September 2011 Reading

Didn't see that any had started a thread for this month so I thought I'd take the liberty. :)

Finished H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau last night, which I actually thought was a pretty amazing little novel. Reminded me a bit of Frankenstein, although Wells' prose style is not as baroque as what I recall of Mary Shelley's.

Also started on Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye. We'll see how that one goes.

I'm reading The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman. It's quite a strange book so far-what with its talking polar bear character- I can't help but think of the armoured bears from His Dark Materials. So far it's looking quite intriguing, but I haven't been really hooked in yet....

For me, The Child Garden is one of the pinnacles of the SF field. I hope you'll enjoy it more as you read on.

#1 I love Wells' novels and short stories. His writing explores concepts that are often political or sociological and I keep finding things that are as applicable today as they were when he wrote them.

#2 & #3

I tried to read The Child Garden many moons ago having had a recommendation from someone who had the same view as anglemark. I abandoned it but with the intention of getting back to it. Like HanGerg I didn't get "really hooked in", but I will give it another chance.

>4 pgmcc:

You wrote: "I keep finding things that are as applicable today as they were when he wrote them."

If not more so. An example from MOREAU would be the morality of mankind's forcibly manipulating the make-up non-human creatures, an issue we deal with more each day in this age of genetic modification.

#5

When I was reading The Sleeper Awakes there was a G8 or a G9 or a Gwhatever summit taking place and there were protests and riots ongoing with people complaining about the evils of globalisation. If they had read The Sleeper Awakes they would have found their arguments articulated much better than they had been managing to do.

I am just finishing Friday by Robert Heinlein...I read this when it first came out in the early 1980's. Now about 30 years later it reads like a new book to me. Of course it is in Heinlien's T&A era which was a slide for me in writing style but I like this book for its surprising setting of Winnipeg, Manitoba and surroundings for much of the book. This is where I was born and to see these references and correct ones at that (eg. a tube terminal at the Perimeter/McPhillips would be on the edge of the city, though it would have been quite a hike from Stonewall, Manitoba to reach it) , so he has done research on the city...not just chose a name at random....I wonder at the reason for this setting.

My next book will be The Eagle and the Wolves by Simon Scarrow. If you have followed my reviews of the first three in his Roman series, you will note that I find his writing is getting better with each successive book. I almost dropped the series after the first book but improvement leads me on. I still hate his use of modern British slang in conversations but that seems toned down a bit lately.

7 Lynxear: I enjoyed Friday. I didn't know that RHA was ever not in his T&A period.

Reading: Halfway through The Wreck of The River of Stars. The author was definitely hot when he wrote this one. Pretty much finely crafted throughout. So far only the occasional drop-out or re-write/edit here spots.

Audio: Still enjoying SF anthologies.

I too admire The Island of Doctor Moreau . On the way to and from the Adirondacks I pass a state park called Moreau State Park, and sometimes wonder if it's filled with beast men, and the park superintendant is a mad surgeon. :-)

8

Well he got worse (or better depending on your POV) with time LOL

#7 Lynxear I enjoyed Friday too. What I liked about it was his exploration of genetic engineering. I was also very interested that he was really prdicting the mobile phone and the prolific use of the Internet in people's homes at a time when ti was still very limited and was still basically a research tool for colleges and the military.

I was disappointed with the ending. I felt the very strong female character faded away and the story had a "fizzle out" ending.

I'm currently reading Dogland by Will Shetterly (OK so it is fantasy).

But I do have Final Days lined up for a read soon.

Reading Field of Dishonor as I continue down the Honor Harrington path...

Heinlein predicted implanted moble phones in The Puppet Masters.

As for the 'fizzle out' ending of Friday, that is how I feel about all of his later works that I have read.

Just started Venus on the Half-Shell.

Just finished Slow River, which was terrific. It was gripping both plot-wise and in terms of character growth. Some of the reviews say they found the use of three different narrative strands jarring and hard to follow - not a problem I had. Next up is Left hand of darkness.

>15 paradoxosalpha:

Great book. Philip Jose Farmer (er, Kilgore Trout, I mean) was an amazing writer. :D

The City Trilogy by Taiwanese author Chang Hsi-Kuo. Seems promising.

14

I cannot count the number of novels that I have read that lack a strong ending. It often seems that an author after building up a great story gets bored with it and wants to end the book as quickly as possible. It was a major reason for me avoiding John Grisham novels now...great beginnings....disappointing conclusions.

#19 Lynx I would like to point out a great earlier thread here on LT. The topic " SF's Hall of Infamy" or some such at:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/46042#t

Great comments all through the thread especially the opening remarks and post#95 might shed some light on your observation that an author : "wants to end the book as quickly as possible"

#20 DugsBooks Thanks for posting that link. #95 is very funny.

One literary book I enjoyed up until near the end was The Olive Readers. The story was very literary and a very pleasant read. Then, out of the blue, there was a mad dash to find a resolution that involved a science fiction ending that had all the hallmarks of someone who had never read a science fiction novel in her life.

I understand from various sources that the author had been writing this book for years and then the publisher insisted on an end date and hence...

There are some of my favourite authors whom I believe come up with great ideas and then either haven't a clue how to end the work or are just not very convincing with their endings. Two come to mind.

Ted Chiang has great ideas in his stories, but in some of them, "Understand" being an example, he just doesn't know what to do with it once he's set it up. Of course, some of his stories are absolutely brilliant (for example, "Hells is the absence of God", "Division by Zero", "Seventy-two Letters") and the ideas he builds into all his stories make it worth reading his work.

Neal Stephenson has trouble with endings. I really like the books of his that I've read and have pre-ordered his new one, but he does provide fairly unsatisfactory endings. Snow Crash is a great book, but the ending is a bit of a fizzle-out. The book was short and the fizzle-out can be excused, but Cryptonomicon and Anathem, while great reads with lots of fantastic information, historical, tecnological, and philosophical, are huge books with rather inconsequential endings.

On the other hand, there is a great sense of fulfilment when one finishes reading a book that has a well balanced ending. My most recent example of that is The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. When I finished that novel I felt I had just had a great time and that my appetite had be sated nicely for the moment. It also left me anticipating with pleasure another novel from the same pen, or should I say keyboard, and last night I started Brasyl.

> 21

Yeah, McDonald knows how to write a good conclusion. He's got, like what? six of them in Desolation Road.

#22 He's got, like what? six of them in Desolation Road.

paradoxosalpha, you have to realise that in Ireland, if you ask someone, "Where will this road take me?" you are likely to get the answer, "Well this road will take you just about anywhere." With a title like Desolation Road you are lucky you only got six destinations. :-)

>20 DugsBooks:

Thanks for that link also...it was a great read and very funny in spots. I thought they were a little tough on Asimov though. I like a lot of his writing, it can be dry in parts I admit but not everything has stir the blood. He made an enormous contribution to Sci-fi by putting human face/emotions into robots and his "three laws" set the stage for many a novel. I am sure that C-3PO was patterned a bit after R. Daneel Olivaw and how can you call the patter between Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw in Naked Sun as being boring...I think Hollywood is missing out on a great "buddy" movie with a sleazy Columbo PI and a dead pan dudley-do-right android investigation team along the lines of Elijah/Daneel.

What I also like in Asomov's writing is that a lot of his writing, especially short stories, is set 50 years from the time of writing which makes it about now. I find it amazing how close to the truth many of his predictions are.

To me its fairly easy to come up with an idea. but figuring out the ending is what keeps me from being a writer. this is especially true for big mystery plots. At least I can take some comfort from the example LOST and know IM not the only one.

I found Up Jim River to be a fun second-sitting of The January Dancer. Both are unique in terms of their style, a sort of 'new' old style space opera. Next up is Alastair Reynold's Terminal World.

I liked Up Jim River. Now reading the author's The Wreck of the River of Stars, so far (3/4 thru) and its pretty darn good

Finished Hellhole tonight. Pretty much the same old Brian Herbert / Kevin J Anderson novel I've come to expect from Saga of the Seven Suns and the Dune followups.

28
Yah. I had to bail on The Saga of Seven suns after book 5. I still think about that poor woman stranded on the southern continent though and I quit Dune soon after Dune Messiah which I actually rather liked.

Here's a totally OT question:

It seems like SF, new SF that is, comes out in bursts, especially in spring and fall. Is this accurate? Seems a while since anything I like has come out.

#randalhoctor Many of the authors I know work to a spring or fall launch date; spring to catch the summer holiday readers, and fall to catch the people buying books for the long winter nights and the Christmas shoppers.

Next I'm gonna read From the Earth to the moon by Jules Verne, the father of SF!

>32 sf_addict:

I like that idea...I have visited Jules Verne's house in Amiens, France. It is a museum now and filled with stuff on his life. In the Musee de Picardie, in Amiens there was a fantastic exhibition of artwork from his works, a few years ago. But you know...other than comic books in my youth I have never sat down and read his books. I think I will join you in a bit and read all of his works...HG Wells as well....I have read War of the Worlds in the past and it still holds up today.

sf_addict, are you planning on reading it in French or English? If English what translation are you going to use? The North American Jules Verne Society (I never heard of them before) has a pages on English translations for many of Verne's works, including one for From the Earth to the Moon.

#32 sf_addict

I really enjoyed From the Earth to the Moon.

When reading it I spotted a mistake in the kenematics he used. At the time I thought it was simply the stage of understanding at the time the book was written. However, at a WorldCon panel in Glasgow some years ago, there was a discussion about Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. One of the panelists was a French man and he said he hated Verne. He went on to tell that his hatred dated back to his school days when his science teacher had his class read From the Earth to the Moon with the objective of finding the mistake in the kinematics.

The mistake didn't take away from my pleasure of the book.

Reading Roadside Picnic by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky (thanks to a link by square_25, who is working on getting his/her new translation published). So far it reminds me of Catch-22 crossed with Flashmen.

Not to butt in on this discussion... but the new translation of Roadside Picnic will in fact by published in North America by Chicago Review Press in April 2012. The new cover is here: http://www.math.utexas.edu/users/olenab/RoadsidePicnicCover.html

Started on Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. I've seen nothing but high praise for this book over the years. In fact, huge praise, and it has an exceptionally high rating on LT. I'm 60 some pages in and rather underwhelmed. It jumps around a lot in near future time between about 2015-2020 and 2060. It was written about 15 years ago. I can barely distinguish the difference from 1996 to 2019 to 2060. Nearly everyone and thing talks, sounds and feels like 1995. I'm assuming for now that the story will kick in when we get to the extraplanetary stuff.

I debated bailing on it, but I am interested enough for the moment to keep going.

#38

A number of people I know didn't like The Sparrow, it is just that you don't see many people panning it. Some people don't like it because the book relies on people acting unrealistically, and that jars with the tone and feel of the world as portrayed in the book.

FWIW the first 100 pages or so were "de-science-fictionised" by Russell so as not to induce future shock in non-genre readers.

#39 Thanks Andyl. I purposefully avoided reading a bunch of reviews and background on this because I didn't want to spoil the party for myself. You aren't kidding about the absence of science fictional elements in the book so far. Other than a mention of what seems to be a scarcity of wood and tablet computers, 2060 is like 1995. They're apparently still driving bread trucks in Vatican City in 2060 however.

Randal, I gave up on book 5 too when the series first came out and then this year I forced myself to finish the series. Believe me you didn't miss anything. I'm tempted to go back and read the whole Dune series (Frank's run and Brian/Kevin). I rewatched the Sci-Fi Dune and Children of Dune miniseries and that got me interested again.

Picked up The Lost King and started reading it today. I have that whole series (Star of The Guardians) and the spin-off Mag Force 7 laying around and haven't read them in at least 10 years. Margaret Weis' Stars Wars knock off basically.

Also if anyone is looking for a good near-future virtual world series I *highly* recommend Tad Williams Otherland series. I ran across them in a box the other day and realized I hadn't read them in at least 5 years. One of my favorite series of all time I ran across by accident in the library one day. I'm looking forward to setting some time aside to read those for the third time.

Frank Herbert's Dune novels are certainly worth reading, and I'd argue they improved in quality as the series progressed. Though God Emperor of Dune is a bit of a lump in the middle and something of an acquired taste. The KJA/BH McDune novels, otoh, should be avoided at all costs.

I learnt today that KJA's latest dumping on genre is his fictionalisation of the life of Captain Nemo. And he made him French. Gah. The man is a blight on fiction.

Ian, even worse it looks like its a reissue. I'm fairly certain if it didn't do well the first time around there's no need to bring it back.

#41 by @Beezlebug> I think my enjoyment of the Otherland books would have been immensely increased had a good editor went in and carved off about half the volume. There was just so much extraneous stuff in there. At some point I was screaming inside my head, "I don't need to have another two hundred pages on yet another cool simulation you thought of that the characters will just be passing through!" Plus I felt the ending was a little bit jarring with the harder science fiction feel of the series.

Just on vacation, which means throwaway paperback time. I don't like MMPB so I read them on vacation and abandon them in vacation homes for future readers, or give them away if I end up bringing them home. I'm almost through Ender's Shadow. Pretty good vacation read.

While on vacation, I bought (nice) copies of Consider Phlebas and The Chrysalids. Excited. My pile of TBR science fiction grows and grows.

#44 - Yes, thats very true. It did feel like a lot of times he was throwing in worlds just for the sake of doing it. Almost like he was sitting next to his bookshelf of books and DVDs picking things at random.

Currently reading Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (trying to get caught up on Miles)...

Finished Left hand of darkness which I enjoyed, though I didn't find the treatment of gender as notable as the politics and the comparison of the two different societies Ai visits. I'll have to reread The dispossessed some time soon.

Also finished Mission child by Maureen McHugh, which was very good, although I did put it aside for several weeks while I read other things.

#42 A good example of how different people's tastes are. I thought the first two Dune novels were the best, and steadily went downhill from there. But none were outright bad.

I'm trying to find time to reread The Man in the High Castle and Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.

I am reading the Radix Tetrad. I want to like it more because it's full of really interesting ideas but I can't say I'm too impressed with the first book so far.

#49, The link to "Rainbow's end" goes to another authors book. I liked the stuff of vinge's I have read in the past.

I found that Rainbows End (no apostrophe makes the touchstone figure it out) was a much less interesting novel than the other two I'd read by him, The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. When it came down to it, I felt the plot was a bit too mundane. And as a programmer, I felt some of the window dressing was a bit forced.

Thanks for the heads up about the apostrophe. I like Vinge a lot, though he's variable, just like any author. I got acquainted with him with True Names. I still have an old copy.

For the Vinge fans, the A Fire Upon the Deep sequel Children Of The Sky comes out in October. I'm eagerly waiting for that one.

Reading:
Finished The Wreck of the River of Stars. Found it to be very good (4/5). Setting was interesting and unique. Characters were nicely developed. The most precious thing about it was the writing style. This was well crafted.

Beginning Against Gravity. Any feedback on this one guys?

Audio: Still kicking around anthology-land. Listened to Galactic North last night. I really like short stories and novellas.

Finally finished Al Reynolds' Redemption Ark. I was amazed that he managed to employ Doc Smith gizmos (inertia-reducing fields) in his 'scientifically-plausible' future society. Lot of characters that disappeared before 'Absolution gap', so I suppose it was true that you don't have to read them in their proper order. Next up will be Bill Gibson's Idoru.

Yeah inertia dampeners would be one hell of a trick. Wouldn't it?

Just finished Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, and now it's on the Iain Banks' Surface Detail.

I just finished and reviewed Venus on the Half-Shell.

59: paradoxosalpha Thanks. I've got that on my audio to read shelf.

On the audio front: more SF anthologies (2000 Best of)

Reading front: Just in from ILL/Hold VALIS and The Demolished Man. Will probably read the later first.

Barely started Cryptonomicon. Hope I can get through it fast enough.

Reading Honor Among Enemies by David Weber

Just finished Ender's Shadow (in time for negative Orson Scott Card news) and am now on to The Chrysalids, which is excellent so far. I read about half in the first day.

An Orson link, in case you missed it: http://io9.com/5838157/orson-scott-cards-hamlet-not-as-good-as-shakespeares-vers...

A bit off topic but I just took up astronomy and this is my first photo of the night sky with my 5mb digital camera with a built in telephoto lens. I wanted to share it with you folks.  My hand was shaking a bit while focusing so there may be blurry parts.  Click
this link for a larger photo.  ;-)

Yea! Dug, you got a bit of blurr and I think you might have a bit of dust on the lens.

;-)

Totally new to the sci-fi genre but just finished Ubik. Thinking another Philip K. Dick is in order, or Ringworld? Someone recommended, but I'm not sure. Kind of using this list as a "guide" in addition to comments here: http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-science-fiction-novels-of-al...

Oh also, someone mentioned Geoff Ryman? Is The Child Garden the best to start?

The Child Garden is an excellent place to start.

#64 You had me going for a sec there :-) One hell of a telephoto lens and a lengthy drive to get a back-lit shot of Saturn, huh?

Yeah. APOD rocks. I really like multi-wavelength astronomy too. False color composite images where you have far- IR, near-IR, visible, UV, X-ray and gamma-ray are just the coolest thing since sliced bread. So much more info than that shown by a single band pass.

Have you seen the Huygens images of Titan?

I finished Roadside Picnic by the Brothers Strugatsky and Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer.

The former was an entertaining read, as I mentioned in #36. But it had another level to it as well, a commentary on humanity and aliens.

It was fun to read the latter and compare it to the TV show. I liked the show, but of course the novel was better. It was much more cohesive and was entirely missing the more "dramatic" elements inserted into the TV show (hint: there was no FBI agent plot in the book). In fact, it really only shares one and a half characters with the book (the other half is the drastic transmogrification of Theodosis Procopides into Simon Campos and Demetri Noh).

#69 I hadn't checked out the Huygens images before. I just watched the composite landing video. Fascinating.

By the way, the talk of the methane and water ice rocks is rubbish. I think they're eggs.

APOD is great. I have it feed into my LiveJournal and have used many of their images for my computer wallpaper.

I've been reading The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction, an excellent anthology edited by Asimov, which I picked up at a local flea market last weekend.

I'm a quarter of the way into The Demolished Man a book by Alfred Bester. I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I had enjoyed The Stars My Destination. Seems like a crime drama pretty much after you accept a world riddled with telepaths. Also, it has some of that RAH sexism. That doesn't bother me too much, in a tongue in cheek way, but it does seriously date the piece. If I bail out, I'll read VALIS which I took in on audio several years ago.

#72 ChrisSlavens That is a great title for an anthology.

#71 pgmcc Eggs? Nah. Titan looks like a vacation spot in the Alps...on acid. A hydrocarbon lake with snow glazed mountains in the background. My passion for the exploration of Mars has faded in favor of Titan. The need to send a few rovers and UAVs ASAP.

#75 Randal, did you never watch Aliens, man?

Be afraid! Be very afraid!

A Planet Made of Diamond, recent NASA article

Summary: Astronomers think they have found a once-massive star that has been transformed into a small planet made of diamond in our Milky Way. The discovery sheds new light on the diversity of planets and how they can form.

This has to show up in a SF book before long.

#76 pgmcc: Some of my best friends are aliens. So I would not be nonplussed to encounter some on Titan. Disappointed if we didn't. I can imagine an alien on Titan peering into our rover's camera and then tossing it into its rubbish cart. ;-)

I dunno, Titan might have a lot of rocks the right size for throwing but if
you ever fell down you would never get the brown mud off your jeans.!

Just finished Blood Music by Greg Bear which was...okay. it definitely falls the category of "i didn't expect *that* to happen"

started zoo city which is moving along at a good pace so far

#73 I think The Stars My Destination is a great novel, but I hate The Demolished Man.

Well, just finished The Demolished Man. It was...err...pretty gosh darn awful. As if the trite psychobabble and existentialism weren't bad enough, the sexuality was at times very disturbing. And not the fun kind of disturbing but the sick kind. I'll try Alfred Bester again because I liked The Stars My Destination. (2/5)

#63 In case you're interested, here's what OSC has to say about it: http://hatrack.com/osc_responds_halmets_father.html

#77 Aurthur C. Clarke's 2061 is about a giant, though not quite planet-sized diamond.

He doesn't address the accusations, does he? He just claims they're not true.

>82 Valleyguy: Thanks for posting that link. It's good to see both sides of the story, although OSC sounds a mite defensive.

Finished Flashback. Good "locked room" mystery in a vivdly-drawn but bleak setting. Yes, the political overtones are a bit heavy, but not enough to derail the flow of the story, IMHO.

#83 Very true. Though he has been accused of a lot in his writing career and much of it probably isn't true. He claims there are no gay characters in Hamlet's Father, the reviewer says there are three who turned gay because they were molested. Didn't sound like a particularly objective review to me.

Just started A Fire Upon the Deep. Trying to wrap my brain around the aliens.

I'm trying to finish Anathem before Stephenson's next book arrives. I love it, but the book is so huge that I can't take it to work (where I do most of my reading) and so it's taken me about 2 years to get 2/3 of the way through.

#88

The next book Reamde has arrived here and it is another 1000 page brick.

>89 andyl:: My copy is en route from amazon. Getting it home from work will be fun, but at least I'll be able to use it to fight off any muggers!

#89 & 90
I got Reamde last week and my son has taken it to present to me at Christmas as his present to me.

I enjoyed the monastic approach to secular science in Anathem.

>91 pgmcc:: Yes, I love the dynamics of life in the concent, and how that mindset stays with Raz even once he leaves. I'm just up to where he arrives at Tredeghar. If anyone had predicted that I would enjoy a book so steeped in maths, I would never have believed them.

Finished up Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff in a day or so of reading. Moving on to Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh. This one will probably take more than a day or so. I'd thought I'd already read Cyteen, but the start's not ringing any bells.

Currently reading In Enemy Hands by David Weber as I plod to the Honor Harrington finish...

I'm reading and enjoying Brasyl by Ian McDonald. Work and other short readings are getting in the way, but it is a book I keep trying to get back to.

#94 There is no finish. It is an unending series...

I'm currently reading Jaine Fenn's latest book Bringer Of Light.

Not impressed by Alastair Reynold's Terminal World - it seems very hackneyed, with off the shelf cliches taking centre stage (e.g. the 'Skull Boys'). Moved onto his novellas Diamond dogs and Turquoise Days ( in one volume) which are much more like the real Reynolds.

About 100 pages into A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.

Dipping into the massive (1100+ pages) Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Current reading: "Blood Music" by Greg Bear (short story version). Up next: Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost".

Got about halfway through VALIS and stopped because it just seems to be rehashing the same stuff over and over. Really enjoyed the metaphysics however, and actually learned a little, as the book cite many genuine sources and concepts. Metaphysics and theology are one of my interests. Back in college some of my buddies called me Buddha 'cause I had a big belly and was prone toward metaphysical discussions whilst toasted. However, "VALIS" doesn't seem to go anywhere. I listened to its audio reading, but clearly not intently enough. Does the story go anywhere?

So, now I'm on to The World Inside or Lord of Light.

On the audio front: Still taking in anthologies.

#101 by @randalhoctor> It sort of goes somewhere. I admit to finally having to skim large portions of the text to avoid simply throwing it against the wall. But where it goes isn't necessarily all that satisfying. Try to skip ahead to the part where he meets the rock star.

Read The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Not as good as some of his other stuff. A bit meh, in fact. Not sure if it's a worthy Hugo winner, as the only other novella on the shortlist I've read is the Reynolds and it's better than that one.

Listen to The Great Wall of Mars (no touchstone) by Alastair Reynolds. Good shorty. Part of the Revelation Space universe.

Reading The World Inside. Getting in to it now.

I'm reading The Lifecycle of Software Objects right now as well.

Now onto The Enemy Stars by Poul Anderson!

Read Gravity Dreams, a new Xeelee novella by Stephen Baxter. Not his best work - far too much inelegant info-dumping.

And finally finished Red Plenty ,which I thought very good but was also somewhat mis-sold to me: it's a fictionalised account of several people's lives in the USSR from the 1930s through to 1968, and I'd understood it have an element of what-if in it - ie, what if the Soviet system had worked. But it's not like that all. It spends some time on Kruschchev's dreams and promises, but I don't recall any extrapolation from that.

Whats with all the pirate talk me hearties?
Arr

#108 by @sf_addict> http://www.librarything.com/topic/123848

Have been far too tired to make sense of Anathem over the last few days, so I had to take a break from it with some Jack Vance - Marune. Another one of his wacky societies, populated by the usual suspects, but a fun read, just what my poor brain needed.

Just started reading The January Dancer. I'm not far into it but I like the way he writes and his characters.

Just bought Pinion and Red plenty - I think I want to see how Jay Lake's clockwork world trilogy ends up first.

#109 arr thanks for that yer scurvy dog! It seems there be a permanent piratical version if this here site:

http://pir.librarything.com/

Arr

Now reading Echoes of Honor by David Weber...

#107 iansales: When are Baxter's Xeelee stories not a lot of info-dumping? I'll try it out if I can get my hands on it. I'm hungry for more Xeelee universe.

#108 sf_addict:

Probably bored techno-geeks.

#111 nhlsecord: I really enjoyed it too. Well crafted. The sequel is pretty good as well.

#115 It's available from here.

Thanks Ian.

Finished The World Inside. Initially, I didn't care much for it, but eventually it won me over. It has that cloying claustrophobic character of 1984.

Next up: Lord of Light

Audio: Still enjoying various fine anthologies whilst I drift off to sleep.

Finally finished Declare after many months of procrastination. Disappointed. Starting Thursday Next: First Among Sequels just because I picked it up yesterday for 50 cents at Big Lots. It wasn't really its turn but I was wondering what the series was like.

> 120

Based on some observed parallels in our tastes, I'm sorry to hear you didn't think much of Declare. A friend has been urging it on me. And I did like The Atrocity Archives, to which it has been compared.

Just started Moorcock's City of the Beast.

#120

You want to start the Thursday Next series at book 5? Not a particularly good idea - it is a series with continuity so one that benefits from being read in order.

Currently reading Debris for review for Interzone. Not really sure what to make of it - it reads more like fantasy than space opera, and I've yet to spot anything in it that's steampunk...

#121: if you haven't, check out the member reviews for Declare. Loved by some, but way way to slow for others, including me. Don't let this put you off On Stranger Tides or others by Powers.

#123: Indeed, the first chapter appears to be back-to-back references to prior adventures (including one, I gather, that doesn't really exist). I figure if Fforde can't figure out how to run a series for more than a book or two, I might as well find out now.

Still checking out classic SF shorts from that Prentice Hall anthology mentioned in #100. Recently read: Isaac Asimov's "Robbie" (kinda schmaltzy, and the casual sexism is pretty appalling to the modern reader (this one, anyway), but still not without its charms and wry bits of social satire) and Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" (an appropriately cosmic seedling for the whole 2001 thing). Up next: Heinlein's "The Long Watch".

@116
I quite liked it-but then I'm a fun-loving techno geek too

>126 artturnerjr: I liked "The Long Watch." One of Heinlein's better shorts.

As a matter of interest, who thought Reamde was "Read Me" when first spotting the book?

Hand up, I was one!

>129 pgmcc:

The cover I saw has it written "reaMdE" (with the caps representing boldface letters), which I quite naturally read as "read me".

>129 pgmcc:, 130: The UK cover is a bit less confusing than the US one, but I still managed to misread it! I'm guessing it's intentional, given the deliberate boldface that artturnerjr describes. (Or maybe the publisher is just sending not-so-subliminal messages to sell more copies!) Can't wait to read the book and find out, but I am not done with Anathem yet.

When I first saw REAMDE it was online and it would have been the UK cover with all the lettering the same size. I read it as Read Me before I even noticed it had been written by Stephenson.

I was wondering if the potential confusion was intentional, and I suspect the story will give the answer to that. At this point I don't want to know as I won't be reading it for a bit. All I want to know at this point is that people are enjoying it.

131 Sakerfalcon:
The main enjoyment I got from Anathem was the monastic approach to the preservation of scientific information. I also liked the idea of "The rake"; have you come across tha yet? I'm sure he was trying to make a parallel idea with Occam's Razor.

I just finished and reviewed City of the Beast. (It didn't take long!)

>133 paradoxosalpha:

Good review. I agree - entertaining but not anything trailblazing.

>132 pgmcc:

100 pages in and enjoying it, mainly due to the spot on discussions about past and future MMORPG design.

>132 pgmcc:: Yes, I think you're right about that. I too love the dynamics of life in the monastic setting, and the interactions between characters. Stephenson is great at making me feel I understand what he is talking about by introducing concepts via dialogue. He did the same in the Baroque Cycle. I'm up to the part at Tredeghar, so the end is in sight :-) (Although I will be quite sorry to leave the planet Arbre - thank goodness I have Reamde to look forward to when the time comes!)

SwampIrish, thank you for the encoraging signs.

I see we had similar views on Yellow Blue Tibia.

Sakerfalcon, I thought Stephenson was having a dig at the Science/Religion arguments by having a monastic approach to science.

Just finished Debris for review for Interzone. "File under science fiction", it says on the back. I'm not convinced...

Just finished Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (A+); I thought it was a really fine set-piece of gothic misadventure. The thing being that our protagonist is the butt of cosmic jokes, that for all his skill and drive, he often doesn't get.

>138 pgmcc:: Yes, I would not be at all surprised if he intended that. He is also taking the usual image of the scientist stuck in his/her lab, out of touch with the "real" world, a step (okay, maybe several steps) further by putting all scientists and mathematicians in a cloistered setting. Or should that be, he is taking the image to its logical conclusion? . . .

@139, Ian, one member of LT says of Debris 'a non-fiction work by the creator of Dilbert'

Gah. Wrong touchstone. Corrected.

#138
Or should that be, he is taking the image to its logical conclusion? . . .

You now have me thinking of an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" in a monastery.

Hmm! "Anathem", the serious side of "The Big Bang Theory".

We could have a pitch here!

Wading in to Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation. I think when I first heard of this some months back the word "blasphemer" popped into my mind. I loved the Fuzzy books 25-30 years or so ago and kept telling myself to re-read them, though I never have. So now I'm into Fuzzy Nation and it isn't bad, seems like a fun enough romp, and I wonder if I'll probably wish I had just re-read the original Fuzzies by books end. I honestly can't remember the Fuzzies all that well after the intervening years. Plus I think my memory got diluted and obscured by wookies. I remember when the original Star Wars movies were coming out I kept mentally ticking off source material grabs by Lucas and I think it took me two seconds to say "Fuzzies" at my first sight of an Ewok.

ETA: I must say that I am finding Fuzzy Nation to be a lot of light, fun reading.

More classic SF goodness from my big Prentice Hall anthology - just knocked off Robert A. Heinlein's "The Long Watch", Avram Davidson's "Or All The Sea With Oysters", and Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", with the PKD story being the pick of the litter. Up next: Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit".

"We Can Remember it for You Wholesale" is one of my favourite stories. I love the ending. It is so different from the film that the reader can enjoy both as separate entities.

>147 pgmcc:

Yeah, I thought the ending was great, too. I love the thing in Dick's fiction where it's like you're constantly peeling back the layers of an onion, and each time you get to a new layer, it's like, "Oh, this is what's REALLY going on," only to discover a few pages later that there's another layer of reality under THAT.

Read The Quantum Thief, which as a pretty good debut novel. Would probably make a good movie. Look forward to The Fractal Prince next year.

Now reading Ashes of Victory by David Weber...

I started Consider Phlebas. So far, it's a bit confusing. I hope I am right in thinking that this is the first in the series.

Sturlington - It is Iain M. Banks first Science Fiction book. None of his books form a series as such.

I found it a great yarn. Just sit back and hang on tight. Don't look for too much meaning, and get used to the ships having long names.

>152 pgmcc: Well, it is a long book and I am only 50 pages in, so I will certainly give it a chance. I didn't get into Transition until I was about 1/3 through, if I remember correctly, but I ended up loving it.

>152 pgmcc: Sturlington - It is Iain M. Banks first Science Fiction book. None of his books form a series as such.

???? See: The_Culture

AlanPoulter
They are not a series as such. The Culture books are stories in a common universe. A series implies a sequence IMNSHO. None of the Culture books require reading in any specific sequence with the possible exception of Surface Detail requiring the reading of an earlier Culture book if one wants to get the obscure reference at the end. (Not mentioning specific one to maintain the mystery.)

Sturlington's concern, I presume, is that starting with a book that was not the first in a series would could cause some disadvantage. My comment was to reasure Sturlington that no such disadvantage is likely.

Yeah. The Culture is one of my favorite SF universes. Consider Phlebas was my introduction to the Culture as well. Hang in there Sturlington.

Finished Lord of Light. Pretty good. 3/5

Got a bunch of library holds all coming in at the same time. So lots to choose from tomorrow.

Audio: still enjoying anthologies.

Started reading: The Eternity Artifact

I read Goliath, the last book in the Leviathan trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. I liked it, though perhaps it's a good thing this is the last book as it feels like this steampunk series is running out of steam.

Still working on Cryptonomicon. I've really enjoyed it so far, better written than Snow Crash. Are his other long works as engaging as Crypto? If so I may have to read them too.

Cryptonomicon is the only Stephenson I've really liked.

I just received Reamde for Early Reviewers. I'm not sure I've ever read Stephenson. So, we'll see! (If I did it was a long time ago and not one of his more prominent works)

ETA: oh, duh. I did read Diamond Age and loved it.

I don't read too much science fiction any more (much as I love it)...but I've always been a huge Michael Moorcock fan and have just picked up The Coming of the Terraphiles, a new Dr Who story, and it's classic Moorcock!

Finshed Cyteen and moving on to it's sequel Regenesis. I always get the willies about the concept of how the azi are created/brought up in C. J. Cherryh's Union stories.

Reading: The Eternity Artifact. One quarter into it and it seems pretty good.

Audio: Listened to "To be or not to be" a shorty by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.. I love that guy. Comically sarcastic, just like I try not to be. Read some of his stuff and I have to find more. Is he dead yet? I think he is. He's got that '50s SF feel to it.

I'm reading The Puppies of Terra by Thomas M. Disch which I picked up at a BookCrossing convention last weekend. It's told by a man who was brought up as a pet of one of the aliens who conquered earth two generations before.

>165 randalhoctor:

Yeah, sadly he passed away in 2007. Kinda surprised he didn't go sooner as much as he loved his Pall Malls. He was an amazing guy & a great writer; I need to read more of his stuff, too.

ETA: He is also the author of what may be the most wonderfully-titled SF story of all time: "The Big Space Fuck", from Harlan Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions collection.

>167 artturnerjr:: My first exposure was The Sirens of Titan. I thought it was a total blast.

>168 randalhoctor:

Of his, I've only read Slaughterhouse-Five and Welcome to the Monkey House. Like I said - I need to read more.

Reading War of Honor by David Weber...

Pssst, it's October ;)

>165 randalhoctor:

Here's where audio books can differ from print: The printed title of the story is "2BR02B". Heh heh!

172> Nah, the audio version also has it as "2BRO2B". I just didn't think it was good...um..."text-speak" (as opposed to "news speak") because it doesn't include a representation for the word "not" so I thought it was a mistake or something. Interesting that Vonnegut did it that way.

Thanks for the follow up though. Double plus good.

I assume the "0" is a zero, or naught, right? I admit on first glance I thought it was the letter "O".

Errr...yup that makes sense. I would have gotten it if it had a line though it. Man, I'm just losing my edge. I need to be herding sheep or something. Something safe and easy ;-)