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Starchild
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a raving alcoholic drama queen with a penchant for the biosciences
Jan 1970
time: 00:30
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I'd like to recommend Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I just got it from Amazon and it's a wonderful, eclectic mix of science fiction, Hindu mythology, Buddhist philosophy, and Sanskrit. Here's an edited (it was LONG) review with some very minor spoilers:
Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India. But even as the "Deicrat" consensus firms, there is dissent: Sam, one of the First, the crew of the original spaceship, remains an "Accelerationist", wanting to spread scientific knowledge to everyone. He starts a one-man crusade to bring down Heaven, a crusade that will lead him to the depths of Hellwell and to Nirvana and back.
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ajbera
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of the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium
Apr 1999
time: 05:30
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Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep
quote:
From Publishers Weekly
It has been six years since Vinge's last book ( Marooned in Realtime ), but the wait proves worthwhile in this stimulating tale filled with ideas, action and likable, believable characters, both alien and human. Vinge presents a galaxy divided into Zones--regions where different physical constraints allow very different technological and mental possibilities. Earth remains in the "Slowness" zone, where nothing can travel faster than light and minds are fairly limited. The action of the book is in the "Beyond," where translight travel and other marvels exist, and humans are one of many intelligent species. One human colony has been experimenting with ancient technology in order to find a path to the "Transcend," where intelligence and power are so great as to seem godlike. Instead they release the Blight, an evil power, from a billion-year captivity. As the Blight begins to spread, a few humans flee with a secret that might destroy it, but they are stranded in a primitive low-tech world barely in the Beyond. While the Blight destroys whole races and star systems, a team of two humans and two aliens races to rescue the others, pursued by the Blight's agents and other enemies. With uninterrupted pacing, suspense without contrivance, and deftly drawn aliens who can be pleasantly comical without becoming cute, Vinge offers heart-pounding, mind-expanding science fiction at its best. |
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=books&n=507846
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Imran Siddiqui
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The Potterverse
Jan 1970
time: 00:30
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My nomination is Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (my favorite sci-fi book  ):
quote:
An all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle's puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama's secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible "southern" half of the enormous cylinder. Rama's unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed. Rendezvous with Rama is fast moving, fascinating, and a must-read for science fiction fans. |
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=glance&s=books
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St Leo
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Member of the Apolyton Social Democratic Party
Jul 2005
time: 00:30
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Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.
For twenty thousand years, every observable phenomenon in the universe has been successfully explained by the Sarumpaet Rules: the laws governing the dynamics of the quantum graphs that underlie all the constituents of matter and the geometric structure of spacetime. Now Cass has stumbled on a set of quantum graphs that might comprise the fundamental particles of an entirely different kind of physics, and she has travelled three hundred and seventy light years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, in the hope of bringing this tantalising alternative to life. The “novo-vacuum” is predicted to begin decaying the instant it's created, but even a short-lived, microscopic speck could shed light on the origins of the universe, and test the Sarumpaet Rules more rigorously than ever before.
Cass's experiment turns out to be more successful than anticipated: the novo-vacuum is more stable than the ordinary vacuum around it, and a region in which the new physics holds sway proceeds to expand out from Mimosa at half the speed of light.
Six hundred years later, more than two thousand inhabited systems have been lost to the novo-vacuum. On the Rindler, a ship that has matched velocities with the encroaching border, people have come from throughout inhabited space to study the phenomenon. Most are Preservationists, hunting for a way to turn back the tide, but a few belong to another faction: Yielders, who believe that the challenge of adapting to survive on the far side of the border would reinvigorate a civilisation that has grown stale and insular.
Tchicaya has come to the Rindler to join the Yielders, but when Mariama — a childhood friend whose example inspired him to abandon his own home world and traditions for a life of travel — arrives soon after, he is shocked to discover that she plans to help the Preservationists find a way to destroy the novo-vacuum.
As a theoretical breakthrough leads to a sequence of experiments that begins to reveal the true richness of the world behind the border, tensions between the opposing factions grow. When a splinter group responds to these revelations with violent, unilateral action, Tchicaya and Mariama are forced into an uneasy alliance, and travel together through the border, balancing old and new loyalties against the fate of two incomparably different universes.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/e...csbookreviewpag
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...e=books&tag=516
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/se...2229816-1645934
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:30
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I nominate In Conquest Born by CS Friedman.
From amazon.com:
quote:
In Conquest Born is the monumental science fiction epic that received unprecedented acclaim-and launched C.S. Friedman's phenomenal career. A sweeping story of two interstellar civilizations-locked in endless war, it was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. |
Great book, based on a pretty much endless war between two human civilizations, with one character from each culture as the main characters. What really makes it a winner is the fine description of the cultures (especially the militaristic Braxians), complete with their vicious internal politics, poetry and 42 speech modes. The two main characters and their growth from childhood to military leadership is also well charted, and they're the characters that you love silly no matter how amorally bloodthirsty they get, with neither one being easily labeled as the "good" guy or the "bad" guy, they're both ruthless but fundamentally honorable (in very very different ways). Its based far more on character development than laser guns, although there is a bit of that too. My only gripe is with the ending, which I'm not going to discuss now 
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:30
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I'll nominate Michael Flynn's very, very good novel about the start of a true space Industry, Firestar. The first in a series of four (but self-contained!) None of the Amazon reviews do it justice, but here's the best of a sorry lot:
quote:
Firestar is the first novel in the Firestar Saga series. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten is the teenage heiress of an old and very rich family. She is eager to take over the management of the family business from her grandfather and has decided to obtain a degree at Chicago to learn the basics of administration and management. During the summer before leaving for college, however, she has a vivid vision of a large meteor strike and resulting destruction which haunts her for the rest of her life.
In the following years, Mariesa concludes that the only protection against human extinction from meteor strikes is an active and prosperous space industry throughout the solar system, providing both defense capabilities and dispersal of the population in self-sufficient habitats. Since very few others are concerned with the meteor risk, she determines to promote such industry by means of Van Huyten Industries.
Christian van Huyten III had begun naming his companies after mythological characters in 1873, so the space initiative adopted by Mariesa shortly after she takes over is named the Prometheus Project. She recruits several of the VHI executives into the Prometheus Steering Committee. Development of a single-stage to orbit prototype for the project is performed by Daedalus Corporation, a Brazilian subsidiary, with materiel and expertise provided by other VHI companies. Daedalus hires Ned DuBois and Forrest Calhoun as test pilots for the new "Plank" SSTOs.
Mariesa also sees better education as a necessity to support Prometheus, so she acquires Mentor Academies, a private education concern, and expands it to manage public schools, under contract with the states and local school districts. One of the first managed public school districts is North Orange, New Jersey, near her home. Barry Fast, a teacher within the North Orange district, becomes a Mentor Institute Fellow and confidante of Mariesa.
As Mariesa begins to build an autonomous space industry within VHI, she finds both supporters and opponents within VHI, in the other aerospace companies and in government. She also finds herself developing a special relationship with a group of students within the North Orange district.
This novel spends a great deal of time attacking the current education establishment. It doesn't take any position on the dogmatic issues, but rather supports an eclectic approach that enables teachers to control their own presentations and relegates much of the administration to the managerial staff. Success is measured by the degree to which the student body achieves stated objectives. As someone who has been exposed to the education curriculum, I tend to agree the author in that the style of teaching must vary according to the student, but current public education thinking seems to consider such an approach to be too expensive. However, my reading in psychology suggests that the evidence tends to support the author's position: lockstep teaching is too expensive as well as also ineffectual.
This novel lays the foundation for a provocative series. It has been much compared to Heinlein's works -- i.e., The Man Who Sold the Moon -- but it is much longer and thus more detailed. Moreover, it has more room for character development and uses it aggressively.
Highly recommended for Flynn and Heinlein fans and for anyone else who enjoys hard science fiction with believable characters and excellent plot development. |
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Jon Miller
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I liked her other books better
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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I was refering to the CS Friedman book
Jkon Miller
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:30
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Hmm. Some good ones on the list. Think I'll renominate one I mentioned before.
Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams.
From Amazon.com:
quote:
Williams's novel Hardwired was a well-written but standard entry in the cyberpunk sweepstakes launched by William Gibson's Neuromancer. This followup, however, is much more interesting and successful. Etienne Steward is the clone ("Steward Beta") of a hero of the Artifact Wars, in which multinational corporations fielded armies to plunder alien ruins. He's been given Steward Alpha's memories minus the last years of the hero's life: the war and its aftermath. Now Steward Beta begins an investigation, tracking down Alpha's wife, friends, enemies and fellow vets to fill in the picture and learn why Alpha was murdered. In particular, Beta probes the war, its horrors, its betrayals and The Powers, the aliens who ended it. Resonances of Vietnam-era moral concerns make this deft updating of the postWorld War II genre of psychological thrillers about amnesiacs one of the best of its kind. |
Wraith
"Écrasez l'infâme."
-- Steward ("Voice of the Whirlwind")
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11-09-2003 18:29
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