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What Makes Great Science Fiction?
cheesethegreat writes "Have you ever noticed how everyone breaks down into a near-religious frenzy when the topic of the "best" science fiction universe comes up? Everyone has a favorite universe, be it the Foundation Series by Asimov, or the classic Star Wars trilogy. So tell Slashdot what your favorite is, and what the most important part of a science fiction universe is to you."
...and his ability to foresee the future, and tell us about it so that our imaginations flowed with his. And throw in some Asimov for his clarity in things machine.
Seriously, if you haven't read this guy, do yourself a favor. American book stores don't care much of his stuff, although I have seen Excession and Look to Windward in there lately. His books are hands down the best science fiction I have ever read. His fiction books are widely acclaimed also.
The technology in his books allows him to place his well-developed characted in unusual situations. He doesn't let the technology run the story. The questions his books pose stay with me for many days afterward. His endings are not simple, usually they're very bloody and unhappy, sometimes even unsatisfying. And that's why I think they're so great. So check him out. Start with Consider Phlebas, or Against a Dark Background. You won't regret it.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Its tough to say. You may either actually like her, or she could be the epitome of bad "female" SciFi. If you are going to give her a go, try the short stories or Clay's Ark (if you want to devote a whole novel to trying out a new author).
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Greg Egan is one of the latest authors that takes the latest ideas in the sciences and makes coherent believable stories that bring them to life. "Diaspora" is an amazing novel that treats us to a view of a post human world with a view of universes beyond ours, still based in coherent extrapolations of current bleeding edge physics. A must read for extropian buffs. ;)
You mean, of course, you remember reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep unless you're referring to the novelisation of the movie Blade Runner.
Actually, there's some interesting backstory about Blade Runner- one of my favorite "dark" SF films. The origin of the name is from a book by Alan E. Nourse called Blade Runner, but had nothing (or very little) to do with the plot of the movie, which was largely based on the P.K. Dick short story and the writers' imagination. Nourse's book had a great title, which apparently one of the writers had done a screen treatment of and they decided to use that title instead of the far-too-long Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
The cover of Nourse's book was flat black and had a sillouhette of a guy in a long coat running done in red on it- that little icon is often associated with the movie, and in fact appears at the end of the credits (along with a nod to Nourse's book, if I recall).
Nourse's book was OK, as I remember it, but not incredible or anything. The title was more prosaic than anything else, the book having to do with a future society where the practice of medicine is outlawed for most people. Blade runners would carry surgical and medical equipment to underground doctors who would provide medical care to people on the sly. The book is about one of these Blade runners. Unremarkable, but now that I think about it, some of the elements of the movie may have their origins in Nourse's book. Have to score a copy and re-read it to see if that's true or not; it's been about 20 years since I read it.
Asimov clearly stated he based the storyline along the middle age and renaissance. That's not novel, but many of the ideas in the book are, and cleary set it appart from "historical" setups.
The fact that a small group is attempting to change power is in fact a universal constant that doesn't even need the human race arround to be a certain truth.
unfinished: (adj.)
Ehrm, last time I checked, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, not George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm).
Now, if you want to read more along the lines of Orwell and Huxley, try "Fahrenheit 451" (Ray Bradbury), "Anthem" and "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand), "Kallocain" (Karin Boye), and "This Perfect Day" (Ira Levin).
I don't think that it is so much whether the author creates believable situations, or that the characters are ordinary people, but that the universe and the characters are consistent -- and that is what makes the story believable. Not any ordinary or extraordinary quality of the characters or the situations they are in, but that the characters exist as consistent beings in a consistent universe.
This is one of the reasons I like Alastair Reynolds' work so much, the consistency and attention to detail. For example, in his universe (set several centuries in the future of our own) FTL travel is still impossible, and the stars were colonized by relying on a combination cryogenic sleep and relativistic time dilation. If you want to intervene in events happening in another star system, it will take years for you to even be aware of it, years to prepare, then years to get there, by which time circumstances could be completely different. The people who do well in this universe aren't impulsive hotheads like Kirk or idiotic risk takers like Archer, they are people who think, because there's no pulling a techno-babble solution our of your ass.
Have to wait 'til next September or something for the conclusion of the trilogy, tho', but there are some other stories set in that universe published in January.
Lem is not afraid to tackle the real difficult questions in his books. For example, the problem of communication with another lifeform/species is far from trivial and Lem gets into it in a number of his books.
Orson Scott Card comes close to this topic with "Speaker for the Dead" - where there is a weird cultural conflict. But most other SF authors just gloss over this issue, in Star Trek "Universal Translator" style...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
My Eye-Opener and all-time favorite, :)
5 53 X/ref=pd_sim_b_dp/026-9739727-9738844
apart from the Foundation of course
Julian May had created a cyclic immense universe story of 9 books of which this trilogy is a encapsuled part of.
Read it and see for yourself.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/033028
Being Australian, I start with, Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind series. (Particularly his planet Norstrilia, "Old North Australia", like Dune settled by outback Australians instead of Bedouins.) And then A Bertram Chandler's Rimworld series about tramp spaceships on the edge of the galaxy.
More classically, Edgar Rice Burroughs' worlds: Pellucidar [the hollow Earth], Barsoom [Mars], Amtor [Venus] and Tarzan's Africa [and all its lost cities].
One of the largest and most coherent universes must be Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic League/Terran Empire. Read some Dominic Flandry and forget about Star Wars.
Of course Heinlein's "Future History" (apparently he invented the term), and Niven's "Known Space" are up there, but suffiently well known not to need my endorsement.
I'm curious how you see Babylon 5 as being a rip-off from Lord of the Rings, though.
I wrote that it's a rip-off from several epic works, with LotR being the most influential.
See: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5
B5 and The Lord of the Rings
Several elements in Babylon 5 were influenced by themes that also appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. For instance, in The Fellowship of the Ring, the Dark Riders first appear singly, then in progressively larger groups; Babylon 5 repeated this tension-building pattern early in the third seasion, when enemy forces known as the Shadow Vessels appeared first singly, and then in larger numbers. The wizard Gandalf is warned in a prophecy that he will die if he goes to an underground city called "Khazad-dûm"; in B5, commander John Sheridan is warned that he will die if he goes to a planet called "Z'Ha'Dum." Both men sacrifice themselves, fall into an abyss, and return in an altered form to unite the forces of good against the forces of evil.
Straczynski seems to acknowledge inspiration from Tolkien in one episode of B5 where a travelling "techno mage" presents a saying that is almost a direct quote from The Fellowship of the Ring, where the character Gildor Inglorion says, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
However, after being asked the same question hundreds of times, Straczynski has been known to get upset when asked if Babylon 5 "is based on the the Lord of the Rings." His response is that, as an author, he is very well capable of writing his own story, and that it is insulting to suggest that B5 is a LotR rip-off. JMS states that people misunderstand the similarities between the two different stories. In Babylon 5, JMS openly paid homage to LotR by naming several characters after LotR characters -- but this doesn't mean that they are ultimately the same story. JMS also confirms that within these different stories there are indeed some shared events, such as the hero's descent into a pit and resurrection. The small number of shared events exist because both JMS and J. R. R. Tolkien consciously drew on classical mythological sources and storytelling methods. Few people accuse J. R. R. Tolkien's LotR of being a "rip-off" of classical mythology, yet it also has many scenes that draw on classical mythological stories. JMS hopes to communicate to viewers that the archetypes explored in both works are far older and far more universal than most people realize, and that it is common for authors to explore some of these themes in new contexts, in new stories, with new consequences.
I find the last paragraph a rather poor excuse for the way-too similar elements of Babylon 5 and LotR. I don't mind that JMS is making a show partially based on LotR-concepts, adding ideas from other sources. I do mind that he thinks he can use similar names, quotes and plots while saying that he used the same sources as Tolkien for inspiration...
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You may like my a cappella music
I just wrote a science fiction novel for NaNoWriMo and posted it on my Web site. I can't claim that it's Great Science Fiction, but my friends who've read it have liked it and you can't beat free-as-in-beer.
Go read it!
- Matthew Skala
Persistence of Vision is a short story collection well worth tracking down.
The story "Phantom of Kansas," is one of my favorites. You wake up in the cloning facility, only to find that you've been killed, once again, by a very determined serial killer. Fun stuff.
What were you expecting?
For a good long while, the primary copy of "Do androids..." that you could find in book stores had a sketch of Harrison Ford on the cover and said "BLADE RUNNER" across the top in huge letters with "or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" below in much smaller letters. This is not the movie novelization, it is Dick's original story. There is a new trade paperback out now with the original title and a nod to the movie on the back cover(thanks to a renewed interest in Dick's work, maybe related to Minority Report).
Anyway, my point is that calling the book "Blade Runner" is an easy mistake to make, even if you have actually read the original.
lysergically yours
Other writers with interestingly different worlds:
-----sharks