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Vanguard
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Monster Island
Apr 1999
time: 05:20
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You think Dune is boring, but you consider Forever War, a repetitive sententious novella with no characters to be a great novel? Well, to each his own.
Frankly I think Bill the Galactic Hero is actually a better anti-war novel than Forever War, just as Dr. Strangelove is a better anti-war movie than Platoon.
For my part, Dune is the best science-fiction novel, managing to combine religion, politics and speculative invention into an exceptionally readable book.
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:20
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I'm gonna give a  to my favorite sub-genre, space opera. I enjoy nothing more than the titanic struggles undertaken by interstellar empires, whether the events take place on a small scale (much of Fire in the Deep) or on an intergalactic level (Stephen Baxter.)
Currently my favorite space opera writer is Peter F. Hamilton. While his ending to his first big story was a let down, he has been creative enough to create not one but three separate self-contained Universes: the Night's Dawn universe, the Fallen Dragon worlds, and the Commonwealth of Pandora's Star. All of them rest upon different physical and economic assumptions about space travel, and all of them work.
His biggest issue is writing himself into a corner, getting his protagonists so over their heads that they can do nothing but lose. How he resolves this difficulty has not been popular.
Iain M. Banks is always readable, but he's a little too esoteric at times - I just want to say into some pages "Yes, you're smart and you have a way with words. Can't you just tell the story now?"
I've never gotten into Ken MacLeod. I've read two of his books (Cosmonaut Keep and another), but for the life of me I can't tell you what they were about (CK was about a female space ship captain who... something about genocide?)
And they're getting up there in years, but I have to give a shout out to S.R. Donaldsons Gap series, a densely plotted and, at times, painful series to read. Donaldson is not to everyones taste (I'm convinced the man needs somebody to talk to, at the least), but if you can handle it, you will find a very rewarding experience as this little nothing of a story about a space pirate who kidnaps and rapes a young girl turns into an epic upon which rests the fates of civilizations.
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nostromo
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Montréal, Québec
Mar 2002
time: 00:20
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Am I the only one here who thinks Nineteen eighty-four is one of the greatest sci-fi books ever? Most of you probably think it isn't sci-fi, like Asimov, who claimed that it wasn't sci-fi, that it was a satire of totatitarian regimes. Why can't it be both, sci-fi and a satire?
Last edited by nostromo on 29-06-2005 at 23:28
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nostromo
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Montréal, Québec
Mar 2002
time: 00:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
The problem with classifying 1984 as a science fiction, rather than a fiction book, is to look at the role that science, and scientific endeavours play in the book. Yes, it describes a future world, but there isn't much place for technology in the book.
Particularly when compared with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. |
But I hope you realize this is one definition of sci-fi among many others? Basically, a definition is good if it includes what you want it to include, and exludes what you want it to exclude.
Btw, I'm not even sure you have to exclude 1984 from the realm of sci-fi based on your definition. How about the use of tech to destroy privacy, to monitor people? How about the use of tech to manipulate the media and the public's mind?
But it seems to me that you're definition excludes sci-fi classics like Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness or Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle. Like Le Guin pointed out herself in her intro to Left Hand of Darkness, these are thought-experiments:
quote:
Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. the science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. [...] A prediction is made.
Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game by any means. [...]
This book is not extrapolative. if you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Lets say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; lets say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war. |
I like that definition. Sci-fi as thought-experiments. Of course these thought-experiments are about stuff that is scientifically possible.
And Mary Shelley's Frankenstein definitely should be a runner-up.
Last edited by nostromo on 30-06-2005 at 00:50
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29-06-2005 08:08
What was I double thinking? 
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