ quite a bit, actually, but again it's not a
self-contained work. It's a continuation of a larger story begun in
the first 2 novels, and doesn't really manage to resolve any of the
larger issues. If we were to stop there, it would be rather like
ending _The Lord of the Rings_ after the battle at Minas Tirith...
> Later, he came out with the second Uplift trilogy, which is...I'll be
> charitable and call it boring. It's continuity doesn't match the
> first trilogy, his entire viewpoint on the universe he created is
> different, the characters are utterly unlike themselves from the
> previous trilogy, the 'resolution' of the story is utterly
> nonsensical, and he can't seem to resist planting thinly disguised
> versions of his raving screeds against all religion and tradition on
> every other page or so.
Just so. To me, this makes "the Uplift story" as a whole an example
of a great hook turned into a bad book. It has good bits, but sadly
fails to fulfil its promise. I don't think Brin is a bad writer --
some of his short works are pure genius -- but I do think he has
failed miserably at whatever he was trying to achieve with the 6-book
sequence.
David Tate
[1] My question here is whether this particular hook is really Brin's
idea, or a rather flagrant ripoff of Gordon Dickson. Dickson
published _Wolfling_ in 1969. It's a terrible book, but it introduces
all the basic ideas of uplift, client and sponsor species, humans as a
'wolfling' species being manipulated for gain by senior species, etc.
I don't think anyone would argue much against the notion that
_Wolfling_ is an example of squandering a great hook.
Nancy Lebovitz
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>Relatively little "within-genre" science fiction was, according to
>what I've read - again, I wasn't there - published in the US in the
>1950s without first being published in magazines (at least excerpted
>there). I have the impression that outside-the-genre SF was
>*extremely* uncommon in the US at that time, but am even less secure
>in stating that. (Before the 1950s, within-genre SF was almost
The major early non-genre US sf writer I can think of was Thorne
Smith, and (thank you, Google) and he was writing in the 20's and
dead by 1934.
Who are other early major non-genre sf writers from the US? Or elsewhere?
>*wholly* magazine-published, and outside-the-genre SF was more common
>within magazines, but not, I think, elsewhere. The distinction was
>which magazines, mostly.)
>
>Digression: One thing I was trying to convey but couldn't fit within
>the structure of the post as I posted it is that a certain kind of
>gadget-story is a New Thing, something that is much *more* prominent
When I think about it, I don't remember all that much gadget sf from
any period. Is that just a matter of taste, or am I forgetting
major stuff?
>in the genre than it was say forty years ago. It's not really fair to
>stereotype hard sf as being gadget-stories, but it is fair to say that
>many gadget stories are hard sf, these days, and hard sf is one of the
>branches of sf that developed after the 1950s, to some extent in
>response to the more-famous developments (the "artsy" New Wave,
>feminist sf, cyberpunk [1]) that I did mention. There is SF of the
>1990s that is *much* harder than anything published in the 1920s or
>1930s, let alone the 1950s. And it seems to me that the whole
>"techno-thriller" sub-genre is nothing *but* gadget stories, and has
>developed basically since oh, maybe the mid-1970s?
>
>(One could argue that this sub-genre isn't really sf, and I'm not sure
I'd argue that myself: I seem to define sf by a strangeness standard,
and just adding one device (even if it's a really cool weapon) doesn't
qualify.
>what exactly I'd answer, but to judge from how many techno-thrillers
>we got in used at the bookstore when I worked there, a lot of sf
>readers think they're sf...)
>
>This was my point in bringing up <Analog> - many of whose worse
>stories were nothing but gadget-stories, last time I checked - but the
>existence of the techno-thriller market category is a sign that the
>trend extends well beyond the magazines.
>
>> > My understanding of the
>> > one-word-per-decade way-oversimplified history of SF, in fact, would
>> > be something like this:
>> >
>> > 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
>> > gadgets Campbell social artsy feminist cyberpunk
>
>The correction 1920s "gadgets", 1930s (as another poster suggested)
>"adventure" would, in fact, be a more accurate description of the
>Stereotyped History of Science Fiction.
>
>Joe Bernstein
>
>[1] Early cyberpunk writers and others explicitly attributed some of
>cyberpunk's ancestry to hard sf, but hard sf has also changed in
>response to cyberpunk; just noting this to forestall more
>corrections...
What do we nominate for the 90's? My tentative take is military--
afaik, milsf didn't really kick in till the 90's or perhaps late
80's, and there hasn't been any other development to compete with
it.
Nancy Lebovitz
David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>
>Just so. To me, this makes "the Uplift story" as a whole an example
>of a great hook turned into a bad book. It has good bits, but sadly
>fails to fulfil its promise. I don't think Brin is a bad writer --
>some of his short works are pure genius -- but I do think he has
>failed miserably at whatever he was trying to achieve with the 6-book
>sequence.
>
>idea, or a rather flagrant ripoff of Gordon Dickson. Dickson
>published _Wolfling_ in 1969. It's a terrible book, but it introduces
>all the basic ideas of uplift, client and sponsor species, humans as a
>'wolfling' species being manipulated for gain by senior species, etc.
>
the sense of tremendous space and time.
>I don't think anyone would argue much against the notion that
>_Wolfling_ is an example of squandering a great hook.
I would. (Welcome to usenet.) I have _Wolfling_ filed as good
pulp that's interestingly weird about race. I'm not sure how
the premise could have been better handled, but I'm interested
in your ideas on the subject.
James Nicoll
Jorj Strumolo <jo...@yifan.net> wrote:
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>JN> Oh, I'm sure. I am absolutely convinced.
> > Which isn't to say I might not be wrong.
>
> What strikes you as terrible about the notion?
My memory is that the ship expelling the mass was also the
ship retrieving it, which raises questions about when Newton's Laws
were repealed.