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inktvis posted:Have you got through it yet? I've been curious, but well-written sci-fi is a list that, in my experience at least, pretty much starts and ends with Lem. Lessing's sci fi series very, very good. It's also a weirdly structured narrative and breaks down into tidbits about the human (and feline, she wrote a lot about cats) experience. It's a grand, mythic exposition on the breakdown of humanity's better nature and why the world is as hosed up as it is. I can also recommend Mara and Dann, which is a post-the next ice age coming of age story. That's a really interesting study of women's lack of power in society. Sienkiewicz wound up being famous (in Poland anyway) for writing the great Polish national epic, The Trilogy. That's a gothic adventure romance set in three books, starting in 1648 with the Cossack rebellion and continuing with the Swedish and Turkish invasions. You can open any of those books anywhere and find a duel, skirmish, raid, chase, ambush, battle, or siege. Fun stuff, highly recommended if you can handle your swords without sorcery. Get the newer translation if you can. Solzhenitsyn wrote a lot of novels and short fiction in addition to the Gulag Archipelago. There is, so far as I've heard, no or very little fiction in Gulag. There is a lot of storytelling, a great deal of it is him passing along first hand accounts from other prisoners. Of his fiction, I adore his short stories, they're very evocative. My second favorite of his novels is Cancer Ward, terminally ill scientists forced to work on military projects. There are some very interesting scenes from Stalin's point of view. My favorite novel is, of course, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. That covers a single day in the life of a prisoner in a work camp. There's also a very good film adaption, but it's a short novel so you should just read the thing.
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Mar 2, 2014 22:23
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Iamblikhos posted:Senkiewicz's With Fire and Sword are also read and occasionally can even be seen in Barnes & Noble and such. My set came from a B. Dalton's. He's famous - in Poland - for the Trilogy, but it isn't what the award was for. That said, read The Trilogy.
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May 2, 2014 09:18
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