Science fiction discussion

[Old King Koaleamos]

Frederick Pohl's been fun to read. Wish there'd be some newer collections of his work.

 

[Boy_Blunder]

Now, the Golden Age of Science Fiction was more known for short forms. A lot of these were bundled into "fix-up novels" and anthologies or collections.

I should have paid attention to the little line of copyright text in the front of Methuselah's Children that said it was originally published in a shorter form. Heinlein did not have enough ideas to extend it to novel length but he did it anyway. Makes me a little wary of getting into any of his doorstoppers.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

I should have paid attention to the little line of copyright text in the front of Methuselah's Children that said it was originally published in a shorter form. Heinlein did not have enough ideas to extend it to novel length but he did it anyway. Makes me a little wary of getting into any of his doorstoppers.

It's one of those "future history" stories and those can be very "hit or miss". I'd say to stay away from the Future History novels with Lazurus Long until you've read Heinlein's other stuff. The Future history short stories are great. Heinlein's short works are typically good.

His "juveniles" are all solid. "Double Star" and "Orphans in the Sky" are solid novels. The 3 big Heinlein works- Starship Troopers - Stranger in a Strange Land - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, are all worthwhile and not doorstoppers. They're what. . . 280-380 pages?

 

[BABANGUIDE64]

'Dune' is an insufferable book about arabs in space
There is a different fauna presented in the book, so instead of a goat fucking MC does worm riding

Hard Sci-fi is even more insufferable. It is mostly written by high functioning autists who believe in space, atoms, trains and shit. It's mostly filled with reddit-speak and these books' characters are mostly redditors.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

'Dune' is an insufferable book about arabs in space
There is a different fauna presented in the book, so instead of a goat fucking MC does worm riding

Hard Sci-fi is even more insufferable. It is mostly written by high functioning autists who believe in space, atoms, trains and shit. It's mostly filled with reddit-speak and these books' characters are mostly redditors.

New hard sci-fi or old hard sci-fi?

I found Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov to be alright, but the later hard SF writers seem to be bleh. Niven's fine, Clements' fine, etc. But I just don't care for, say, Tchaikovsky or Liu from what little I've read. I'll finish what I do have though.

 

[BABANGUIDE64]

New hard sci-fi or old hard sci-fi?

Watts, Egan, Stross, new hard supposedly

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Watts, Egan, Stross, new hard supposedly

Oh yeah, kinda fucked that these guys are the ones you bring up and they've been writing for 20-30 years. Sheesh.

Egan, iirc, is a weird outlier. He does weird math shit.

I hear Stross and Watts can get interesting to the right people. Don't know. I think Watts' Blindsight is on his sight for free reading.

That being said, kinda wild how guys like Robert Silverberg are kinda still writing.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

You know what fucks with me about Stross? His absolute best work are the short stories. Both A Colder War and Missile Gap are tiny, but absolutely fucking awesome. They really should have been much bigger books. Meanwhile his Merchant Princes series was interesting but the books really, REALLY derailed at the end where it felt like the final book was like 3 books shoved in one to try and end it, which doesn't make sense because he then continued the story a few years later.

Also thanks for the reminder about Watts, I should read his Rifters trilogy.

Anyone else read Dragon's Egg? I thought it was a pretty fascinating book. Just found out it has a sequel so I will be reading that.

 

[Briananderson1138]

You know what fucks with me about Stross? His absolute best work are the short stories. Both A Colder War and Missile Gap are tiny, but absolutely fucking awesome. They really should have been much bigger books. Meanwhile his Merchant Princes series was interesting but the books really, REALLY derailed at the end where it felt like the final book was like 3 books shoved in one to try and end it, which doesn't make sense because he then continued the story a few years later.

Also thanks for the reminder about Watts, I should read his Rifters trilogy.

Anyone else read Dragon's Egg? I thought it was a pretty fascinating book. Just found out it has a sequel so I will be reading that.

It was a real shame how Stross absolutely wasted the premise of Missile Gap: his rootless cosmopolitan misanthropy probably induced that ending. I get the distinct feeling that he is one of those people who would take the side of the bugs in the Starship Troopers movie, if you remember that discourse.

 

[crowabunga]

I finished Alastair Reynolds's Inhibitor Phase/Revelation Space series. It's surprising just how good the first book is compared to the latter two. It's as if Reynolds picked the perfect blend of the absurd high-concept and verisimilitude for Revelation Space, and then felt compelled to keep one-upping things to the setting's detriment. I'm glad I read some of his standalone books first, because I'd probably have been turned off if this trilogy was my introduction to his authorship.

Thankfully, the first book works as a standalone novel.


On a separate note, I just read this article:
Merveilleux-scientifique

It briefly explores early 20th century French sci-fi/fantasy.

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

snowcrash and altered carbon

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

snowcrash and altered carbon

Already read Snow Crash back in the day, have not read Altered Carbon, thx for rec

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix. Also the rest of Gibson's Sprawl books.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

Vurt.

I'm not going to try and explain it.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Or in House of Suns, when a robot is on death's door and in need of assistance by a transhuman superintelligence, the prognosis is portrayed as dire but there's no dirty tricks pulled to keep me flipping pages, no sense of a known ticking clock the protagonists can measure themselves against.

House of Suns is so fucking good. I also really enjoyed the detective series offshoot of the Revelation Space universe. It's so nice to have a good, straightforward scifi story. Setup and payoff.

I'm back to give Alastair Reynolds even more credit: I'm starting the Revelation Space series, and I'm pleased that Reynolds at least somewhat respects the hard problem of consciousness and the teletransporter problem, but without ruminating too long on them, either: it's refreshing to see an AI backup of a dead guy just come out and essentially say, "yeah, that dead guy ain't me, I'm just a duplicate but I'm also the only one alive now so suck it, dead guy, I'll usurp your spot" instead of prattling on in tortured existential rumination.

Sylveste and his various incarnations are my favorite dickhead AI Tony Starks.

 

[BABANGUIDE64]

Stross and Watts

Stross' writings make an impression of being made by a redditor. Millenial writing, the book
'Accelerando' by him was an amusing nerdy read, even fun somehow
Watts is just an edgy physicalist and I hate physicalism with every fiber of my being, and I hate it's intellectual inconsistency. Physicalism, especially it's radical form - eliminative materialism - is naive, lame and gay
But the idea of aliens being just animals with high intellect but no subjective experience is fine
Egan's 'Permutation city' was an interesting read on solipsism and it also had some other nerdy concepts I liked
Nerds are easily amused by anything that looks like it came from the sci-fi or a comic book and therefore their works are mostly shallow and not that much interesting to read

 

[2mm and 99 others]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

Sergey Lukyanenko - Labyrinth of Reflections and False mirrors.

 

[FuckMeGentlyWithAChainsaw]

Please recommend me cyberpunk literature (besides Neuromancer because I've already read that scads of times and loved it).

Mirrorshades is a worthwhile anthology of early Cyberpunk.
Ribofunk by Paul Di Filippo is biopunk, but if you enjoyed Neuromancer it should be right up your alley.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Stross' writings make an impression of being made by a redditor. Millenial writing, the book
'Accelerando' by him was an amusing nerdy read, even fun somehow
Watts is just an edgy physicalist and I hate physicalism with every fiber of my being, and I hate it's intellectual inconsistency. Physicalism, especially it's radical form - eliminative materialism - is naive, lame and gay
But the idea of aliens being just animals with high intellect but no subjective experience is fine
Egan's 'Permutation city' was an interesting read on solipsism and it also had some other nerdy concepts I liked
Nerds are easily amused by anything that looks like it came from the sci-fi or a comic book and therefore their works are mostly shallow and not that much interesting to read

So, I take it that Stross is a C-list amusement, Watts is mildly amusing too. Egan seems really really weird, but genuinely one of the ones that seems to still nail cutting edge stuff.

I'm gonna wager that Tchaikovsky, Mieville, Banks, Stephenson, Liu, Chiang, and Reynolds are still findable in modern bookstores. Wonder how well they are.