What Is Being Read

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I would have put this in the "what are you reading now 2.0" thread, except that that thread is now buried three pages deep and adding anything to it would constitute necromancy, and what I wanted to bring up is largely science fictional anyway.

Seriously- how can a thread like that go five months without an update? Is this simple indifference, as I hope, or have we in fact ceased to read? I can think of no good explanation- by which I mean, really, that there isn't an explanation that doesn't make us sound stupid, indifferent or actually illiterate, or like a community that has ceased to be so and is retreating into it's own little interest groups. Sometimes necromancy may not be the worst of evils...

Oh yes, books and stuff. Mostly ebooks, in fact- storage space reasons.

Ignoring the potboilers and mil-SF that aren't worthy of mention, Alistair Young's Vignettes of the Star Empire is interesting, because it is fragments from a heading for very advanced civilisation in the early- transhuman stages, in its' growth period; there is a Banksian vibe to it, which seems entirely deliberate. My guess is that Young felt that the years this side of Utopia, while humans still mattered, would be more interesting and that if he wanted to read about them, he might as well write about them- and had considerable fun doing so.


Timothy J Gawne's four book series starting with the Chronicles of Old Guy was fun although maybe a bit less SDN- like; thoroughly recommended for all Bolo fans, it is basically a Generation-Y, network- centric and net-savvy update of the concept.

For fans of the original, I have to bring up one of the biggest gaps in Keith Laumer's writing; If you look at the Retief stories, they are darkly witty, cynical diplomatic black-comedy that assume that everyone who isn't one of the suckers is one of the shysters, very disrespectful of rank, authority and bureaucracy- and he seldom if ever let those sensibilities loose on the Bolo universe. He compartmentalised his writing a bit too well.

Gawne doesn't make the same decision, and yay for it. He opens in outright dystopia, in fact, (chronologically if not in book order), takes a few stabs at sacred cows in passing. Speaking of which, this bit might stick in the throat of the collective, he is obviously a Christian- the sympathetic handling of the cybertank that believes itself to be Jesus Christ proves that. On the other hand the third in the series, chronologically a prequel, is entitled Neoliberal Economists Must Die! so you can take that either way.


There's another odd one; see if you can guess who perpetrated this- fifties SF before we realised how hostile the rest of the solar system was- before the end.

The real meaning of what happened today is not that of an honour to one man. This-' I gestured with the Martian wand- 'is proof that two great races can reach out across the gap of strangeness with understanding. Our own race is spreading out to the stars. We shall find- we are finding- that we are vastly outnumbered. If we are to succeed in our expansion to the stars, we must deal honestly, humbly, with open hearts. I have heard it said that our Martian neighbours would overrun Earth if given the chance. This is nonsense; Earth is not suited to Martians. Let us protect our own- but let us not be seduced by fear and hatred into foolish acts. The stars will never be won by little minds; we must be as big as space itself.'

Robert Heinlein, Double Star. Someone else who did a rather better job than is generally realised of compartmentalising his writing, and letting his characters say what was appropriate for them to say rather than the editorial opinions he put into their mouths.


Oh, and an odd one, just for comparison purposes- George Biddlecombe's The Art of Rigging- 1890's publication, and an object lesson in how complicated even the primitive can be, and how little you really know when all you know is the history of something. Very useful for historical fiction writing, but I was flipping through it with a head in the stars, imagining the 2890's The Art of Magnetic Containment.


Blee.

[Crazedwraith]

I would have put this in the "what are you reading now 2.0" thread, except that that thread is now buried three pages deep and adding anything to it would constitute necromancy, and what I wanted to bring up is largely science fictional anyway.

Seriously- how can a thread like that go five months without an update? Is this simple indifference, as I hope, or have we in fact ceased to read? I can think of no good explanation- by which I mean, really, that there isn't an explanation that doesn't make us sound stupid, indifferent or actually illiterate, or like a community that has ceased to be so and is retreating into it's own little interest groups. Sometimes necromancy may not be the worst of evils...

Reviving an old thread by adding new content doesn't constitute necromancy.

Way to guilt trip. Activity is down all over the board. So yeah that one thread isn't being updated, and for the most part it was pointless. It was a listing of titles. Not telling everyone what I am reading for them to ignore is not stupidity, indifference, or illiteracy.

[Gandalf]

I'm told it's scifi, but I just started reading The Time Machine Did It by John Swartzwelder.

No scifi elements yet, many laughs.

[Vendetta]

Just finished William Gibson's latest The Peripheral.

It's an interesting take on dimension hopping via telepresence and examining the effects of first/third world interactions via different timelines similar to Charles Stross' Merchant Princes, but more Gibson futurism and a bit less grim meathook future, (MP was a case study in development traps a la middle eastern oil regimes).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I reckon the core of the explanation is the one at the end; a community separating, nobody sure what they're up to is going to matter to the rest of the board, that it is sufficiently Serious Business.

Yes, I know that's a bit of a loaded term, and I don't stand behind it- not part of that faction bloc- but it also is part of what I mean about a community going it's separate ways. Anyway-


Ted Sturgeon, again; while he may be most famous for saying that ninety percent of everything is crud, he also perpetrated the notion that "Science fiction writers usually don't try to predict the future. They're usually too busy trying to prevent it." Thinking about the period when he was most active, I can see a lot of writers providing a basis of evidence for that. A lot of dystopias and broken worlds, and I think that trend is on the rise again.

On one hand, it is serious and worthy stuff, the future could easily suck very badly if we let it, but on the other hand sometimes you just need a bit of escapism. Odd and an interesting reversal of position that most of the escapism these days seems to involve space marines...

And I think of that when I think about latterday William Gibson- to be honest I gave up on most of his work from the 2000's onwards, I was never all that convinced that he could stretch his style to new topics. If he has managed to pull it off, it may be worth taking a look at.

Philip Palmer had a further out and less reality- based take on the concept in Debatable Space, a hedonistic upper class quantum-entangling and telepresencing their way across interstellar peasant colonies, space pirate freedom fighters (ish), but whether the supposed good guys were actualy capable of making the situation better- it looked very much as if it was going to be meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Ian Macdonald's Evolution's Shore is somewhere between that and Roadside Picnic, with a side order of tiberium; an alien ecology-forming probe lands in Africa and everyone scrambles to exploit.

Charles Stross- apart from a perfectly natural envy- caused dislike (grrr), he is someone else whose worlds tend to need to be escaped from, he usually manages to make reality look good by comparison. Has he done anything with an upbeat- or hell, might as well say it, happy- ending? For values of happy that do not require a chthulhu- worshipping context?

[Joun_Lord]

I just finished up rereading the Prince Roger series and most of the William C Dietz Legion of the Damned series (still waiting on the last books and the prequels to come in). I haven't read LOTD since like elementary school. Reading it at such a young age left alot to be desired in my understanding of it, much like how when I read Battlefield Earth at around the same age I thought the talk of "mortar" they were speaking of building mortar, to the point I was wondering why the hell they were shooting AA batteries like Duracell when they were meaning anti-air batteries.

Also picked up a box of random Outlanders and Deathlands books that I will start cracking on. Those along with the Destroyer series I've got back into over the past year and have been buying piles of them off Ebay and Amazon in no particular order. I'm trying to get all 3 complete series which is no small order considering one series started well before I was born and has well over a hundred books while the other two just have a crapload of books probably about a hundred all together.

I'll probably give the Clone series by Steven Kent a go considering the final book (I hope) is ocming out this month or already did and I hate reading books piecemeal.

What I will not be reading is the new Star Wars book Tarkin. A friend was going to buy it for me for Christmas I shot that down right quick. No fucking thanks.

[Enigma]

I've finished reading The Daedalus Incident by Micheal Martinez (I believe that is his name). Two story lines, one hard sci-fi and the other is gas lamp fantasy (whatever you call liberal use of alchemy and wooden sailing ships that travel in space) that intersect near the end. Very interesting read and I am happy that there are more books by this author. Will try to track them down.

[The Romulan Republic]

Right now I'm trying to read Foundation by Asimov.

[Simon_Jester]

Once a thread like "what are you reading" stops being posted to for a week or two, it's very likely to go 'pfft' of its own accord. And it doesn't necessarily take more than a coincidence for it to go that long without posts. Granted a hyperactive forum community might, by sheer population demographics, avoid that... but there's a difference between "so populated that even if only 5% of the member base cares that's still enough to have someone going at it at all hours of day and night" and "dead."

For myself, I'm currently working through... let's see, I've closed out most of the novels I have simmering, so the only thing I'm really working on right now is 1493 by Charles Mann, a moderately-casual analysis of the Columbian Exchange and how it affected various societies around the world. Some interesting insights in there on, for example, the role of malarial mosquitos in making it uneconomical to bring in white indentured servants to the plantation colonies of the American South (and various parts of the Caribbean and Latin America), and how the rise of the slave power in those regions may be related.

Occasional desperate escapes into Leiber's Swords and Ice Magic when the psychic pressure of a workday at the semi-urban high school gets too great to bear and I finish the day cracked up. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are a good antidote to the aftereffects of heedless, witless, squalling juvenile delinquency... who honestly only make up about 5% of our student body, but a damnably conspicuous 5%.

Charles Stross- apart from a perfectly natural envy- caused dislike (grrr), he is someone else whose worlds tend to need to be escaped from, he usually manages to make reality look good by comparison. Has he done anything with an upbeat- or hell, might as well say it, happy- ending? For values of happy that do not require a chthulhu- worshipping context?

His Echelon setting is interesting. Singularity Sky may be irritatingly smug, but Iron Sunrise is interestingish, with something recognizable as a human future and the AI gods firmly in the background.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Problem is, I include myself in that; one of the people who let the thread wither because of, hm, reasons.

oh, and an interesting footnote- my friend Matt, a fellow re-enactor, works as a teacher in a young offenders' institute; most of them are in there because they are psychologically disturbed or have been convicted of crimes of violence, or both. His working day consists almost entirely of heedless, witless, squalling juvenile delinquency. I am in fact slightly worried by how easily he seems able to cope.


Those white indentured servants were often the fallout of politics back home, and it frequently backfired- ship loads of royalist prisoners of war out to the Caribbean and avoid paying for them to be guarded properly and they're going to escape and turn pirate, aren't they?

Incidentally the pirate brethren of the coast, far from being as you might expect outlaws with no concern for human life, arguably helped retard the development of Caribbean slavery for a good fifty or so years- they were no friends of the economic powers whose interest it was to keep men in chains. The fact that a captured slaver generally made an excellent pirate ship once it had been refitted and the slave deck removed was just an added bonus.


Another one from sci fi, "Sex and Violence in Zero-g", Allen Steele's collection of short stories from his Near Space future history; unfortunately as you can probably guess from the title, a lot of the stories in there try rather too hard to break the clean cut mould, and overdo it a bit. Much of it is near future, high frontier stuff, with the timeline only getting stranger though. Orbital Decay was bad enough; the short 'the Return of Weird Frank' is the, um, piece de resistance, when he passes from trying to add realistic flaws and dings to the shiny facade, to somewhere way out in crapsack land. You have to read it to believe it.


Trying to read Asimov is like trying to eat mashed potatoes; he wasn't a stylist, there is nothing there to stick in the throat, it really shouldn't be a challenge. As long as you think about it a bit as you go, with the brain switched on.

[Simon_Jester]

oh, and an interesting footnote- my friend Matt, a fellow re-enactor, works as a teacher in a young offenders' institute; most of them are in there because they are psychologically disturbed or have been convicted of crimes of violence, or both. His working day consists almost entirely of heedless, witless, squalling juvenile delinquency. I am in fact slightly worried by how easily he seems able to cope.

I might find it easier to cope too, if I had playing at hitting things with swords as a hobby. Perhaps I should look into it.

Those white indentured servants were often the fallout of politics back home, and it frequently backfired- ship loads of royalist prisoners of war out to the Caribbean and avoid paying for them to be guarded properly and they're going to escape and turn pirate, aren't they?

Also a factor- although at least in the Carolinas, the malaria was probably hurting the plantation owners more than the escape rate was. It's not as though slaves don't try to escape given a chance.

Trying to read Asimov is like trying to eat mashed potatoes; he wasn't a stylist, there is nothing there to stick in the throat, it really shouldn't be a challenge. As long as you think about it a bit as you go, with the brain switched on.

I find it to be a pleasant relief, despite or perhaps because he's at the opposite end of the spectrum from Leiber. A typical Asimov story is very left-brained, with the action and plot driven by almost pure logic plus a few gimmicks or conceits.

It may be bland, but a typical Asimov story is going to be close to the Platonic form of a story-as-logic-puzzle. And when I'm hankering for logic, it appeals.

[Ahriman238]

Well, I went a couple of months without a new book, I can do that sometimes. I just finished Loamhedge, yeah it's a kid's book but I needed something light and fun. Before that I finally got my paws on Skin Game. Now I have a small stack of books waiting for my attention, but I'll see what Christmas brings before starting anything new.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Well, yes, but I was probably being slightly unfair to Asimov- he wrote so very, very much that there are also a lot of atypical Asimov stories out there, even if many of them do feature absolutely terrible puns.

He was also a notable editor, and if you can track down the collection of sci fi humour that he and his second wife edited, Laughing Space- long out of print but worth it.

Lieber had a broader repertoire than just the high fantasy he is best known for- recall The Silver Eggheads, although much of it is satire and horror.


As far as dealing with juvenile delinquents goes, actual violence is not the answer. (Legally dubious, and expensive in replacement hardware.) The confidence that comes from knowing how good you are, and if anything does kick off you are not going to be on the losing side, has been for him a very effective deterrent against and preventer of trouble. If you have the physical presence to build on, to begin with.


I did look at Martinez' book, and the reviews seem to be quite mixed; I personally dislike genre- jamming because it often seems to be the result of not being able to do one or the other cleanly, (just look at Rifts- and I was never that big a fan of Anne McCaffrey), but I am tempted to get it out of sheer curiosity to see how he managed to pull it off.


Today's ebook was Atomic Times, a memoir of soldier Michael Harris' time on Eniwetok atoll during the Redwing series of nuclear tests. It was a very surreal reading experience, I was hoping that it would turn out to be well disguised fiction, because there is a very Kissinger's peace prize feel to it; that art has accidentally imitated reality, that after all the black comedy and over the top satire, after all the exaggeration for dramatic effect, the truth turns out to have been exactly like that anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

Lieber had a broader repertoire than just the high fantasy he is best known for- recall The Silver Eggheads, although much of it is satire and horror.

I've had the privilege of reading some of his non-fantasy, though I cannot recall specific titles. Also part of my "for curling up into a ball and applying a literary defibrillator to my inner mental life" collection. Along with Doc Smith for sheer imaginative infinitive-splitting romps.

[Enigma]

I'm currently reading (the title escapes me at the moment) a compilation of sci-fi short stories in which the first two stories so far have nothing to do with sci-fi.

Though not sci-fi, I did love reading Fort Freak. Got to see if there's more books on it.

EDIT: I just found out that the book is the 21st volume from the Wild Card series. I got to read them all.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Reread some warhammer short stories (Meh).
Rereading Alastair Reynolds "Revelation space" (As audiobook) - And it's excellent, just like I remembered.
May start rereading Michael Swanwick's SUPERB "The Dragons of Babel".
I could use something new and awesome, but there hasn't been anything cool enough, and easy enough to read lately . (Although my "to-read" pile remains huge. Topped by "Connectome").

Also, reread "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L. Peck . Fantastic novella. (I suggested it to my book-club at the neuroscience faculty )

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Awesome and easy to read is quite an ask, especially with a lot of sci fi writers who seem determined to show off how brilliant and awesome they are by being seriously weird, attacking with arcane concepts as an opening barrage.

Someone who opens straightforwardly, and it's only later thinking about it afterwards that you realise how profound it was- I'm probably missing someone searingly obvious, but apart from Pratchett who you obviously know well enough, there's not another name leaping out at me.

Not producing today, anyway. Again Asimov fits the bill, but he's gone, so- is there anyone currently active writing like that?

Swanwick is good, and best of all he's not that prolific so I can afford to catch up with all his stuff. Michael Marshall Smith is almost there but he's another one of the writers who enjoys being weird at you.


Meant to ask- all these multivolume sagas, twenty-one books, fifty, a hundred- what is their nutritional literary content? What's the draw of them? It's not something I usually do, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.

[Enigma]

<snip>
Meant to ask- all these multivolume sagas, twenty-one books, fifty, a hundred- what is their nutritional literary content? What's the draw of them? It's not something I usually do, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.

For me, I liked reading Fort Freak. All the authors in it were telling their own story that connects with one another to the main story line. It is set in a part of modern day NYC called Jokertown that borders on Chinatown. The people in Jokertown are mostly mutants, people that have been affected by an alien virus that mutates human DNA (known also as the Wild Card Virus) that was unleashed not too long after WW2 ended. They are classified as either "aces" (normal looking people with extraordinary abilities. Think Spiderman.), "deuces" (aces with useless powers like growing hair at will or levitating up to two feet off the ground), and finally "jokers" (people that have been physically mutated. People that are animal\reptile\insect\etc... hybrids. People looking like their face is constantly melting. Things like that).

Though those that are currently affected by the virus are from those whose parents, grandparents or great grandparents were carriers. When the virus becomes active in a person, it is called having their "card turned".

Life isn't easy for them except for a few aces as most people consider them second class. Even wild card cops aren't treated the same. Every joker cop is partnered with a normal or "nat" cop. The joker commanding officer is subordinate to the nat commanding officer.

All of these books are mostly edited by George R.R. Martin.

I liked not only the stories but the characters, minor of major and the setting of the volume. I want to read more of it.

[Joun_Lord]

Meant to ask- all these multivolume sagas, twenty-one books, fifty, a hundred- what is their nutritional literary content? What's the draw of them? It's not something I usually do, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.

I enjoy reading and enjoy reading about the characters, plot, and settings in the huge-ass volumes of books. Its like the book equivalent of a tv series with individual books being like a movie. For some things its a one and done affair, one book or one movie and you are satisfied. For others you want to read more of the adventures and junk going on and like watching 11 seasons of NCIS with over 200 episodes of Gibbs and Co and you also might like reading over 120 books of Deathlands and the stories of Ryan Cawdor and Co.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Swanwick is good, and best of all he's not that prolific so I can afford to catch up with all his stuff. Michael Marshall Smith is almost there but he's another one of the writers who enjoys being weird at you.

I'm actually rereading the Dragons of Babel. It drives me nuts that I can't find any of his books in shops (not even in the UK). (I managed to get physical copies off Amazon).
Fantastic author. (I can recomend you some others in his vein if you want, albeit more Fantasy oriented - China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, ...)

Meant to ask- all these multivolume sagas, twenty-one books, fifty, a hundred- what is their nutritional literary content? What's the draw of them? It's not something I usually do, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.

Which of them exactly? (I.E What anthologies)?
If you're talking about Wild-Cards - I tried them, never managed to really enjoy more than maybe one or two of them. (The recent comics series, and the one where they do a world tour. And the origin of the Terrible Turtle).

[Ziggy Stardust]

Seriously- how can a thread like that go five months without an update? Is this simple indifference, as I hope, or have we in fact ceased to read? I can think of no good explanation- by which I mean, really, that there isn't an explanation that doesn't make us sound stupid, indifferent or actually illiterate, or like a community that has ceased to be so and is retreating into it's own little interest groups. Sometimes necromancy may not be the worst of evils...

For what it's worth, I never posted in that thread simply because, from a cursory glance, it doesn't look like my personal reading interests really line up with many of the other people on the board. I didn't personally see a need to post in it because the books I'm reading aren't the type of sci-fi/fantasy books that most people in that thread were discussing. I'm at the point where I almost never read sci-fi (and when I do, it tends to be Heinlein or Clarke or Asimov; i.e. recognizable titles that most people on here would have already read), and don't really have much to contribute to a discussion of sci-fi literature.

I've been reading authors like Italo Calvino, Henrik Ibsen, Yasunari Kawabata, Tomas Transtromer, Robert Bolano, Raymond Carver, and others, lately. Just started "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk.

[Imperial Overlord]

Finished The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman, the last in a great trilogy of coming of age novels about a nerdy guy who ends up going to a Hogwarts for Adults style magical college and his successes, failures, and how he painfully grows the fuck up. Highly recommended.

[Imperial Overlord]

Polished off The Fist of Demetrius by William King. It's the second of his Macharius trilogy, based around an Alexander the Great inspired figure and told from the point of view of one of his bodyguards. King does a good job of portraying both ordinary soldiers and not-Alexander and tells part of the story from the view point of the Dark Eldar Archon who is the primary antagonist. He and his legion of pain junkies come off as deadly killers and the war of wits between Marcharius and the Archon is convincing and reasonably compelling for a struggle you know Macharius is going to win in the end. It's pleasant to read the Dark Eldar doing something other than jobbing for Space Marines so the Astartes can show off how badass they are.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Ziggy, who's Yasunari Kawabata? Most of the rest I have at least heard of (and yes, some things just don't fit in with the board, and I reckon Pamuk is showing all the signs of disappearing up his own backside in his more recent stuff, far too selfconsciously trying to be "great" to actually be really good) but, ?

Now there's actually an interesting subtopic; mainstream, if the concept still exists, writers who have dabbled in science fiction, and how well they did. Calvino comes close at times, does Borges count? (Who do I need to see to get a job as a Tlonist?) What does science fiction written with all the normal conventions and ellipses thereof of mainstream literature look like? Pynchon? Thomas Vollman? Mieville? Davfid Zindell? Eco?


I was never much of a comichead, which is I think the gateway drug to these massive serials- not when I was that age, anyway. Later on as I regress to premature second childhood, yes- mostly 2000AD though, down with Americana. (Is Joe Dredd a better detective than Bruce Wayne? Discuss.) Apart from Bob Burden. But yes, I can see the logic of that.

Lev Grossman? Any relative of the great and terrible Vassily?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ziggy, who's Yasunari Kawabata?

Japanese writer, first East Asian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Now there's actually an interesting subtopic; mainstream, if the concept still exists, writers who have dabbled in science fiction, and how well they did. Calvino comes close at times, does Borges count? (Who do I need to see to get a job as a Tlonist?) What does science fiction written with all the normal conventions and ellipses thereof of mainstream literature look like? Pynchon? Thomas Vollman? Mieville? Davfid Zindell? Eco?

Calvino and Borges have brushed closely with sci-fi. So has Bolano and Nabokov. You could also make an argument for some works by Haruki Murakami, Doris Lessing, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, Octavia Butler, Herman Hesse, Kazuo Ishiguro, and likely others I can't think of off the top of my head. Kurt Vonnegut is probably the closest thing to a mainstream bridge between science-fiction and so-called literary fiction, but I would contend those labels are fairly arbitrary. Even Rudyard Kipling wrote at least one sci-fi short story. One of my favorite sci-fi stories of all time was written by E.M. Forster, who was otherwise more famous for dry novels about British aristocracy.

I was never much of a comichead, <snip>

I personally despise comic books and graphic novels. I've tried to read some of the more favorably reviewed ones, but even things like "Watchmen" I thought were utter piece of shit. Another reason why I don't often stray into this part of the forum.