Twenty Sc-Fi Fiction Novels that will change your life. (http://io9.com/361597/the-twenty-science-fiction-novels-that-will-change-your-life)

Hummmm... life changing? I don't know about that, but definitely worth checking out. There are a few I need to look into.

Good starting list... how about some more????

Twenty Sc-Fi Fiction Novels that will change your life. (http://io9.com/361597/the-twenty-science-fiction-novels-that-will-change-your-life)

Hummmm... life changing? I don't know about that, but definitely worth checking out. There are a few I need to look into.

Good starting list... how about some more????I've read about half of them.

I'd actually recommend LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ over _The Dispossessed_. And I wonder if the author of _Sparrow_ ever encountered the late James Blish's _A Case of Conscience_?

Oh, and the thumbnail plot description of _A Fire Upon the Deep_ made me wonder if we read the same book.

Others? Hmmm. Folks who haven't encountered them might like to try David Brin's "Uplift" series.

Humanity has developed FTL travel, and ventured out into the galaxy. It has also used genetic engineering to raise chimps and dolphins to human level intelligence.

It discovers that there is a galactic civilization. Intergalactic, in fact, encompassing five galaxies, and once, long ago, extending to fourteen.

The very first intelligent species to arise in the local cluster were the fabled Progenitors, several billion years ago. They achieved sentience and civilization, developed FTL travel, and went looking for other intelligent species. They didn't find any, since they were the first. They did find some worlds with species who could become sentient, with a little assistance, and they provided that assistance, and started a tradition that became known as Uplift, and grew and endured over billenia afterward. The Progenitors vanished long ago, but their memory and influence remains.

By the time humanity arrives on the scene, galactic civilization is based on Uplift. It is the closest thing to a religion the galaxies have. Every intelligent species in the galaxy has been "Uplifted" to sentience by a Patron race. Uplifted species owe their patrons 10,000 years of chattel slavery as repayment for being uplifted. Status in the galaxy is measured in part by how many species your race has uplifted.

Along comes humanity, tossing a cosmic monkey wrench in the works. To begin with, we don't appear to have Patrons. This is anathema to half of the galactic clans, who believe achieving sentience unassisted is a holy act only the sainted Progenitors could achieve. They believe that the Progenitors will someday return, and seek to make the galaxies the sort of place they believe the Progenitors wished them to become.

But if we did have Patrons, they appear to have abandoned the task part way through. This is unthinkable to the other half of the galactic clans, because Uplift is a sacred duty you do not simply abandon.

And to make it worse, we arrive with two already Uplifted Client species of our own, and instant status.

Half of the galaxy wants us extinct on general principle. The other half thinks we need more seasoning, and ought to be someone's Client species for a few thousand years...preferably theirs.

And a human exploration ship crewed by dolphins may have discovered what became of the vanished Progenitors.

Start with _Sundiver_, and proceed through _Startide Rising_ and _The Uplift_ war, as a good start.
______
Dennis

I've read about half of them.

Oh, and the thumbnail plot description of _A Fire Upon the Deep_ made me wonder if we read the same book.


I had read ninet of them.

I thought the decription of A Fire Upon the Deep was accurate.

The Left Hand of Darkness of a better book than the Dispossesed but you can argue that the idea content of the Dispossesed will influence you more.

I had read ninet of them.

I thought the decription of A Fire Upon the Deep was accurate.I didn't see the menace as a computer virus, nor was there evidence it transformed matter.

The Left Hand of Darkness of a better book than the Dispossesed but you can argue that the idea content of the Dispossesed will influence you more."Left Hand" actually influenced me more. Her depiction of a society of human hermaphrodites who could become either male or female in breeding season had all sorts of interesting implications. (And LeGuin stated a while back that had she to do it over, she would have used feminine rather than masculine pronouns to emphasize the differences even more strongly.)

The Dispossessed annoyed me. From where I sit, LeGuin's principal weakness is an inability to understand and therefore do convincing portrayals of villains. Her society on Annares was too carefully set up. The utopian communal ideal was a nice one, but she set it in a marginal environment where there was just about enough to go around. It simply wasn't possible to be significantly better off than your neighbor in material terms. It would have vanished like a moth in a flame in a more abundant environment.

And the society of Urras, the system's other habitable planet, felt like the main inspiration was the sort of thing depicted in old copies of The Masses, with top hatted capitalist owners oppressing slave workers in the name of profit. When Shevek's servant throws off his careful mantle of obsequious silence and begs Shevek to "help free them from the masters", I nearly tossed the book across the room in disgust. It simply didn't work for me, and I couldn't believe it. (And back when I first read _The Dispossessed, I was far more left wing in my beliefs than I am now, and far more likely to swallow such a notion.)

I felt LeGuin was stacking the deck and visibly pulling strings to make a particular point, and the book suffered because of it. It's more annoying to see that when it's someone like LeGuin than it is with lesser writers, simply because LeGuin is so good, and I expect better.
______
Dennis

I thinks I saw the program as a virus so I had no problem with that description. The matter transformation I do not remember anything about...

I read The Dispossessed 1987 (also when I read The Left Hand of Darkness for the first time) and have not re-read it so I do not remember the details. i remember that the setup read as constructed but I do not remember that I considered that something that destroyed the book for me.

The Dispossessed annoyed me. From where I sit, LeGuin's principal weakness is an inability to understand and therefore do convincing portrayals of villains. Her society on Annares was too carefully set up. The utopian communal ideal was a nice one, but she set it in a marginal environment where there was just about enough to go around. It simply wasn't possible to be significantly better off than your neighbor in material terms. It would have vanished like a moth in a flame in a more abundant environment.

And the society of Urras, the system's other habitable planet, felt like the main inspiration was the sort of thing depicted in old copies of The Masses, with top hatted capitalist owners oppressing slave workers in the name of profit. When Shevek's servant throws off his careful mantle of obsequious silence and begs Shevek to "help free them from the masters", I nearly tossed the book across the room in disgust. It simply didn't work for me, and I couldn't believe it. (And back when I first read _The Dispossessed, I was far more left wing in my beliefs than I am now, and far more likely to swallow such a notion.)

I felt LeGuin was stacking the deck and visibly pulling strings to make a particular point, and the book suffered because of it. It's more annoying to see that when it's someone like LeGuin than it is with lesser writers, simply because LeGuin is so good, and I expect better.
______
Dennis

Very well put, Dennis. I had some similar thoughts about how perfectly marginal Annares was - it made her Libertarian society there conveniently plausible. I didn't throw the book. But it's interesting that I've totally forgotten how it ended. My favorite of hers is The Lathe of Heaven which definitely impacted me more than The Dispossessed.

Can I find that Uplift series in eBook format?

Can I find that Uplift series in eBook format?Unfortunately, I don't believe so. The Uplift series is published by Bantam/Spectra, one of the publishers that currently doesn't have a clue about ebooks.

The only Brin titles I've seen in ebook form are _Kiln People_ and _Foundation's Triumph_, published by Tor and HarperCollins, respectively.
______
Dennis

I went looking for the Uplift series in electronic format and found nothing. I *loved* reading those books but have long since passed them on to new homes.

I've still got the (smelly ) dead tree series
I won"t be parting with that
untill they are digital

Twenty Sc-Fi Fiction Novels that will change your life. (http://io9.com/361597/the-twenty-science-fiction-novels-that-will-change-your-life)

Hummmm... life changing? I don't know about that, but definitely worth checking out. There are a few I need to look into.

Good starting list... how about some more????

Excellent link, thanks kilofox!

While not exactly SciFi, I consider G. Orwell's 1984 one of the few books along this theme that can definitely be life changing.

Twenty Sc-Fi Fiction Novels that will change your life. (http://io9.com/361597/the-twenty-science-fiction-novels-that-will-change-your-life)

Hummmm... life changing? I don't know about that, but definitely worth checking out. There are a few I need to look into.

Good starting list... how about some more????

Hoy ! I wuz trying to squash that fly on my screen !!!!!! :smack:

Nova by Samuel R. Delaney changed my life. It was published in 1969, and I found my copy at an aunt's yard sale in about 1973 or 74. I was a kid, 11 or 12 at the most, and it was the first "real" scifi book I ever read. It was a life-changing book for me to suddenly understand the possibilities of what could be imagined. I've been hooked on scifi - and Delaney - ever since.

I found a wonderful collection of Delaney stories in a used book store at the beach several years ago, and it's got pride-of-place on my bookshelf. I'm a big fan of older short stories, so forgive me if my taste in reading material seems too old-fashioned.

Nova by Samuel R. Delaney changed my life.NB: his last name has no "e" -- it's Delany.

It was published in 1969, and I found my copy at an aunt's yard sale in about 1973 or 74. I was a kid, 11 or 12 at the most, and it was the first "real" scifi book I ever read. It was a life-changing book for me to suddenly understand the possibilities of what could be imagined. I've been hooked on scifi - and Delaney - ever since.Nova was a brilliant book. I'm also fond of Triton, and have wished someone would collect the "Notes towards the modular calculus" Chip had scattered through that volume as a seperate publication.

I found a wonderful collection of Delaney stories in a used book store at the beach several years ago, and it's got pride-of-place on my bookshelf. I'm a big fan of older short stories, so forgive me if my taste in reading material seems too old-fashioned.I wouldn't call liking Delany old fashioned. I'd call him one of the reigning masters of the field, as adept in shorter lengths (such as "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones", which garnered a Best Short Story Hugo Award in 1970) as in novels.

He's also a very nice guy in person, and fascinating to talk to.

I can't legitimately recommend all of his work. He did a porno novel called "The Tides of Lust" many years back which may be the most unerotic book I've ever read, and Dhalgren is best considered a literary experiment (though it was a cult item when published, with lots of folks discussing exactly what Delany was doing in that book.)

But for the most part, pick a Delany off the shelf and expect a good read.
______
Dennis

Thanks for correcting my spelling - and feel free to keep proofreading for me! :)

I've never heard of Time as a Helix... but will try to find a copy.

Thanks for correcting my spelling - and feel free to keep proofreading for me! :)You're welcome. I made that same mistake in a flyer advertising Chip as a GoH at a convention years ago. No one caught it, till a local fan walked into a bookstore where copies had been left, looked, and said "You misspelled Delany's name!" Oops...

I've never heard of Time as a Helix... but will try to find a copy.It's widely anthologized:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40866
so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

It won the Nebula Award in 1969, as well as the Hugo.
______
Dennis

That list of 20 looks like it was written by someone fairly young. There's a huge gap there between the inevitable old classics that are always in print and books printed after 1979. I think the only reason I, Robot is listed is that the movie tie-in came out. I agree with the aformentioned Samuel R. Delany as one of the important ones. His Einstein Intersection certainly changed my life. Also seriously, seriously, seriously conspicuous by his absence is J.G. Ballard. On any list like that, I'd also include the Dangerous Visions anthology. Although it is a bit dated now, it shook things up at the time. Also missing is Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman. Say what you will about Ellison as a person, that story rocks. Let's not forget the books that really did change people's lives too; books like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and Herbert's Dune. I guess familiarity really does breed contempt. I'd also put Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination on any such list as well. And how can we forget Jack Vance's The Dying Earth? One book that I would be tempted to include that I only recently discovered right her on the forum is George MacDonald's Lilith. It was written as fantasy but he discusses concepts that science didn't discover until string theory.

An interesting list, quite a few new to me so I look forward to checking them out.
My addition would be Huxley's 'Brave New World'. I read it in my early teens, and it really did change my life (reading the right book at the right time!).
It totally altered my conception of what it was to be human, the mind-blowing potential of technological advance, and the inimical role of politics in philosophy.
I put that book down a different person to the one who'd picked it up.

Right, I'm just going to say it. It's Sunday night, and if anyone disagrees they'll hopefully only reply in a few hours time after the demons have settled down and my invisible friend, Adrian (the inadvertently violent gibbon) has stopped repeating everything I'm saying ("...everything I'm saying...") while tousling my hair like I'm the "baby brother" in this relationship and the voices that aren't in my head (they're in my fingers, and my left big toe) are no longer telling me to kill you all with bananas, and I will be normal and it will be Monday and I can apologise for my behaviour, so I'll just say...

"The Sparrow" is an interesting if slightly plain bit of "first contact" scifi covering for the fact that it's a "woe is me" tract for "like, you know, whatever"-type god-bothering teenagers who've read way too much (and yet not enough) Gerard Manley Hopkins and think "religion" means "Christianity [preferably RC like me, or at least like the RC I was born into] with a nod to Judaism" and that losing god is a worse fate that hating Him. It shows atheism only as a harmless, unthinking aside that naturally gets along with children really well, and tortures sexuality and love in twists of soap-opera-like confusion and angst and restraint (and heaven forbid "aberrant" sexuality be portrayed in anyone or in any way that is not violent, loathsome or "nobly" abstaining).

Fortunately for those who loved it, the author continued the themes through "Children of God", only progressing the plot (though, admittedly in the aforementioned "interesting" manner).

I read them through. I felt what I should feel. I can admire the author (and, at this point, I will cede that I can never put my own desired themes, yet alone plot, down on paper as well as her), but I still think that if "The Sparrow" changed your life, read something else and change it back. As someone once said, (or maybe it was that road sign I just passed sailing down the rampway onto the Bruce Motorway, one hand on the wheel, one hand tappin' away on the keyboard keeping up with my homies on MobileRead, singing along top-of-the-lungs-until-I-cough-up-blood my second-favourite band's - The The - Mercy Beat) "WRONG WAY. GO BACK."

I'll apologise tomorrow. I did think it (and the sequel) sucked though.

Cheers (mmm, cocktails.....)
Marc

NB: his last name has no "e" -- it's Delany.

Nova was a brilliant book. I'm also fond of Triton, and have wished someone would collect the "Notes towards the modular calculus" Chip had scattered through that volume as a seperate publication.

I wouldn't call liking Delany old fashioned. I'd call him one of the reigning masters of the field, as adept in shorter lengths (such as "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones", which garnered a Best Short Story Hugo Award in 1970) as in novels.

He's also a very nice guy in person, and fascinating to talk to.

I can't legitimately recommend all of his work. He did a porno novel called "The Tides of Lust" many years back which may be the most unerotic book I've ever read, and Dhalgren is best considered a literary experiment (though it was a cult item when published, with lots of folks discussing exactly what Delany was doing in that book.)

But for the most part, pick a Delany off the shelf and expect a good read.
______
Dennis

I remember receiving Dhalgren as a Christmas present:eek:many years ago from my little brother. I think that with the cover art on the paperback book he thought it was just another scifi book. I started reading it on Christmas Day, and if I recall rightly there was a scene early on in the book graphically describing a homo-erotic oral sex encounter that the hero of the book was engaging in. Since my tastes didn't veer in that direction (sixteen year old horny hetero teenager), I quickly put the book down and never picked it up again. Of course, to my brother's embarrassment and my parent's horror, I read out loud to everybody hanging out in the living room one particularly juicy passage that Christmas morning...:D

... Since my tastes didn't veer in that direction (sixteen year old horny hetero teenager), I quickly put the book down and never picked it up again. Of course, to my brother's embarrassment and my parent's horror, I read out loud to everybody hanging out in the living room one particularly juicy passage that Christmas morning...:D

My suppressed and guilty proclivities at a similar age did (and still do) veer that direction, and I read it at the same age as you.

I confess that I too initially put it down, for different reasons (embarrassment and shame and probably (self-)disgust), but I straight away picked it up again (for similar reasons - "sixteen year old horny...teenager") and I'm glad I did.

With this confession, however, must also come a professed need to read it again, without the intervening maelstrom of hormones.

I hope you've since apologised to your parents (imagine a grin-and-a-wink emoticon right here).

Cheers,
Marc

care to list ?

I would add Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End to any list of life-changing books. Slightly more current would be the Beggars in Spain trilogy by Nancy Kress. And even further back: H.G. Welles' War of the Worlds (not the movies, the book).

All of those books gave me profound perspective-shifts on life and humanity, more than any of the list of twenty (or any other books mentioned by others here).

Last one: Satan: His Psychoanalysis and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S. by Jeremy Levin.

I think we should make a "20 supernatural horror novels" list too.

For my $0.02 --


Dune by Frank Herbert -- For my money, I think this book has had the biggest cultural impact. I'm currently listening to it as an audiobook. This is my third time through this particular volume, and every time I revisit it, I find more to be amazed with. The world building, the philosophy, the political intrigue, every bit of it is fascinating.
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe -- This one could swing either way as either fantasy or science fiction. It feels like a fantasy world, but there are flying saucers and time travelers. This is probably the best example of a faulty 1st person narrator that I could imagine.
Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh -- She does such a great job building an alien culture. I read this as a young teen and it probably influenced my love of space opera quite a bit.
Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis -- I read Narnia when I was nine, and then my parents gave me this series as a follow-up because they knew how much I liked that. Totally different target audience, but I persisted, and it was quite rewarding.
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle -- An excellent morality tale about racism and discrimination.
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds -- I really liked this one. I'm a sucker for the unreliable narrator, and this one (combined with a really freaky ending) left quite the impression on my mind. I also liked the descriptive language he used describing posthumans.


I'm sure there's more.

I don't know if I'd consider Perdido Street Station on that list. It's solidly fantasy (I could do a really long fantasy list).

I do want to point out about Brin's Uplift books, the first trilogy is really rock solid, and should be held in the highest esteem. The second Uplift trilogy, though, shows a marked drop-off in quality. I never could get through it.

i know i might be young and not appreciate all the old classic story's as i have not read them all (I'm working on it though) but the book that really got me reading in a big way was Ender's Game and then Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.

They really got my imagination going and since then science fiction and science (a vague term i know) as a field of study have been my main interest.

Also the way the two books are so different in settings and themes always impressed me.

Nice thread. I've been working on identifying quality SF, Fantasy books that are available for the Kindle. I base "quality" on the Hugo and Nebula awards, which most discussed here are recognized as such. I did this to A) find a good book in e-form for my kindle, and B) Get a sense of where the Kindle SF, Fantasy offerings are compared to print.

Here is the thread:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=169870#post169870

The database has grown to 500+ books thus far (all hugo and nebula nominated books, including the "pre-hugos"), with maybe 25% available on the Kindle storefront. Ebooks aside though I had the data in my spreadsheet of these books and their awards so I wrote a quick macro to rank the authors by how many nominated or award winning books they have authored. The list is surprising:

(Most awarded authors, top 10 sorted most awarded first)
Lois McMaster Bujold
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Silverberg
Gene Wolfe
Orson Scott Card
David Brin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Isaac Asimov
Joe Haldeman
Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson made the top-10 and I did not even count his Niven-Anderson co-authored books which won or were nominated to quite a few awards.

Here are the top 19 books (I thought I had pasted 20, but oh well). Books are ranked by the number of nominations (one point each), and the number of actual wins (an extra point per win). So if a book wins the hugo and was nominated for the nebula, it gets a "3". I then sort them, highest is on top:

(Most awarded books, top 19)
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
Dreamsnake, Vonda McIntyre
Dune, Frank Herbert
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld , Larry Niven
Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
Startide Rising, David Brin
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke
The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein


Note that of the 500+ books in the database, the top 20 most certainly won both awards I just lost that data when I posted in the original thread.
-d

Nice thread. I've been working on identifying quality SF, Fantasy books that are available for the Kindle. I base "quality" on the Hugo and Nebula awards, which most discussed here are recognized as such. I did this to A) find a good book in e-form for my kindle, and B) Get a sense of where the Kindle SF, Fantasy offerings are compared to print.

You should look at all nominated book and you should look at the Clarke award also for "quality" books. I also think that the nominated or short listed books for the Nebula award have been "odd" these last years.

The database has grown to 500+ books thus far (all hugo and nebula nominated books, including the "pre-hugos"), ...
(Most awarded authors, top 10 sorted most awarded first)
.....
Here are the top 19 books (I thought I had pasted 20, but oh well). ...


I tend to disregard nominations as a sign of quality as it seems to me anyone could nominate anything. And people could have many motives to make a nomination.
But I could be wrong :eek: - it would be interesting to see the bottom 20 entries in such a database, and whether they are works still held in high regard.

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five was definitely a mind-altering, and therefore life-changing, read for me. It may not classify as scifi by some people but it's a terrific and slightly bizarre book nonetheless. An amazing writer who kept me glued to his pages and constantly thinking. I could not help wondering what he would have been like if he hadn't lived through the Dresden firestorm. Sadly, Saturday was the first anniversary of his death.

I tend to disregard nominations as a sign of quality as it seems to me anyone could nominate anything. And people could have many motives to make a nomination.
But I could be wrong :eek: - it would be interesting to see the bottom 20 entries in such a database, and whether they are works still held in high regard.

Not these nominations. A book gets nominated to one of these, its going to be a great one. Slaughter-house five was mentioned by vivaldirules. It garnered a hugo nomination (the winner that year was The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin to get the idea of competition).


Also, just to answer a few comments: Im only including the category of novel. Novelette, novela, and short story awards are not counted.

Ill look into the clarke award. The big two in terms of industry respect and prestige are the Hugo and Nebula. The third is probably the Locus award.

-d

Not these nominations. A book gets nominated to one of these, its going to be a great one.

Ah, is it just the shortlisted nominations you're including?

That'd make sense; because (as I understand it) there's nothing stopping me writing some awful bit of tripe, and nominating it for a Hugo myself:
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/hugo101.htm

But it'd never make it to the shortlist :o. So a shortlist list is likely to only have the good stuff.

Ah, is it just the shortlisted nominations you're including?

Yes, should have mentioned that

-d

Ill look into the clarke award. The big two in terms of industry respect and prestige are the Hugo and Nebula. The third is probably the Locus award.


Well, they are the most well known but they have problems. Hugo has been criticised for being a popularity contests so popular but not so good authors gets nominated (like all the Robert Sawyer books that I then have to read...). And Nebula seems to have a problem with nominations based on that member of SFWA think people deserve the price and not on the actual book. But in recent years the Nebula nominations have been OK.

For new and maye a bit different books I think the Clarke Award and The World Fantasy Award (or whatever the name is) are better. The Clarke Award is a juryed award like the Nebula.

Now, if we could only get all of these books into e-book formats for anything at all...

I have read some of the books on the list, a few comments.

Consider Phlebas (1987), by Iain M. Banks
I was not impressed, but it is readable. Lots of action, but otherwise a bit shallow and purposeless.

A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), by Vernor Vinge
Excellent book.

Pattern Recognition (2003), by William Gibson
Very, very boring. W. Gibson lost it after the Neuromancer trilogy. Other recent books by him have the same problem: BORING.

Glasshouse (2006), by Charles Stross
This is OK, but to put it into the top 20 its a bit of a stretch.

Some other recommendations:
Alastair Reynolds - very good except for the Absolution Gap
Isaac Asimov - Foundation series is a classic
Frank Herbert - Dune (AVOID the prequel books by his son)
Greg Bear - Most of his books are very good
Frederik Pohl - The Gateway series is a classic
Stanislaw Lem - some very good classic scifi.

My avoid list:
C J Cherryh - I read Cyteen and Deepstation, had to give up the former. REALLY boring stuff.
Dan Simmons - Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion - weird and boring at the same time.
Jack McDevitt - started two of his books, was not impressed at all.

Beware Hugo and Nebula awards, they are awarded for writing and not for the story.

Just my 2c.

My avoid list:
C J Cherryh - I read Cyteen and Deepstation, had to give up the former. REALLY boring stuff.

Beware Hugo and Nebula awards, they are awarded for writing and not for the story.


If I had started to read Cherryh with Cyteen I would not have continued since the book was very hard to read and I did not like the ending. I really like some of her other stuff like Downbellow Station, Merchanter's Luck and Rimrunner.

Hugo is decided by a popularity vote and often a book wins because of the story. For example the year that the Harry Potter book won. If the writing is bad enough in a book it will probably not win.

Dan Simmons - Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion - weird and boring at the same time.

Curious why you read both :blink:.

I'd have given up after the first if I hadn't enjoyed it.

Curious why you read both :blink:.

I'd have given up after the first if I hadn't enjoyed it.

I think it really is one book that for practical or economical reasons was published in two parts. So if you want to finish a book then there is a reason to read both parts.

Jack McDevitt - started two of his books, was not impressed at all.

I got that from his book Chindi... a long way to go for a single punch line. However, I've been enjoying most of his other books, I like his style.

I got that from his book Chindi... a long way to go for a single punch line. However, I've been enjoying most of his other books, I like his style.

Haha, Chindi was the first and last of his that I have read. Maybe I should look at the others.

I really enjoyed
Deepsix
The book is one of those
I finished in one sitting

Heinlein's Time for the Stars is a book I remember vividly today, from long long ago junior high days, that somehow completely captivated my imagination and led me to read many of the other SF "classics" (Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury.) The story of twins, one who remained young because he traveled at the speed of light, while the other remained on earth to age, just blew me away. At the age of 12 or so I had no concept of the big ideas in physics.

My all-time SF favorite though is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Pure poetry, imho.

Lelah

I remember receiving Dhalgren as a Christmas present:eek:many years ago from my little brother. I think that with the cover art on the paperback book he thought it was just another scifi book. I started reading it on Christmas Day, and if I recall rightly there was a scene early on in the book graphically describing a homo-erotic oral sex encounter that the hero of the book was engaging in. Since my tastes didn't veer in that direction (sixteen year old horny hetero teenager), I quickly put the book down and never picked it up again. Of course, to my brother's embarrassment and my parent's horror, I read out loud to everybody hanging out in the living room one particularly juicy passage that Christmas morning...:DWell, Chip is gay, so the homo-erotic episode isn't a big surprise.

I'll have to re-read Dhalgren one of these days. In retrospect, I see it as an exploration of what happens when the usual constraints of civilization are removed. We never find out exactly what happened to the city of Bellona, but it's obvious that most have left, and those who remain are different from what they used to be.

Civilization is a shared construct, and the restraints we think of as normal are consensual and imposed partly from within, and partly from social pressure. (There are things we don't do because we think we shouldn't, and others we don't do because those around us would object. Different societies draw those boundaries in different places and whether the control is internal or external may vary, but the control will be there.)

What happens when external controls are removed? You can make a case that Delany was working the same territory as William Golding in _Lord of the Flies_.

And Chip dropped some hints that the protagonist was not a reliable narrator, and might not be what we think of as sane.
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Dennis

Curious why you read both :blink:.



The story had no ending really, I was curious what the Shrike was. I was hoping for some conclusion in the sequel, but in Fall of Hyperion, it just drags on and on and on.....

The story had no ending really, I was curious what the Shrike was. I was hoping for some conclusion in the sequel, but in Fall of Hyperion, it just drags on and on and on.....

I heard that things are explained in the last book The Rise of Endymion but that thw two last books was not worth reading.

I heard that things are explained in the last book The Rise of Endymion but that thw two last books was not worth reading.

You know, I honestly can't remember at the moment. It sounds right - about the "explanations" - but it's been a while.

This is one of those books/series that I'm surprised to see amongst the disliked, because I enjoyed it so thoroughly (his Ilium and Olympos...not so much, though still a satisfactory read for me).

I do absolutely love the fact that people can call "boring" what others call "brilliance", and vice versa, and all the shades in-between. It's not the disagreement, but the individuality that I like (perhaps it's because it stops me feeling like there's something wrong with me ;) because I didn't much like Perdido Street Station).

One of the books that has a popularity that leaves me wavering as to whether to read it or not is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. Some folks enthuse about it (including some folks that I "know" to some degree, and can therefore make better guesses as to whether I might enjoy it), but I get put off worrying about the Perdido-effect. :)

If I had to list the one SF novel that "changed my life", it would probably be Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. It's one I need to read again, but it's a book that, as a teenager, resounded amongst the chaos of hormones, identity and sexuality that I swam in, and it continues to echo down the years. Yes, I must read it again.

Cheers,
Marc

I agree with you Mark on Hyperion and Endymion. The first book of the series began quite wobbly and felt like the author had no idea where the story would go. But he kept at it and went ahead splendidly.

As for this thread, the book that impressed me the most is the first one I ever read at 11 years old. Robinson Crusoe. I think this is the reason behind my love of this planet and its preservation and my jack-of-all-trades mentality.

I heard that things are explained in the last book The Rise of Endymion but that thw two last books was not worth reading.I read all four and found them absolutely worth reading.

Hyperion was a tour de force, with an inspired reworking of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as the various folks on the way to see the Shrike tell their stories.

And Simmons structures his books like layers of an onion: as you read them, layers are peeled away, and you discover things aren't at all what you thought they were.

Every few years, SF seems to manifest a big series chock full of ideas that become a high water mark. Back in the 70's, that accolade went to William Gibson's "Sprawl" series, _Neuromancer_, _Count Zero_, and _Mona Lisa Overdrive_. I'd call David Brin's "Uplift" series another such, with Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion next, and Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy following that.

I'm way behind, so I'm not sure what is out there currently that might fall into that category. Nominations, anyone?
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Dennis

I tend to disregard nominations as a sign of quality as it seems to me anyone could nominate anything. And people could have many motives to make a nomination.Anyone can nominate anything (with the caveats listed below). But to make the nominees list, many "anyone's" must nominate the same book.

The fact that many people liked it well enough to nominate it is no guarantee of overall quality or that you'll like it, but it does provide a decent pointer to things worth looking into.

The Hugo Awards are nominated by and voted upon by members of the World SF Convention. Anyone can become a member of the Worldcon, and nominate and vote upon titles, though it does cost money. Nebula Awards are nominated by and voted upon by members of the SFWA, and you need actual sales to recognized paying markets to qualify for membership. Much powder has been burned over perceived flaws in the process on both the Hugo and Nebula sides (and with SFWA, you have the organization's internal politics in the mix, too), but in general, works nominated for and works actually winning the various awards tend to be worth a look.
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Dennis

I agree with you Mark on Hyperion and Endymion. The first book of the series began quite wobbly and felt like the author had no idea where the story would go. But he kept at it and went ahead splendidly.


We had a book discussion about Hyperion recently and of the people that had read all the books they all thought that only the first two was worth reading. Peoples taste differ...

One of the books that has a popularity that leaves me wavering as to whether to read it or not is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. Some folks enthuse about it (including some folks that I "know" to some degree, and can therefore make better guesses as to whether I might enjoy it), but I get put off worrying about the Perdido-effect. :)


I liked Eastern Standard Tribe much better then Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. And I would really recommend Little Brothers which is recently out and availables as CC.

Stranger in a Strange Land. Some folks really don't dig Heinlein, but reading that book opened up a channel in my brain. Religion has nothing to do with ghod and all to do with money. How we see the world is not necessarily how the world sees us. I came away from that read a changed boy.

Stranger in a Strange Land. Some folks really don't dig Heinlein, but reading that book opened up a channel in my brain. Religion has nothing to do with ghod and all to do with money. How we see the world is not necessarily how the world sees us. I came away from that read a changed boy.

A classic...