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Dec 17, 2011 18:58
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hey this lovely local company's logo looks familiar: http://www.localedge.com/
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Dec 17, 2011 19:01
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:i've heard the Lensman series is good, you should give it a try and let us know how it goes You can get the whole Lensman omnibus for cheap but honestly the books get creepy with a eugenics breeding program to create the perfect super psychics, but given the power creep of the series it kinda makes sense? The problem is Lensman is like an old sci-fi serial turned into a novel, and there are great sequences which would work well in a short-story format but as part of a longer novelization are just out of place. Plus the fetish for eugenics of the 1930s, and the insanity of the Nazis who pursued it, casts a long shadow over the themes of the book. Agent of Vega by James H. Schmitz basically owes a lot to the Lensman series but was written in 1949 after World War II, and thus has no eugenics themes. Additionally, they're all basically novellas so they work fine independently and tell concise, space-opera stories. Agent of Vega & Other Stories is like $5 on amazon too.
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Dec 17, 2011 20:02
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lensmen are good, skylark of space series is good too.
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Dec 17, 2011 20:23
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for harsh scifi i've never found anything i enjoyed and disliked more than The Gap Series it's written by a pretty lovely fantasy author who i've always suspected is at least mostly schizo and his fantasy is unreadable crap but the gap series is mean and cold and humans is jerks and it's good
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Dec 17, 2011 20:40
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theflyingexecutive posted:hey this lovely local company's logo looks familiar: http://www.localedge.com/ that's good visual recall man
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Dec 17, 2011 20:51
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Laphroaig posted:You can get the whole Lensman omnibus for cheap but honestly the books get creepy with a eugenics breeding program to create the perfect super psychics, but given the power creep of the series it kinda makes sense? The problem is Lensman is like an old sci-fi serial turned into a novel, and there are great sequences which would work well in a short-story format but as part of a longer novelization are just out of place.
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Dec 17, 2011 22:30
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BUSINESS CATTE 2.0 posted:for harsh scifi i've never found anything i enjoyed and disliked more than The Gap Series also he makes good jeans
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Dec 17, 2011 22:34
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BonzoESC posted:also he makes good jeans j/k levi's 501s for life
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Dec 17, 2011 22:34
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BUSINESS CATTE 2.0 posted:for harsh scifi i've never found anything i enjoyed and disliked more than The Gap Series that's the one where the creepy old dude rapes a girl for 4.5 out of 5 books, right?
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Dec 17, 2011 23:02
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ya like i said it's really good and really bad the author definitely needs to spend a lotta time in therapy
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Dec 17, 2011 23:06
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Lost For Words posted:I remember really enjoying Zodiac but that was like 15 years ago. I should read it again c/d? It's a thin book, so why not? Remeber that part where the protagonist got chloracne from absorbing dioxin? In the book, he got pimples all over his body and then that cleared right up. In reality:  That's before and after pictures of Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko after getting dioxin poisoning, probably by a political rival. His face is still full of scars.
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Dec 17, 2011 23:49
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Bad rear end Boutique posted:just finished Ringworld and uhhhhhh...it wasn't really all that good Ringworld is one of those books that's important to the history of SF, but not actually that good a book when examined on its own. There's a lot of these, obviously.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:04
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at the time, ringworld (and niven's known space work in general) was considered cutting-edge hard sf, and that was one of its appeals. forty years of developments in actual science has rendered his hard sf awfully soft and faintly ridiculous. the interstellar medium isn't dense enough to allow bussard ramships to function, dolphins are not as bright as humans, the ringworld itself needs to made of material that's stronger than the strong nuclear force to hold it together, psionics is not a rapidly developing science, humans are not descended from alien space colonists, you can't breed genes for luck, and so on
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Dec 18, 2011 00:10
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A lot of hard sci-fi is going to have a hard time withstanding the test of time. You're going to have to deal with more speculative aspects of science to do anything interesting and there's always a chance half of it will end up being a dead end 10 years later
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Dec 18, 2011 00:14
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TOOT BOOT posted:A lot of hard sci-fi is going to have a hard time withstanding the test of time. You're going to have to deal with more speculative aspects of science to do anything interesting and there's always a chance half of it will end up being a dead end 10 years later
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Dec 18, 2011 00:19
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FMguru posted:at the time, ringworld (and niven's known space work in general) was considered cutting-edge hard sf, and that was one of its appeals. forty years of developments in actual science has rendered his hard sf awfully soft and faintly ridiculous. the interstellar medium isn't dense enough to allow bussard ramships to function, dolphins are not as bright as humans, the ringworld itself needs to made of material that's stronger than the strong nuclear force to hold it together, psionics is not a rapidly developing science, humans are not descended from alien space colonists, you can't breed genes for luck, and so on the best one is that someone pointed out that the ringworld is dynamically unstable and would rip itself apart without constant oversight and corrective forces then he came up with a solution to that and wrote all of ringworld engineers around it
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Dec 18, 2011 00:21
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This is why William Gibson doesn't write SF anymore. He explains this through a character in Pattern Recognition.quote:"Of course," he says, "we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile."
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Dec 18, 2011 00:21
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FMguru posted:it would be less of a problem if hard-sf books had more going for them than the hardness of their sf (like good writing or compelling characters) but most don't. this is the inherent problem with all genre fiction.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:23
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Woz My Neg rear end posted:the best one is that someone pointed out that the ringworld is dynamically unstable and would rip itself apart without constant oversight and corrective forces the fun part of the sequels is how each is slightly more panicked then the last in their attempts to explain away scientific objections.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:25
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Heresiarch posted:This is why William Gibson doesn't write SF anymore. He explains this through a character in Pattern Recognition. greg bear has also given up writing sf and now does technothrillers.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:29
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the third book was suddenly full of references to fractals all over the place lolduTrieux posted:the fun part of the sequels is how each is slightly more panicked then the last in their attempts to explain away scientific objections.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:30
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FMguru posted:yeah, that's only natural, and it's why so much older hard sf is tough to read. i want to read about the future, not some really bad guesses about the future from 40 years ago. it would be less of a problem if hard-sf books had more going for them than the hardness of their sf (like good writing or compelling characters) but most don't. yeah i honestly dont have a problem with Ringworld in regards to poo poo being scientifically inaccurate or whatever (tho "breeding for luck" was pretty loving retarded, sounds like something from a Dune prequel), its just that the story really wasn't told very well at all. lots of cool ideas, just all rushed together sloppily sooooooooo basically anyone who still gushes over ringworld hasn't read anything by Iain M Banks, i suppose
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Dec 18, 2011 00:45
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It's kinda dumb to stop writing SF for that reason though. It's entertainment, not a crystal ball. Neuromancer is still a great book even if was almost totally wrong about what the future would look like.
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Dec 18, 2011 00:45
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I've only read the first Ringworld book but the whole book basically boiled down to 'Explore featureless wasteland filled with nothing but small settlements of savages every couple thousand miles'
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Dec 18, 2011 00:47
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for someone whos read startlingly little sci fi is neuromancer/gibson good to read in 2011
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Dec 18, 2011 00:59
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Wilhelm_Scream.wav posted:for someone whos read startlingly little sci fi is neuromancer/gibson good to read in 2011
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Dec 18, 2011 01:01
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yeah, neuromancer is definitely good from a historical perspective. kind of a cool story, too, lots of pulpy and dorky parts but overall interesting has gibson written any non-cyberpunk? i thought some of the space scenes in neuromancer were pretty neat
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Dec 18, 2011 01:07
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Wilhelm_Scream.wav posted:for someone whos read startlingly little sci fi is neuromancer/gibson good to read in 2011 it holds up very well.
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Dec 18, 2011 01:32
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:i've heard the Lensman series is good, you should give it a try and let us know how it goes If you like your main characters to be unironic hard-fightin' womanizing mechanical and electrical engineers, your astrogation conducted with slide-rules, and your morality the purest black and white, then the Lensman series is for you. They're interesting to read as historical relics, and to see the origins of things like the Green Lanterns and the Jedi Knights, but they're not exactly great literature.
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Dec 18, 2011 01:36
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Are the Lensman books easier to find in other countries or something? It looks like most of them have been out of print for 20 years in the US.
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Dec 18, 2011 01:47
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FMguru posted:at the time, ringworld (and niven's known space work in general) was considered cutting-edge hard sf, and that was one of its appeals. forty years of developments in actual science has rendered his hard sf awfully soft and faintly ridiculous. the interstellar medium isn't dense enough to allow bussard ramships to function, dolphins are not as bright as humans, the ringworld itself needs to made of material that's stronger than the strong nuclear force to hold it together, psionics is not a rapidly developing science, humans are not descended from alien space colonists, you can't breed genes for luck, and so on that's where its charm comes from. known space as a whole (read his short story collections esp. N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind) is sprawling and full of cool stuff and him using the puppeteers to fix stuff that he got wrong with behind the scenes machinations. also the man-kzin wars have been being written for quite a while and still are, afaik so they try and keep things up to date for the old geezer.
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Dec 18, 2011 03:04
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FMguru posted:yeah. gibson likes to point out that for all the alleged visionary futurism in neuromancer, he still has whole scenes play out in front of banks of pay phones. his early 21st century has direct brain interfaces, private space taxis, rebellious ai systems, and cybernetic eyes and limbs, but no cell phones.
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Dec 18, 2011 03:09
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Action Jacktion posted:Oh yeah, I remember in The Naked Sun there's a chapter where Lije Bailey is on a spaceship going at FTL speed to another planet, and when he decides to watch a movie it mentions the difficulty he has threading the film in the projector. Asimov could imagine spaceships but not DVD, or even VHS. they "had" videotapes for a couple years before that came out
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Dec 18, 2011 03:27
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TOOT BOOT posted:It's kinda dumb to stop writing SF for that reason though. It's entertainment, not a crystal ball. Neuromancer is still a great book even if was almost totally wrong about what the future would look like. The thing is, Neuromancer is a great book, independent of it being SF. That's why it holds up okay. If you're capable of writing great books without having to cover them in a layer of SF to cover up any serious flaws with Big Cool Science poo poo, then why not just do so? It's less likely that in twenty years, people are going to go nitpick how you got the future wrong. My next read is going to be Banks' Transition, which I know is going to be good, because Banks can write good books without the superscience that drives the Culture novels.
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Dec 18, 2011 03:33
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a guy i knew in college was writing a novel where the premise was "what if cancer were cured" wonder how it turned out/if it got finished
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Dec 18, 2011 05:34
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i bet median age increased 5 to 10 years and then heart conditions took over
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Dec 18, 2011 06:03
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TOOT BOOT posted:I've only read the first Ringworld book but the whole book basically boiled down to 'Explore featureless wasteland filled with nothing but small settlements of savages every couple thousand miles' just like the game 
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Dec 18, 2011 06:28
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Wilhelm_Scream.wav posted:a guy i knew in college was writing a novel where the premise was "what if cancer were cured" more tanning and smoking, more dumping of chemicals, novel finished i win
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Dec 18, 2011 06:32
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Heresiarch posted:The thing is, Neuromancer is a great book, independent of it being SF. That's why it holds up okay. Neuromancer was great until space Jah and the last few scenes and a lovely wrap-up
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Dec 18, 2011 06:33
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