Infinite Worlds

Hi,and welcome to my Way Station,hopefully a relaxing place to pop in on your SF voyages. Loved Clifford D Simak's Way Station,of course,but it was a bit quiet,usually only one guest at a time,hope here will be more lively.But not perhaps as wild as Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, or the Cantina of Star Wars Also we dont expect any more people being locked in with atom bombs,as in Fritz Leiber's joint The Place,in The Big Time. No shenanigans of that sort,just a nice relaxing place for oldtimers in the SF genre to perhaps reminisce about old favourite reads. Lots of additions to the TBR probably. See,already we have several interesting titles above to explore if we havent read them,or chat about if we have!
PLEASE tell me you have read the Simak,and are a fan. One of my top favourite reads. There's something about Simak's pastoral SF that strikes a chord with me.
We have all the amenities here. Time machine over in the corner,portal to anywhere in our universe next to it,ansible to chat with friends on the other side of the universe (thank you Ursula for that so useful invention!). We have a little museum with interesting artifacts that I'm sure you would enjoy scoping out(weapons,magical artifacts,invisibility cloaks,diorams of various planets etc.We'll discuss them at various times once I am settled in)
We have any food from anywhere,courtesy of said portal or time machine,its always fresh. Same with alcohol,any kind from any place;and we have thoughtfully set up a nice little medical room for those who WILL insist on drinking the Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.And if you are too rowdy we have on our security team several guards hired from a certain vacation home at R'lyeh.(HPL fans will know the place) Their rather hideous features quickly quell the timid,and all those tentacles make short work of ejecting the obstreperous.
I hope to use thistopic thread for little posts that wouldnt merit a whole thread,an occasional puzzle,the spotlighting great authors,and great books,musings or rants, lists - whatever strikes old Dusty's rambling thoughts. Hope you can join me to relax and chat about anything under the sun - any sun,not just Sol! - as long as its not full of technical or scientific stuff. I havent a clue in those areas. lol

Still have quite a few books in progress this month,so many real life crises - and watching about 7 hours a day Olympics! Hell on the reading schedule.Not sure if I will complete all these
Jack Williamson - Darker Than You Think
Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire
Darynda Jones -The Dirt on the Ninth Grave
Pat Murphy - The Falling Woman
Kathy Reichs - Exposure

I always enjoy visting the Green Dragon pub over in the eponymous LT group,and liked the way everyone can have a personal thread,a sort of blog cum tracker. So I am going to open my Way Station,Infinite Worlds,hopefully a relaxing resting place for all you SF voyagers . Feel free to drop in and chat,or listen to my rambles and musings! :0) It will take a little while to get some posts together,so bear with me. Have a drink!

Just a little mini quiz to start things off.Take the first letter off the answers to the following questions,ignoring articles,and it will show name of a famous SF author.

1. Ursula Le Guin's useful device for instant superluminal communication across the universe.
2. This hallucinatory drug makes for a continuous Happy Hour in a Brave New World
3. Robert Neville may be the last man on earth,and is surrounded by zombies. Title of this downbeat haunting work?
4. Ray Bradbury's famous lyrically written collection of short stories about colonizing a neighbouring planet
5. John Varley had a hotline apparently linking us to this particular star.
6. Writer who invented the Nautilus,and its enigmatic commander,Captain Nemo.

answers a few posts down. Can you answer them all without googling? I'm sure some oldtimers can do that!
Any comments or reviews even would be welcome.

Quote of the Day
''Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF''
Dan Simmons.

I am surprised he even found three or four! :0).
What is your attitude to dumbing down? Do you froth at the mouth about the stupid inaccuracies of the films,or can you just go with the flow and enjoy the spectacle?
And what about books?How hard are you on writers who get it wrong,or blithely dont care a hoot about the science? And what will you do when some cutting edge piece of science is shown to be inaccurate? Will you jettison the books or give them some slack? Gotta say I much prefer John Carter bounding around the martian ruined cities to the dull barren rocks which are all we are allowed to see in books about Mars today. Same with Venus. We have to go far out in the galaxy for such fun stories of derring do today. But I still happily read those books just for fun.
Certainly those hard SF writers who like to be on the cutting edge of SF are the most likely to suffer from being outdated as the science progresses.
I just tend to shrug and say,hey,this may be a parallel universe where such and such development never occured. That way the books never become oldfashioned or outdated :0)

Some Authors Birthdays this week
Ray Bradbury- 22nd August1920
Orson Scott Card - 24th August 1950
Vonda N McIntyre - 27th August 1948

any fans,fave books by them?

Answers to the Mini Quiz

1. Ursula Le Guin's useful device for instant superluminal communication across the universe. Ansible
2. This hallucinatory drug makes for a continuous Happy Hour in a Brave New World Soma
3. Robert Neville may be the last man on earth,and is surrounded by zombies. Title of this downbeat haunting work? I am Legend
4. Ray Bradbury's famous lyrically written collection of short stories about colonizing a neighbouring planet Martian Chronicles
5. John Varley had a hotline apparently linking us to this particular star. Ophiuchis
6. Writer who invented the Nautilus,and its enigmatic commander,Captain Nemo. Verne

author - ASIMOV

>1 dustydigger: Way Station is one that I haven't got to yet. I certainly wouldn't want to spend much time in Leiber's Place. Off the top of my head, Arthur C. Clarke's White Hart sounds more like my kind of joint!

1. Ansible
2. Soma
3. I Am Legend
4. The Martian Chronicles
5. The Opiuchi Hotline
6. Jules Verne

Oh! Now I get it! The famous SF author is Asimov!

EtA: Ah-ha, I didn't see you had already answered this yourself, Dusty.

>7 EnsignRamsey: Good one,Ensign! Ah,dear old White Hart,it sounds such a great place,full of authors,journalists and scientists . I can just about cope with the level of the science there:0)
We tend to forget it today,but most of the early greats honed their skills on short stories long before the novel overtook that style. I remember the small SF section in my public library being jam packed with anthologies way back in 1961 when I got my adult library card.( Wow,now I could get FOUR books out at a time.) Bradbury,Sturgeon,Van Vogt,Damon Knight,Clarke,and Asimov and lots of others were there in plenty. I cant find a single volume of short stories on my public library shelf today.
As forTales From the White Hart,the whole book was quite funny.I must reread it,and happily see that it is available in Open Library - all 150 pages!There we go,my first book added to my TBR from this thread .
Hey,the whole book deserves to be added just for the delightful story title,''The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch'' lol

>8 ScoLgo: Good job,ScoLgo. Did you have to google or did you know them all?
Le Guin's ansible was such a useful Hainish invention that it was taken over by many other authors,perhaps most famously Orson Scott Card in Ender's Game
. "The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator," explains Colonel Graff "but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere''
soma in Huxley's Brave New World is quite the drug,"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.".lol.I was blown away by this book way back in the early 60s,especially that scene in the factory producing all those identical clones. Looks pretty credible these days,but what must have been the impression back in 1932.No wonder what with the cloning,the free love and the drugs ,the book was banned all over the place! lol.

Loved 'Way Station' when I first read it - and I'm overdue for a re-read...

I'm currently bemoaning the absence of any sort of sf in mainstream book outlets - not so much bookshops, though the W.H.Smiths I frequent most often has only one bay of shelves dedicated to SFF, with one shelf full of Stephen King and another full of George R.R. Martin.

But I remember a time when there'd be at least a shelf of sf in any supermarket or newsagent's paperback book section. Now? Nothing, unless an sf title gets onto the bestseller list. How are new fans supposed to find good stuff locally? How are readers who don't even know yet that they want to be sf fans going to happen across this stuff by accident?

Way station is on my tbr pile. I must try and read it soon as I've heard so many good things about it.

>5 dustydigger: I would have had to look up no. 5.

>9 dustydigger: I love anthologies, we could never get SF magazines in the UK, not in my lifetime anyway. I think the best writing in the genre has been in the short story format, but you can't market them the way you can novels, which is a shame.

>11 RobertDay: A lot of it is down to the publishers, who don't see SF as marketable now, they prefer LOTR-style fantasy. And you're right about WH Smith, the best place to go is Waterstones, if you have one locally. I get most of my stuff online now, but would buy locally if I could.

>11 RobertDay:

Good public libraries are still identifying and buying quality new sf. That's how I got into Ken MacLeod's work, for example.

>14 EnsignRamsey: Oh yes, I'd come to that conclusion. If pressed, I suspect they might say "We're fed up of telling people that there's no demand for that sort of thing." I have a reasonably good Waterstones in the centre of Leicester, but that's a special journey for me.

>15 paradoxosalpha: The question is finding a good public library. The UK public library service has been contracting for years as successive governments have cut back on provision. Since 2010, we've been going through a process whereby libraries have been closing, pending them being handed over to volunteer groups. There's a closed library three minutes away from me which may reopen next year. Too many of our current political leaders see no value in an informed, literate population.

>16 RobertDay:

For many "political leaders" an informed, literate population is seen as a drawback, I fear.

>14 EnsignRamsey: The only bookshop within 15 miles of my home is a very small Waterstone's,which has about 10 shelves of SF/F,but the vast majorityof that is fantasy,and a few well-known modern SF authors,but very little older stuff.A favourite complaint of mine is that they NEVER stock any C J Cherryh but thats a pet peeve of mine for another day Definitely a novice in the genre wouldnt get any sort of overview of the field.
Same goes with the library. Because of cutbacks (the book budget has had a swingeing cut for our system of 39 libraries down from £6.25 million to £4.5 million a year),and of course SF had to bear its share of the disaster. Libraries have been closed in our area too. The City of Newcastle has closed 8 of its 20 branches. There are laws that say there must be a library within such and such a number of miles. They must have sat down with a pair of compasses and worked it out exactly to see how to ''rationalise''! lol. Craftily a few branches were closed and one would be relocated so that the law would be complied with. But 8 libraries gone is a disgrace.
In Sunderland City Library there isnt even a reference library any more.The council in its wisdom said in the age of the computer people will google things anyway,so why have the expense of a separate room,specialized staff and so on? Instead reference books are in among the rest of the stock with a little sticker saying dont remove from the library.Disheartening.More and more the library gets paperbacks,and after a few years they drop to bits,and the book is never replaced.Its all very depressing
Sunderland - a university city - doesnt even have a second hand bookshop any more.It was turned into a winebar!There are a dozen charity shops but I never see any SF in there.I took some old but still perfectly readable SF to the Oxfam shop,which in the past had a lovely corner of old dusty books,the old hardbacks with no dustcovers that sometimes hid a treasure. I was disconcerted when the staff refused to accept them! Now all they want is books that look like new so they can be sold at a third of the price of the new.Accept old 1970s paperbacks?Forget it.Even if its Roger Zelazny's brilliant This Immortal
So we have to turn to the internet again and the closing of the bookshops continues inexorably. Very sad

Hmm,an added note. The last figures I can see about SF/F publishing in UK are for 2014.In 2014 there was a 7% drop of SF books being published,down from 4448 to 4142.Oddly the drop in fantasy is much greater,a whopping 13%,down from 8615 to 7526 publications.People must be finally getting sick of all those interminable monster tome derivative series!
Horror/Psychological/Occult did even worse,a massive 26% drop from 4474 to 3329. And want to bet anyway many of those were Stephen King,Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz reprints? Cant see a Sturgeon,Cherryh,Silverberg or the like anywhere,but every book King ever wrote - and boy,is he prolific! - is there on the bookshelf,with reprints every year.:0(
The only increase was a 13% rise in graphic novelsand a copius amount of YA dystopian fiction.Not many readers of thHunger Games or even the sparkly vampire genre books are likely to make the transition to proper SF
Things are not looking good,Voyagers!

>18 dustydigger: a university city - doesnt even have a second hand bookshop any more

Hair-raising.

>19 dustydigger:

Are those percentages by number of titles?

>20 paradoxosalpha: Yes I assume so.Of course this is printed books but apparently ebooks have reached a plateau,even slightly declining,so its still not looking good really :0(

>18 dustydigger: You need to get up to Barter Books in Alnwick - plenty of old hardback SF from the '70s as well as newer stuff.

>22 SChant:

Second the recommendation For Barter Books, but last time I was in, under time pressure, I could not find the SF...

Ray Bradbury - pretty much anything. He had such a compassionate side to his writing. I still remember the one about the little girl from Earth who was living on Venus when there was 1 day of sunlight per year, and her classmates lock her in a closet because she is "different."
Card - I've tried. I've really, really tried to like him. I read his first novel of short stories, liked the one about the musical prodigy but didn't like the Ender series, and after starting and stopping Ender's Game twice, it just didn't click. Nieces and BOL love it, and I *did* love the movie.
Vonda!! - loved her novel Dreamsnake and others of hers I've read (just can't remember the names now.

Thanks for posting!

I knew the ideas but not their names. Thank you for this great brain tester!

Yes! A friend of a friend has published his first book, and where can I get my hands on it? Amazon! The behemoth!

I've noticed at the US's sole chain bookstore that there are shelves and shelves of Christian books of greater or lesser research and strains, but only a half-shelf of New Age. And it tends to be on the wack-job side what's more.

I remember buying a copy of Damiano at a grocery store. Now? Mystery and very little of that. And the prices!!

Atlanta used to have a terrific Science Fiction and Mystery bookshop. And it had Oxford Books. And the indies that remain are dealing in used books to keep books circulating in the world.

Your question is so timely, Robert - How are new fans supposed to find good stuff locally? How are readers who don't even know yet that they want to be sf fans going to happen across this stuff by accident?

I sure wish I knew. Where are all the new ideas going to come from if we don't have readers who have ready access to sf, whether or not they know the love sci fi?

I'm going back into classic SF these days so that I can pick up the allusions and find out what got this whole movement started. To that end I am reading (re-reading, I think) Childhood's End after watching the mini-series on SyFy channel late last year. The Cold War was still raging, he seemed interested in keeping the UN as a world power, and the thought of world peace is certainly admirable. Having Karellan and the Overlords be Devil-shaped does explain humanity's problems with the form.

So I will say that I am reading it to know what were Clark's ideas for his novel, not for the story itself. I just finished the part where a couple is at a party and the unconscious sexism and racism is mind-boggling. But not unexpected. There are no leaders who are women, just women who are good scribes or beauties or pests who need to be scolded. It's not a book that grips me as one I fall into, and in fact last night, when I decided I was finished reading it, I pulled a book from the bottom of my currently-reading pile, called The First Feminists: British Women Writers to let voices from women in the 1600's ring through my brain.

I think it is this unconscious exclusion of women from science and from power that turned me off of most classic sci-fi and into the realms of fantasy, where even though Tolkien had a male fellowship, he at least had love of the earth, and T.H. White's take on Arthur had heart and some women and human struggle. Clark's people are either humanity as a species about to change, or man/a few men who make the action happen.

>10 dustydigger: No googling. I'm a fan of all the authors on your list and own all of those books except for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I could see The Opiuchi Hotline being tricky for some folks to get but I've been a bit of a Varley fanboy ever since reading his Gaea Trilogy. Plus, you included the word 'hotline' in the clue so that was a bit of a giveaway too! ;)

Ansible was easy as I made it a personal mission to track down and read all of the Hainish novels and short stories around 4 years ago. I recall that in The Dispossessed, the ansible was not yet in existence. A mild spoiler: It is Shevek's work in mathematics theory that helps develop the ansible, thereby making the instantaneous communications described in the earlier (and later) novels/stories possible. Le Guin then goes one better in the novella, The Shobies' Story, where she imagines the effect of instantaneous travel on the people that first test the new 'Churten' technology, (a rather unwieldy word, eh?). In typical Le Guin fashion, it's more about the people and how they cope (or don't cope), with the experience than it is about the hard science of how the tech works. There is actually a trilogy of stories that explore the themes begun in The Shobies' Story as that novella is followed by Dancing to Ganam, and Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea. All three tales are found in the collection, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, which also contains several other great short works that are not part of her Hainish Universe. (Can you tell that I am a Le Guin fan? ;)

BTW -- I completely did not grok the 'hidden author' part of your post until I typed in the five answers... < Lightbulb! >
----

>12 Sakerfalcon: I too will recommend Way Station. Really enjoyed that read when I finally got around to it about 3 years ago.

>18 dustydigger: Sad. Here in the states libraries seem to be doing ok for now - at least where I live. My small-town county library has a deep catalog of e-books for loan across all types of genres. Plenty of new and classic SF/F in there. Recently, they even found me a nearly impossible to get ILL of David Palmer's Emergence, only available in print form, and that only rarely. Used copies of the book are going for around $25.00 to $30.00 on the internets so being able to borrow that title was much appreciated. Hard to believe used book shoppes would turn down a Zelazny. Of course, This Immortal is quite prevalent on used shelves here so there may be a glut of certain books in the used market. Still...

>18 dustydigger: In North Carolina, all our libraries (well most) belong to the NC Cardinal. This feature lets us borrow from libraries all over the state. If the book you are looking for is not in your county library, chances are it will be somewhere in the state system. I have borrowed from libraries several hundred miles away and no cost to me.

>1 dustydigger: Waystation was one of my early favorites. I am now reading The Fifth Season the Hugo Award winner for best novel. Also liked Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and Clarke's Tales from the White Hart and Pratt and de Camp's Tales from Gavagan's Bar.

>28 ScoLgo: I'm also a fan of Varley's work, and am now the proud owner of a signed first edition of The Ophiuchi Hotline and a signed slipcased edition of Blue Champagne. Unfortunately, I have yet to track down decent first editions of the Gaea trilogy...

>29 Foghorn-Leghorn: Here in the UK, public libraries were organised on a county-by-county (or town-by-town) basis. (UK counties are more populous and traditionally were given more administrative functions than US counties. Equally, there used to be a division between counties and towns above a certain size, and until the early 1970s, many town or city councils ran services in parallel with county services until there was a big reorganisation and many services were widely amalgamated.)

There was supposedly a national Inter-Library Loan service where a request for a book not held locally would be escalated, first to other county libraries, then to other participating libraries in the area (which might be the nearest separate town/city library network, or it might even include some university libraries, though their participation was optional), and ultimately up to the British Library itself. When I was studying librarianship in the middle 1970s, this was certainly drummed into us as a major part of the national library network.

In fact, I found that the system was already falling into disuse as different councils started making financial cuts and this service was little-used except by a limited number of borrowers, in comparison to the total numbers of library members. Certainly, one of the first cuts made to the scheme was stopping inter-library loan requests for fiction titles.

Hi Threadnsong! great to see an old shelfarian in the bar.:0)
I fell in love with Bradbury when I was 13,and am still delighted by his lyrical writing. The Martian Chronicles(or as it is known in the UK,The Silver Locusts} still gives me a thrill today. As do those dark depictions of the small town America life which start off normal but fall away into darkness very soon. I have never looked at carnivals the same since reading Something Wicked This Way Comes
One of my favourite parts of the Martian Chronicles is when the third expedition lands and are met by what seems to be their family. Wonderful nostalgic depictions of idyllic small town life,then in the night........eek!
Next day sixteen coffins are solemnly escorted to the cemetery,and buried by the mourners,who sometimes look like humans,but sometimes look like something else.Oh boy!Maybe with Halloween coming up in a couple of months I will unearth Something Wicked.
I did like Ender's Game(preferred the shorter original version,more punchy) but couldnt get away with the rest of the series. Tried Ender's Shadow I had found accepting Ender as a military commander at about 6 or 7 very difficult to accept,so I added on about 5 years in my mind.I found believing all the incredible things Bean did as a BABY just beyond belief,spoiled the book somewhat. Did enjoy the Battle School bits which were a parallel to Ender's story from a different perspective.
Apart from those I did not like the first Alvin story and didnt bother following on.
As for Vonda,I too loved Dreamsnake,even though I am SOOOO not fond of snakes! lol. Her novelisations of the Star Trek films were very enjoyable too,and she was a major ST fan.
She has a sly sense of humour too.While taking part in a science fiction convention panel on SF in TV, McIntyre became exasperated at a fellow panelist's extreme negativity toward existing SF TV shows. She asked the panel and audience if they had managed to see Starfarers, which she claimed was an amazing SF miniseries that had almost no viewers due to bad scheduling on the part of the network. No such show existed, but after reflecting on the plot she described, McIntyre felt it would make a good novel, and went on to write Starfarers as well as its three sequels, later referring to it as "my Best SF TV Series Never Made" An enterprising fan went so far as to make a TV commercial advertising the fake series.
I have her The Moon and the Sun on my Nebula winners list,probably read it early next year. Bit disconcerted to see it is set in the Sun King's court about a sea monster captured and put on show. Sounds pretty odd to me.lol. I am finding that many of the Nebulas are mostly fantasy from the 80s onward,not really my cup of tea,but I'll see what its like.

>32 RobertDay: Robert,it was a great pity when ILL deteriorated.Once I tried to order a book through the system and they wanted £8 to get it for me,from Liverpool. I pointed out that even with postage I could get it for half the cost online.

Hmm,Vonda's nonexistent TV series reminded me - tangentally! - that libraries over the years have had numerous requests for the Necronomicon,Lovecrafts famous dark grimoire.written by ''the mad arab Abdul Alhazred'' (it is obligatory to say the putative author is a mad arab!)
Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the Yale University Library's card catalogue. :0)
Fans have produce some pretty nifty copies of the book. Not sure what they put inside it though! :0)

So sad to hear of the death of Gene Wilder. Beloved by children around the world for Willie Wonka,but to us SF/F lovers probably even more we adored Dr Frederik Fronkensteen/Frankenstein,beleaguered descendent of Victor in Young Frankenstein.Absolute genius.Always crazy,but that twinkle in the eye was always there,and the warmth of his nature always shone through.
My children loved Blazing Saddles (of course) and we literally wore out our video tape of Stir Crazy back in the 80s. Both Richard and Gene are gone,but the legacy of crazy fun is still there for us all. R.I.P Gene.

>33 dustydigger: I just read The moon and the sun and had a mixed response to it. The depiction of the court of Louis XIV as glittering but rotten was very well done, but the heroine was something of a Mary-Sue - good at everything and threatened by all the nasty men. I will be interested to see what you make of it, if I haven't put you off! Dreamsnake is on my Tbr pile, though like you I hate snakes!

Another issue with finding SF is that many authors aren't published outside their own region. C.J. Cherryh was mentioned as not being available in Waterstones but I'm not even sure how much of her output is currently in print in the UK. When I do see new copies of her books they are always US imports. A small store is unlikely to risk the cost of importing titles without being very sure that they'll sell. (Sometimes imports can't be returned to the distributor if they don't sell, so the bookseller is just stuck with the titles.). I'm lucky to be in London where Waterstones Piccadilly and Forbidden Planet both have a decent selection of SF from the USA, but I can imagine in smaller cities it's quite rare to find this.

>37 Sakerfalcon: I used to be very fortunate,a little bookshop used to order my latest Foreigner book straight from the US for me,though I never saw any of her books on their shelves. This went on happily til #6, Explorer,then the store was taken over by Ottakar's,and then 3 years ago by Waterstones. Neither of those would order in a book,but of course by 2011 I had a computer so buying online from Amazon and Abebooks became easy,and I have bought all the series since then. Of course I have the agony of waiting for the paperback version to come out and drop in price a bit before I can afford to buy (OAPs on basic state pension with four children and 6 grandkids dont have much spare cash for book buying I can tell you! lol).I do the same with Bujold's Vorkosigan books too.
There is a tiny Forbidden Worlds shop down a little side street in Newcastle,but I have been pretty much housebound for the last four years,and it is away from the bus routes so I have only been there once,with friends who rapidly got bored with the shop and I had to leave. Ah well,these days I get masses of free books to read from Open Library.so I dont go without interesting reading material!

Famous First Lines from SF books
The first line of a book needs to grab the attention and pull the reader into the story at once,set the tone,and in the case of SF point perhaps to an intriguing new world
See how many of these you know :0)

1.“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”

2. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

3. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.”

4. “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

5. “The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light years and eight centuries.”

6. ''We slept in what had once been the gymnasium''

7. “On my 75th birthday I did 2 things. First I visited my wife’s grave… Then i signed up for the army”

8. ''The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but
well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and
bellowed in the swamps below''

9. In the nighttime heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality.

10. On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

OK,that was fairly easy. Here are the answers. Did you manage to get most them without googling?

Answers

1. Ender's Game,Orson Scott Card
2. Neuromancer,William Gibson
3. 1984,George Orwell
4. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,Douglas Adams
5. A Deepness in the Sky,Vernor Vinge
6. The Handmaid's Tale.Margaret Atwood
7. An Old Man's War,John Scalzi
8. Hyperion,Dan Simmons
9. Ringworld,Larry Niven
10. I Am Legend,Richard Matheson

The only one I didnt know was#5,the Vernor Vinge. Its on my TBR for next year.

>38 dustydigger: The reluctance of publishers and marketeers to push sf has also had the effect that many US authors don't get published in the UK any more. I think all my Cherryh is in UK editions from some years back; the Bujold Vorkosigan books did come out in the UK, but not for long (only a couple of titles, plus a couple of US imports that actually came in through the UK book trade, oddly enough). But none of the recent titles have been seen over here. No-one I've spoken to (including Lois herself) can understand why her sf doesn't do well over here.

Again, many of the writers that our friends across the pond rave over on this site don't really appear over here much, and I don't get to the conventions I used to (and in any case, those few remaining dealers who still offer new mass-market titles aren't getting US imports very much anyway). And as for writers from Canada, Australia or anywhere else, really - forget it.

One of the reasons I've seized on Cixin Liu is just to encourage a UK publisher to take a chance on translated sf. The Hugo win was the icing on the cake.

>39 dustydigger: The first sentence game! Nice!

I recall scratching my head over how Mark T. could just pull title after title from under his hat when we had this going in the SF group over on Shelfari.

I have read nine of the books you listed and actually remembered 8 of the opening sentences. Haven't read #6 yet and did not remember #5, although I have read that one. Some of the others were sentences I posted in the Shelfari game so were pretty easy for me to remember.

Getting a sense of deja vu, here. But that's the general idea, I suppose.

Sorry to be late to the party. Life's been busy, between writing and the day job, and adapting to a new computer. Actually, the computer isn't the challenge - it's the keyboard.

Just finished reading a different sort of alien invasion novel: Inish Carraig by Jo Zebedee. Set in Belfast, after the invasion takes place, it's a departure from the usual gung-ho freedom fighter schtick so popular in this sub-genre. A solid 4-star read. I'd recommend checking it out.

Also starting (at last) to read eBooks on a Kindle Fire. I'm finding it much less of an adjustment than I expected.

>42 ThomasWatson:

There are times where I still prefer the printed page but, the greatest single feature of e-readers (IMHO) is that every book, regardless of page count, is precisely the same size & weight.

>41 ScoLgo: Mark T was amazing,he seemed to have read every book ever written! lol. What a memory.So sad that after moving from shelfari to Leafmarks he couldnt deal with yet another move three months later.
If enough people show interest in the first line test we could open a thread for it,we'll see.
I didnt recognize the Vernor Vinge quote either,but it is intriguing grabs the attention.One thing Vinge could never be accused of is being parochial,he seems to like space opera of the widest scope!
I've just started reading my first Vinge book,A Fire Upon the Deep,very intense and gripping,but not the most straightforward or easiest of reads.Lots of aliens in it though. I am still a sucker for a book with aliens! lol

>43 ScoLgo: . That is some bonus I can tell you! I recently got out Stephenson's Anathem and its HUUUGE! And HEAVY! I suffer badly from arthritis in the hands and I think that book is definitely the definition of a ''wrist breaking tome''. I also have Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and that is just as bad. No wonder they sit month after month on my shelf, waiting hopefully to be chosen,and are continually rejected. You know my phobia about monster books :0)
BTW,did you notice LT actually allows you to add the weight and size of a book on the book page. Wow! Now thats taking cataloguing just a teensy bit too far for me,but chacun a son gout :0)

Quote of the Day

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

>42 ThomasWatson: Have you read Ian McDonald's Sacrifice of Fools? It's written by a one-time resident of Northern Ireland and is set after an alien visitation (rather than invasion) in a post-Good Friday Agreement Belfast. Except that McDonald wrote it before the Good Friday Agreement. The only real issue (writing from the other side of the Irish Sea) I identified was that he got the name of the Police Service of Northern Ireland in the wrong order (though that was never going to be a hard prediction).

The politics of adding refugee aliens into the Northern Ireland situation makes for an interesting read.

Author Birthdays This Week

Mary Shelley - 30 August 1797

C J Cherryh - 1 September 1942

>47 RobertDay: No, I haven't encountered Sacrifice of Fools yet. I'll check it out.

>39 dustydigger: I got 3!

>48 dustydigger: Happy birthday Caroline! I just finished reading her The Faded Sun trilogy yesterday. Brilliant stuff, through & through. Almost out-Dunes Dune, so to speak...

>51 ScoLgo: It was excellent,except that I couldnt quite suspend my disbelief that they had repeated the destruction of worlds so many times. Two,possibly even three times I could have accepted,but not dozens. Sorry,one step to far.
Great aliens as ever,and great world building.Even this early in her career she was handling alien cultures as a master.Rather more downbeat than later works,but good stuff.
And I loved the Michael Whelan cover !
As for Dune,I must be the only person in the world who was a bit underwhelmed by Dune. I read it at the same time as I was first reading LOTR,back in 1968,and LOTR caught all my enthusiasm and love.lol.
I actually enjoyed Herbert's The Dosadi Experiment more than Dune.(even though I couldnt understand half of it!)
I also was left cold by Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and anything by P K Dick so I am not unused to being in the minority report where famous works are concerned. :0)

>52 dustydigger: Oh man... Herbert's Dosadi Experiment is in my top five, all-time favorite, SF yarns. I've read it several times and it still causes a brain meltdown. Whipping Star is right up near the top of the list as well.

>53 btuckertx: lol! You are so right. Whipping Star was even harder to follow,though it did prepare you for Dosadi.Yep,communicating with stars is REALLY difficult !But this is probably right, alien minds must surely be difficult to communicate with! :0)
McKie is a favourite hero of mine,wish Herbert had written more books about him.
Loved the various aliens in the ConSentiency too.These books are great fun but so difficult I can see why those who may have loved the very straightforward style of Dune were put off by these later books.
It always raised a smile during the Credit Crunch when people were talking about Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae,because Whipping star's own sentient star called Fannie Mae always came to mind!
Just been googling.I had never comes across Herbert's short story ''The Tactful Saboteur'' which introduced the ConSentiency universe. Its apparently in the Worlds of Frank Herbert so I checked Open Library and there it is.YAY! Thanks for posting,I would never have come across it probably,so you've done me a service.
Of course,I am going to find it hard not to go back to read Star and Dosadi again.That's the problem with running a nostalgia bar like Infinite Worlds,the urge to go and reread is ever rising! :0) So many books,so little time.

>54 dustydigger: Must admit the Herbert novel I rate highest is probably The Santaroga Barrier.

Also, if you're interested, there's a complete collection of Herbert's short fiction available, The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert. And Kevin J Anderson has been publishing some of Herbert's previously unpublished works. So far, there's High-Opp, A Game of Authors, Angels' Fall, A Thorn in the Bush and Unpublished Stories.

>45 dustydigger: Yes, book weight is rapidly becoming a problem for me. I'll tolerate the dull ache in my wrists for hardcover nonfiction than will serve future needs in my reference library, but can't really justify it for fiction that I'm likely to read just once. There's also the issue of shelf space. This Kindle Fire resolves both quandaries quite nicely.

>36 dustydigger: It's Frankensteeeenn! Still cracks me up.

>39 dustydigger: A Deepness in the Sky is my favorite Vinge. It's everything that's good about SF.

I hadnt realized that 2016 is the 20th anniversary of when our redoubtable Lara Croft exploded upon the world in the first Eidos publishing of Tomb Raider. Damn,my kids adored that game!Tomb Raider was impressive at the time for its 3D graphics, player interaction, and mix of action and exploration. It also established the third person perspective that was used in all subsequent games. Today the graphics may seem ludicruously bad,but I still remember the awe and excitement my kids felt.They were totally stunned at the huge scope of the game,all those different levels. And the enemies ,from the wolves to aligators ,panthers to dinosaurs.Plus all those nasty traps,crumbling floors and seemingly impossible puzzles. Will never forget my 12 year old son despairing in the tomb of Midas,as he repeatedly tried to put silver bars in the expected place to open the gate to the next section. It was only when I tactfully explained that Middas,as he was pronouncing it,was Midas, who could turn objects to gold, that light dawned,and he rushed back through the tunnels to the broken statue of Midas's hand,turned his bars to gold and could continue with the game! lol
If they got killed,they would patiently go back and die repeatedly till they got it righ,and I would ruefully exclaim that if they could apply that persistence and focus on their school work,they would rule the world within 5 years. lol
I lost all interest in watching them playing games once they got older and only wanted to play Medal of Honor and other shoot em ups. No fun for a spectator.
But Tomb Raider 1 - 3 gave us all many hours of pleasure.

>59 dustydigger: I've never dared step into the video game world. I have so many other things that keep me distracted from writing as it is!

>60 ThomasWatson: Lol. I was never any good,far too slow with my reactions.(already in my 30s)While I was wondering which button to press the wolf had already eaten me or I fell off a cliff to lie a crumpled heap on the rocks or was impaled on spikes in a pit that opened before my feet.I never got more htan 5 minutes into the game.lol. But I loved watching.
The only game I could manage was Spyro the cute little dragon. I had fun flying! That was made for 7-8 year olds,I think.
And further back still,the dear old Atari racing car game. At the bottom of the page was a rectangular block representing the car,with a smaller square on top being the drivers head. A joystick for left right and forward - and that was all that was needed.Just the thing for my level.
I do remember the kerfuffle around 1982 that kids were playing truant to play Space Invaders,so the end of civilisation was definitely in sight. But then they stop moaning about it and started in on nasty videos instead :0)
Thomas,I sometimes feel like Methusaleh with regards to technology. In the 70s ads started appearing for those newfangled word processors,which then rapidly led on to computers for the home. Wow! How did they get that whole room full of computers we saw on TV into this little machine? Actually our Sinclair Spectrum was only 64 bits,you had to load the kids games in with a cassette,and that could take up to 15 minutes! lol. Didnt matter,the kids had enormous fun playing Chucky,Manic Miner and Mad Nurse.
Then there is the great divide,pre and post mobile/cell phone,which is a glaring chasm in our SF reading. I can imagine young people just saying why didnt they use their phone?
Wonder what the next huge gobsmacking development will be. It will probably pass me by because I am an old fogey set in my ways,but I envy the youngsters their delight and excitement with the brave new world at their fingertips.

Hi, dustydigger - I am a bit late to the party but I am going to add to your little moan about getting sci-fi / fantasy in the UK. Public libraries never bought much of it historically but now budgets are being slashed or they are becoming hived off charities, they are spending even less and the ILL system seems to be being destroyed along with it. Makes me sad and angry.
I had a Nook so I could when needed buy the stuff which I knew the library would never get or was US published or e-only and never likely to be in physical form here. But then they abandoned the UK and we got shoved off to Sainsbury's Entertainment - wtf! Big surprise that they do not supply obscure or US titles e.g no Bujold. TBH I am not a big fan of reading ebooks, I'd much rather an actual physical book to read but not always possible. Wales has a national ebook library system now, which does contain some sci-fi but a lot of the time, it will only have the first book of a series or 1 book of a series and no more. But they will download to the Nook so that's something at least.

But I am reluctantly considering buying a Kindle so I can get these items which no-one else wants to sell - the "long tail" working for Amazon again.

mini quiz - Who Am I?

I am a very old man. How old I do not know.Possibly I am a hundred,possibly more:but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men,nor do I remember any childhood.

answer down the page

>63 dustydigger: Just call me Conrad

Quote of the Day

“No, look, there's a blue box. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It can go anywhere in time and space and sometimes even where it's meant to go. And when it turns up, there's a bloke in it called The Doctor and there will be stuff wrong and he will do his best to sort it out and he will probably succeed 'cause he's awesome. Now sit down, shut up, and watch 'Blink'.”
Neil Gaiman

>64 iansales: That's a great guess,Ian. I LOVE This Immortal and the mystery of just how old Conrad is. But I'm quoting the words of someone else,someone who travels an awful lot further than Conrad!And not in the far future,we need to go back to the past.....the book was published around 1913
.

think ERB

>62 infjsarah: Its all so sad,Sarah. I had high hopes when SF Gateway started producing old classic reissues,but I found the prices too high for my pocket,especially books being read for a challenge etc,and which I would probably not read again. £5-£6 was just not worth it
Our library system does have some ebooks,but their idea of SF and mine are poles apart Its all teenage dystopia,urban fantasy and sparkly vampires as far as I can see! lol
......Mmm checked it out and on Overdrive the only SF they have is The Martian(of course!) about 5 Hugh Howey books,one Eric Frank Russell and 10 Kurt Vonnegut! Oh and a copy of Ready Player One - in GERMAN. lol. Full stop.Pathetic.
So we continue helping Amazon to take over the world.We used to have Abebooks as an alternative,but Amazon gobbled them up,and then The Book Depository met the same fate. Dire straits

>68 dustydigger: Its all teenage dystopia,urban fantasy and sparkly vampires as far as I can see!

Libraries and bookstores both, increasingly.

:(

Last month at Worldcon the RetroHugo for 1941 were awarded.
Here are the highlights.Winners in bold
Best Novel
Slan by A E Van Vogt
Grey Lensman by E E ''Doc'' Smith
The Illmade Knight by T H White
The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson
Kallocain by Karin Boye

Best Novella
If This Goes On..... by Robert A Heinlein
“Magic, Inc.” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Coventry” by Robert A. Heinlein
“The Mathematics of Magic” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
“The Roaring Trumpet” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Best Novelette
“The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science‐Fiction, June 1940)
“Blowups Happen” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Sept 1940
“It!” by Theodore Sturgeon (Unknown, Aug 1940)
“Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Oct 1940)
“Vault of the Beast” by A.E. Van Vogt (Astounding Science‐Fiction, August 1940)

Best Short Story
“Robbie by Isaac Asimov (Super Science Stories, Sept 1940)
“Requiem” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Jan 1940)
“Martian Quest” by Leigh Brackett (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Feb 1940)
“The Stellar Legion” by Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, Winter 1940)
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges (Sur, 1940)

Some good stuff here. Heinlein was so dominant at that time! And Sturgeon,though he only has one nomination in this award.
Never heard of Kallocain before today,nor Coventry by Heinlein.
Nice to see Leigh Brackett getting some attention. Better late than never.

Anyone got old favourites here?

>70 dustydigger: Hah! I only recently came around to The Once and Future King a couple of years ago. Really enjoyed that entire work, including The Ill-Made Knight. The first few books in the omnibus were much funnier than I expected. Can't really call it an 'old favourite' though since I just read it a couple of years ago.

As a kid, I remember being completely enraptured by Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll. The vision of a future where people could whiz around the cities without cars by simply stepping from one belt to the next really fired my imagination. Sadly, the nearest thing we have now are those belts in airports. I wonder if those were designed by an engineer who is a Heinlein fan...?

I don't think I have read any of the other titles that were honored.

"If This Goes On..." is a favorite of mine. Revolutionary freemasons in a dystopian US future theocracy! It's the first and bigger part of Revolt in 2100, and "Coventry" is the remainder.

I haven't read either of those Brackett stories, but I'd sure like to.

>72 paradoxosalpha: Stellar Legion is on Kindle for 99 cents.Bit expensive for a 31 page story! :0)
Martian Quest is even more expensive,at $4 at Baen Books,but the only physical anthology with the story is out of print,and a copy on amazon costs $99!!

>73 dustydigger: Yeah, I think I'd rather find a copy of Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, which has both of those stories in it. But I see that prices on abebooks exceed $200! Interlibrary loan, maybe. It's not in my metropolitan public library network. Pretty surprising scarcity for a book published in 2002.

lol
with Martian Quest, the "regular" edn is out of print from Haffner - but the limited edn is still available from the publisher at $125. All their Brackett volumes are great! Lots of nice Kuttner and other stuff as well

Brackett isnt well served at all. I always keep an eye out on the Wildside Megapacks,hoping someday they will feature her,but no such luck! :0(
Only Black Amazon of Mars on Project Gutenberg. Shocking! :0(

Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories has a place of honor in my collection, even if it is a disposable-quality trade paperback.

>63 dustydigger: Who Am I?
Answer - as bookstopshere hinted this is Edgar Rice' Burroughs iconic hero John Carter. Our gallant Virginian gentleman's rather spooky ability to die and be resurrected, still looking like a 30 year old guy, is a mystery that isnt explored in the series telling of his martian adventures, beginning with A Princess of Mars.
What a magnificent start to a planetary romance Princess is!. John Carter has been prospecting in the Arizona desert when he is pursued by indians and hides in a sacred cave which continues the mummifed body of some sort of shaman,and he is suddenly transported by astral projection to Barsoom(Mars) where his earth trained body has super strength and agility in Mars lesser gravity. And off he goes on his great adventures and falls in love with the glorious Dejah Thoris.
All thoroughly ridiculous of course,but great fun. I got this book from the library on my 13th birthday and fell deeply in love with John Carter! lol. I still have a soft spot for him today,and love to revisit Barsoom with him every decade or so.
The story was a huge success and massively influential.It has been claimed as a source of inspiration by Heinlein, Clarke, and Bradbury, who was influenced by ERBs descriptions of the dying planet,and paid homage in The Martian Chronicles James Cameron's Avatar was influenced by it,and George Lucas regarded it fondly. It gave rise to a whole subgenre of planetary romances and was a source for the sword and sorcery subgenre,and influenced people like Leigh Brackett and Jack Vance.
And its still a rattling good read today,and all because of the charismatic John Carter! :0)

>70 dustydigger: Agree with all except "Robbie", I would have gone with "Requiem" instead.

>70 dustydigger: Decades ago I read a book by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt and I am not sure if it was “The Mathematics of Magic”.

Magic was manipulated using mathematics in this book of short stories and I remember one story about a bumbling wizard who routinely misplaced a decimal point in his incantations. The King ordered him to conjure up a dragon, they built a strong pen in the bowels of the castle to contain the dragon but again he misplaced the decimal point and the dragon was 10% or so of the real size and it was able to fly between the bars and snorting fire shooting it at the wizard's ass as I recall.

I wonder if “The Mathematics of Magic” is that book.

Author Birthdays

6th Sept 1972 China Mieville
The novels;
King Rat (1998)
Perdido Street Station (2000)
The Scar (2002)
Iron Council (2004)
Un Lun Dun (2007)
The City & the City (2009)
Kraken (2010)
Embassytown (2011)
Railsea (2012)
This Census Taker (2016)
The Last Days of New Paris (2016)

Well you have to admire the range of Mieville's work!
I've only read Kraken,Embassytown and The City and the City,and had mixed feelings about them.
I have Perdido Street Station,its been on my shelf 6 months,looking reproachfully at me. Its a doorstopper.
So,opinions on his works? Best reads,worst reads?

China does divide opinion; a lot of people read 'Perdido Street Station' and found it pretty strong meat. I liked it, though I couldn't bring myself to think of it as fantasy; it read like sf to me. I really enjoyed its sequel, 'Iron Council', though that worked on a number of different levels with me.

I haven't yet read any of his novels, although several interest me. I did appreciate his short story "Details," which was the subject of an LT group discussion.

>81 dustydigger: I have only read two Mieville novels so far. Perdido Street Station and Embassytown. I really liked them both but, being more of a science-fiction guy, I preferred Embassytown.

>82 RobertDay: I do agree about Perdido being more SFnal than fantasy, but it struck me as having more fantastical elements than Embassytown, which I found to be pretty much straight-up science-fiction, (with one of the more unique alien races conceived in SF). Plot-wise, Embassytown also felt more tightly focused whereas Perdido seemed more of a messy sprawl, (although it was a good kind of messy). At the end, Perdido seemed somewhat unfinished... I guess I need to read Iron Council soon to see what else he does in the world of New Crobuzon.

Oh, and that scene in Perdido, when they go into the lair of the slake moths, was absolutely hair-raisingly written. Nothing in Embassytown really compared with that, viscerally speaking.

I read The Scar and The City and The City and enjoyed the plot, world-building, and concept exploration in both, as well as the many differences between them. Not SF, maybe, but definitely at home in an SF library.

Weird. Had to rejoin the group in order to post. Didn't think I was away THAT long!

>80 Lynxear: If the wizard was named Harold Shea, you've got the right story in mind. The Mathematics of Magic ended up as part of an omnibus entitled The Complete Enchanter.

Happy 50th anniversary,Star Trek.Long may you continue to live and prosper!
I watched those original programmes on a tiny blurred black and white version.We in the UK didnt have colour TV back then. So I never knew for years that different officer classes had different colour tops! lol.

I've been intrigued and irritated over the mainstream media response to this anniversary. Intrigued that Trek has reached so far into the general consciousness that it's considered newsworthy, even on Radio 4; and irritated that all the mainstream coverage has focused on the original series only.

Thirteen (is it?) feature films, five different tv series incarnations (so far) totalling 28 seasons' of tv episodes, let alone the animated series, the novelisations (of which I possess precisely one, lest you think I'm some sort of closet Trekker) and a detailed literature about the franchise and the ideas behind it (and that's not even going near the fan fiction!), and all the arts establishment can look at is the first three years out of fifty. After all, how did Patrick Stewart ever get to be an international superstar? His stage work may be excellent, but it wasn't his participation in the RSC that made him into an international sex symbol! And many of the themes that were important in TOS were picked up just as much if not more so in TNG and subsequent series; even if DS9, Voyager and Enterprise did concentrate more on plot than concept, the overall zeitgeist of the franchise underwrote everything, and I don't think that's being acknowledged.

>86 Thomas_Watson: You may be right... I have read The Compleat Enchanter though I no longer have the book... I recall enjoying at the time I read it.

>85 ChrisRiesbeck: I did like The City and the City which to my relief was fairly tradition SF (for Mieville,anyway!) after reading Kraken.It was 2012,I had been out of the SF genre for decades,hadnt a clue who Mieville was,and was attracted by the premise that a forty foot long sqid had mysteriously disappeared from the bowels of the Natural History Museum,and a body was found squashed into a large glass bottle. Sounded fun,but as I began to read the book it got very weird,turned into horror,then satire,and half a dozen other genres. The squid pretty much turned into a Maguffin. Not being used to Mieville's evil sense of humour I resented that a little! lol.
Its four years but I have NOT been able to forget The Tattoo. Oh boy,the scene where it is on a man's back,talking, has unfortunately etched itself in my mind.
No wonder turning to the City and the City was such a relief :0)
I wasnt very keen on Embassytown. The world setting was suitably Mievillean, a bit creepy.The language aspects were interesting but the characters were a bit bland to say the least,so I couldnt immerse myself fully in the tale,and have no wish to revisit the book.
Next year I will be reading Perdido Street Station,already girding up the loins and courage! lol

Old shelfarians,shall we try to resurrect the First Lines game? Thought we'd try it out here in the bar,and if there is interest,perhaps we could open a general thread.
Anyone can post a book title. One title per post. Mark it as First Lines and give the group a few days to try to answer it - without googling,but if you think you have it on your shelf you can root around to locate! lol.
After a few days if no one answers,the poster can either give the answer,or give a clue.
Let's give it a go!

First Lines
''I see in Lunaya Pravda that Luna City Council has passed on first reading a bill to examine, license, inspect—and tax—public food vendors operating inside municipal pressure.''

>92 dustydigger: Must be Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Correct JS! I loved that book so much back in the 70s but ,after rereading quite a few Heinleins and finding them a bit embarrassing in some cases,I dont want to spoil my fond memories of MIHM by rereading! lol.
You can post a title if you want to,JS.

>94 dustydigger: The strong libertarian vibe gave Heinlein away. The Luna references suggested the title.

I'm sorry. I'm crap at playing games, I'm not sure what you mean by "posting a title".

>94 dustydigger:.My mistake,I should have said post a first line. I just meant you add a book first line of your own choice to the page for others to try to guess.If no one manages you can either give the answer or give them a clue.
Over on shelfari we got through all the famous first lines quickly (eg Fahrenheit 451.''It was a pleasure to burn'') and it got pretty challenging.But we'll start off slow.You can do several entries at a time if you wish.
Wake up ScoLgo,Thomas,and Jerry and get posting

First Line
"They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from grammer school across the street. He was eight years old then. He'd been doing it for years."

(nope it wasnt that,but it certain grabs the attention,as first lines should!)

First Line
''Tonight we are going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man''

Author Birthday
12th September Stanislaw Lem (1921 - 2006)
The only book of this famous Polish writer I have read is Solaris which was interesting ,a bit difficult at times,and sometimes painfully slow- as was the Russian film version! lol Preferred that version though to the US film with George Clooney!
I hear good things about his Star Diaries,supposed to be very funny.
Also would like to try his Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Quote of the Day
“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.” - Ray Bradbury

Hi everyone! Dusty, such a nice thread you have here....

I've never been very good at the first sentence game, they only rarely stick, but this one sounded familiar. I had to go to the book and check it, it is indeed The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I didn't like the book very much, but that is a great first sentence.

I'll have to think of a first sentence now...

OK, here it is:

First line:

There were five of us - Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.

>88 RobertDay: I'm not quite sure what you find so puzzling about the media coverage of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek focusing on the only part of Star Trek that is 50 years old.

None of the movies, subsequent TV series or novels would exist without the original series. I particularly enjoyed the Star Trek marathon of the entire original series on BBC America this last weekend. I stopped in several times to enjoy old favorites.

>104 tottman: It's precisely because TOS set the tone for an enduring franchise that I find myself irritated by the way in which the UK mainstream media have concentrated on the first three years only. The fandom revels in the whole story arc; and one of the interesting ways that Trek has kept fresh and is still relevant is the way in which each new show or film has re-invented itself for its times.

UK mainstream media just doesn't do genre stories; when they do, they tend to find talking heads to offer opinions who rarely have had much to do with the show, or the fandom. So we've had people on flagship news programmes talking about how Relevant The Issues Were in Trek as if it had disappeared at the end of TOS season 3 and everyone nods wisely and ticks the box marked 'Star Trek 50th anniversary'. And that's where it stays for the next 50 years.

>98 dustydigger: "They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from grammer school across the street. He was eight years old then. He'd been doing it for years."

The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon. I just read this last year and greatly enjoyed it.

>103 LauraM77: "There were five of us - Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger."

I believe this is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. An author that is perhaps none too popular with Dusty at the moment. LOL!

>98 dustydigger:, >106 ScoLgo:

That line just reeked of Sturgeon to me, but I didn't think of a specific book! It's been some years since I read The Dreaming Jewels; it's a good one.

Here's an easy first line..

It was a pleasure to burn.

>109 ScoLgo:

Fahrenheit 451, I presume?

>110 paradoxosalpha: Yup! ;)

Here's one with some vague mood in common with the earlier Sturgeon quote:

Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin.

>112 paradoxosalpha: "Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin."

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett. Great book!

These are sure going fast now.

Well... Dusty and I, and a few other ex-Shelfarians, played this game extensively in the SF group on that site. So... we have seen a lot of these before. Both The Long Tomorrow and The Dreaming Jewels were first lines that I posted in the Shelfari game so I suppose I had an unfair advantage with those. OTOH, my memory is much like a sieve so there are plenty of others I won't recognize - even though I may have read the book. ;)

First Line

Isserley always drove straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up.

>102 LauraM77: Hi Laura,good to see you. Correct ,its Haldeman. Do you think this one is just one for the guys, female SF fans always seem a bit lukewarm to this one,while the guys rave! lol.Couldnt help but see Lou Gossett junior in my mind's eye for the guy teaching them to kill quietly and efficiently. There was a lot of thought provoking stuff about the effects of time dilation on the soldiers as they became ever less connected to changing society and of course for Americans it was very symbolic of the disconnection of soldiers on their return from Vietnam,but I didnt find the complete changeover of society to homosexuality very credible at all.One of the less common forms of population control I've come across in science fiction! lol.Think I'll stick to Starship Troopers.So sue me! :0)
BTW glad you like the thread,Laura. After our active shelfari group I found the quietness here on LT unnerving,so I decided to do my own thread where I could ramble to my heart's content,plus try at least to have something for visitors to the group to look at while posting their latest reads,even if its just a quote of the day,or an author's birthday! :0). Very pleased at the response so far.

>107 ScoLgo: Yep,I've made myself pretty notorious about Doomsday,havent I? It turned out to be not too bad,probably 3.5 stars. Nothing like a lot of blood and nasty plague details to brighten up a book!
Next year as I progress through the awards I'll be faced with Blackout and All Clear,which Robert Day had severe problems with,but let evil be sufficient unto the day,I'll cross those bombsites when I reach them probably next summer! :0)

>108 paradoxosalpha: It was a very strange book,PA. Would you almost want to class it as weird fiction in a way? Certainly it was rather close to horror,but with that pervasive hardboiled noir vibe we see in the pulp detective fiction of the time.Of course authors at that time scratched a living by doing all sorts of genres,so even routine pulp seemed to merge a variety of genres in a way that makes them still readable today.
Not that I would call Dreaming Jewels just routine stuff! lol.Sad how time dims even great reputations. Back in the 60s Ted Sturgeon was king. Perhaps since his greatest fame was in the short story area,and that is out of fashion today,he has become less famous. But More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels are definitely cracking reads even today.
So,any young whippersnappers who think SF didnt exist before Neuromancer - and there are an awful lot of them! lol - have a look at those two Sturgeons at least!
(Hey,you 40 year old Gibson and Stephenson fans,you have to admit time is going by ,but young whippersnappers is actually a compliment,you do seem young to me! )

>113 ScoLgo: I liked The Long Tomorrowtoo.There were so many post nuclear war books around at that time - naturally,the shock of Hiroshima was still reverberating! -(e.g. Wyndham's The Crysalids came out the same year) - but where I feel Brackett scores over the others is the complexity of the communities,their varying viewpoints.And best of all,the hero Len is himself conflicted,he veers between pros and cons of re-harnessing the old technology that caused so much suffering. Nothing is black and white. Possibly because Brackett is female?Its a feature of her work to give some depth of motivation and sensitivity to her characters. Even with her forays into the Conan type arena,her hero Eric John Stark had a litle less boneheaded machismo and the heroines a little bit more gumption than the guys were producing! :0)

>119 dustydigger: Would you almost want to class it as weird fiction in a way?

I said so in my review posted back in 2007. I'm a Sturgeon fan, and I've repeatedly nominated his stories for discussions like these:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/171230
http://www.librarything.com/topic/179230
http://www.librarything.com/topic/158662

>120 dustydigger:

Stark is a John Carter type, surely, rather than a Conan type! I remember being upset with this book club cover for Brackett's Skaith trilogy, because it made the female character Gerritt into a cringing little girl, and it made the black Stark into a swarthy white guy. Not the way she wrote them.

>122 paradoxosalpha: I meant the term more generally as being warriors with swords lol.It just seemed to me that Stark did seem a little softer,less brutish in a female's eyes than most such characters. But its not an area I know anything about,so I havent a clue about Gerrit etc. Obviously its something that annoys you,so feel free to rant here as much as you like. I take it that you feel husband Edmond Hamilton is the culprit here?
As for covers,do you ever really expect the covers to be true to the books? I swear most cover artists dont seem to have even opened the book before putting pencil to paper.:0)
Thanks for the references to Sturgeon. I like the look of the Weird Tradition group but need to do a lot of reading in that area,I am a complete rookie in the genre,having read only HPL,a bit of LeFanu,and a smidgen of Ashton Clark,so I dont feel competent to take part. Maybe next year,since I intend to do a little exploring of the genre.!

>Ironically, although I've not actually read the book, I recall your interest in it on Shelfari.

Under the Skin, right?

>122 paradoxosalpha: I take it that you feel husband Edmond Hamilton is the culprit here?

Nope. I never took it on myself to audit Brackett's marriage!

Of course I don't expect perfect fidelity in covers. But it's frustrating when features that specifically make characters interesting are contradicted in illustrations executed for the work.

Alright, ready to use my first line (if it hasn't expired yet).

First Lines

He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

First Lines

''I always get the shakes before a drop.''

I just want to say that I'm terrible at this game, and never know the answers, but I enjoy reading the First Lines that youall find worthy. My writing teachers all stressed the importance of the opening line, to set the mood and to grab the reader's attention, and it's interesting to consider a line out of context, separately from the rest of the story.

Locus magazine

>128 Darth-Heather: Hi Heather. Even if your cant answer any you could always post a first line for others to puzzle over! :0)

>126 justifiedsinner: "He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."

I think this is Orlando by Virginia Woolf...?

>120 dustydigger: "And best of all,the hero Len is himself conflicted,he veers between pros and cons of re-harnessing the old technology that caused so much suffering."

And that conflict is wonderfully hinted at in the opening line. You put your finger directly on the reason I found that line so memorable.

>124 Thomas_Watson: Yep, you got it. >116 ScoLgo: is indeed Under the Skin. One of the creepier alien invasion stories I've come across in a while. Well, not really an invasion per se... but so, so disturbing. I pretty much loved it! ;)

Wow,it was a surprise to see that Virginia Woolf 's Orlando had such an unusual starting sentence. Sounded more like something Michael Moorcock in one of his more outre moods would write! lol.

>127 dustydigger: Starship Troopers

First Lines

For the fifty-first time (according to his laptop), Oscar studied the riot video from Worcester.

>131 ScoLgo: You are right of course. There are strong transgender hints in the line which I figured would give it away.

>136 justifiedsinner: I actually just got around to reading Orlando last year - and that was a memorable line so I guess I had not yet forgotten it. Still, I wasn't 100% certain...

FIRST LINE:

The stars, like all man's other ventures, were an obvious impracticality, as rash and improbable an ambition as the first venture of man onto Earth's own great oceans, or into the air, or into space.

First Line

"No! I don't want the mangosteen."

DOWNBELOW STATION and
THE WINDUP GIRL

nice books

first line (skipping the prologue):

"He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead."

>140 bookstopshere: Correct on Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh.

>140 bookstopshere: Also correct on The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Wow! I was wondering if there would be enough interest to set up a specific thread,and I'm glad to see such an enthusiastic response.So I've set up a new topic thread.
Because of no nesting of replies,too many topics get too tangled,so there will be less chaos when the First Lines goes off on its own way!

>141 bookstopshere:The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester

What a book!This is the book that really got me back into SF after decades away. Not a pleasant character,our Gully Foyle,but the exuberant splashy pyrotechnics of the writing and the rather weird 25th century setting were spectacular. I then read The Demolished Man,and was less taken. At the time the typography and the depiction of mental communication must have been mindblowing to readers. Since then a million authors have trodden the same path,so it all looks a bit ''whats the fuss about?''.A common fate for pioneers,the people following in the footsteps seem to surpass the original.
Certainly didnt feel that with Stars (I still tend to think of the book under the Brit title,Tiger Tiger). Gully Foyle is still whizzing far ahead of us.lol.

Quote of the Day

“I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.”
― S.J. Perelman

Ah,I'm with Perelman,where would we be in SF without the scientists,predominantly mad,or coldly cruel,or stubbornly tinkering in world destroying technology,or inventing super strains of would be world saving foods which end up destroying mankind - notice a ''destroying'' theme?
In many cases they get their comeuppance, and on the whole have a VERY bad press in the SF world.
Any fave books? Of course its been a theme right from the start,with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.(Actually much further back,if we include mad alchemists,and Faust)Scientists didnt do so well in A Canticle for Leibowitz either
Arthur Machen has a very creepy scientist in The Great God Pan
Well's Doctor Moreau on his horrible Island EEK!Or Dr Griffin,The Invisible Man
Saruman in LOTR,with his hideous proliferation of machines.
The list is endless!

>144 dustydigger: Good idea, doing the first line thing on its own.

When you get round to reading Perdido Street Station you'll find that the whole State must, at some point, have been made up of Mad Scientists with a penchant for cruel and unusual punishments for minor crimes - i.e. The Remade.

>149 SChant: Oh-oh sounds ominous!.
But did they fit the accepted idea of mad scientists? You know,wild hair(probably copied off Einstein) white lab coats.building terrifying technology (often very odd or sinister,I think we have some atom smashers in the museum ).These guys often work for unscrupulous bosses and never care what damage they are doing,SCIENCE IS ALL.They are usually proving a point,usually about a theory of their own and totally dont care who gets in the way. ''Collateral damge'' is such a nice euphemism,dont you think?
The totally crazy scientists tend to want to make a monster,but the cold blooded,but heartless types are probably much more chilling. Think of the not-nice people who created the tech in Scalzi's Old Man's War(I always find inserting human minds into new bodies creepy for some reason!) or the makers of all the terrible viruses /infectious disease to such catatrophic effect. Nuclear bombs can look quite clean by comparison to some of them! Makes for great reading though! :0)

Michael Kearney is quite a "mad" scientist in Harrison's Light. I couldn't help but wonder about having that highly unsympathetic central character named "Mike," when that's the author's name to his friends!

>150 dustydigger: - Not really - maybe more like the Archemandrite Luseferous from Banks' The Algebraist, sadistic just for fun, though they like to see it as Justice.

A typical modest sort of quote by the grandaddy of all mad scientists,Victor Frankenstein;

"So much has been done — more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation..."
There you go,nothing like some quiet ambition

Author Birthdays this week

Norman Spinrad - 15th September 1940
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - 15th September 1942
Mary Stewart - 16th September 1916

I havent read Spinrad yet,he looks a bit depressing and heavy going to me,particularly works like The Iron Dream and Bug Jack Barron,both of which are future reads for me.
Yarbro has written in all sorts of genres,and I vaguely remember some rather light and enjoyable,but forgettable SF. She is mostly known for her vampire novels about Saint Germain.
Cant believe its 100 years since Mary Stewart was born. She was very popular for her very well written romantic suspense novels,still enjoyable today,but also for her Merlin/Arthur trilogy,starting with The Crystal Cave.

Spinrad's two iconic novels, which you reference, are both very much of their time. Both were highly controversial in their day, though 'Bug Jack Barron' now looks like a day in the everyday life of your average shock jock.

Haven't kept up to speed for a while, so my 2 cents are a bit late...
>81 dustydigger: I read The scar first, which I absolutely loved. It is the same world as Perdido street station, only different location. I read that one later and still liked it, although for some reason, The scar worked better for me. But both books are very visceral with excellent world building. I loved that the endings are ambiguous. Stuff happens to the protagonists and in the end, they have to live with that. It doesn't have a totally good or totally bad ending, or even a completely resolved ending. It's life. I though that was very well done, and having read somewhere in your threat that there is another book in this world, I will have to look that up. Would you recommend Iron council?

I also read The city & the city, which was entertaining, but which was less immersive for me.

>156 zjakkelien: I read Perdido Street Station a while ago (dustydigger probably remembers my somewhat mixed on Shelfari). Not exactly a light read. I plan to read more of his work, but probably not soon, as I'm reading Wolf's Shadow and Claw at the moment. I'll need to read something a bit lighter soon!

>157 ThomasWatson: Oh boy,read something lighter?I can see why,Thomas. I have had to pause with book three,Sword of the Lictor.Wolfe may be heavy,but I am light-headed with trying to grasp what is going on,as we keep having abrupt changes of direction,and more of those little stories,seemingly barely connected to the tale,that ,Ancient Mariner like,people in the tale ramble on about. I desperately attempt to grasp them in case they have serious significance later. lol.
How old do you think Severian is in the story? He is a journeyman before leaving the Guild,so maybe quite young,though of course few become Masters in a Guild,and stay journeymen all their lives.He always talks in this stately formal way,sounding rather wise and selfcontrolled and mature,but his attitude to women is very callow. He falls in love with every woman he meets! So that seems to be quite a young man.Of course,this being Wolfe,even that is complicated by Severian narrating the story years later.Certainly Wolfe doesnt make things easy for us. A fascinating but difficult saga,but definitely a masterpiece.

>157 ThomasWatson: No, it's not a light read. I find though that once you are firmly ensconced in the story, it pulls you in to the point where you don't notice the effort.

Quote of the day

“Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities.”
― Miriam Allen de Ford

Just remembered, when I was trying to unravel Gene Wolfe a little better I printed something off a website and tucked it into my copy. Good thing I did, the web site is defunct now, looks like.

Severian is Wolfe's most famous creation and is someone who should become the ideal chronicler. For example, imagine the delight of the Egyptologist if we uncovered a record of an Egyptian Pharaoh from time long lost who had a perfect, photographic memory and wrote his memoirs from his reign for no better reason but to please himself and seal up the record for no one to see except in some far, far distant time and land--perhaps the afterlife itself. The record should be perfect. The record should be confessional and without political motive. Such a record would be hailed as one of the greatest historical documents of all time.

We are given precisely this in New Sun. Severian, in his rise to power, is all of these things. Yet despite this, he is frustratingly opaque.

In the most macroscopic sense for someone attempting to investigate the "time of Severian," the chronicle is vague in politics, geography, and economy to the point where the reader is given almost no understanding whatsoever regarding anything on which a normal historical text would endeavor to enlighten us. Severian is simply ignorant or uninterested. His monetary and property interests are completely non-existent. His grasp of politics is woeful under any measurable standard. The great bulk of his chronicle takes place in a very small geographical area beyond which Severian has no knowledge whatsoever. The reader is instead inundated with the whimsical interests of a man prone to digression regarding myths, women, and ethics. Long, (presumably perfect) discourses on the importance of these matters swell the book such that someone approaching it from a notionally historical research vantage point would be completely thwarted.

Wolfe's point in this is that a seemingly perfect narrator is prone to all manners of errors and misconceptions. He shows us by making obvious examples out of Severian but the reader is reminded of how even the most assiduous and well-meaning scholars will be prone to similar errors in judgment based upon their interests, their education, and the importance to which various omnipresent contributing causes hold for current events that may or may not have any historical value whatsoever. The autobiograophies of presidents, prime ministers, famous politicians and public figures, and any other historically important figure must in turn be studied with the same (or more) suspicion with which we judge Severian. Lacking any other evidence with which to cross-reference, how much can we presume is accurate? And of ancient texts of some few individual upon whom we rely almost completely for our historical understandings, what sort of shade imprints its color on our minds as we peer through the autobiographical glasses?

Each principal work of Wolfe takes an aspect of the historical chronicler and challenges our assumptions about its objectivity. This challenge likely appeals greatly to the post-modern critic who, building on the ideas of Sasseur and other 20th century theorists, places individual perception as a creator of individual truths not to be held in any higher esteem or greater authority than any other "truth." It paves the way for all kinds of later theories. But Wolfe is actually dealing in a much different mode: he is challenging the division between history and fiction in ways that blur the distinction and force us to realize how important each can be.

We study history to learn its lesson and not repeat its mistakes. Which mistakes? Were they actual mistakes of the time or the perceived mistakes of the chronicler? And, if the latter, are they any less a fiction than the mistakes that Severian might commit in his own history? By challenging these notions of objectivity, Wolfe is making answer to any person who scoffs at fiction as a worthless venture for, in truth, these fictions can be as instructive as any notionally non-fiction work. There is still a division, of course, between the colleges of science and liberal arts. By non-fiction, we surely mean that scientific texts are by their nature testable: certainly a manual instructing one in carpentry or scientific papers published to test reproducible results of experimental physics can be determined as objectively true under most circumstances or at least substantiated to a large degree. But when one blunders in to the liberal arts the line is not so clear between fiction and truth and the man who would attempt to hold the one in higher esteem over the other would make a profound error. Liberal arts is about expanding the understanding of humanity, its purpose, and its evolution on this earth. In this, fiction can--and often does--serve just as well or better. In fact, it may be the only true offering at the buffet.

> 161 As Pilate said,''What is truth?''Seems to be a major theme of Wolfe's as he has this seemingly infallible recorder who repeatedly shows us a bewilderingly different take on events. No wonder some readers howl unfair,Severian is a liar,or has lied by omission! :0) Old Gene is a very wiley feller,keeping me at least in a constant state of perplexity,to the point that by the third book I cant take even the most seemingly straightforward sentence for granted.Amazing stuff
No wonder in Orwell's 1984 the authorities had Newspeak,trying to pin down language to a simplistic version which could manipulate the people!Thank you so much Cecrow for this interesting article!
Slightly off topic,its odd how different times sees different things in a book as important. At this time we have programmes called Room 101 where celebrities choose pet peeves to be ''destroyed'' in said room,and we have the Big Brother franchise with contestants under constant surveillance. All a trivialisation of Orwell. I distinctly remember earnest worried discussions of the book on TV back in the 60s when the USSR and USA were demonising each other,and the Newspeak aspect was seen as extremely pertinent,a warning of the use of language by USSR as propaganda to mislead and neutralise their people.(never the US,our ally of course,though they were manipulating language in pretty much the same way)
Whereas Big Brother was trying to strip down language ,removing ambiguity and emotions,Wolfe seems to envelope Severian and us in a fog by obscuring events by rich,archaic,and exotic language. Brilliant, puzzling, fascinating,and bewildering by turn,this is definitely the work of a master craftsman.But no easy read.

Something I'll look closer at if I re-read them is the descriptive bits that some readers have interpreted as relics of our era. For example, the building where Severian works at the beginning of "Shadow" is possibly an ancient, grounded rocket. And at one point, in this building he describes an image on the wall that sounds very much like a photo of one of the Apollo moon landings.

What fascinates me is Severian's education. He has knowledge of starships,and planetary colonisationand some science,and doesnt turn a hair at finding a friend is really a cyborg which dtransports out in the middle of an ancient dungeon,in a world that is very much mediaeval in style. I would love to know more of this world,and how it got this way,but as usual Severian is utterly selfabsorbed and we only see his world in its relations to himself. Which of course is natural to anyone,but annoying for the reader. lol. Severian is definitely an odd duck,and the more we know about him the less we understand! lol. Or even like,I have to say. That glamorously tragic young man who has lost his beloved,and been exiled in Shadow,has blotted his copybook a few times to my disillusioned eye now.
Of course I put some of the blame for the glamour on that eerie but iconic cover art for Shadow.
I see that new paperback editions of Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel in the SF Masterworks series are due out in UK in November.a bit pricey £12.99 and £10.99 respectively. Great covers,as is usual for the Masterworks series.

>164 dustydigger: Which will be really irritating for UK readers if the rest of the sequence - The Urth of the New Sun, the four volumes of The Book of the Long Sun and the three volumes of The Book of the Short Sun (which, AFAIK, have never been published in the UK) aren't published as well.

The second sequence is still on my TBR pile after all this time; when I get around to them, I shall have to re-read the first sequence and 'The Urth...' just to bring myself back up to speed.

>165 RobertDay:

I'm in exactly your position relative to these, and this discussion is bringing that re-read toward the top of my TBR pile.

Name the author

Take the initial letter from the answers to the following questions to find the author of one of the most famous SF novels of all time.Free drinks at the bar if you can do it without googling! Gargleblasters as punishment if you have to peek,one drink per clue you had to check out!Dont worry,we have excellent medical care provided for Gargleblaster imbibers,but the fewer you drink the sooner your recovery :0)

1. At the Gateway humans find a whole collection of spaceships left behind by this mysterious long departed older race.
2. ''This Island -----'' by Raymond F Jones
3. Surname of the Revelation Space universe creator.
4. Gandalf's foe in the Mines of Moria.
5. Title of the Cherryh book where first contact with the Kyo is made.
6. They do things in threes
7. Capital world of Asimov's Galactic Empire

answers later

>165 RobertDay: "The second sequence is still on my TBR pile after all this time; when I get around to them, I shall have to re-read the first sequence and 'The Urth...' just to bring myself back up to speed."

Precisely where I am at with these Wolfe books. This fascinating discussion you all are having is making me push these books closer to the top of my reading list. At least I have managed to collect all 12 novels. I have the original well-thumbed decalogy plus 'Urth' in paperback. In the past couple of years I have also picked up used but great condition hardcovers of Litany of the Long Sun and Epiphany of the Long Sun as well as hardcovers of all three of the Short Sun books. All of them at bargain prices.

I have read quite a bit of Wolfe over the years. Considering that every book of his I have read has proved a challenge, I expect it will take me half a year or so to get through the entire series. Best get started, eh? ;)

From my very limited knowledge I say
1 - Hechee from Frederick Pohl's Gateway and Hechee saga
4 - I think a Balrog
Don't know the others but based on the 2 letters the answer should be Herbert?

Ah, that sandy place book.

Heechee, Earth, Reynolds, Balrog, Explorer, ?, Trantor

>165 RobertDay: Perhaps for new readers I should list the titles involved.The similarity of the series titles are a tad confusing,as is the fact that omnibus editions of various types were published too.
Deep breath,here we go

Urth : Book of the New Sun
1. The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)
2. The Claw of the Conciliator (1980)
3. The Sword of the Lictor (1982)
4. The Citadel of the Autarch (1982)
5. The Urth of the New Sun (1987)
omnibuses
1+2 Shadow and Claw
3+4 Sword and Citadel
1-4 Severian of the Guild

Urth : Book of the Long Sun
1. Nightside the Long Sun (1993)
2. Lake of the Long Sun (1994)
3. Calde of the Long Sun (1994)
4. Exodus from the Long Sun (1996)
omnibuses
1+2 Litany of the Long Sun
3+4 Epiphany of the Long Sun


Urth : Book of the Short Sun
1. On Blue's Waters (1999)
2. In Green's Jungles (2000)
3. Return to the Whorl (2001)

I couldnt believe my luck when I got the Severian of the Guild from Amazon for 1p plus £2.80 postage. The book was pristine,fine quality brilliant white paper,obviously had never even been opened. The only flaw was the bottom corner,which had got curled up a little,almost unnoticeable. £14.99 at the moment for such pristine copies! :0)
I was very surprised because the books I usually order then receive are tatty old nicotine brown,slight-whiff-of-mildew ancient SF books. This was a bonanza lol

Those are also listed here, but in chronological order. Thanks for your list, I always prefer publication order: https://www.librarything.com/series/Solar+Cycle

>170 justifiedsinner: I think ? = Ramans

Well,sheesh,I turned away for 5 minutes and we already have replies!
>169 LauraM77: Well done Laura,I am letting you off the Gargleblasters because you got the author with a minimum of clues.
>170 justifiedsinner: JS well done,6 out of seven,and you'll kick yourself when you see the answer to #6! ;0).Oh well,only one blaster,cant do all that much damage,cant it?
>173 ScoLgo: Correct ScoLgo! How many did you get altogether
I'll wait for more attempts and will chat about the answers tomorrow. Have to leave the bar now and go and do boring chores and cook the supper. See you all tomorrow!

>171 dustydigger: Good gawd, what have I gotten myself into? "For it is no easy road." No kidding! lol

I just finished Shadow and Claw yesterday. That man certainly has a way with words!

My impression is that Severain is in his late teens, and certainly no older than twenty years. Since the account is being related by his slightly older and more experienced self, there's sometimes a bit of a disconnect between how he tells it and the experiences he's recounting.

It all adds up to a clever and somewhat trippy reading experience. And I will, indeed, follow that road. Eventually. ;-)

>174 dustydigger: I got all but #5. My reading of Cherryh is woefully lacking. Have only read 6 books by her to date.

>175 ThomasWatson: Everything I have read by Wolfe has proved challenging. I think the reason I enjoy his writing so much is largely due to his penchant for using unreliable narration. He also leaves much of his narratives open to interpretation by the reader. For instance, the latest Wolfe book I read was his first full-length novel, Peace, (not a science fiction story so apologies for veering a bit off topic). I loved the book but he about drove me over the edge with multiple references to why Napoleon often kept his hand in his waistcoat - but he never did divulge the reason. He also never fully spells out what is up with the narrator. At the end, I was still guessing about many things. Yet, the book was simply wonderful.

>173 ScoLgo: >174 dustydigger: I was thinking Pierson's Puppeteers (Ringworld) but I knew P didn't fit. Long time since I read the Clarke series.

>167 dustydigger: Name the author - Frank HERBERT

1. At the Gateway humans find a whole collection of spaceships left behind by this mysterious long departed older race. - Heechee
2. ''This Island -----'' by Raymond F Jones - Earth
3. Surname of the Revelation Space universe creator. - Alistair Reynolds
4. Gandalf's foe in the Mines of Moria. - The Balrog
5. Title of the Cherryh book where first contact with the Kyo is made. - Explorer
6. They do things in threes - The Ramans
7. Capital world of Asimov's Galactic Empire - Trantor

>177 ScoLgo: Same for me. Shadow and Claw isn't my first experience with Wolfe, it's more of a follow up. I've read other works by him (long time ago!), and read Shadow of the Torturer when it was new. Never got around to the rest of the series, which has grown some since then. There will be a copy of Sword and Citadel on the TBR pile soon.

Quote of the Day
“Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults.”
Alvin Toffler:Future Shock

Author Birthdays
David Drake - 24th September 1945
Michael G Coney - 28th September 1932
Nicola Griffith - 30th September 1960

>181 dustydigger: I wonder what Toffler would say on the matter today, with science fiction having been so thoroughly "mainstreamed?"

>183 ThomasWatson: That book was a big thing back in 1970,and certainly had cogent points about the acceleration of change,which is now dizzying.I agree that SF has lost its important edge that Toffler was discussing,rather romantically I think. But today? Its all a bit ''meh'',isnt it?
And the kids,instead of reading SF,either stick to dystopia or sparkly vampires.If they are even reading,as they are more likely to be killing monsters on their X-boxes or following celeb gossip on Twitter.
Apparently Toffler only died July this year.

>184 dustydigger: .I agree that SF has lost its important edge that Toffler was discussing,rather romantically I think. But today? Its all a bit ''meh'',isnt it?

I don't think so. In recent years, I've been making an effort to read sf written in the 21st century, and I've been getting a lot out of it. Most recently, I've found that Ken MacLeod has no shortage of big ideas.

>185 paradoxosalpha: Then I hope enough young people are reading him! :0)

>186 dustydigger:

Oh, you're finding the contemporary reception of sf (rather than the output) "meh"? I could see that.

The mass notion of sf these days seems to be heavily invested in franchises that are at least two generations old: Trek and Wars.

>184 dustydigger: Yes, he did.

>185 paradoxosalpha: & >186 dustydigger:
I second the praise for Ken MacLeod's work. He has a new trilogy, Corporation Wars. The first novel is out and it is excellent touching on many issues facing the world today. It explores the impact of technology on society. You can read my review here.

I started the Infinite Worlds thread tentatively as an experiment to see if we could get a bit of a vibe going in the group,and I am very happy with the results,so I will make it into a regular monthly thread. Good to see the September Reads thread reached the 200 posts mark ,and the First Lines thread was busy too.I do like to see a buzzing active group.We have moved up from our normal 20th or 21st position up to 12th in the most active groups list. Nothing worse than coming onsite and there are no new posts to read. :0)

>181 dustydigger: I wonder which author of the 20th century anticipated today's internet texting generation. I am sure some one did. Perhaps it goes back to Dick Tracey? Of course, in Star Trek, they had flip cell phones.

>191 jerry-book: Heinlein had watch phones and "net" connections in people's home in his novel, Friday. When people arrived in a home they would ask permission to log into the net on the resident's terminal. I am always being asked for our wifi password when my sons' friends are over.

>171 dustydigger: Found myself talking about Wolfe's work with someone in another venue, and the comment was made that keeping it all straight was almost as much a challenge as reading the books. So I gave him a copy of your list.

I've also transferred it to my TBR spread sheet, by the way. ;-)

That was odd. With one click I managed to post the same message twice.

I wish I could make money that way.

>195 ThomasWatson: I get that sometimes, too. I think the technical term for that sort of thing is 'a Feature' (as in my question to a developer, in detecting something I think is wrong with a system: "Is it a bug, or a Feature?").

>196 RobertDay: I have often heard the refrain, "Don't fix it. Feature it."

The best (or worst?) comeback I ever had from a developer was; "It's not a bug. It's just something that's failed far earlier than we anticipated."

>198 RobertDay: I like that one. It's the explicit acceptance of inevitable failure.

>198 RobertDay: >199 pgmcc:

I was a debugger in a software house for one stint of my working life. I ran into an issue with one subroutine and I brought it to the attention of the programmer that was responsible for writing it and his response was:

"That is not a bug!... it is an unintended use of the software, outside the frame of reference of the terms of agreement for the application."

>200 Lynxear: Love it.

I used to implement an integrated software suite (an ERP system to those in the know) that included inventory management, purchasing, production control, production planning, and all the finance modules. This system had originated in the USA and originally worked with only one currency. A Dutch affiliate had carried out some development to add multicurrency capability to the system.

The multicurrency development worked well but the main software house wanted to tidy things up and make the financial modules much more integrated and slick in their operation. They planned a super-dooper fancy software release with all the new multicurrency features built into the system.

I had many clients interested in when this release was due and I rang up the software company's head office to get an estimated release date. I got one of the senior sales people. I asked him when the software would be released and how the development process was going. He informed me that things were going well and the release would be soon. The software was at a stage where it only had standard bugs. He was confused when I asked him who had specified the standard bugs and whether or not I could have a manual detailing the standards used for these bugs. I loved winding up that company's sales people.

I wonder if there are people here who can identify the ERP from the information above.

>201 pgmcc: I have a similar story.

I don't have a degree in Comp Sci but I was a pretty good amateur programmer in Visual Basic 4 when I took a course at a local Technical college given by a Software house president. He jokingly said that after the course was over everyone could submit their resumes. Well I was very strong in business plus having some programming experience as an amateur PLUS I was out of work at the time so WTH, I submitted my resume and was hired 3 months later.

The application was an application for tracking Oil sales from wellhead to refinery and was 3/4million lines of code with 10 man years of input. It had 12 interested beta users paying pretty good coin to support the app. Our company was small and this application was attracting another software house wanting to buyout our company. When I started there was only one other guy devoted to debugging... he was a 19 year old wunderkin... we worked well together... I was 47 at the time and simple bugs (by his measure) were a challenge to me so I took the nuisance stuff off him but was available when I got stuck (I learned a lot of SQL from him at the time.) In addition I wrote reports that looked good... the previous ones were more like raw data dumps.... they did not understand how the client viewed the reports and when I showed a talent for their creation they shoveled every one to me. The programmers considered them "prettiness issues" so I put a sign above my cubicle "Head of Prettiness Issues" They made me take it down after a day or two but it was a laugh.

Anyway, they wanted to "shrink wrap" the application so they had something to show the potential buyer. To date we were just tackling reported bugs, but now they wanted to "let loose the hounds" (that would be the 2 of us). Well we identified 25 unknown bugs the first day and 40 bugs the next.....We had touched maybe 1/3 the code by then but fixed nothing. The Supervisor yelled "STOP LOOKING FOR BUGS!!!!".

Well we started fixing what we found and I guess the other company was less that thorough in their DD and they bought out the company...keeping our division intact... that lasted 2 years before they gave up and canned the project and getting rid of the division. From a sales perspective I could not see how they could do that as at least a dozen companies had invested a lot of money into the project and overall they were not hating their beta programs as long as bugs were handled when found. The software engineers that were let go formed another company and continued to do maintenance on the software.

Quite a 4 year experience. :)

>202 Lynxear: That sounds like my career path and my experience with my last company; we also managed to burn through that situation to my redundancy in two years . And it was the company's owners who decided that rather than continuing to support in-house software development, they'd prefer to sack all the testers and most of the developers and buy another company that developed the same sort of applications.

>203 RobertDay: Yeah, in my case it pretty much ended my programming career. Not having a degree in Comp Sci, cut me out of applying for other jobs, though I did work as a temp for 2 more years creating/repairing reports written in Crystal Reports as I had developed a pretty good expertise in that software... but that eventually ended as well.... but I moved on to other things.

>202 Lynxear: You reminded me of my time (1979) learning and programming (that's what we called coding in those days) DIBOL, the Digital Business Oriented Language, the Digital Corporation version of COBOL.

When you wanted to step through your programme to debug it there was a tool that you could incorporate into your compiling process so the programme could be halted at any stage while running so that you could interrogate the values in variables and other settings. The tool was called the Digital Debugging Technique, DDT for short. How apt!

yeah... that exists in all forms of basic that I know of... very difficult to debug a program otherwise