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Gregory Benford had a great column about this, all the way back in 2000. It also involved a nuclear powered satellite.

It's human nature to react more extremely to new things, especially if they seem "unnatural." This might have been a survival instinct in bygone days, when the hominid who noticed that bush was out of place could take another path and avoid getting eaten by the sabertooth tiger behind it. But like so many such instincts, it translates poorly into the technological era.

In a fantasy story, there is a mechanism of causation (or the results of such a mechanism), most commonly called magic, which is indifferent to, if not in direct violation of those rules of causation considered to be science. Theres a list of some sub-genres here. I remember reading interesting words written by Algis Budrys in F&SF about the difference between descriptive fiction and speculative fiction and the difference between science fiction and fantasy being not as great. I haven't found a link directly to those words, but I did find that you can buy them by following links from here. Be warned, however, that in these books, those particular words are collected among many others.

This premise, writ large, dates back at least to Frederick Pohl's 1982 novel Starburst . Eight varied, smart people are sent off on a long journey to a distant star. They soon discover there is no star toward which they're heading, and the whole thing was designed to get them to solve a lot of the world's problems.

Not a lot of the SF I read as a kid stayed with me into adulthood, but I still think about that one on occasion. I guess that's partly because of the fantasy that, I'm learning, appeals to so many nerds: that we might finally have time to sit down, without distractions, and "work it all out". (Now that I think of it, like Descartes at the beginning of the Meditations ...)

Don't forget Greg Bear. That book is a trip-and-a-half.

Read ETHAN OF ATHOS (review) by Lois McMaster Bujold, the first author to avoid turning a *GAY* planet into a collection of one-dimensional characters.

Agreed. Very good books, which I also read in my pre-teen years. 8 may be a little young, but it's worth a shot. I've been watching Falling Skies with my 14yo and it strikes me that Falling Skies could almost be a prequel to the Tripods. The details don't quite line up, but the alien invasion and subjugation of the human race with mind control devices are similar enough. (Yes, I know about When The Tripods Came, though I haven't read it.)

Also try Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind. It's kind of a Last Starfighter story. His other young adult fiction might also be good, but I haven't read any of it.

I haven't read any of them, but the Jupiter series is a conscious effort by Charles Sheffield to produce modern SF stories reminiscent of Heinlein's juvenile novels.

Are the Danny Dunn books still around? Those had a bunch of science and SF themes, though they probably seem very dated by now. As my wife points out, any books supposedly set in the present day need to acknowledge the existence of cell phones or they'll look outdated. If the characters are in a tough situation that revolves around them being isolated, you need to explain why they can't just text each other or call 911.

Scroll down to the review section. Tons-and-tons of book recommendations from professional critics. BTW Speaker for the Dead is a faaaar better book than Ender's Game (imho). I look forward to reading it a second time. :-)

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/depts.htm

I know you were looking for technical magazines, but two of the most import science fiction magazines in the field, Asimov's Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction are still being published on paper (though I think both are also available in electronic format as well).

A privacy free future envisioned: The Light Of Other Days, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/lod82.htm

That is a book/movie I would like to see done.

Harry Turtledove has several alternate histories based on this. Some going back to "what if the Civil War had been fought to a draw, and then continued into WWI times."

I'm going to disagree with you too, and it's not just because you're getting older--I've been reading SF for nearly four decades myself, and I think the average quality of SF has been improving my whole life. Of course, you have to keep Sturgeon's Law in mind.

There is one qualification I'll add: when I was young, fantasy was even more of a ghetto than Sf, and today the situation seems somewhat reversed. A lot more good new writers seem to go into fantasy these days, since it's a little more prestigious, which is too bad because I much prefer Sf in general. The flip side of this is that a lot more bad writers go into fantasy, so the shelves at the local bookstore are covered with dreck.

But really, the problem is simple. Sf (and fantasy) are both much more popular (and acceptable) than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Which means that there's a lot more people writing it. Which means there's a lot more third-rate crap being churned out, and it can be hard to find the gems. That doesn't mean they're not there--in fact, there's more high-quality Sf (and, yes, fantasy) than ever these days--but because of Sturgeon's law, there's so much more crap that it is harder than ever to find the good stuff. Which is probably why you think that there isn't as much good stuff any more.

Me, I haunt the awards-nominees lists to try to ferret out new authors worth reading, and I discover wonderful new authors that way just about every year. Not all award-nominated authors are good, but there's a much higher percentage of good ones than you'll find just randomly browsing the shelves at your local bookstore. I also have a couple of first-rate specialty Sf/Fantasy bookshops nearby where I can get good recommendations. If you don't have that, you can at least check out some of the better review sites: I like SFSite (which I found recommended in one of the Best SF of the Year anthologies a few years back), and SF Revu (which I discovered when it was nominated for a Hugo at a Worldcon I attended).

Quite honestly, the overall quality and especially the peak quality of Sf has improved so much over the last twenty years that I frequently find it hard to stomach some of the old classics I used to love.

One of the better online SF communities is the venerable rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup (available here for the usenet-challenged), worth reading for an unusually high level of discussion (if you can ignore the usual sprinkling of spam). There are plenty of people there who'll make useful suggestions if you let them know what you like already.

Check out SF Site for tons of reviews, excerpts, and another forum.

I actually find Amazon quite useful for discovering new stuff (especially now they have excerpts from a fiar number of books). It doesn't need to be 'dicey and expensive' if you buy secondhand or discounted stocks from Amazon Marketplace traders with decent feedback (or similar small dealers that sell via ebay or AbeBooks ).

Why not subscribe to one of the major SF magazines like Interzone or Analog ?

sfsite.com has a yearly list of books to read for both SF (SciFi) and FF (Fantasty) at http://www.sfsite.com/yearsbest01.htm They also have Industry wide lists, reviews of new releases, interviews, lists of each author's books and a lot more info, but all you really need to get started is the best of the year lists.

I compared the books on the lists to what was available at my local libary and developed a reading list. Here are something things I'm looking to read the next few years (look on wikipedia for the names of individual books in the Hamilton and Reynolds series):

Hamilton, Peter: Night's Dawn Trilogy
Reynolds, Alastair: Revelation Space
Scalzi, John: Old Man's War; The Ghost Brigades; The Last Colony
Sean McMullen: Souls in the Great Machine; The Miocene Arrow; Eyes of the Calculor

The venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has two book review sections each month. Past issue reviews can be viewed on line. http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/ The magazine itself is worth a subscription since Gordon Van Gelder became the editor.

The Silver Metal Lover

And don't forget Brian Aldiss's Non-stop, where the action takes place in a generation starship after society has broken down.

When I hear talk of ocean worlds I am always reminded of the amazing speculation about them that Stapledon did in his books.

In Olaf Stapledon's book "Star Maker" (see here also) he describes one water world .. I'm thinking of the world of the living ships, not the that of the dolphin-crab symbionts or the avians. Living ship-like beings, think a cross between a whale and a squid with natural deployable sails. The symbionts eventually develop technology and starships because there are a few islands that become the site of research. But even the world of the living ships have a few islands. However there are also avian races on true water worlds where flying fish have evolved into bird like things ... small bodies, small brains but group minds. Been a while since I've read it. Hmmmm ... must read it yet again. Bliss.

I agree: plenty of size for what the projected use would need. (Though I'm sure most kids can find ways to use whatever space you provide them + n.

Another thing to look at is the ease of repair. I'd much rather replace a CF chip than a hard drive, wouldn't y'all?

The upgrade path would be a bit cheaper as well, one would think.

I have to say, I like the whole idea of giving a bunch of cheap, limited hardware to kids (regardless of socioeconomic status). I have visions of the Genius Colonists in Fredrick Pohl's Starburst "sliding the board across the floor". (A reference to a psychological experiment where groups of kids were given lengths of rope and two boards and asked to cross a room from point-to-point without touching the floor. Of course the kids all tie the ropes to the front of the boards and use them like skis to shuffle across the room. Then they are given a rope and one board. The kids do the same thing, except they stand sideways and use their hips to effect the sliding motion - the funny thing is, it's always faster to use one board and one rope, but no one ever tries it until the 'extra' rope and board are removed from the plenum. :-)

Of course, one could consider Rumsfeld's 'experiment' in supply, deployment and maintenance funds in Iraq as a nice collary.

They are also available online:
- Magic for Beginners
- The Faery Handbag

http://www.sfsite.com/11a/dm163.htm

Though I wouldn't necessarily argue better: why not enjoy both?

Blood Music by Greg Bear?

In it someone's "enzyme computers" got too smart.

its a book by james gunn that predicts the creation of SETI. here's an interview

-- no karma, no whore

... plants roaming the place chomping on kids and strangling people with vine-like tentacles... You mean like Triffids? (read the book, http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/wyndham.html)

I've been looking for a good magazine sci-fi fix ever since. This could be just what I've been looking for since I was a teenager, if they do it right.

Was there something wrong with Asimov's or Analog or Fantasy and Science Fiction? They've been publishing the whole time and helping to keep the short sf market alive.

Granted that of these only Analog publishes science fact articles as well, but if you subscribe to those three and add Scientific American you're covered.

Anyway, Whedon denies that Firefly is a "western". It's a standard SF subgenre, about a future where technology has regressed. In this case, the cause of regression is economic: a few rich people have Star Trek technology, but most people live on backward planets with no industry. The only technology they can afford is what they build themselves. Which mostly means reconstructed 19th century stuff. Which makes the story look like a western, but there's a lot more to it than that.

(For comparison, check out S. M. Stirling's Island series, where a small 20th century community is thrown back into the bronze age. They have the knowledge to recreate the 20th century, but before they can do so, they have to work their way up the complicated network of dependent technologies. Which takes more than a single lifetime. Meanwhile, the locals are also interested in this "new learning"...)

In any case, who cares? Did Watanabe take out a patent on the sub-genre? It's just a way of telling a story, and the stories in Bebop and Firefly are about as different as you can imagine.

You obviously haven't read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend --excellent book about a plague that causes symptoms much like traditional vampirism. Basically a horror novel with an SF background, but certainly no less plausible than the average Star Trek episode.

No argument about Buffy, though.

Of course not some "Hello fans rejoice". What is this Hello anyway, does it run on linux or can you read it? it's Ringworld fans rejoice!

Long ago Robert Heinlein envisoned household robots (see Flexible Frank in "The Door into Summer",) as the 'killer app' in robotics, as opposed to the 'killer bots' the military is developing.

Take a look at Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel "In The Presence of Mine Enemies" http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/presence.html to get a better idea - fictional of course - of what DNA evidence might mean in a police state.

It's not big, and it's not clever. And it leaves you blind (and susceptible to plants that attack humans; but that part of the sci-fi novel hasn't been implemented yet).

Is anyone else reminded of Frederik Pohl's Jem?

http://www.sfsite.com/lists/orion02.htm

Baxter's alternative begins with Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Although Kennedy is hit, he survives, Jacqueline Kennedy taking the fatal bullet. Kennedy's injuries, however, force him to relinquish his office to Lyndon Johnson and act as a cheerleader for the space program he began as president. The space program then continues much as in our world, including the landing of Neil Armstrong and Joe Muldoon on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Baxter's changes come slowly, as if to say the inertia of history must be taken into account. Eventually, Nixon, at Kennedy's urgings, chooses a Mars program instead of merely the shuttle program he chose in our timeline.

It's worth listening to, but is only available for one week, the first online (realplayer) episode will be replaced by monday.

That's funny, usually I don't even know what I want to watch. If I feel like watching something, I like to flip open the DVD binder and start browsing.

This does not necessarily imply a contradiction. Picture something along the following lines: The 'environmental AI' monitors your behaviour and infers your mental state (think dogs who by how you smell may infer a lot but imagine a much larger attribute space) thus being capable of predicting your preferences.

If memory serves me right, you may encounter a corresponding scenario in P.K.Dicks UBIK.

CC.

A.E. van Vogt, Computerworld, 1983 (... the story of our world under the cold and emotionless eye of the almighty computers ...(not brilliant, but rather anticipatory and fits in here))

Ursula K leGuin; The Dispossessed, 1974 (In The Dispossessed the values of an anarchist world, Anarres, are contrasted with those of primarily capitalist. Anarres is a barren, small moon, from which the hero, an Anarresti physicist Shevek, starts his journey to Urras, the mother planet. Shevek's tries to develop a general theory of Time, which would re-unite the estranged societies. Shevek is not completely at home in either society. He finds that the culture of Urras is more alienating than on his home world. After finishing his work he returns to Anarres, seeing that its era of cultural isolation is coming to end.)

Paul van Herck, Where Were You Last Pluterday?, 1968 (A story of a guy who saved some 10^k years on his time account)

Anything of Stanislaw Lem, B&A Strugatsky

Well, and perhaps Ringworld & Co by Niven (also "The Mote in God's Eye" with Pournelle ).

&& ... I better stop here :)

CC.

• Analog
• The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

what if some ancient civilization was just as advanced as us but nuked themselves out of existence?

See "On Venus Have We Got A Rabbi" by William Tenn in the story collection called Wandering Stars. Or hear it at this link.

What if their culture makes ours look sour and limited?

Been done. There were actually a lot more in 50s science fiction, such as one short about aliens who casually installed a satellite that prevented the instigation of violence...

Your analogy fails, because to many drivers, it's their mechanic, or their spouse/parent/relative/neighbor/friend who looks after the machine's internals for them. For a lot of people, simply getting in the car and driving it is what they know.

Neil Stephenson made the apt comparison of computers to cars, with Macs being the Volvo-esque, hermetically sealed O/S, Windows 95 a station wagon, and Linux a tank.

The analogy holds up, being that the average car owner takes their vehical to an expert who does the regular servicing. Sure, you and I know where the drain plug is located on the oil pan of our tanks, but do you think the graphical designer cares whether their Volvo even has one? Nope, they just want it to work, and they pay experts to solve the problems outside their domain.

I pity you and your genetic tree.

"Stay away from my house, you freak!!"

I (mark_dot on /.) read Walter M. Miller Jr.'s The Darfsteller last year in "The Hugo Winners, Volume 1." A brilliant story about actors displaced by robots, who themselves are coordinated by a powerful central AI (machine). This real life story reminds me very strongly of The Darfsteller. I strongly recommend Miller's 50-page short story if you find this real life story intriguing. :)

It's no surprise to me that F&SF was well-represented in this list. If you love *good* fantasy and science fiction, F&SF is for you. I've had a subscription on and off since freshman year of high school, and I'm currently in the process of completing my collection by ordering the back issues from my "off" times. You can subscribe here.

They publish an incredible spread of stories. Some to make you think; some to make you feel; some to make you laugh; some to immerse you completely in the world the author has created. I can't say enough good things about the magazine. Check it out.

If Stephen Baxter could use the Saturn V for a one way trip to Titan, I see no reason why we can't use it for Mars instead! Baxter has even done the research :-)

And just for the record, yes the book does drag, but it also has a great story of a dilapidated American space program doing something heroic which I found a tale worth reading.

And it's easy. This is the kind of thing that computers are really good at; collecting vast quantities of mindless data and doing statistical analyses. Someone notices that a peak in rush-hour train times correlates with a peak slightly later in McDonald's sales near stations --- hey, there's an opportunity there! Open fast-food franchises in the stations and make a mint.

And, of course, with enough information you can identify individuals. You don't care who they are --- all you care about is what they're likely to spend money on. A surveillance system notices that customer #282712 is passing your restaurant --- your database notices that it's near suppertime, he eats out frequently and he's particularly fond of spaghetti bolognase. Quick! Change that sign --- yes, that one there, in his line of sight --- there's a special on!

But here's the kicker: this is unavoidable. It's unavoidable because it's profitable, and in a capitalist society, profit is king. Database aggregation and automated identification systems gives you targeted advertising like never before, and unlike most advertising, it's something the customers actually want, because you're advertising something they're interested in. It's the holy grail of marketing. You can legislate against this sort of thing if you like, but advertisers have big money, and money makes the laws.

But let's say by some miracle you do manage to pass a law prohibiting, say, automated face recognition. Do you really this is going to make a difference? If my local takeaway can buy a system that sits on the counter and reliably recognises customers, so that they knew what I was likely to want whenever I walked in, don't you think they'd be tempted? It gives me better service, which makes me more likely to spend money there. Or a night club; put the camera somewhere near the entrance so it alerts the bouncers whenever known troublemakers come near. How do you know they're troublemakers? All the nightclubs in the district pass round lists. Illegally, of course, but they'll do it.

All this is inevitable. We are all going to be watched; information is going to be collected about is; that information is going to be aggregated. The only question is, when, and who gets access first. Legislate against it and you're just going to drive it underground. When you can build mechanical flies that can send HDTV images back to a base station, they're going to be used, legally or otherwise. They'll be used from everything from watching football matches, to getting a bank's safe combination, to busting organised crime rings, to spying on your local politician to see what deals he's making, to watching the girl next door showering, to checking up on your husband, to child-minding...

Privacy is dying. It's not dead yet, but it's dying. Currently we can expect to be watched whenever we go out in public. Within ten to twenty years, I expect most people in cities will assume that they can be watched at any time. This is going to change things.

For better or for worse, I don't know. On the plus side, there's accountability. If the police are watched, all the time, then they'll be forced to be honest. On the minus side, there are no secrets. Let's say you start going out with someone the same sex you are, but don't want your family to know --- well, they will know. If they look.

This side of things has been better explored by people other than myself. Try David Brin's The Transparent Society, or Arthur C Clarke's The Light of Other Days. I don't know whether I'd like to live there; for someone who grew up in normal Western society, I think it would

I've seen a little of this show. It does seem to be mostly pretty bad, but I don't quite see how we can blame GR for it. Yeah, they put his name on it, but that's just an example of using the name of a retired or dead SF person as a kind of brand name. One of SF's more depressing trends.

The traditional Sci-Fi of rocket ships, blaster guns, and aliens may be on decline

Actually, all that stuff is *coming back* (if often with a postmodern, ironic slant): the most recent trend in SF (that I'm aware of) is the "new baroque space opera".

The original poster is *seriously* (as in, 30 years) behind the curve on SF - the move away from technology was in the 70s (the "New Wave"), then we had the 80s stylized technology ("Cyberpunk"), then the 90s with a lot of *great* work on the impact of technology on society, and now we're retooling the 50s-style space opera. (Which may indeed have a lot to do with the current doldrums in human space flight.)

The recent Tolkien-triggered interest in fantasy had zero impact on SF - the two fields are well enough decoupled from each other these days. SF is bigger, healthier, and better than ever before, if you know where to look. Some rough guidelines:

1) any SF made in Hollywood is utter crap. For Hollywood, SF = juvenile adventure stories. Ignore movies, ignore TV, ignore games, ignore movie, TV, and gaming tie-ins.

2) the primary form of SF is the *short story*, not the novel. Short stories are the ongoing dialogue of ideas between SF authors; novels are what they fluff their short stories up into when they need money to pay the bills. Read the short stories!

3) to read the current short stories, you subscribe to SF *magazines*, such as Interzone, Asimovs' SF, Analog, Fantasy & SF, to name but the largest.

4) to catch up on the last two decades, buy past editions of "The Year's Best SF" edited by Gardner Dozois. You'll have the best short stories and novellas of a year at an unbeatable price. Gardner knows the field like no one else.

I have yet to make friends with the "new baroque" style - my favorite stuff is the work speculating on the implications of the latest, cutting-edge science, and its impact on society. If you're not scared of plots pivoting on the finer points of quantum mechanics, biotechnology, and theory of computation, Greg Egan is the man here. His short stories are collected in "Axiomatic" and "Luminous".

I could go on now about all the wonderful *old* SF that people who never dug deeper than Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke are missing out on (ever heard of Tiptree?) but that's left as an exercise to the reader :-)

- nic

Disclaimer: I don't have time to read the mags, and am still working on last year's Dozois - so I'm about two years behind the curve myself.

The traditional Sci-Fi of rocket ships, blaster guns, and aliens may be on decline

Actually, all that stuff is *coming back* (if often with a postmodern, ironic slant): the most recent trend in SF (that I'm aware of) is the "new baroque space opera".

The original poster is *seriously* (as in, 30 years) behind the curve on SF - the move away from technology was in the 70s (the "New Wave"), then we had the 80s stylized technology ("Cyberpunk"), then the 90s with a lot of *great* work on the impact of technology on society, and now we're retooling the 50s-style space opera. (Which may indeed have a lot to do with the current doldrums in human space flight.)

The recent Tolkien-triggered interest in fantasy had zero impact on SF - the two fields are well enough decoupled from each other these days. SF is bigger, healthier, and better than ever before, if you know where to look. Some rough guidelines:

1) any SF made in Hollywood is utter crap. For Hollywood, SF = juvenile adventure stories. Ignore movies, ignore TV, ignore games, ignore movie, TV, and gaming tie-ins.

2) the primary form of SF is the *short story*, not the novel. Short stories are the ongoing dialogue of ideas between SF authors; novels are what they fluff their short stories up into when they need money to pay the bills. Read the short stories!

3) to read the current short stories, you subscribe to SF *magazines*, such as Interzone, Asimovs' SF, Analog, Fantasy & SF, to name but the largest.

4) to catch up on the last two decades, buy past editions of "The Year's Best SF" edited by Gardner Dozois. You'll have the best short stories and novellas of a year at an unbeatable price. Gardner knows the field like no one else.

I have yet to make friends with the "new baroque" style - my favorite stuff is the work speculating on the implications of the latest, cutting-edge science, and its impact on society. If you're not scared of plots pivoting on the finer points of quantum mechanics, biotechnology, and theory of computation, Greg Egan is the man here. His short stories are collected in "Axiomatic" and "Luminous".

I could go on now about all the wonderful *old* SF that people who never dug deeper than Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke are missing out on (ever heard of Tiptree?) but that's left as an exercise to the reader :-)

- nic

Disclaimer: I don't have time to read the mags, and am still working on last year's Dozois - so I'm about two years behind the curve myself.

Who thought of this, Harry Turtledove?.

I flipped through this book in B&N recently, but thought it was too violent, which usually doesn't interest me. After reading your review, and a review at SF Site where the reviewer commented

"This is not usually my kind of book -- extreme violence and tough, wise-cracking detectives don't turn my crank. But Richard Morgan kept me reading. Some of the draw was sheer momentum -- the plot is complex, with much action and many marvelous twists -- but the real strength of Altered Carbon lies in the complex and subtle characterization, which takes Kovacs far beyond hard-boiled stereotypes."

I guess I'll have to give it a try...

Have alook at this recently republished list of SF masterworks, I'm going through it myself, next on my list is 'I am Legend' the Vampire one:

I'd also mention the folowing because they've always coloured my perception of the world since I read them:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Orwell: 1984, Down and out in Paris & London, Homage to Catalonia

Nabakov: Lolita, Aida

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 100 years of Solitude.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road.

The Tao Te Ching

anything on Zen Buddhism, Zen Speaks! Shouts of Nothingness is great because it's cartoons, but there's a lot of wisdom in there

i've often thought about how societal acceptance of the levels of modification could take place. what seems a likely initial vector would be quality of life issues. from there it could/would snowball. why not rewire some of your bodies reactions, capabilities, etc. or even sprout wings

other works in science fiction have touched upon future worlds/societies where those with unmodified genes were considered inferior and or puritans. some kind of singularity would probably occur. isn't this one of the things post-humanity is all about?