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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.
Nubile female alien sex addicts, who are genetically engineered to please men at the drop of a hat.
Well, as far as books go, I'd have to say the Dune series by Frank Herbert (ALthough, I'm sure you all know that) The way it so elegantly combines action, suspence, twisty curvey plots within plots that actually require one to think... but the prequels... they are just pieces of crap that are poorly written..
As far as movies go... Donnie Darko, although not blatently science fiction, is one great piece of film... you should all watch it...
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Can't we just all get along and create one all encompassing universe?
As much as I like nearly all science fiction universes, my favorite is that of Dune. Herbert's universe is filled with politics, planets, populations and dozens of complicated plots that could affect whole galaxies. He manages to convey a vast and complicated universe through his works. I am always amazed.
#1: Believable, REAL people.
Heinlien, Weber, Drake, Cook. All authors that have good solid characters.
#2: Believable science.
a limited number of WOW factor science. Make it easy for Me to believe, and make it well thought out and self consistant!
Sci-Fi needs to tell a story, period. Many times you read a sci fi novel and the author is obviously in love with how clever he can be. Sci-Fi is about expanding ideas, not how clever an author can be. An author needs to suspend disbeleif, this can almost be as easy as Orson Scott Card (enders game) when he assumes technology exists, because then we can see how it affects the characters and devise how we beleive it works. Or an author can take the road of Peter F. Hamilton (reality dysfunction) and completely describe every minute detail about how things interact and function. Both authors achieve a suspension of disbeleif about things that are scientifically fictional, and they mix it with the good elements of a story, that are not sci fi at all. The blending of sci-fi concepts and ideas and a good solid story seemlessly make a good science fiction novel.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Arthur C Clarke's Space Oddysey series, without a shadow of a doubt. Not just a classic movie (and so-so sequel), but four incredibly compelling books which explore far more than any other sci-fi series I've ever come across.
Deliberately non-specific so as to be non-spoily for people who haven't read the books (try them, you might like them!).
As good literature: nontrivial (but feasible)technical ideas, good non-cartoonish characters (read: NOT Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk), interesting plot (read: not necessary ends with happy end). In general, one may actually have more questions after finishing the book than he had in the beginning. BTW, Lem is one of such authors. Philip Dick is another.
Iain M. Banks' Culture.
I'd love to live in the middle of trippy post-humanist apace opera universe... wouldn't evryone?
deus does not exist but if he does
I think what makes great science fiction isn't the universe, it's the concept behind it. Of course, you can argue that this is what distinguishes short stories (which tend to be much more concept-oriented) from novels (which need to develop deeper characters, unless you can figure out a device like Asimov used in Foundation to get away with shallow character development). Still, I can think back on the great science fiction I've read, and most of it is really about the ideas, not about the universe.
After all, most sci-fi universes are just our own universe with something changed - a more complicated version of a Sliders episode. If everything were actually different, we'd have no reference point and it wouldn't mean anything. It's the fact that almost everything is the same except for some crucial difference (more advanced technology, or the Nazis winning WW2, etc.) that makes the stories compelling. That's why so many of these stories include some kind of foil character that the reader can identify with (Arthur Dent is a good example of this, but literally almost every single sci-fi book ever written contains at least one main character that is strikingly similar to people contemporary to the author's own culture). The story can often be created simply by allowing the contemporary typical person to clash with the changes introduced in the universe.
I really am a big Gibson fan. And no, not just because of the hacker-of-the-future thing. I think that when he writes (every 8 years or so, the lazy canadian bastard) he creates a future that could damn well be tomorrow. Granted, it's no Dune or LOTR, but I think he has a great mind.
There is no greater science fiction writer than the late Douglas Adams and there is no greater work of science fiction than the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and its five part trilogy.
Science fiction doesn't have to be dramatic to be good, but being nuts does help a little...
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Interesting question.
Mine would have to be Babylon 5. I've always been a SF fan, and enjoyed all the popular stuff, and a lot of the unpopular stuff. But B5 was great for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was the first major SF show with any production value to have an actual story arc, not just a series of disconnected episodes taking place in a loosely connected background.
Contrasted with most other SF series, B5 had a consistency and an appeal that made it truly great. As an example, I think it's the only SF series I can recall that even attempted to use something resembling realistic physics in its spaceflight sequences.
As far as movies go, I have to give the nod to Star Wars, just because it's great, even if it's a little (a lot) schlocky. If I had to choose one great SF film, it'd be 2001: A Space Odyssey. Once again, the use of real-world physics (or something resembling it) made a lot of difference, and as a long-time Clarke fan, I had loved the book/short story long before I saw the film.
Really, it's the same thing that makes any story good:
1) GOOD CHARACTERS
2) Good plot
3) Well-written imagery and narrative
Too many sci-fi writers seem to forget those rules. They take a gadget or a concept or an individual occurrence and try to stretch it into a novel, because it's sci-fi and "people who read sci-fi" (insert Trek convention stereotype here) will buy it no matter how shitty it is. They don't even TRY to be good writers.
Also, and even good writers can be guilty of this, they write into the genre rather than letting the genre be a non-factor. They don't develop a plot or a character in a logical way because that's "not sci-fi enough." You can always tell when a writer has shoehorned something into what they percieve as a sci-fi limitation.
Battlefield Earth was the best science fiction movie ever!!!!!!!! Man... Where else can you find a bunch of natives who learn how to fly jets in under 42 hours... all by reading...
I tell you... nothing to get better than that...
And with that whacky scientoligist alien guy... it's excellent! You should all go rent it right now!
EOS, End of Sarcasm
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, were the trinity of SF when I was a kid. The genre offers too much to be limited in thi way.
For really great SF look to Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling, Vonnegut...
Dont forget to read mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
The list of great SF goes on and on, basically because stories of the future answer or us the question "where are we going?"
The essence of great science fiction, to me anyways, is taking ordinary people as we know them in real life, then placing them in extraordinary (but still believable) situations. Of course, science and technology should be present, but it shouldn't dominate the story. If you let it upstage the rest of the story, you get garbage like Independence Day (which wasn't even very science-fictional, if you ask me).
Great science fiction sheds light on the inner workings of what people are like, by showing them in a different light. It serves as a warning about possible futures, examining implications of technologies both good and bad. And perhaps most of all, great science fiction has ideas and themes in it that can survive the test of time.
Cecil
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!
One thing that makes great sci fi is when the story and setting can not only withstand the implications of the science, but grow naturally from it. Examples of science fiction stories that really reflect an understanding of their science are: everything by Vernor Vinge (particularly A Fire Upon the Deep, anything by Greg Egan (I particularly love Permutation City), and even the classic '50s film Forbidden Planet, whose plot is almost inevitable given its compelling techno-sociological premise.
Examples of Science Fiction that cannot withstand the implications of the science presented include Star Trek (particularly the later series) and the Star Wars franchise. Neither of them really know what they're getting themselves into with their technological advancements. Replicator technology in particular would be so transformative in reality that we would not recognize the society that resulted from its existence.
Gotta go with Douglas Adams' universe. I'm probably not as well versed in sci-fi as some people here (I gave up reading it a few years ago) but it seems to me that his universe is the most realistic - all the power belongs to the media, nobody cares about anything, stupidity and bloody-mindedness are the norm and no one really has any idea as to what's going on. :)
:)
I also liked the universe Asimov created in the "Stars like Dust" trilogy. I'm annoyed that it's out of print - I wanted to give it to someone for christmas.
My all-time favs tho are sci-fi stories that happen here, like Adams' Dirk Gently series or the Illuminatus Trilogy. I find them easier to immerse yourself in. People seem to forget that Sci-fi doesn't automatically assume spaceships and all that.
Triv
Niven is one of my personal favorites - you can't go wrong with the Ringworld books, or the Smoke Ring books(a world consisting of a gas torus around a white dwarf star, giant trees and humans evolved to live on them. Tech from when they first arrived is highly prized and guarded. Great stuff!) Pretty much all his books are good, I have noticed a battle of the haves and have-nots theme reappearing here and there.
Clarke is great and has put out alot of '2 hour' books, finish them on a long car ride - if you can stand your wife's/gf's driving ;)
Asimov is wonderful and has written something about everything. Clarke and Asimov I found while buying cheapy sci fi books at garage sales and thrift stores. I will *always* buy anthologies - they never fail to provide a story that amazes me, and authors that I've never heard of writing incredible stories. I'll post some when I find my books...
I'm reluctant to cast a vote in the best SciFi category, mainly because there is so much great stuff.
I will, though, mention one author that is completely blowing me away right now. Her name is Octavia E. Buttler and for powerful, dramatic SciFi, she reigns supreme (for me at least). Clay's Ark and Patternmaster are definately not to be missed. Also, for great short stories, try her collection of short stories Bloodchild: And Other Stories
Also, for good old fashioned SciFi, check out Roger Zelazny. The first half of the Amber series is almost purely fantasy (while the second half is a mix of SciFi and Fantasy) so they probably don't count as an answer to this question. But Psychoshop and Donnerjack are definately fun to read.
Oh and I guess I might as well plug one of my all-time favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. All of them are so good that I can't even pick out one to recommend. Just try any (or all) of them.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Lately, I've been going through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Series. Very interesting, and quite entertaining.
I think what makes it appealing to me is that it isn't too far-fetched, and also deals with the human element -- something that's all too often ignored in the terribly geeky, antisocial realm of sci-fi.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
However you spell his name, He was fun to read. I liked Job, especially perhaps...but many were very, very good.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Nudity, robots and nude girls, nude girls floating in zero-g, nude girls in futuristic cities, and umm, nude girls.
Some of his insights: Edgar Allen Poe's horror stories were great sci-fi. As an "exercise", he rewrote "Masque of the Red Death" into a Cold War-themed "Masque of the RAD Death" - and changed about ten words. Or a story about man first receiving SETI-type signals - which ended after a month and an alien nuclear war.
Ben Bova is one of the sci-fi heavyweights - find this one at your library and give it a read. I promise you won't be disappointed.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
It's just like things such as "what makes a great sandwich." Some swears by tomatoes while others can't stand them; the select few will go with anchovys and say that any sandwich without them is no food at all, etc.
/., eh?
/. to get them answered, anyhow... It's all about Karma-whoring right?
Furthermore, you can't really answer this without delving into a question like "what makes a good book." And if all of us had better ideas than you, we'd be making millions selling books instead of posting of
Of course, I can give you what I personally like in SciFi - imaginative worlds are always welcome (well described, mind you), and intellectually stimulating is also another plus (social / psychological / whatever problems that arise from these new and imaginative circumstances); beyond that, here and there some action / romance / whatever to help push the story along so I actually look forward to continue reading.
Of course, I have read books that may lack some of these qualities but were still very fun to read. So in the end, your question is still unanswered; but anyways... who posts questions on
My life in the land of the rising sun.
i'm not sure if it's my favorite, but i have to say i was most impressed by the cowboy bebop series. i bought the first disc (eps 1-5) and loved it so much i bought the whole box set. as far as anime goes, it's far and away my favorite series i've seen so far.
Though often times in Sci-Fi, there's a great emphasis on technology or tricky plots, there's nothing more off-putting to me than a lack of interesting charactors. For instance, the book The Light of Other Days has an arguably good and interesting plot, and has technology that's both believable and very cool. But it lacks any sort of actually interesting charactors. The kind of character that makes you just want to go and meet them.
On the other hand, one of my favorite SciFi writers, Lois McMaster Bujold, manages to incorporate amazing characters. The tech in her universe is fairly generic (in fact, it rarely calls attention to itself) and while it's mostly scientifically correct (that is, it doesnt' make any blatent errors) it doesn't seem to overly concern itself with mundane scientific details, but instead tells a very human story. And that, to me, is very important.
Yes, it's nice to have your action take place on a superintelligent space-ship, travelling through time to save the galaxy, but if your characters lack substance, I frankly don't care if they live or die. Good characters make people care.
Charles Sheffield, for one.
."
:wq!
Of all the Sci-Fi authors I have read over the years I would have to say he had the formula down the best.
Hard science fiction, believeable characters and the odd McAndrew made for exellent storytelling I could read over and over again.
Too bad he passed away here lately and I won't get to hear any more of his ideas but in order of prefrence I would have to say:
hard science. Sure, you have to extrapolate a bit, but make it believable and intelligent.
Humor. That's always good. Like the alien Hollus, in his first meeting with humans. The humans thought it was all a prank at first...:
"...Of course, if you want, I could give you an anal probe . .
There were gasps from the small crowd that had assembled in the lobby. I tried to raise my nonexistent eyebrows.
(in Robert J. Sawyer's exellent Calculating God)
And finally characters you can get behind and understand. This is a lot more ephemeral and it dosn't happen to fall into a nice neat little package. Normally, you gravitate towards Sci-Fi characters you can see yourself in (or how you would like for yourself to be someday). Idealized supermen are silly.
whew! time to get back to work.
Writing.
Writing is what makes good science fiction;
a fancy, exciting world means nothing without good writing.
On the other side, a crap world can be entertaining and even enthralling, providing that the writing is good.
Last year, I had the opportunity to take a class with Joe Haldeman, here at MIT. He asked us for a challenging topic to write a short story on - the topic we chose was "Sentient Asteroids" - and, surprisingly, he made a good story for the topic, even if it was flavored by September 11th in theme.
That is why my own stories will never be good - because I am not a good writer; no matter how detailed I make the worlds, the fact is that my writing sucks.
No offense, Raymond E Feist, but the writing of those Midkemia books has gone down over the years, despite the fact that more aspects of these worlds are fleshed out with every book. I stopped reading them - who else can say the same?
Of course, place an area in the middle for capitalization on popular themes, mass market fantasy books (cough cough), and such, but if you want good fantasy or science fiction, look for the writing.
Are you crazy? Aren't you forgetting something, like, oh...
FUCKIN' STAR TREK!?!
Enterprise rocks my world like Mexican food for breakfast. Everything else is just pretenders to the throne.
Love Always,
Cobalt
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Then again I just started on the Foundation series again so that might change shortly :)
Either way in the foreword in the newer Foundation Asimoc writes
James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy-- virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible-- but the stories povide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas
Not sure if that is completely consistent with Dune but my personal belief in in strong, likable, and interesting characters (ie not Annican) are necessary. Along with that goes a consistent plot and science to back it up. The science can't become the center of the story with endless detail nor can it make you gag with inconsistencies... Oh how I wept when Frank Herbert had Waff freeze something at -275 Kelvin!
I stole this Sig
There are some other examples. Aside from the world the writer creates another big factor (for me) for a good SF/fantasy book is the surprise factor.
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I really love the classics:
Asimov, especially the original "Foundation" trilogy.
Clarke's "2001"
Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land"
Niven's "Ringworld"
Among more modern works, I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman("Neverwhere", "Sandman", "American Gods"), William Gibson("Neuromancer", "All Tomorrow's Parties") and Neil Stephenson("Snow Crash", "Cryptonomicon")
What I like about them differs. Asimov does large stories and themes well. There aren't any big characters in "Foundation", but the story is so beautifully put together, spanning hundreds of years. "Stranger In a Strange Land" is barely science fiction, dealing almost exclusively with people's perceptions and beliefs. Gaiman has an excellent knowledge of classical myth and legend and how to weave it into more modern stories. Gibson deals with themes and problems that are just starting to become an issue today. Stephenson's books vary in type and character, but most are pretty good. "Snow Crash" is a pretty out-there half cyberpunk/half action-flick novel, it's a great quick read. "Cryptonomicon" has two separate but related storylines fifty years apart, and he plays them off each other very well.
There's nothing specific to any one of these authors or their novels that I can single out, aside from good writing skills. Their novels are enjoyable and intelligent, which is all I require from any genre.
How did his actions prevent the "distruction of the entire universe?"
The airplane engine which fell on his house in the beginning, also fell on his house at the end.
If you recall, at the beginning of the film, the Rabbit led him out of his house, preventing his death. At the end of the film, Darko chooses to remain in bed and die. Thus, the tangent universe would never have existed unless the Rabbit had interfered in the first place. The tangent universe problem, which the Rabbit is supposedly trying to get Darko to fix, would never have been happened without the Rabbit interfering in the first place!
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Lexx.
It's sexy.
It's weird.
It has characters I love to hate. (Prince, 790)
It has characters I despise but cheer on (Stanley!).
It has characters I want to ogle (Xev).
It's epic (C'mon, lexx = biggest weapon of destruction ever built?
The whole initial plot is serendipity so severe that it can only be called extremely dumb luck that the heroes can find themselves in such roles.
Oh,and it doesn't have omnipresent use of special effects.
Vaiyo A-O
A Home Va Ya Ray
Vaiyo A-Rah
Jerhume Brunnen G!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Regardless of your local definition, a good dose of fragging can turn any ol' sci fi into a nebula prize shoe-in.
/sarcasm
either that, or add some post-apocalyptic goodness.
good fiction makes good sci fi. No amount of technology after the fact can save a crappy story.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Early?
:)
I don't recall H.G. Wells writing about anyone or anything nubile, expect for space travel...
You must be thinking of Cringley and Heavy Metal
To me, good science fiction starts with what makes good fiction. You need good, believable characters, an interesting plotline, etc. The difference between science fiction and other genres is the fact that there's science involved in it. There should be some correlation to real physical laws in the universe that may or may not have been discovered yet.
Science fiction is similar in some regards to horror and fantasy genres. They both are fiction that hold themselves within limitations that are commonly known. (Horror titles probably have a good amount of leeway. Fantasy titles enjoy more leeway than science fiction, also.) In my opinion, it is these limitations that make good science fiction.
Great science fiction asks, "What if?" questions that provoke our mind, but it'll do so within a hypothetical context. Take a look at LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness for instance.
My personal favorite episode of Star Trek (Original) is City on the Edge of Forever. It asks the question of how important can a single person be? How important is a single moment in time? It also provides some great scenes with the interplay between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. (There's also that memorable line at the end, with McCoy saying, "I could have saved her! Do you know what you just did?" And Spock replying, "He knows, Doctor. He knows." Love it!)
I also personally enjoy Larry Niven's Known Space stuff. Hard science fiction is great. As a reader, you exercise your mind and get entertained. "Science fiction without a net" is the perfect way to describe it.
Finally, I really enjoy Gibson's stuff. I must have read Neuromancer about twenty times, and there's always something new to find in there. Great books are like that.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
I think RD is *VERY* funny, but one has to have a seriously bent sense of humor to truly appreciate it :)
I like other Sci-Fi as well and have recently just gotten hooked on Louis McMaster Bujold.
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
LeGuin's sci-fi (Left Hand of Darkness, Hain cycle, etc.) always struck me because of it's cultural realism. Even though the alien species posited are humanoid, the extreme difference in culture between the species makes for a great dramatic device (especially when help is decades away!). By giving them such different points of view from our own, she makes her writing much more humanly thoughtful than a lot of sci-fi out there. Just as she built up the world of Earthsea with offhand anecdotes regarding the world around the characters, building up the cultures of her alien worlds gives her novels both a satisfying completeness and a believable internal consistency.
Too bad no one has ever tried to make some sort of movie or series out of his works....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
No, he's answering the correct one.
The question was WHAT MAKES GOOD SCIENCE FICTION, not "what's the best sf out there".
Very big difference.
As for his opinion, he's dead right. Plot is the only place people have a lot of room to argue on; I say "plot" is good, but traditional plot structure blows. Traditional plot structure could not accomodate the story of an interstellar tyrant defeating his enemies to the point of extinction, assuming they offer no fight, and his race is unified, without identifying his conscience as the antagonist. However, from another standpoint, that could be really interesting; you might want to read it just for the sickness of it, or because the tyrant's mindset was so peculiar that you wanted to read it.
Sort of the BOFH, except interstellar war.
Thoughts?
Ok. Here is the thing with Farscape:
They are Muppets
I know people are going to go, "wawwawaa, it's the plot and character development". This is what I heard in my mind every time a TV ad for Farcescape came on, "Kermy, change the channel and get me some more food!!!!"
I personally would much rather see bad blue/green screen and poor CG/Real actor interaction then some lame assed Jim Hanson leftover (and to be honest the same goes for an Ewok)
I prefer to make a distinction between the three, because I think there can be great stories in all of them, however, if you block them together as tends to happen, you don't have good criteria with which to judge.
I think science fiction is fiction in which the science plays a major role. My example here is David Webber's Honor Harrington series: I think it's a good story, but obviously not fantasy: he takes too much care in making sure there are realistic scientific devices with known limitations, and builds his characters inside a world with that science.
Fantasy is simply where that doesn't happen: magic is the canonical example here: World XYZ has magic. We don't know *why* they have magic and we don't, but they have magic.
Speculative fiction, on the other hand, I characterize as the types of stories when the author says "what if this happened?" My classic example is the movie Pleasantville: "What if we were all in a black and white world and suddenly there was color?"
Speculative fiction can be either of the above catagories, but is unique in that it is usually a social commentary. As a book example, consider any of Ben Bova's novels. Especially his near-future ones, like "The Kinsman Saga". When it was written it was speculation about the future. What if the military took a real interest in space and we got missile defense to really work? And what if local problems like overcrowding and such were growing? Most good speculative fiction changes a few things, very few, and just paints a picture of what the world might be. Orwell's 1984 is just like that: "What if the government was always watching?".
In any case, there are many great novels in each category, but the distintions are so rarely made that trying to choose the best often leads to trying to pick one. I think it'd be much much easier (but still nontrivial) to pick a best in each catagory, rather than one overall. My picks:
Fantasy: LotR (Tolkein)
Speculative Fiction: Colony (Bova)
Science Fiction: The Worthing Saga (OSC)
These are just a few, there are many just as good. But I think it's a few good picks.
Heinlein had the ability to make his characters grow as the story progressed. I have always loved his story writing. And he never let technology bog down a story. Technology is a crutch to some writers...Look at StarWars II.
I also loved Zelazny's Amber series, although I guess that was more Fantasy than Sci-Fi.
Its hard to pick out the greatest, because there are several good ones. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Card...and the list goes on.
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Something about the gratuitous nudity, filthy planets, and entire orbits filled with space trash.. hrmm.
Actually, I read a lot of Clarke when I was a kid. I've always thought that songs of a distant Earth was great reading for a gloomy teenager. Just think: endless dust, and Earth at 6.5 billion years.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Lovecraft's genius was to tap into the human anxiety about what might exist beyond the limits of reason and the safe, predictable, knowable world ,and the nagging thought that perhaps the universe itself might harbor malevolent intent toward our fragile planet and the humans who dwell on it (Lovecraft's characters would often go insane when faced with these alien horrors). .
These fears have manifested themselves throughout history in everything from witch trials to UFO scares. Lovecraft was so good at playing off this ancient unease, in the process creating his own universe of alien gods and beings, that his legacy lives on decades after his stories (never out of print) were first published, in the form of countless "Cthulhu Mythos" stories, games, and of course tribute websites.
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.
It is presumed that science fiction moves "everyone" into "near-religious frenzy" (are the religious fully frenzied?), and we all have "a favorite universe." (I'm fond of this one; is another universe possible? Stephen Hawking, are you lurking?)
Before some cruel person strikes you down, not everyone likes science fiction! Professional wresling may have a larger following.
So those of us who do like SF need to be sensitive to the plight of the majority who don't. Primetime mass-audience shows appear more tilted towards the paranormal, like X-files, and we haven't seen tons of creativity in science fiction aside from amazing progress in special effects (The Matrix). Also, many successful flicks seem borderline fantasy -- like Bladerunner -- the cyberwhatever segment.
I'm pissed about Farscape, FWIW. What a waste. Finally an anti-Trek show with challenging plots adn characters comes along and (sniff) they kill it.
I could bore y'all with my DEEP THOUGHTS about the genre, but will save it for another day. Just wanted to make a reality check for those of us who need to "get a life" but don't want to.
The one author I keep returning to is Stephen Donaldson. I have read the whole Gap Series 5 times now, and it remains interesting. There is nothing like the raw power, emotion, violence and vile politics that Donaldson portrays in the Gap series. Every page you think that the characters cannot endure more - cannot go further. The final book, "This Day All God Die", is one massive crescendo - a fitting finale for a space series of serious proportions.
Donaldson is the master.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Orwell's 1984 of grey buildings and nameless superpowers being the post war England he was living in.
Haldeman's Forever War as Vietnam.EE Doc Smith's space opera Lensman G-men Vs The Mobs in the 30s.
Clockwork Orange as swinging London.
Delany's Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones and Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar as New York in the 60s.
That said, my vote is for Niven's pre Ringworld Universe as it has the best of FTL and non-FTL science with good writing and his Gil The Arm stories as they succeed as mysteries as well as science fiction.
For pure science - The Cold Equations (although he's really pushing the math), Greg Bear - Blood Music.or Gibson's Count Zero for sheer flavor. The tech is glossed over but there is a real feel for a future.
For Sociology, Le Guin The Dispossesed - a frightenly relevant society.
Best story telling (IMHO) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as there is a good tech angle and the plot is epic while remaining about the characters.
There's always George Luca's planet of the teddy bears.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
The vast majority of Science Fiction is actually drama in space. This is what Star Trek, Star Wars, and most popular SF is. SF that falls into this category is easy to spot: every alien speaks flawless American English.
Then, there is real, actual, science fiction that focuses on the science, not the drama. This variety is much less common, less popular, and most people don't like it because the parts that do not focus on the central premise are often dry and boring. Real science fiction doesn't make for good movies, so it tends to be restricted to novels. At the end of the day, gray goo can't act.
Occasionally, you get bits and pieces of real science fiction in a TV show that is usually of the drama in space variety. The Borg in Star Trek for example are sufficiently different from the prototypical humanoid alien species to be interesting in their own right, not just as token antagonists.
Alright, I found "The Philosophy of Time Travel" online, which, while being somewhat atmospheric and mentioning "divine intervention," really did little to explain the fundamental premise of the film and it's associated paradox and questions.
Don't get me wrong, I thought the film was well done cinematically... however, the fact that it revolved around a bizzare science-fantasy concept which was used as a McGuffin, left me with an extremely dissapointed feeling at the end. I can only assume that my analysis of the film, and desire for a rational, logical explanation of its events has ruined it for me.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
here it is. Donaldson is brilliant.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Stephen Donaldson once said in his "Gap" Series that there is a difference between Drama and Melodrama.
Imagine a triangle, with each of the main character classes at a point - the Villian, the Victim and the Hero.
To truly be drama, in the course of the story, at least 2, but preferably all three of the characters must change place:
The Villain becomes the Victim, the Victim becomes the Hero and the Hero becomes the Villain. That's the essence of true drama. Otherwise it's just melodrama.
Stephen Donaldson used this to good effect in the Gap Series. Like much of Piers Anthony's work, this story featured some pretty hefty brutality and abuse of women. Unlike Piers Anthony, it's not the mainstay of Donaldson's work. Anthony has managed an entire universe based around this Hero-Pirate, but essentially the characters always stay the same, and his work never makes it past low-grade melodrama. Donaldson uses almost exactly the same pretext and gives us an epic and dramatic tale.
This is also a reason why Episode II was so poor from a narrative perspective. [*spoiler alert] We all know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader, we know what happens to Obi Wan. We know from Episode IV where all these characters must be. So unlike most stories, the interest is not derived from where the characters go, but how they get there. Which is what Lucas failed to deliver. The story of Anakin is not so much a fall from grace as a slight trip - you can believe that he becomes Darth Vader, but his personal journey to the dark side isn't particularly interesting.
I was simply blown away when Asimov linked all the Foundation story to the Robot Novels. He managed to link so many of his books together so well, and these are books that he wrote long before Foundation.
What an amazing writer.
Many other posters have stated that great science fiction is great fiction + science. Although science fiction contains both of those things, it is not nearly so simple.
Science fiction is an opportunity for us to look at uncertainties in the world as we see it, and then to draw interesting assumptions that lead us to examine and question the nature of our own lives. Look at the matrix, for example. We cannot prove that our reality is as real as reality can get, therefore there is always an uncertainty as to the true nature of reality.
The matrix draws an assumption: our reality is not real. Then the story builds a good fictional story on top of that assumption, thus causing us not only to be entertained, but to question our original position on the matter at hand. The matrix is good science fiction not because it is a good fictional story with fictional science, but because the assumption used as a plot device (reality is not real) is an interesting suggestion, which causes us to question our own reality.
It's not good science fiction unless you walk out of the theathre / put down the book and wonder if all of that crazy stuff you just saw / read is or could be true.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
IMHO, the biggest rift in Sci Fi is between devotees of "hard" Sci Fi (focuses more on the *science* than the tale - think Greg Egan) and "soft" Sci Fi (space opera - swords & sandals epics in space - think Peter Hamilton).
I like both, and have always found the zealotry on either side to be kinda childish. Think emacs v vi... (sorry kids).
The bummer with Hard Sci Fi is that a lot of the really _interesting_ stuff will go straight over the reader's head: I've got a reasonable grasp of, say, the basics of quantum physics, but I get completely lost when someone a lot smarter than me starts using more esoteric aspects of the theory as a _starting_ place for an exploration of the logical consequences of said theory in a literary context. _I_ like it though, because even if I don't completely understand, I can still muddle through and figure out the gist of what's going on. The other downside of hard sci fi is that the writing tends to be _terrible_. You effectively have scientists attempting to write engaging stories. It's not, as a rule, their forte. Too much science, not enough fiction.
Conversely, the bummer with "soft" sci fi for me has always been that it's just some-old-story-set-in-space. Star Wars is like that. In fact, it's a modern classic of the genre. Peter Hamilton is another good example. This kind of sci fi is more like fantasy than _science_ fiction. Even worse, the fiction is usually terrible too. I used to love space opera when I was young - laser beams, aliens, space ships, funky babes. But I think you kind of grow out of it unless there's something _more_ to it than big-arse space battles & galactic empires.
Which is why I'm a _huge_ fan of Iain M Banks. This is a guy who can _really_ write. His sci fi (he writes more standard fiction under the name Iain Banks) is space opera, but some of the best space opera I've ever read. Read the Culture novels - start with "Consider Phlebas" or "Player of Games". Seriously - they're worth reading just for the ship names.
So I guess what makes great sci-fi for me is great writing. There's plenty of "ideas" writers, and don't get me wrong - interesting ideas are part of what sci-fi's all about. But that's a neccessary condition, it's not a sufficient condition.
Long post - must sleep.
Jeff Noon too. I seriously recommend "Vurt" - Automated Alice says curious yellow.
The most important thing in Science Fiction is to never ever, under any circumstances make up any science. All the really good series have fantastic machines, faster than light travel and all kinds of silly impossibilities, but they never try to explain how they work. Fiction stories exist in a realm that we choose to believe for the time being. This suspension of disbelief (as the lingo goes) lasts only as long as the reader can imagine such a world.
Take, for example, the world created by Orson Scott Card in Ender's Game. The world is great and totally believable. The greatness even lasts into a sequel. In the third book (the name escapes me) Card starts to explain the physics of his world and the storyline breaks down. It is no longer believable. Go ahead and flip back through the series. The instant that he starts to mention this new, crazy physics of his is the instant the story falls apart into completely unbelievable crap. You just can't make up physics. Stretch it, bend it, but never try to tell the reader how it happens. That's the trick to good science fiction.
SadSaddened to read Iain M. Banks isn't popular among the US bookshops, in my opinion he has to be the best Sci-Fi writer I have read.
l ture.html for an explanation of his unique Utopian universe.
and he has the best ship names in the business...
(seems to have influence Xbox Halo a fair bit as well)
His non Sci-Fi Iain Banks (winner of most transparent nom d plume award) is pretty good too.
Others I have introduced to him too were blown away, so I wholeheartedly encourage you to seek him out.
Read http://homepages.compuserve.de/Mostral/artikel/cu
I think you are missing something. What makes great science fiction is politics and psychology. I have never read a single science fiction piece that really got into my skull that wasn't challenging some present-day assumption about society or the individual.
I think all great science fiction seeks to answer not just "what if?" but "where do we go from here?". The technology in science fiction is not just a prop, it is usually a disguise for an topical issue in the here-and-now. "Sci-fi" that uses technology as a "gee-whiz" element is just fantasy or action dressed up as science fiction.
Personally, the best stuff I've ever read has been short stories. Something about SF has always lent itself to short, concise explorations of a single theme. I think novels tend to get tricky, since you need a few themes and a really strong philosophy to back it up.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
For me, it is not what is in it, or what it is about, or how realistic the science is. Good science fiction is science fiction that makes me think about themes and ideas that are sometimes only barely explored by the work itself. It's usually the kind of story that sticks with me for only a little bit, and then when I think that I've forgotten all about it, it comes back and plows me over.
Kubrick's version of The Clockwork Orange might fit this definition for me.
Maybe Socrates' (Plato's) story of the cave.
Roger Zelazny's lyrical short story Frost comes back to me every now and then, as well as Wolfe's even more lyrical and adept New Sun books.
Tsutomu Nihei's manga series Blame is remarkable for its visual style, and what is even more remarkable is the story it contains--one that can only be told through the particular medium which Nihei has selected.
And of course, my favorite place to find good science fiction is in Gardner Dozois' yearly anthology of short stories, The Year's Best Science Fiction. The summation at the beginning of the past year in science fiction is worth the price of the book, and the many stories inside are pure gold.
I'm a big fan of P.K. Dick.
Whenever they make a Dick book into a movie they change things around, but his characters tend to be schlubby middle aged guys teetering on the brink of loserdom.
In Blade Runner Decker is a guy whose greatest ambition in life is to have a sheep, a real one, not a synthetic animal.
Dick's view of the future was all about the countless new ways things will suck.
And then there's the madness that crept in at the end.
Yep. Dune is the best. Well, at least, the Frank Herbet ones are. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for his Son's work - The Brian Herbet Prequels just don't cut it. The writing is very weak and the characters are one-dimensional. Still, the Prequels are nevertheless entertaining. My advice to a Dune Newbie is to read the Frank herbet novels first.
This is easily the most important aspect of SciFi. Any time a story involves anything considered "fantastic," be it supernatural, scientific or whatever, the story still needs to lie within the realm of what people would deem believable. And I don't mean believe as in "Aliens in outer space scanning my mind so let me go get my tinfoil hat." It's more like stepping outside the boundaries set by your perception of how things should be.
Your actions on earth echo in eternity.
and the Giants Novels. A must read for anyone who is my friend and reads books (Very few now adays.)
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Heinlien,
In a word, no. Most of the female characters in his books were just his libertarian wet dreams. How realistic are super-proficient women, who just happen to dress provocatively and mouth his beliefs perfectly?
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
I am too tired to explain why this is the best, so I'll just say it's my favorite, and for good reason.
Man against Man, Man against Nature, and especially Man against himself. It's a shoot-em-up. It's romantic. It's revolutionary. It's serious. It's funny.
And then throw on some accurate forecasting (such as predicting the slashdot effect and distributed denial of service attacks, the problems of security through obscurity, and even 404s) and there you have it, the best sf.
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The Stars my destination
Hey now, don't be dissin' the Dr. Who.
And let's not forget Tom Bakers riveting cameo performance in Dungeons and Dragons. The man is a genius.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
There's little if anything is unique to great science fiction versus great fiction in general.
So what's great fiction? Great fiction changes the reader; for better or for worse it leaves the reader in a subjectively significantly different state after reading. It can be subtle, it can be life founding, it can simply illuminate a viewpoint, but it leaves a mark in a manner the reader knows of or about (if only long after the fact).
Why and how does it leave a mark? That rather depends on the exact mark left on which exact reader. Social, cultural, and educational background play a huge role and don't even begin to define the set.
That said, what do I consider makes for great SF? Something that leaves me thinking, especially if it leaves me thinking months or years later. There are works which achieve that mark. David Zindell's Neverness is one. L E Modesitt Jr's Adiamantine is another. Stepping outside the SF boundary Myer's Silverlock has left such deep marks I'm forced to renew them regularly. The list goes on.
As a kid, I read just about anything sci-fi...but even then, I think I recognized the gems of the genre. The books I kept, versus the books I gave away or sold, includes a list of the authors I still read and enjoy today. Back then, if there were robots or sex or spaceships, it was probably good enough for me to read it once...but what I kept has some qualities that the majority of the pulp stuff just doesn't have.
I think sci-fi without a real science underpinning is generally crap. The science doesn't have to involve mechanical technology in the form of spaceships or robotics, it can just as easily be the science of sociology or the science of medicine. But where "sci-fi" pulp fiction often fails is in being too dedicated to mysterious magical developments...I'm afraid the Star Trek and Star Wars universes often fail because of this reliance on trappings of mystery. The explanation of The Force as a virus just seems forced, if you'll forgive the pun. Star Trek has too many dramatic dying scenes and too many dramatic miraculous healing scenes for either to be believable.
Good sci-fi asks tough questions about how the human race will realize some dream, and what the cost will be. Great sci-fi shows us the fallacy of common truisms, and makes a case for the other side. As has been said many times before, science fiction is about asking "What if?" and making an honest attempt to figure it out.
Asimov, of course, deserves the title of great science fiction writer. The Foundation novels are compelling for their sweeping vision of a human future (not The human future, as no one knows what The human future will be, and there wouldn't be so much point to sci-fi if we did). History and social sciences are merged and theorized into a strikingly convincing future. One comes away from them with a little more understanding of human history, and human behavior on a grand scale. Of course, it wouldn't be very much fun if the story wasn't worthwhile as fiction. In that regard too, Asimov is a lonely figure (though not entirely alone) in the sci-fi landscape. Humor permeates his every novel and story, along with a profound sense of joy and surprise at the diversity of the human race. Every character is real, complete and knowable. Without the human element, science fiction is just more useless techno-babble.
Heinlein too, has persisted in my book collection, and his best works are capable of impressing even people ordinarily bored to tears by sci-fi. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, perhaps my favorite, provides laugh-out-loud comedy, strikingly human personalities (even on Mike the computer), and a great story of "what if?". What if a computer developed "life"? What if the moon housed a colony of humans, growing tired of being dominated by Earth? What makes a revolution? The best of Heinlein is respectful of history, is lovingly impressed with and in equal part disgusted with the human race (to know us is to love us...and hate us), and perhaps most importantly, fun as hell to read.
Stanislaw Lem is a new one for me, but one that I can't help be impressed with. I recently picked up Peace on Earth because of frequent Slashdot recommendations, and was simply blown away. Lem knows science, and is convincing whenever he wanders into imagining the future of technology. Lem also knows the human mind, and presents it in all its glory and fallability. But the key to Lem is his feel for the movement of a story. The story flows from beginning to end with the majestic and impossible force of a glacier...it is unstoppable, and yet it is almost unnoticeable in its momentum. It reaches its conclusion with almost crushing force, and leaves the reader satisfied at having made good use of the time spent reading.
All of that said, I keep finding myself wanting to differentiate the above authors from run of the mill science fiction by talking down the things they are not. They are not writing fantastic tales of improbable outcomes in entirely fictitious universes. That is the realm of fantasy writers. Science fiction requires a respect for science, not a mindless fascination with explosions and shiny things. Of course, great science fiction isn't just respectful of science, it remembers what its purpose is...to entertain. Without that, any other reasons are moot, as no one will read the story to find them. So, great science fiction is also great fiction, and can stand beside other great works of fiction...if it can't, then it is merely an interesting footnote into predicting the future (if the predictions within prove correct in some respect). I wouldn't be ashamed to suggest Asimov's Nightfall or Bicentennial Man, be read alongside Huckleberry Finn in a study of great American literature. Ray Bradbury doesn't really need my endorsement, as he has already received much of the respect amongst the literati that he deserves, but is worth mentioning anyway, as he is a shining example of great science fiction. Nearly everything he has written is simply stunningly pretty to read, all the while answering all of the other requirements for great science fiction.
I would like to think that the tripe (even the tripe I enjoyed as a child) will be filtered out of our collective memory over time...There just isn't any point in wasting more peoples time or money on L. Ron Hubbard books. I attempted to reread Battlefied Earth when the movie was nearing release, and was just astonished at how bad the book really is (I loved it when I was a kid). Full of paper thin caracitures posing as human, overwhelming in its scientific and historical ignorance, and painfully obvious in its every twist and turn. A more thoroughly pulp sci-fi space opera has yet to be constructed (Ok, Star Wars comes close, but I still love the original episodes as well as the next nerd, despite its flaws).
I'll stop talking now, as I'm back to wanting to bash the stupid 'sci-fi' products of the world rather than talking up the good fiction and film. There's just so much crap to talk about...
For me the most important characteristics of good SciFi are an epic plot, forethough (and planning) on the part of the creator, strong lead roles, and detail. At the end of it, good SciFi "says" something to me; touches me in some way, and makes me reevaluate what I think of the real world. Of course good writing/presenting style and/or dialog are essential.
Babylon 5 and Dune achieve both of these admirably. Star Wars sacrifices some forethough and detail, while Star Trek has little in the form of an enduring plotline, poor details and consistency, and weak characters. Of course I still enjoy them ;)
Babylon 5 weaves a web of intrigue which is underpinned by an epic saga and several prophecies. Consistency across the entire series is high, as is detail. Small seemingly throw-away comments in some of the first episodes have significant three seasons later. The acting and dialog is evocative, and it is easy to relate to all of the characters, even the "bad guys". The are at least several monologues that I would like to see again just to copy down and put up on my wall (and some other dialog besides). Characters come and go and when they do there is a profound sense of loss.
Dune presents a far different universe. During the series the focus expands from a single character to several, to the political balance of the known universe, and beyond. His attention to details is magnificent, and he draws on a wealth of knowledge to flesh out the behaviour of the characters. He too presents a saga which is a turning point in history, and encourages the reader to relate to the characters. While many disagree with me, I personally enjoy Herbert's writing style and find it captivating.
Perhaps the most significant part of these two settings compared to other SciFi is that they are SciFi-Fantasy. Babylon 5 is based far more in reality than Dune (concerning itself with physics and scientific possibility in many instances), but both present fantasy aspects which transgress the realm of the strictly possible, and add a level of interest which is difficult to attain in any real (or future-real) world setting.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
A few of my favorite series (book wise) are the Titan, Wizard, Demon trilogy from John Varley. The Gateway/ Heechee Saga from Frederick Pohl or for a good romp the Stainless Steel Rat series from Harry Harrison. These may not be the high brow mainstream stuff like Dune, 2001 or Foundation, but hey for me they were all entertaining and a good read.
"Have you ever noticed how everyone breaks down into a near-religious frenzy when the topic of the "best" science fiction universe comes up?"
/. story dedicarted to it!
OK, so let's make a whole
I mean really, I really dislike getting into 'holy wars' and reading through the responses so far, I've already had to resist (hard) several times responding to posts to tell the poster what an idiot he is for ignoring one author or backing another.
Seems like this whole story should be modded down to -1 flamebait.
(of course, I'll probably be the one modded down for this comment, but oh well - I've sworn off of AC posting, so I guess I'll take the hit)
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
As is the case with all fictional literature, the
:-)
"best" is that which most effectively triggers,
shapes, and gives life to the mental images which
writing can only stimulate in our minds rather
than convey directly.
Since minds are so different from individual to
individual, and sometimes utterly so, there can
never be a single "best". At most, the fact that
any given book is seen as "best" by more people
than any other simply means that there are more
people with that particular mental makeup which
allows that book to succeed. Quite often, this
translates to those people inhabiting similar
memespaces, which is very common especially in
high-bandwidth communities both online and off.
So, which SF books best trigger my mental imagery
at the present time? In several categories of
subjective assessment:
Iain M. Banks's Culture novels
-- most convincing galactic future
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age
-- most convincing human-level future
C.J. Cherryh's The Chronicles of Morgaine
-- most forceful and single-minded heroine
Peter F. Hamilton's The Nano Flower
-- most luscious yet unobstrusive image weaving
Walter Jon Williams's Aristoi
-- most distant yet still recognizable future
E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series
-- fastest delivery of mental images
Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time
-- most endearing treatment of distant future
I'd expect a fairly good correlation with the
"bests" of other SF readers on Slashdot, as the
memespaces of the technical communities tend to
be fairly cohesive. Ultimately though, it really
doesn't matter, since "best" is a personal issue.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I agree. Can't wait for the Movie though, although we shall see how everything translates to film after hollywood gets done with it all..
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
There's great as in "great literary work", or great as in fun to read.
I'm gonna catch a lot of heat for this one, but I really like E.E. "Doc" Smith. It's not high literary art but if you read the Lensman and Skylark series there's an atmosphere to those books you just don't find anywhere else. I know people complain about how every gun is the new ultimate weapon, but really if you think about it that's what we do with computers, military weapons, and lots of other technology, so it doesn't bother me much. They do deserve respect as a precurser to lots of later stuff - I'm willing to bet George Lucas had read these books before thinking up the whole Star Wars thing. And I saw one of Smith's "nonsense" words appear in a modern Star Trek book, so I can't be the only one who likes his stuff. Most people would say his work isn't "great", and in a literary sense I'll agree, but they're great fun and to me that makes them worthwhile.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I will second the Jules Verne comment, 20,000 leagues is amzingly accurate. I am suprised yours is the first comment to mention him.
But the Matrix is plausable? Come on, do you know about conservation of energy?
you cannot get energy out of feeding people to themselves. Think about how much you eat. One human carcus will not feed you to produce the precious heat the robots need for very long at all. You cannot have a closed system produce energy like that, there is no way. Without breaking out the nuclear energy you cannot get more energy from a person then is possible by drying them out and setting them on fire (well perhaps you coukld go a little further, but not much). You cannot make energy using people without a food large food supply (corpses of other people don't count, unless you drop your population by an order of magnatude at least (probably more like 2 or 3) each generation. The large food supply would need the sun (oops, no sun).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
To return to what was asked in the original post, the coolest, best realized and with the greatest 'damn, I'd live there' factor universe in all of Science Fiction is without a doubt Iain M Banks's 'The Culture'.
I would recommend anybody wanting to try it to get started with 'Excession', and then move on to something heavier, such as 'Use of Weapons' or 'The Player of Games'.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Best motherfucking book ever, and one of the least recognized. Imagine a more literate "Star Trek" with elements of "Alien" and "Forbidden Planet" thrown in (but it predates all of them by quite some time). Though it was born out of pulp sci-fi, it transcends the vast body of what was being written then; I'd rank it up alongside "Nightfall". Vernor Vinge is the only other author I've read who makes me feel anything like I do reading Space Beagle.
Other than that, all of Philip K Dick's short stories. His novels are even better, but most of them aren't sci-fi the way Asimov or Heinlein are; I think he just wrapped them in futuristic settings. Of all of these, I'd say "Eye in the Sky" and "Ubik" are my favorites.
Science Fiction...
Classic Jules Verne.(Intrinsic SciFi)
Asimov and Heinlein (ex: Number of the Beast)
Phillip K. Dick (ex: Do androids dream...)
Science Fantasy?
Larry Niven's Ringworld and related titles.
The Dray Prescott series. Tides of Kregen.
The Drakka!
Dr. Who.
George Lucas - THX1138 (I never read Orwell)
I like a good tale. One that doesn't fall all over itself breaking well known and basic rules of science. One whose storyline and storyhistory are well planned and laid out. A story that excites the senses and suspends disbelief.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
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. ;)
Not trek, or anything like it, and its perfect werfect, hold your hands, everyone loves everyone society.
Mod me down now, you know I'm right.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Just combining all of the A-list--Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5; Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, Judge Dredd and the DC and Marvel universes would be a monumental gordian knot pain in the ass. I'd hate to be the poor sucker stuck with the job of making that timeline consistant. Then add in the major Anime: Akira, Cowboy Bebop, The Lovely Angels (old and new school); Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Bubblegum Crisis (classic and 2040), Trigun, Ghost In The Shell--oh Lord, the Gundamverse. All of it.
.
Ah. .
Can we get Steven Hawking on this? Maybe he and Harry Turtledove can put something together, if they've got a spare millenium or so.
The first requirement of a good SF work is (as many allready have pointed out) that it is good litterature by the same standard as any other writing. Believabel characters, intresting plot, enjoyable language and so on.
But the one thing that makes SF somehow different from other fiction is of course the tech.
I say there are two manageble ways of introducing fictous tech in a story.
It's just a matter of engineering
This is how Gibson and one of my favourites, Stephen Baxter, does it.
They take tech concepts and ideas that are OK in theory today and expand them. We know about nuclear fusion. From that, a working fusion plant is just a matter of engineering. We know about computers and the net. From that, a Gibsonian world or The Matrix is a mere extrapolation.
It's just there
If You cannot explain the marvelous tech, don't.
This is how Asimov does it. He does not lose precious story time on flawed explanations of an interstellar jump or a force field generator. It's just something thats there in the future.
The same strategy works well in variations of "War of the worlds". The aliens have alien technology. Accept it.
If you try to create a pseudo explanation of the tech marvels, You end in tedious technobabble, or new-ageish inventions like "midi chlorines" (sp) which just annoy the reader.
Anyway, my
All opinions are my own - until criticized
red dwarf fuckin' rocks. Anyone that disagrees is a smeghead.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Picard: Doctor Crusher, some of our crew seem to be ill with a highly contagious disease which we've never encountered before. Can you come up with an antidote?
Crusher: I'll do my best Captain.
50 minutes of people acting irrationally, wandering round the ship contaminating other people etc.
Crusher: I think I have the solution, Captain. I'll introduce it into the ship's ventilation system so everyone will be back to normal in time for the closing credits.
Captain: Excellent work Crusher.
Or how about the ever-popular "We'll reconfigure the deflector array to emit an inverse tachyon pulse."
And why don't they have any robotic probes they can send down to unknown planets to explore? No, instead, we'll send down half of our most senior officers, then a storm will start up and the transporters won't work through the interference ... Will the crew get transported back to the ship before they die of exposure/radiation/disease/killer plants/boredom?
It depends what you are after. When I read sci-fi I want to explore a new idea/universe. I'm not overly interested in the characters beyond what makes them important to the ideas.To me the best sci-fi is in the short story anthologies. Authors get to explore, are forced to move things along and develop the characters quickly (if the idea needs it) but they don't have to draw out a simple idea into something it just isn't worth the time to read.
Of course, if you can explore an idea and have all the other elements of a good novel on top of that then you might prefer that.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
1. The way it lets authors play around with and explore philosophical ideas of how society develops. Asimov did this with the Foundation series, basing a whole story on a theory of how society develops through crises, what steps are taken in what order, who gets in power when and why. That's quite hard to make in a non-science fiction novel, unless you write a historical novel which often gets more dull and predictable.
2. Separate what is undeniable facts in the world around us (i e many aspects of human nature, like love, hate, passion, greed, curiosity etc) and what is just the results of our cultural heritage (our economical system, democracy, patriarchalism, monogamy and focus on material wealth just to mention a few). A good science fiction novel can be an eye opener to what can be changed and what can not.
3. Let's us explore our possible futures. Good SF gives us a glimpse (although very simplified and exagerated) of how the future might look like. By comparing the scenarios of Star Trek with Cyberpunk and 1984, we can more easily get aware of what the future might hold and as a society make decisions on what we want and don't want of what's ahead of us. The novel 1984 has definitely helped to raise the public awareness of the threats of totalitarianism combined with technology, likewise has Cyberpunk woken up many people to how global corporations gathers more and more power and how that might affect society.
4. Epical tales. I'm personally a real sucker for this and no other category except fantasy so easily allows for grand epical tales as SF.
These are to me the promises of SF and a good SF book should take advantage of at least one of these posibilities, otherwise there is no need to put the plot/characters in another space and time. Plot and characters must still be good though, but I expect that from books of any category.
Actually, I'm a bit surprised that not more of the ./ community has more elaborate thoughts of why they've fallen in love with SF and not just books with good plots/characters...
Muppets . . . In . . . SPACE!
Hehe . . . sorry, it's the eternal chant of the kids from 30Mac. I love Farscape - but that name will be stuck in my mind for all eternity.
Science fiction tends to break down into 2 major catagories. Hard science fiction where science and politics tend to drive the story along, and Sci-Fi which encompases all of the action / adventure / romance novells placed somewhere in the future. Needless to say I'm a major fan of hard science fiction, but almost everything I've read/seen, that I would classify "Hard Science Fiction" ultimatly ends up being distopian. It's hard to choose something from that catagory for a 'favorite universe'.
No matter how good the Mars series is by Robinson, or Moving Mars by Bear, or Macroscope by Peirs Anthony, or even the Rama series by Clarke; I woudn't want to live there. And these are just a few examples
eg.
The Mars series introduces the reader to a whole bunch of very cool technologies (space elevators, a lot of terraforming, and some genetic engineering) that ultimatly get wrapped up in a whole bunch of very very wordy politics that lead to 2 wars. By the end of the story nobody is really any better off, Earth is a f'king sess pool that can't shovel its population off the planet fast enough, and the the rest of the solar system is weighed down by billions of people who now live 500-1000 years thanks to genetic engineering. Very very good books, but not a happy universe that I'd like to live in.
On the other hand, Sci-Fi offers us the wonderfull universe concieved by Peter Hamilton, portayed in the Reality Dysfunction -> Naked God series (A nice fat total of 6 books). It's placed only 800 or so years in the future, Humaity has spread out to about 850 systems thanks to FTL travel, made contact with 2 alien races (one of which is a benevolent inter-galactic super race), and still hasn't really deleveloped socially beyond what we have now.
Except!
There's this 'splinter' scociety called Edenism, which takes its roots from the Borg and Budism. But 180% from the "Asymilate Everyone" that we all know and love. The collective link is done through either genetic engineering or for those not born with the 'Affinity Gene', through symbiotic organisms. The Edenists are the only humans that use any biotech due to religious restrictions, and use it they do! Sentient starships linked to their captains, sentient habitats orbiting gas giants and used as a container for thousands of personalities after they die. Organic computers, etc... The most stable scociety you could imagine.
This is the universe I want to live in. Sure most of the books take place during the greatest war humaity has ever faced vs. 99% of everyone who has ever died, a satan worshiping lunatick who wants to destroy Earth, and Al Capone (who don't love Big AL baybee!!) , but Edenism really makes this a wonderfull universe to live in.... as long as you aren't religious.
The hatred, bigotry, and enforced ignorance is still as rampant as it is today (and on some planets its much much worse), but it dosen't touch Edenism execpt in an economic way.
The whole series of books is THICK with 'souls' and the shortcomings of religion, science and politics when faced with the greatest unknown. It's also heavy on the combat, and does get pretty wordy in places with whole chapters you can basically skip or scim in places and not miss a thing because all he's doing is describing the enviornment.
-Opiate (I got an account, somewhere...)
Hot chicks and Lasers!
null A was A.E. von Vogt.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...might be a very eurasian p.o.v., but the strugazki brothers have released some very intelligent scifi, in which technology is a) a utility and b) mostly enhances mens capability to build a better future. which it should be, in my humble opinion. although some of their books (the stalker, the far rainbow) have a quite pessimistic view, it is always the responibilty of the individual what to make of it. most of their books (e.g. troika) belong to the wittiest scifi ever written.
To me, it seemed hugely obvious, and I wasn't surprised at all.
But then, I didn't guess what the twist was in Sixth Sense, and other people say they thought it was really obvious.
That's the way it goes, I suppose.
Tim
Instead of sounding like some bizzare fanatic and spouting out about how cool it was when Mantrid destroyed the light universe by relocating too much matter in an attempt to defeat the Lexx with his drones or anything like that, I'll just leave you with some quotes...
Kai: The dead do not squeeze and please.
Kai: The dead do not poo.
Kai: I have not been sexually aroused in over six thousand years.
Stan: You know, I'm not so sure Prince is a man. I mean, he used to be the ruler of this really evil planet called Fire... and, well, he'd just die, over and over.
Prince: I'm very good with pain.
Xev: What's in Washington DC? Kai: Stan is. Xev: Oh.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
It isn't the "universe" it's the tale.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
First, the genre "science fiction" hasn't been adequately defined to determine what might make a particular science fiction universe the "best." Second, I would argue that a science fiction film is a different creature from a science fiction novel, and what makes one "best" is not necessarily what makes the other "best." Lastly, "best" hasn't been defined: is it really different strokes for different folks? Is Manimal really as good as Blade Runner because Viewer X thinks that it is? Or are we using some other criteria?
I can define science fiction easily by giving examples of what it is and isn't. Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land and Blade Runner are science fiction. Yes, I know that I'm mixing medias. But some quality binds them into the same genre. I'm not prepared to say what that is - if I did, a dozen people would disagree with me, perhaps all with valid reasons. Still, although a consensus proves nothing, most would probably agree that the three works I mentioned are science fiction.
Now, IMHO, Star Wars isn't science fiction. It looks like science fiction, it uses the apparatus of science fiction, but I would personally label it fantasy and not science fiction. I expect many to disagree, but that okay. It just helps to illustrate the problem of defining anything.
As for the differences between science fictions films and books, that's again subjective. I am not an eye candy person. I love eye candy, but if the rest of the film is lacking no amount of eye candy can redeem it. Give me shitty or non-existant F/X any day, but as long as the acting and the direction/writing are good, I'm happy. Some people are exactly the opposite.
IMHO, good/enjoyable science fiction films:
Blade Runner
A Clockworge Orange
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Terminator
Robocop
THX 1138
Metropolis
Scanners
The Matrix
The Thirteenth Floor
eXistenZ
IMHO, bad science fiction films:
Tron
The Black Hole
Battlestar Galactica
The Abyss
Total Recall
Robocop 2
I didn't include any of the Star Wars pictures in the second list because I do not categotize them as science fiction. Also, there are many films missing from both lists.
As for science fiction literature, do you read for story or for shimmering prose? I'm a shimmering prose man. I prefer that a novel has a good story, but I can happily read 800 pages about licking postage stamps if it is told well, versus 25 pages of the most fascinating tale, poorly written.
IMHO, good/enjoyable science fiction authors:
Gene Wolfe
Robert Silverberg
Sheri S. Tepper
James Morrow
William Gibson
Bruce Sterling
IMHO, bad science fiction authors:
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Alan Dean Foster
Piers Anthony
R.A. Salvatore
Christopher Stasheff
There are many books missing from both lists. I've also noticed that some fantasy authors slipped onto my second list. Whoops. I guess that's because I find that science fiction tends to be better written than fantasy. Sorry about the inconsistency.
The best science fiction universes for me are those universes that are so involved and with philosophical questions posed that are so complex that I, as a viewer/reader, am left in a state of pondering wonder for years after the film/book has been digested. I saw Blade Runner 20 years ago, and I still can spend a satisfying evening debating it in my mind, or over coffee with friends.
That's my answer. Your answer may differ. If we re-phrase the question, and ask what makes a particular science fiction universe the most saleable, then we should probably ask George Lucas, as he seems to have figured out the answer.
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Banks is almost unique in writing mainstream modern novels as well. There he is known just as Iain Banks, that is without the initial. Many who enjoy his SF novels would also enjoy some of his mainstream stuff, which also shares his dark sense of humour, particularly "Complicity".
See my journal, I write things there
Alright, I know everyone just loves Foundation and the Foundation series. Unfortunatly, Asimov's greatest work is too often overlooked.
I speak of course of The End of Eternity.
This book is brilliant, probably the best sci-fi I have ever read. I'm not sure if anyone has ever even heard of it. It has the most amazingly interesting concepts but forward you will ever see. I recommend to anyone who enjoyed Foundation to pick up a copy of End of Eternity. You won't regret it!
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
Is Metropolitan the one where everybody gets their news from "the wire" (a sort of internet and cable TV amalgam), and the the title refers to a sort of part mayor, part emperor ruler of a city-state? I found it on a remainder table a few years ago, must have been a copy published before they could splash "Nebula Winner" all over the cover.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
- It has to be FICTIONAL (somewhat obvious).
- It still NEEDS a story, no amount of science will turn a bad story into a good sf novel or tale.
- The "science part" needs to play a ROLE in the story. It doesn't mean it should be "techy" at all, it could be tech-lacking, but not science lacking (it doesn't even have to be scientific, but must have internal logic, be non contradictory, and even though you don't need to explain, you should be able to come up with a reson for everything, in a way that does not make other claims contradictory).
That's the basic ruleset...no wonder why I don't like most sf writers and specially, ST and the likes (yikes).
unfinished: (adj.)
I feel kinda silly saying this, because it just seems so obvious. But I haven't seen anyone who said it yet.
All that's really important is a good story.
I will believe in any bullshit technology, I will suffer through any cliche characters, I will keep reading as the author fills page after page about any breakfast cereal he likes. As long as it's in service of a good story.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I once had a girlfriend who claimed to hate sci-fi. One night I got her to watch the director's cut of Blade Runner with me. She really enjoyed it. Her comment afterward was that it wasn't sci-fi. Her logic was pretty solid... she liked this film and she didn't like sci-fi, therefore this wasn't sci-fi.
I think many people think of things like Star Wars when they think of sci-fi. Just people in spaceships shooting lasers at each other. Personally, I find the ability to stretch reality very helpful in exploring human depths. Some of my favorite Star Trek episodes revolve around Data because you can expore humanity more through him than anyone else. Same with Blade Runner. Or any Bradbury story.
Devon
Don't get me wrong, I love SF. And for my money great SF is about grand ideas. Talk of characters et al, is not important.
Great literature is about the human condition, or about the magnificent use of words. It is not impossible for SF to be about either, but if it is then it is most likely that it need not be SF. Indeed, most every piece of SF I have ever read, from Benford, Bear and Bradbury through Herbert, Hoyle and Heinlein to Verne, Wells and Wyndham is not really about great literature (although some of the above have certainly approached the human condition in some of their work) but about grand ideas and the grandest ideas make the grandest SF.
I mean, Herbert's devices to eliminate technology as a factor in the Dune universe, genius. Bear's cosmic accounting to destroy planets, inspired. these are the ideas on which great SF is made.
For me, it is a tough call. I read and loved Wyndham's work when I was child, "The Chrysalids" and "Midwich Cuckoos" entranced me (perhaps because of the central role of children). But it was Dune that was the first universe that enthralled me, inspiring me to create within the constraints of that universe. I suspect that it will remain a classic, and remain read for many years to come. Perhap's that is the best measure of what makes SF great.
As for Film and TV, most 50's SF (the "golden age") was just allegory and metaphor, nothing wrong with that, and indeed some of it was fabulous, but once the object of the allegory is lost then the story loses meaning. Star Wars changed the landscape forever, for that alone it will last and is great. Bab 5, loved it, loved the vision, loved the idea of using TV as the medium for a grand arc, but in truth it was again just the first, and it (hopefully) will not remain the best. Finally the one offs like Blade Runner and Alien (the sequels _DO NOT COUNT_), are they really SF? possibly. Are they great? Definitely.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I have two counter-examples to test any definition:
1) Star Wars does not count as SciFi in my book, it is a space western.
2) Isaac Asimovs stopry of the hen that laid golden eggs is a prime example of SciFi, because of the scientific way he treats the problem.
I know this puts me in the hard core end of SciFi fans, and prbably that StarWars limit offends some readers - sorry about that.
In Murphy We Turst
I get mod'd down as having an 'overrated' opinion? :)
:) Keep it coming...I can take it.
That must mean my opinion's are routinely of such high value that they now function as a commodity. Wow..I'm flattered!
That's rich..... I must have really hit a socio-political nerve to be dragged out into the street and beaten over being so bold as to state my opinion when asked. I'd hate to see what kind of mod I'd incur if I really sounded off...this place never ceases to provide unadulterated humor
His writing is very dark and not very uplifting, which is why I don't really enjoy his work (Ok, I admit it; I'm an optimist :). The one book I read of his where the main character didn't die, it turned out that the protagonist murdered someone in a quite gruesome way.
'Hardwired' is like being hit over the head - repeatedly - with a mallet - wielded by a gorilla - with bad attitude.
Although Gibson beat Williams to the (re)invention of Cyberpunk, I always thought Williams was the better storyteller. In Gibson's work, the exposition gets in the way of the plot and the characters are so much a cipher that you don't really care for them. With 'Hardwired' you can't help but care for Cowboy and Sarah.
And the vision of a ruined World is so incredibly immediate and desolate. Literally everyone seems to be scrabbling for the lifeboats - even the rich and powerful are fighting to stay alive. Which means that no one is quite who they seem.
Then there is Weasel - quite simply the nastiest method of killing someone I've ever heard of.
Fantastic stuff.
Oh and have you tried his newest book 'Praxis'? First part of a series, very different, but very good again.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I can't fault the imagination, the characters or the core idea, but he really has no idea of when to end a book.
All of them have dragged on for far to long, at least 1/3 of the latter part of 'Snowcrash' could have been ditched and left a fine (if short) novel. And as for 'The Diamond Age' it really needed a damn good edit and the loss of a few tens of thousands of words. There was an excellent story in there somewhere, but it was buried under mountains of non-essential text.
Best wishes,
Mike.
War of the Worlds. A plot so far ahead of its time that the ending is still being copied. Ususally badly (V, Independence Day - although I believe that film to be satire for reasons I'll be happy to debate later). Or how about The Shape of Things To Come, which correctly predicated mechanised warfare. Perhaps you prefer The Time Machine, redone yet again on film in the last year or so. Or perhaps The Invisible Man, redone as Hollow Man. Maybe even The Island of Dr Moreux, which predicts human/animal hybrid experiments like Slashdot's human/mouse hybrid thread a couple of days ago. All of the HG Well's stuff was set in this universe, so it becomes that much more believable.
No? How about Jules Verne's undersea worlds. Or the book his publisher rejected as too depressing, in which he described light railways, telephones and fax machines. The name unfortunately eludes me.
No? How about Brave New World. George Orwell's excellent and entirely depressing book, though to my mind a bit ripped of from his namesake's Shape of Things To Come (George Orwell. Herbet George Wells. Hmmm).
Films. How about 1926's Metropolis, from Fritz Lang? The film without which Bladerunner simply wouldn't exist. The short story 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' probably would, but the short story and the film bear almost no resemblence to each other.
Need to look a bit further back than just the last few years. There's probably some visionary author writing before Wells that I've overlooked. If so, please tell me. I'd be interested to hear it.
Cheers, Ian
This is 'hard' science fiction and I have to admit that they do require quite a bit of concentration, but the reward is worth it. It's a Universe where faster-than-light travel is unknown. So although the galaxy has been colonised, there is no way of instantaneously jumping around. If you leave a planet, you are gone for decades - people come and go, things happen - and you remain ignorant. Which means that planets are isolated and develop their own cultures.
Chasm City is a sort of Bladerunner Extreme! city, a technological wonderland that has gone to the dogs (or is it the pigs) following an attack by a technological virus (did I mention the virus? How remiss of me!)
Humans have changed - some modify their bodies into bizarre forms, others become 'cojoiners' with machines, others remain pretty much like you or me. And all of these factions are playing off one another.
Not to mention the very strange aliens - but that really would be spoiling it!.
Well worth a look if you have time to read a book (you really can't pick them up and drop them). They start with 'Revelation Space', but you could probably read 'Chasm City' (which is admittedly a better book) first. The twist in the latter book is a real doozy, you'll catch on reasonably early, but the 'how', the 'why' and the 'what the f-' are terrific.
Best wishes,
Mike.
With all due respect, David Lynch's Dune was total dreck. It looked like the people involved read the first chapter of Dune, went to Cliff's Notes for about another half, and then interviewed stoned people with friends who knew people who had read Dune a decade or so ago for the rest.
It was full of gross-out for gross-out's sake. It fundamentally botched things like the Voice. Worst of all, it make Baron Harkonnen a buffoon.
The Lensman series , by EE "Doc" Smith. Absolutely classic 1940's space opera in five volumes, from which Star Wars derives a bunch of its themes.
Some of the best books i have ever read was science fiction novels. Even if they consist of otherwise very boring issues the Science fiction plot makes them worth the reading. Many russian books critizise society but in a very subtle manner. That is also true of many western books about the future with a small number of companies battling for world domination. They to critizise society in a subtle way. The sience fiction aspect makes it easier to view from a distance and to look at an issue from a neutral viewpoint.
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i don't read slashdot anymore.
'Known Space'. Larry Niven, et. al.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
His novels based in "The Culture" cut it best for me.
... honest ;-)
A huge universe, one faction of which is "The Culture" - an evolved human race who have no need for money (they can make anything they want) and which is ran by "Minds", machine intelligence.
When they need a new spaceship, they build one and install a Mind, who becomes the ship, hence the entire thing is sentient (and usually hilarious).
I always thought Arthur C Clarke could describe vast tracts of space thoughtfully, but banks is on an even higher scale.
I'm not biased because he grew up a few miles from where I'm typing this
That just shows that you haven't seen the episodes. The first few were a bit tame but after a while it picks up the pace. And what I like about it is that you don't have them walking around being "Starfleet", instead they act like a bunch of criminals with a truce.
In Firefly I liked that the characters sometimes do the most practical thing instead of the "right" thing. For instance:
*Spoiler for DNA Mad scientist*
How most of the crew ganging up on the pilot and chopping off one of his arms, so they can trade it for information? You don't see that happening in Star Trek.
*End spoiler*
And if you ask me the puppets in Farscape are very well done. Much better than a half-assed blue screen is. (Watch Andromeda if you want to be subjected to that.)
I remember reading and interview with Chris Barrie (Rimmer). Apparently it's not uncommon that fans show their appreciation of him with a "Oi! Smeghead!" when they meet him.
Our hero lands some n years in the future, and the first thing he does is walk into a shop for second-hand-gear, finds something from his own (our) time, and let that play a significant role in the story.
That typical for bad sci-fi: The authors really didn't have so much understanding for the science of it that they could make bold predictions, and they weren't able to make fiction based on those predictions, because they didn't have the imagination to see what the science could imply.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Well, the Wold Newton Universe makes a reasonable stab at this. PJF's initial takes were wide ranging and since then more and more have been added.
And of course his World of Tiers universe is worth a mention on it's own.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
1) A universe. An english teacher of mine was fond of saying "People don't exist in a vaccum" I believe that holds true for SF. People interact with other people and interact with the world arround them. If there isn't a world beyond the story, the SF isn't good. Everything can't automagicaly be connected.
2) People you can care about. If you have no caring for the characters, what they do or how they act. If you can't connect with the characters, it's not good.
3) It can't feel like SF. You should be able to read the book and never have it once cross your mind that you're reading SF. It has to have other plot elements that make it a story that just takes place in a world different from our own. Good examples of this are Ender's Game and Cobra. Both have an entire sublevel of politics and character interactions that make it so that the technology is written for the story, not the otherway arround.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I guess with a better imagination and more time on my hand I could be aroused by asexuality as well :)
Secondly, the science is very hard. Hard science fiction is a genre that is very hard to pull off. A lot of authors who do hard sci-fi spend most of the pages of a book just describing their hard science. Baxter manages to seamlessly weave it in to the story and you barely notice, but is leaves an impression.
However, what truly makes it great is that he weaves the plot and the science together perfectly. A lot of sci-fi authors simply use sci-fi as a setting and tell a traditional type story. A sci-fi love story or a sci-fi crime thriller or a sci-fi horror story. These are all sci-fi, but can only achieve the rank of 'good' sci-fi. Truly great sci-fi needs to have science in it, but also relate it to the plot.
When I read a piece of science fiction, I like to know how the advanced science affected the culture. So, in the future there is some really cool technology. Well, how do people's lives change? What are the consequences? These are all focuses in Baxter's series. A big part of the plot is the interaction between the technologically superior Xeelee and the (comparitively) primitive human race, and the resulting war between the two races. Add to that the impending death of the universe and the pursuit of science among all of this, which leads to some startling discoveries about the Xeelee.
Few other sci-fi universes has these elements together. The only other one that I can think of off hand is the Foundation trilogy, which is second on my list. It only falls behind Baxter's series because the science is less than hard.
When it comes to Anne McCaffery I have a tip for everyone. Stay /away/ from the Freedom series. (The first one is Freedoms Landing I think.) It is very inventive in it's use of bad plot, poor characters and a total lack of believable universe.
The first book is ok, enough to read it at least. After that it becomes extremely boring and the main characters always succeed in whatever they attempt. In it's use of stereotypical characters is second only to Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged". (Stay away from that one too.) All the good guys are good looking and intelligent, the bad guys are ugly and stupid. (Actually I believe there is one evil and smart guy in the Freedom series. But I got the feeling that he was just made evil to create a conflict, he never shows any motive for being the way he is.)
I haven't read Pern though, never can seem to stumble across the first book.
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.
IMO he should have stopped at book 2, about where the radio series ended, and about where he actually tried to make the story coherent.
Far more serious a work in sciece fictions was his Dirk Gently's series. He tackled some serious issues regarding time, mythology, the very meaning of reality.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
From what I've heard from people who knew the Heinlein's, many of his female characters are based on his wife.
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Foundation is actually the Roman Empire, and the first Foundation story (the prequel where Seldon is an actual character, and I mean the one that appears in the first book, not "Forward the Foundation" or whatever that tripe was much later published to cash in on the Foundation name) is the actual fall of Rome.
Any relationship to current times should be considered thought-provoking, but do note that to the extent we are currently stagnatng, it is not complete; technology is still developing at a rapid pace, which is a major difference from the Empire yet.
The best Trek episode (classic, tng, movies, whatever) ever. Written by Harlan Ellison.
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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
He's written ~4,000 pages on the Confederation universe. Now he's moved it out of the galaxy, writing more could make it cluttered and end up with it going stale :)
:)
Hopefully we'll see more from him in the same vein, though. At the moment he seems to be concentrating on strong standalone books. Although it would be nice to get another decent series from him, that'll take ages. Bah
Yeah, I can't see anything particular 'bent' in the humour of RD? Ordinary british comedy. Along the same line as much of the other fun stuff produced on that island for the last 30 years, just the settings changed.
And no, Mr. Bean is not funny!
Red dwarf is tho. Funny.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I have taken great pains to study the great masters. I have read the commentaries of several authors, poured through Campell's "Power of Myth", and foisted my work on unwitting colleges and family.
What I lack is what the masters posses: magic. I don't mean the swords and sorcery type of magic, I mean the I'm moving my left hand so you don't see my right hand reach down into my pockey type magic. The ability to suspend disbelief and despite the audience's best efforts, engage them in a meaningful story dressed up as a shootem-up or fantasy.
How many Sci-Fi novels have you read, and after reflecting on the whole story you realize that the characters weren't just real people, they are people that you actually knew. How many plots seems fantastic and almost farcical, and end up being allegories for current events?
My problem is that I don't have a lack of story telling ability. I just don't have a story to tell .
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The best "science fiction universe" ever has got to be Scientology (TM). Its inventor, L. Ron Hubbard, took the wild and crazy magikal ideas of Aliester Crowley and mixed them up with the wild and crazy space opera of E.E. "Doc" Smith and came up with something that was more than a mere universe, it was a business model disguised as a religion!! And the pestelential inhabitants of that business-in-clerical drag universe are still a menace to we civilized citizens of earth!
PK Dick was the Man. Know why? Because good SF is good writing.
Sorry but Heinlein and Asimov were hacks as writers. I mean how much Lazarus Long can you read before you realize it's 95% dialog.
PK Dick Was the Man. The only SF writer who realized that the future is always bad, and he welcomed it anyhow.
What is the problem with that?
This is exactly the kind of women I read about in my magazines. Or perhaps not exactly read, but at least I look at the pretty pictures.
For me, the answer is the universe of the First two books of Fredrick Pohl's 'Gateway' series. Those books provided one of the most interesting worlds I've read about. It is rare in that it required the kind of real imagination that many sci-fi writers spend lucrative careers demonstrating that they lack:
Gibson and the Cyberpunks were largely a matter of predicting technical trends and greasy sociology.
Niven and other intelligent, highly technical sci-fi writers get the physics right, but write like virgins discussing sex when it comes to human nature... including sex.
Far-future, galactic empire fictions like Dune and Star Wars, tend to impose anachronistic systems of government onto far distant futures with such regularity that the result often looks more like a cheap device than a towering work of the imagination.
By contrast, the Universe in Gateway, is close enough to our own time frame in terms of its sociology and economic perspective that the characters it gives rise to are understandable in present terms; they seem relevant in that they are driven by the same forces that drive us.
Dune offers the reader the story of the son of a fallen Duke rising to fulfill the messianic prophecy of an indigenous people, but his journey provides no characters whose motivations a normally functioning reader can really relate to (i.e., how much time have *YOU* spent with a poisoned needle to your neck?). By contrast, in addition to its many stunning visuals, 'Gateway' offers us a glimpse into human nature using a story in which the science is more than just a backdrop to feudalism and this is the best kind of science fiction; the telling of a story that would be impossible to tell without the science.
Most readers have very little experience of nobility in a time of vendetta, but it's hard to imagine anyone who has never seen the results of greed and guilt.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
It's amazing. In the same slahdot main page, we can see a review of Stanislav Lem's Solaris (well, the film). Ok, the Wired article explains why so few Americans do not know this author (he writes in Polish, and most novels are not translated or only poorly). However, also non-Amreicans read Slashdot, and being German, I can only say: After reading Lem, you stop reading Asimov, and others (just the Hitchhiker will still be considered good SciFi). And, Lem's books are translated into German where he sells millions. The only hope for the Americans is that the film Solaris will be a blockbuster -- and trigger the editors to newly traslate all other Lem books as well.
Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein - definitely. For all the reasons described above.
Gibson, Hamilton, Marshall-Smith, Card - nice rounding out of ideas, stories which make you think long after you finish reading.
Herbert - not for Dune, which I liked, but rate along with Gormenghast for amusingly overblown shallowness, but for his wierd stuff, and short stories.
Niven, Pournelle, Bear - scientifically/technically plausible universes. On an epic scale.
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.
Generally, what churns my butter in a science fiction story is how thought provoking or insightful it can be. Greg Egan is one of my favourite authors despite the fact that his characters can be flat listless plot devices that are there to put a human face on an abstract concept. (In fairness, this does not speak to all his characters or stories.)
Science fiction allows authors to explore themes that come off as contrived at best in regular fiction: explorations of human nature, information theory, the role of power in nature, the true implications of the existence of X. My rule of thumb is that if a story can leave you pondering something, it's a successful science fiction story.
That doesn't excuse some of the piss poor hacks who have a cool idea and a word processor. Neato factor does not a successful story make. A harlequin romance could be brilliantly written (in theory I guess, I'll never know) and the best story concept ever could be given to the Eye-of-Aragon guy.
I guess what I'm getting at is that if all the other elements of a good story - interesting & believable characters, gripping plot, well developed setting, good writing are there what separates a good read from a brilliant story is the underlying concept.
That said, Ian Banks (anything), Neal Stephenson (Snowcrash and Diamond Age), Orson Scott Card (Pastwatch and Enders Game), Harry Turtledove (Guns of the South, How Few Remain and the Great War Series), Peter Hogan (The Giants Series and some of his other stuff), Joe Haldeman (Forever War), Peter F. Hamilton (Reality Dysfunction) and Robert J. Sawyer (Calculating God, The Terminal Experiment and Factoring Humanity) are off the top of my head examples of great vs. good science fiction.
Hehe, agreed, but Goodkind doesn't even play in the same league as Robert Jordan.
:)
Wonder how many books (á ~1000 p. each) ago it was something significant happened? Three?
I'm still trying to decide if I will read the next book. Is it worth trying to remember some hundred Aes sedai names for the sake of reading another ~1000 p. where nothing (probably) that affects the story actually happens?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I'm guessing you won't get much flack because a lot of folks aren't even aware of E.E. "Doc" Smith in the first place. For those of you who weren't reading serials back in the 40's, E.E. "Doc" Smith is the inventor of the classic space opera. Yeah, he's the one who pretty much started the whole "spaceships shooting at each other thing". His best-known works are the "Lensman" and "Skylark" series, which were mostly published originally in serial form starting in *1928* with "Skylark of Space". Although most of his books are out of print today, "Old Earth Books" has reissued the Lensman series, and my experience is that you can find at least one Smith paperback in any used book store worth it's salt.
The good: even today, I think Doc's books count as some of the most imaginative Sci-Fi printed from a "universe" and "technology" perspective, especially when you consider that even the basic forms of the genre hadn't been established when he started writing. His science is very internally consistent, and has some wonderful ideas in it that make for great story. The action sequences are first-rate, and there is a sheer exhileration in the way that the scale and the power of the technology and the story grows from book to book- the Skylark series starts primarily as a conflict between two men, and ends up as galaxy vs. galaxy.
The bad: Nobody will claim that Smith writes good literature. The characters are completely flat, and are unambiguously good or bad (with a couple notable exceptions). By good, I mean Boy Scout, and by bad, I mean Adolf Hitler. Dialogue is cheesy and unrealistic, and the plots, while somewhat innovative at the time, are terribly repetitious. Modern readers will also have a hard time with the jurassic gender roles, and perhaps with the fact that many stories end with the genocidal slaughter of the bad guy's entire race (who, of course are all unsalvagably evil).
But to get hung up on the "bad" is to completely miss the point. You may start reading E.E. "Doc" Smith because of the high ironic enjoyment value (they'd make excellent MST3K fodder), but you'll keep reading it because of the exuberance, creativity and vastness of Doc's vision will pull you in.
If you want to start out somewhere, I'd suggest "Skylark 3" or "Galactic Patrol". Although neither of them are the first in their respective series (although "Galactic Patrol" was the first Lensman book *written*) they are great intros to what E.E. "Doc" Smith is all about, and are a must-read for any hard-core sci-fi fan.
That said though, I personally have always found genre fiction to be more than a little stifling. I don't have any problem with a good scifi yarn but a steady diet of it leaves me a little anemic, and as far as I can tell a steady diet of it leaves a lot of the writers pretty anemic as well. This isn't just a problem with scifi by the way -- I also find a steady diet of westerns, mysteries, or whatever else to be boring.
Maybe that's why my favorite "scifi" people would have to include Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and [if a film maker can count] Stanley Kubrick. All of them have dabbled in scifi, but their targets have been much bigger than just the scifi niche market; if scifi makes a good backdrop for telling a story -- cf. the time travel stuff in Vonnegut's _Slaughterhouse-Five_ or the doomsday device in Kubrick's _Dr Strangelove_ -- then great, that's fine by me. But you don't have to use these props all the time to get good ideas across, and over-relying on them can be just as bad as not being willing to try them at all.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Niven: Known Space (interesting tech) Baxter: Xelee stories (interesting timeline, decent science) Hamilton: Night's Dawn (interesting space opera) Hamilton(again): Mindstar series (good cyberpunk stories, reminds me of Crichton)
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
The book has a plot that doesn't rely on the gadgets or "universe" that surround it. Rather, it's the story of one man's drive for revenge against a system that he believes left him to die. All the "sci-fi" trappings are just window dressing for the story, and in many ways, that's the point.
Another one that bears mentioning is Theodore Sturgeon. I'd swear that Killdozer was the inspiration for Christine, but his real masterpiece was More Than Human, which tells the story of several idiot-savants with supernatural powers who are incapable of functioning in the world themselves, but together form an odd sort of gestalt/family unit.
In both cases, believable, human stories told from a slightly different point of view. Really, so are the stories of Hari Seldon, Case, and Luke Skywalker when you break it down.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
I can't believe nobody's yet mentioned Hugo Gernsback's famous definition of SF.
."
Part of the disagreement here may be definitional: some are saying what makes a great work, regardless of genre, some are saying what makes great space opera, and a few are talking about Science Fiction, or as he called it in Amazing Stories #1, "scientifiction":
"By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision . . . Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading -- they are always instructive. They supply knowledge . . . in a very palatable form . . . New adventures pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow . .
So basically to be Science Fiction as opposed to space opera (and I'm not knocking good space opera, I love Babylon 5), it needs to be grounded in science with a view toward revealing how humans interact with the consequences of a given technology.
So to be GOOD SF, it must have the elements that make for good literature (plot, characterization, vivid place, etc.), but it also must highlight some aspect of humanity by examining how we react to changed technological circumstances, and do so plausibly and without obviousness. Some of the ones that explore this well for me are Brin's universe of Sundiver/Startide Rising, and Clifford Simak's City.
So SF isn't excused from the requirements for good literature, it imposes extra requirements on it.
Speculative fiction, as noted elsewhere, lifts the technological requirement but does require changed circumstances, the essential "what if." I'd even go so far as to say that Science Fiction is a special case of Speculative fiction. So once you find out what makes good literature and good speculative fiction, you can figure out what additionally is required to make good Science Fiction.
Wow, Fuzzys... I thought I was one of the only people that had read those books :)
Way back in grade school, I borrowed a copy of Little Fuzzy from my dad to read on the bus. The book managed to sprout legs and walk away from me one day. For some reason the book returned to my memory after I got out of high school and I started looking for a replacement for it, and was disappointed to find it was out of print, and that none of the major (or minor) retailers in my area could find a copy.
I ended up finding a copy two years ago after a co-worker showed me gemm.com. They're like a "global electronic mall or flea market" (their words) for small retailers that carry out of print / discontinued lps / cds / books / etc, and they have an amazing range of items. (No, I don't get any kind of commision, I just think the site rocks.) I highly recommend going and having a look if you want to pick up a Piper novel, or anything else that's hard to come across.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I don't know about you guys, but the messages attached to this story will be invaluable to me next time I can't find a good book to read.
Instant bookmark!
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Most people don't consider this science fiction, but I think Stephen King's "Dark Tower" (and related) novels all mix a certain element of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
For those that haven't read these books, the Dark Tower series takes place in a parallel universe, similar to our own, except set a thousand years after we would have wiped ourselves out (after making a few hundred years of additional scientific progress). The core concept is that there are an infinite number of universes, many of which impinge on each other, and all held together by these mysterious "beams" centered on the Dark Tower. There is a villain trying to destroy those beams and presumably lay waste to the various universes held by them.
The books are excellent, and the universe is very interesting, with most of the world having reverted to what we might consider technology of the "old west", lying smack in the middle of (some partially-functioning!) relics of our ancient technology. Universes "near" this one, and the way they relate to each other are all equally interesting (e.g. the Territories from the Talisman).
What makes this universe a masterpiece, though, is now King is weaving this plot into nearly every piece of fiction he's written lately. Talisman came before Dark Tower, but its sequel, Black House, connects it to the Dark Tower. Insomnia was connected. Hearts in Atlantis was connected, etc. He's basically taking one central theme (the Dark Tower universe) and is writing books about small pieces of that one major plot.
So in a way, he's not just writing a saga, or a trilogy about the Dark Tower, here. He's inventing a universe and we're getting peeks into that universe from many angles, watching the Dark Tower plot unfold as a bystander just as much as we do by reading the actual Dark Tower books. I just hope he gets around to finishing it some day!
How realistic are super-proficient women, who just happen to dress provocatively and mouth his beliefs perfectly?
If Friday is an example that comes to mind, I suggest you re-read Friday and Star Ship Troopers with a more critical eye. Heinlien is NOT Friday or a Star Ship Trooper, he's used the character's to mouth a future he considers nighmarish. The characters are imperfect and unable to understand their situation as well as we do.
Our Star Ship trooper is happy to see the entire planet turned into a war machine. He even smiles when he sees his own father drafted. Would you want to live in a world like that?
Friday is not supposed to represent any living person either. She is a poorly educated sex slave with extraordinary strength and mental ability. Friday demonstrates both her mental power and lack of education by a nauseasingly detailed recitation of events that span years. She remembers every single meal she eats in every greasy spoon and tells us all about it years after the fact! Clearly, Heinlien wanted to paint a mind that was not trained to disregard extraneous details but strong enough to not need to. The average person who burdened themselves with all those kinds of details would run like M$ XP. What appears to be poor story telling is crucial to our understanding of the character! That Heinlien can pull it off without losing the reader is awsome. Yes, she was concieved and bred to be some adolescent man's dream toy. Sterile, with low self esteem and taught only those things that might sexually please before being recruited to other things. It is doubtful that any Libertarian would want anyone else treated that way.
In any case, both of these stories demonstrates what makes good science fiction: they take a few postulated technical inovations, understand how they might effect society and it's members, then create an entertaining story of entrapment or escape. Good science fiction, like any story telling, requires an understanding of both human nature and creation. I see a kind of triad, character insight, technology insight and storyline. Strengths in one area can make up for weakness in others, depending on the tastes and education of the reader. My favorites are short stories that have all the elments.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Man, what a long thread. If only MS was involved in some way, it would expand exponentially until slashdot entered the dictionary as a synonym for "large smoking crater in the ground". But I digress.
I was going to say anything by Bear or Benford, than I thought about the best series of books I have ever read: the Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair (follows Lanny from 1914 to 1950s as he moves among the political figures of the times as a spy and an art dealer). The strange thing is, though Sinclair was a rationalist, Lanny runs into inexplicable psychic manifestations from time to time - tying into the Nazi fascination with the occult. Looking back, I think you could consider the series as sort of an alternate history series of SF. Anyway, don't start reading these books unless you want to give up the next several weeks.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
From everything I can tell, Heinlein's works go through three stages-
Overlap is to be expected - note especially how Starship Troopers is about fifty-fifty 1 and 2, while Stranger in a Strange Land is about 75/25 2 and 3, and Time Enough for Love is almost 20/80 2 and 3. Number of the Beast is just plain weird.
My favorite is Scientology. Talk about a sci-fi universe with a religious following!
Not so much "makes me think about social/political issues here on earth", but more "makes me think about unusual circumstances or science". It used to be those damn temporal paradoxes, but I think I've started to get those figured out. Just kind of the strange puzzles and situations. Maybe the Sienfield theory of science fiction. The plot isn't the main interest, but the quirky circumstances and interactions within the story.
David Weber's Honor Series is one of the few that I sit and wait with excitement for every book. Think of it as Star Trek meets CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower.
The intrigue, military detail, politics, characterization, and the development of all the plots within plots makes it one of my favorite book series ever.
FreeBSD The Power to Serve
I'm surprised that I did not even read a single mention of David Zindell. He is the author of Shanidar and Neverness (both of which were relatively well acclaimed), as well as a series called "A Requiem for Homo Sapiens".
:).
:-D
He's one of my most favourite writers, and his world is just as colorful and varied, as Frank Herbert's, Asimov's or even Tolkiens (especially the names remind of Tolkien - Danlo wi Soli Ringess, Tamara Ten Ashtoreth etc
Well, yes, you would probably see some similarities in his world's with some of Frank Herbert's creations, including say, Jesus Incident, etc - He talks of the possibility of us interfacing our brains with computers, using voidships and massive bodies as infinite data extractors where we could redesign ourselves till we are nothing but a moon sized brain, and growing, where information is all that matters.
Amazing philosophy, great science fiction, well written and it has a touch of William Gibson's or Philip K Dick's world's. And what more, he's got a sarcastic sense of humour like Neal Stephenson in some parts
I'd suggest any fan of science fiction to read him.
Or to paraphrase Douglas Adams, as a fun party trick, to transport every molecule in the hostess' undergarments 3 feet to the right...
Freedom: "I won't!"
Make it an interesting story. Make it with characters I care about. Make it timeless. And yes, if it's a long story, invoke a bit of Joseph Campbell and the importance of myth.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
This reminds me when I met JMS when he spoke at MIT. He truly is a pompous ass, and after listening to him, I really found it hard to enjoy the show.
I only had this experience from reading his own write-ups about the ongoing production process, as used for quotes in the lurker's guide to B5.
After a few experiences like that, I've just gotten to where I don't want to go listen to authors I like.
I don't know, quite the contrary for me.
Most of the authors I like are actually very nice to listen to. E.g., Douglas Adams' interviews and public readings were a hoot. I also enjoyed audio books with original recordings of Thomas Mann and other authors. Few authors are disappointing when they recite their own works in public.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
I don't know how to define greate SF, but I know it when I read it. Here are some Authors: Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan, Stephan Baxter, Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, John Varley, David Gerrrold, Neil Stephonson, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Clarke, James Helperun, JR Dunn, Carl Sagan (book "Contact").
There is some Sci-fi that I consider greater than Iain M. Banks (namely, the Hyperion Cantos), but the main reason I love Banks is the phenomenal inventiveness of the guy. He has a greater density of ideas per square inch than any other writer I've seen - ideas that other authors would devote entire books to come and go within a paragraph.
:)
Also, he credits readers with a little intelligence - some things are merely sketched out, or mentioned in passing as an accepted and integral part of the reality he is describing. For example, an author now would not (unless they were incredibly dull) devote pages to the inner workings of televisions, telephones and cars - they are normal, everyday tools that fade into the background of a story. Banks doesn't devote pages telling you exactly what a Knife Missile is or how Fields work the first time you encounter this stuff - he gives you just enough to work out for yourself what you think it is and it forms a seamless part of the story. And I'm not restricting myself to his Culture novels either - Feersum Endjinn is my favourite Banks novel, Scifi or otherwise.
As another note, I met Banks shortly after he wrote Excession, and I told him how much I loved the names the ships give themselves (Grey Area, Of Course I Still Love You, A Frank Exchange Of Views, etc. etc...). He Said he gets a lot of that sort of thing, and its the subject most commented on by his fans. Interesting that in his next overtly Culture novel, Look To Windward (Yes, I know Inversions was a Culture novel too...), he seemed to devote a couple of pages to conversations revolving entirely around the names of starships.
Perhaps he just wanted to get them all out of the way in one go, to shut the fans up
Needless to say I'm a major fan of hard science fiction, but almost everything I've read/seen, that I would classify "Hard Science Fiction" ultimatly ends up being distopian. It's hard to choose something from that catagory for a 'favorite universe'. No matter how good the Mars series is by Robinson..."
Funny you should figure Robinson's Mars trilogy as dystopian hard sci-fi, since it's very much a utopian effort. I suppose I could see how there are dystopian elements in it, since he doesn't ignore human frailties and, well, doesn't lie. It's not utopian in the sense of depicting a Utopia and saying "hey, let's all live here, it's wonderful!" - rather, it's a utopian exercise. That's what I loved about it - he was looking at the world and saying, OK, it's a dirty place, and humans aren't perfect, but maybe, given the opportunity, we could look at the best things from our past and learn from them and try to build something even better.
In a way, it's exactly what the colonies did in America 200+ years ago.
It's not really that hard sci-fi necessarily ends up dystopian, but rather that good hard sci-fi doesn't gloss over the blemishes of human nature and "the world", but rather deals with them up front, face-to-face. What I like about Robinson is that he tends towards optimism. He doesn't look at the world and say "well, it's going to hell in a handbasket, better get used to it," - instead he suggests we might be able to make the world be whatever we want it to be. And seeing that, we have the chance to realize that we already make the world what we want it to be. If it will be a certain way, it is because of who we are and how we behave - the choices we make every day.
The Mars series introduces the reader to a whole bunch of very cool technologies (space elevators, a lot of terraforming, and some genetic engineering) that ultimatly get wrapped up in a whole bunch of very very wordy politics that lead to 2 wars.
I liked the politics, personally. And didn't you notice that the revolutions in the books (OK, wars) got progressively less violent? I think that's a pretty good goal.
By the end of the story nobody is really any better off,
Really? Nobody is better off? I kinda like the society he tried to build. Sure there are some perhaps unrealistic goals or ideals, but that's what drives us, isn't it? I wouldn't like to live in a society that just gave up...
Earth is a f'king sess pool that can't shovel its population off the planet fast enough, and the the rest of the solar system is weighed down by billions of people who now live 500-1000 years thanks to genetic engineering. Very very good books, but not a happy universe that I'd like to live in.
That's kinda the point... As usual, the bad things are things to keep an eye out for, and the good things are things to shoot for. It's better than the stories that say "Wow, we could live forever, wouldn't that be neat!" or "Oooh, lookout, the population will just keep growing and growing... The future's gonna suck."
It's a real world, with projected problems that the people are actually dealing with.
I like a good fantasy as much as the next person, but Sci-fi tends towards the escapist and it's so wonderfully refreshing to see it showing realistic people actually dealing with potential problems. It makes you think maybe we could actually do that now.
If the books make you think it's not a happy universe that you'd like to live in, doesn't it follow that one should act to help keep the real world from becoming like that? No one else is going to do it for us. I for one find myself in a real universe that I don't think is happy and that I don't enjoy living in as much as I could, so I work for change, both in my personal life and in the lives of others.
In my opinion, good fiction inspires...
Try Kazaa. I have a lot of epps and am working on the rest.
I have most of the "Roughnecks" CG series too.
The net has made a ton of stuff easy to get. I just wish someone would put up "Sledgehammer".
Douglas Adams was a master of getting you to imagine great special effects--he started off writing for radio. In addition to HHG, I love _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_ and _Starship Titanic_ (cowritten with Terry Gilliam.)
Fun sci-fi eye candy:
- The attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars
- Dune
- Gotham City in the Batman movie with Catwoman in it
Really good sci-fi books:Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Although some may argue they aren't sci-fi, the universes created by Philip K. Dick are my favorite. Reading his work seems to turn me into one of the paranoid, twisted characters that populate it.
You can never be sure of anything while reading a Philip K. Dick novel. This makes you feel more like a character in the story, instead of the omniscient reader.
That was not the case at all! Ender created a physical replica of his sister and his brother, but they were most definately not his sister and brother. They were extensions of himself, and they did not help; they made things worse and more confusing, and led to Ender's death(sort of...).
On the other hand, the instant travel bit I agree with you about. That was technology for the sake of the plot, not plot based around new technology.
I guess I'm just nitpicking, as I agree that Children was the weakest of the Ender series.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Learned to play chess at age 4.
Attended the US Naval Academy, competed in fencing and marksmanship. Graduated 20th in a class of 243 with a degree in engineering.
Served in the Navy until honorably discharged at rank Lieutenant because of Tuberculosis.
Ran as a Democrat for representative in California on a platform of ending poverty (lost). Was active in politics as a fundraiser, speaker, and committee member throughout most of his life. His 'libertarian claptrap' was, right or wrong, the product of his disaffection with politics through years of direct personal experience.
Amon his many interests and careers, he dabbled in mining, photography, and masonry.
During WWII he worked with the US military on high altitude aviation suits, the precursor to modern day astronaut uniforms.
Designed and built his own house while in his 50s.
I'd say it's fair for a writer that happens to be a jack of all trades, sexually open-minded, highly intelligent, libertarian, and reasonably athletic to write about characters that also have those characteristics, don't you?
A good book has to
a) Provoke thought
and/or
b) Stimulate the imagination
Scenario (a) often applies to the non-fiction works, or works based on comtemporary/historic/near-futuristic reality. You have events that happened, or events that very possible could have happened, had things been a bit different, or could happen in the future. It gives you that sense of "what if" that makes you think, and also leads you into scenario (b).
Scenario (b) works often start in the fictionous/fantasy realm. Characters are very far out, not believable in physical definition, but (for their fictive archetype), believable in action. Things like being able to fly, or use magic, etc are often based around childhood imaginations or fantasy. It doesn't really make for a "what if this happened today", but more of a scenario where the reader thinks: I wish life were more like this.
Don't cross me boy, you'd make an ugly toad!
I've heard the english translations of his books are no good.
The english translation of "Solaris" is translated from the French translation of Lem's polish novel.
I needed an english credit, and guess what they offer? ENGL 334 : Science fiction as literature. I bet you're all incredibly jealous. Here's the reading list: ;-)
Frankenstein (Shelley) : one of the first sci-fi novels, and written by a woman, on a dare
The Time Machine (Wells) : one of the first sci-fi authors, revolutionary at the time
"We" (Zamyatin) : Our prof had a hard-on for russians. And it was a good book.
Starship Troopers (Heinlein) : he bashed it because it was so fascist and militaristic. I dunno, I liked it a lot more than him.
Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller) : Wow, cool book. First published as 3 different novels, one of the first post-apocalyptic novels (excepting Shelley's "The Last Man")
Songs of Distant Earth (novel version, by Clarke) : First sci-fi novel to make it on the new york times bestseller list, written as a response to 2001's cold, pessimistic view of the future.
Solaris (Lem): Read the solaris thread from yesterday.
Left Hand of Darkness (LeGuin) : Our gay-lesbian-transgendered group did a discussion on this. It's a REALLY creative novel, and it's pretty good too.
City of Bones (Martha Wells) : Wells is an alumni, but she's also an amazing (but not prolific) writer. But I don't think she's been writing for long, so give her time. This was my favorite book because of it's VIVID world and realistic fight scenes (our hero is a good fighter, but loses repeatedly) and it's raw originality. Think "Dune" meets "Star Wars", but post-apocalyptic and with magic.
The verdict? Our prof also teaches russian lit, and he seems to think that all of these novels were based on either Brothers Karamazov or inspired by it, except for "We" which is the best book to come out of europe, ever. And he hates Heinlein for being politically incorrect. But he has a lot of interesting things to say, and he manages to make multiple lectures over each novel. And it sure as heck beats the other ENGL classes (except "Language of Film", which has 33 seats per year).
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
No favorite universe; there are lots of different books I like, from different worlds, and no one world is "the best". Individual books are more important to me than worlds.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
It's a real pity you missed "Children of Dune", and the God Emperor of Dune, Leto II. Some say that an immortal human-sandworm hybrid is not entirely credible-- but I say they are too blind to see our future.
You haven't read Frank Herbert until you've read "Helstrom's Hive" (the next step in human society apperently involves the creation of a human-ant hybrid that can live and work as part of a hive mind) or the "Santaroga Barrier"-- better living through halucinogenic mushrooms.
"The Flying Sorcerers" - Gerrold and Niven
(OK, so Gerrold and Niven aren't quite unknowns.) Funny and revealing. It will help to enjoy bad puns.
Sherri S Tepper
I've come to quite like Tepper's works. She builds good, consistent (though odd) worlds, reasonable characters and interesting plots. She doesn't always do endings well - often trying to do something climactic and dramatic which only ends up being a bit silly. I think I'd suggest "After Long Silence", "Raising the Stones" or "Grass" as starting points.
"Stand on Zanzibar", "The Shockwave Rider" - John Brunner /.'ers should read it, then notice the copyright date. And wonder where he kept his time machine.
Both deserve to be considered classics. "Shockwave Rider" - well,
Fool's War by Sarah Zettel
The Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress
Armageddon Inheritance and On Basilisk Station by David Weber
A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
The Demons at Rainbow Bridge by Jack L. Chalker
And of course Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
And Hitchhiker's, Ender's Game, DUNE, Foundation, Ringworld, most LeGuinn, all things by Philip K. Dick, etc...
Education is the silver bullet.
I always like to point to Shelley's Frankenstein as THE seminal work.
To me (now, this is just MY opinion) - Science Fiction is all about man versus nature. Our inginuity, our technology, how we change the situation God/Nature handed to us, and how that change or attempt changes us; the human condition, and consideration of the implications, morally, ethically, of what we as a species do.
For instance, in Frankenstein, the limits imposed on us by Death seemed to be broken down by Frankenstein's innovative experiment. But it made us think about the implications.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Awesome book! Also by Stapeldon, The Star Men.
Highly reccomended reading. That fellow had a lot on his mind, and wasn't afraid to share.
Makes you laugh when people describe a SF novel as being of "Grand Scale."
What were you expecting?
Novelty. The opposite of formulaic. I.E. - I don't expect to see the formula for writing I will like appear here or anywhere else except the book in question.
:)
I want to be amazed.
I also expect good writing. I used to tolerate sophmoric use of language, but I just don't have the patience to endure it anymore. (Just because I like to read good writing doesn't mean I write well myself, alas...
If you've only ever read science fiction, try some other genres. Try Nabokov, for example. I'd recommend 'Lolita'. Yeah, there's a movie, but don't bother. You might just cry the next time you slough your way through a penny sci-fi novel.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
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?
Shara comes to mind, but I might be mixing her up with the goddess/demon in MZB's Darkover series (I know the goddess in those books was Shara, but I seem to remember the names being similar).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Then I highly recommend you read John Norman's Gor series.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is truly brilliant, and probably my favorite sci-fi universe (although, telivision-wise, I do have to give much credit to Babylon 5). Actually, to be more accurate, the Foundation "Universe" encapsulates 3 different series of novels, each in a different historical epoch, plus a couple more thrown in in between. I'll list them here, for the benefit of anyone who's interested:
The Robot Novels:
The Empire Novels:
The Foundation Novels:
In addition to all these, a few other authors have written books in Asimov's universe. Roger MacBride Allen wrote a trilogy of novels set just after the Robot series, taking place on a Spacer world at the very beginning of the Settler expansion. The books are decent, but don't really live up to Asimov's skill. They are listed as follows:
As I was researching, I came across some additional Robot mysteries written by Mark W. Tiedemann. I haven't read these, so I have no recommendation, but here they are:
There was also a "second foundation trilogy" authorized by Asimov's estate and written by some very excellent modern SF writers. These books flesh out some of the details in Asimov's universe, but the authors tend to project their own themes onto the stories with mixed success. All three are great books, though, and take place concurrently with Forward the Foundation:
As I recall, Asimov himself may have also written a book which takes place during the reign of the Trantorian Empire (between the Empire and the Foundation series) involving contact with an alien species, an element notably absent from all the rest of the novels in this arc. I haven't read it, though, and I forget the title.
Anyway, these books are truly epic, and present a huge historical drama about the human race as a whole. You should read them. Now!
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Fred Hoyle yet. In my very personal opinion, the best scifi book ever written his "The Black Cloud", which must have appeared in the 1950s.
There are no spaceships, no laser battles, no bug-eyed, man-eating aliens, and the story itself was set in the very near future (the 1960s, in fact).
One thing about this book is that it presents probably the most original alien I have ever read about. In fact, the extreme unoriginality of aliens in most scifi really pisses me off. Do you remember seeing some Star Trek film, in which other races make first contact with Earth? Here a Vulcan steps out of his spaceship (basically a human with pointy ears), and some onlooker says "It's like nothing we've ever seen before". Like, wow. Pointy ears. How amazingly exotic. The point is, any alien will be FAR LESS related to us than any of those truly weird creatures you can see in any rock pool at the beach, yet almost all scifi still treats aliens as basically human with some simple modifications (four arms, green skin, etc). I could go on about this. There are some other original creatures in the books out there: The Moties ("The Mote in God's eye", Larry Niven) are anatomically uninspired, but at least have a very interesting sociology; the Scrode-riders ("A Fire Upon The Deep", Vernor Vinge) are actually pretty cool, and I LOVE the role they play in the book. There may be some other examples, but most aliens suck in my opinion. Read the Black Cloud for the most interesting alien there is.
Besides that, the book is very nicely written, has interesting characters (one of them is very obviously Fred Hoyle himself), bashes politicians (which I always apreciate), and gives, in my opinion, a very realistic account of how things develop on Earth (administratively and sociologically) in a very special kind of crisis.
Lastly, this book can serve as the very definition of "hard" science fiction - which is to be expected, as Hoyle was in fact one of the world's leading astronomers (he coined the term "big bang, afik), and narrowly missed a Nobel Prize in physics for explaning the creation of heavy elements in stars.
"...Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Good science fiction is a vehicle for the author to display his beliefs about human nature by setting his story in a world that is optimal for the social point he or she is trying to make.
Take Star Trek: TNG for a moment - not nessisarily the best SciFi out there, but it does qualify as SciFi (mostly). A science fiction setting allows it to talk about things like the Borg and people's reaction to the possibility of being "Assimilated" into a cyborg hive mind.
A good science fiction universe doesn't nessisarily have anything to do with good science fiction. One of my favorite science fiction universes is BattleTech, and it's just an excuse to talk about 30 foot tall humanoid tanks - (now with chain saws).
In the intersection of "Good Science Fiction" and "Science Fiction Universe" there's a good number of examples.
Asimov's Foundation/Robots universe managed to be both, mostly through Asimov being an amazing writer and thinker.
Heinlein's future history stories always were a favorite of mine but they don't form that much of a Universe - they more manage to talk about human nature: Religion, Immortality, etc.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Ah yes, a few points that have little to do with Heinlien's use of imperfect narative. I had forgoten the characters names and that there was no compulsory draft. The reason I'm hazy about details like that is that Rico's narative is less than perfect, we can not and are not supposed to trust what he says.
Now consider if the father's enlistment was portrayed in a positive manner, despite it being seen that way by Rico. Would you really consider it good for people who have run sucessful business to suddenly give it all up? One of the biggest reasons for the father's enlistment and the "big change" was that one of the alien worlds under Earth attack had managed a couter strike that killed Rico's mother along with a large chunk of the world population. Old men like Rico's father jumping onto rockets was portrayed even by Rico as a despiration measure.
The idea seems to be that a military society had evolved which made all decisions and ultimately used all resources to further its own aims. That they did this without repressing free speech and taking other liberties is unlikely. We never get a good view of why the earth was at war with all other inteligent life forms and that is the root of the nightmare. Rico presents us with a society that was prosperous and had recovered from a horrible nuclear war only to be plunged into endless galactic wars. Rico can't tell that his is an awful existence or that things could be any different.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1)I have to like it.
2) see 1
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In the real world, people are molded by the choices they make. Every evil choice, even if it is minor, and even if it is "for a good cause", makes it a tiny bit easier to make an evil choice the next time.
Good Fantasy/Sci-Fi has a realistic moral universe to complement the counterfactual/extrapolated physical universe. This does not mean that the protagonist always or even usually makes good choices. (A realistic dark protagonist is instructive, if depressing.) It does mean that logical consequences ensue. Too many stories show the protagonist making lots of minor evil choices (lying to friends, stealing from or killing the innocent, etc) in order to accomplish a Great Good (saving the world). Instead of these choices making them more like the enemy they are vanquishing, the effect is portrayed as neutral - an implementation detail for the Great Good that is accomplished.
As an example of a realistic moral universe, it is clear in Tolkien that in using the one ring to defeat Sauron, the user will become (as evil as) Sauron.
While real world examples are rarely as dramatic as in Tolkien, it does happen. Suppose a proposed plan to defeat Hitler involves infiltrating his inner circle, and then assasinating him. To gain his confidence, the assassin must participate in many horribly evil activities: torture, extermination of innocent people, etc. In fact, many of the activities prescribed for the inner circle are in fact rituals of evil designed to reduce the participant to the same level of moral decay as the others.
However, he's recently come back to books and did Steel Beach in his "Eight Worlds" series, not as imaginative as his early stuff, but still good.
Plus 300+ pocket books, plus 750 issues of the spin-off series Atlan.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Off the top of my head, and having read a number of the other posts on this article (and boy-howdy did this one bring out the opinions from everybody), Here's my tentative list of major SF genre, and some classic examples that I have read from each (I'm more qualified in 'hard SF' than most of the other categories). I'm also going to try and keep my opinions to 'Universes' in which there are more than one work.
Major SF-related Categories:
These may not be universally regarded as 'The Best' but all are worthy of note.
'World-building' is one of the most important elements of Science Fiction. It is arguably more important than 'setting' in more standard literature, since experience can fill in more gaps in traditional literature - historical fiction being the exception. There are a couple of outstanding examples of world-building that I've run across in single novels which were never made into a 'franchise universe' where any number of novels are set. Two shining works along these lines are Way Station by Clifford Simak (who has the best aliens in SF, IMHO) and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, who's 'Esper Guild' inspired Babylon 5's Psi-Corps (Hence Walter Koenig's character being named "Alfred Bester" in an intentional homage).
I suppose I should have an honorable mention category (although I will leave out obvious movie/TV franchises). Larry Niven's 'Tales of Known Space', William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' are good examples with broad appeal.
A note on the 'My Personal Favorite' entry. This quartet, composed of Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion touches on most of the major elements of modern science fiction, from 'hard SF' and 'cyberpunk', to horror-fiction, a la Alien. This series is best described by Peter Falk's monologue from The Princess Bride with monsters, wars on a galactic scale, intrigue, some good dime-novel theology, and even environmentalist themes, while having some really excellent hard SF and being extremely well-written. The universe which spans three major cultures, one of which is a community of AIs, is very rich, with a history spanning centuries, and hundreds of unique worlds. I highly recomend it.
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Geosynchronous satellites were nothing new.. It was the idea that, with them, you could greatly extend your communication range in an easy way that was new.
It didn't used to be like that. War novels have taken over mainstream SF. Most of them are lousy war novels. Moon, Drake, Cole, Bunch, and Weber know how to write that stuff, but most of the others do it badly.
As an aside, lone heroes don't win wars. It's tough to find a single individual in history not in high command who determined the course of a major war by heroic acts in the field. (Exceptions? Otto Skorzeny, maybe.) SF is lone-hero heavy.
For me the true test of the best sci-fi is this...RE-READABILITY!
If I can't read it at least two or three times without becoming bored or disgusted it's not worth the paper it is written on. More important is the book that makes you WANT to re-read it the moment you are done. Or the kind that has you begging the writer for a follow up book.
Oddly enough, some of the great books a I have read don't generate in me the desire to re-read them. Asimov's Foundation series is a one example. Loved it, but didn't want to go back there. Some of Heinlein's work was the same way, but most I have read three or four times and still love em.
The works of Niven have withstood my best efforts to wear them out. Probably due to the great central characters he creates, the mystery plots, and the hard sci-fi edge he incorporates into his stories. Integral Trees, Ringworld and the Ringworld Engineers, The Mote in God's Eye and following books, the great short stories, all seem to endure without fail. Truly, in my mind, one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever.
Card is another who wites stories that can be re-read obsessively. Treason is a lesser know favorite of mine. Similarly to Niven, Card creates great central characters. Unlike others, Orson's explores his characters weaknesses as much as thir strengths. And, oddly, some of his characters' strengths ARE their weaknesses. Think about it when next you read Card.
One of my other favorites it Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martin. Sort of a one hit wonder: it's kinda campy, but the story is so entertaining, and the characters so quirky that it never fails to reel me back in. By the way, this story was originally written as a series of short stories in "Analog" magazine.
Another great series is the Gateway/Heechee series by Fredrick Pohl. Nice hard Sci-Fi with a great cosmoligical twist. Complex, human characters. Describes time dilation from black holes and faster than light travel as an integral part of the story (in my case it was a great way for a ninth grader to be exposed to the concepts).
Last, but not least, Adams. Of course the Hitchiker's Guide and associated books rock, and the humor never ceases to amaze and amuse me. Teatime and Holistic Detective are also wonderful. Worn out a few paperbacks of both!
Oh, The Godmakers, by Herbert(and many others Dune and such included), and Catseye By Norton are also great re-readers.
I haven't included any Tolkien here because I don't consider his books Sci-Fi.
Any suggestions on other books that I can read (and then re-read!) would be helpful. Thanks!
It is completely impossible to say anything intelligent or enlightening in a space this size, excep
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Yeah, Cherryh is fanatastic. Cyteen (helped me understand myself and my son (asperger's syndrome (high functioning autism)), Chanur, Cuckoo's Egg, The Faded Sun, Foreiner, Hammerfall, Tri Point...
Her fantasy is great too: The Goblin Mirror, Rusalka and Morgain (wow:). There's more, that's just what I've read.
To me, Cherryh isn't so much about the technology (though every now and then it creaps into the story) but more about the people (human or not, maybe especially not:) and the environment.
She also has a webiste
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
The Liaden Universe by Steve Miller & Sharon Lee and
The Vorkosigan Series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Good posting, except for the mis-spelling of the word Lotus. :)
Don't know that I'd classify The Iliad or The Odyssey as science fiction and you make a good point in questioning that. I suppose Icarus comes closest to Old World science fiction - at least in Western culture.
My fave, though, remains Herbert's Dune.
My favorite SF universe is that of Iain Banks' "Culture" novels. His triumph is to blend some serious gosh-wow old school superscience (gigantic artificial worlds, hypersentient AIs, near-godlike control over energy and matter) with richly nuanced characterization and deftly crafted cultures.
The most interesting question he asks -- many times, in many different ways, throughout his work -- is how a being can find meaning and purpose when all material needs can be met effortlessly, and all desires fulfilled nearly as easily.
Newcomers to the Culture books should start with _Consider Phlebas_. His most recent work, _Look to Windward_, is a sort of tonal sequel to Phlebas, revisiting some of the same themes in a more reflective, somber mood.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Funny how some writers get stuck in a Genre - I was going to mention some HP Lovecraft sci-fi, but I can't remember the names (most of his stuff was horror or horror-on-earth sci-fi).
I particularly liked a short he co-wrote about a bunch of non-fighting aliens that trapped a soldier hunting them in an invisible maze on mars. It interested me more than most Lovecraft because it was a psychological horror that was descriptive from the soldier's point of view, not a 3rd person point of view as in most Lovecraft.
For me, at least, great sci-fi has to be realistic and believeable, and the tech has to be correct (at least, I have to be able to believe it could function and have some idea of how it is supposed to work).
I think the most wonderful genre is near-future science fiction. A lot of Asimov's work falls into this line, involving space exploration, etc... James P. Hogan was pretty good with his "Inherit the stars" trilogy, which I thought was pretty good. I like Heinlein a lot, because although some of his fiction goes pretty far into the future, at least the tech is handled in a very believeable way and he tries pretty hard to "get it right".
The whole cyberpunk genre is just awesome, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, et al... I like the fact that they're very tech-centric, and make some pretty good predictions about the near future (some of which are already coming true).
I'm not into the "faraway galaxy" thing at all, I recoil at fantasy stuff like sword-and-sorcery, and if a story is too far in the future, and the tech is just completely pulled out of the author's butt I generally ditch the book and write the seven bucks off as a loss. I think this sort of thing is a sign of laziness on the part of the author; instead of researching, and figuring out how something could work if it was happening in real life, the author just says, "it's fiction" and pulls the whole thing out of his ass. It's crap, you know?
What pisses me off more than anything else is when an author has no understanding whatsoever of computer science and tries to make up a situation without researching it. I've seen a couple of novels about how a "biological virus" is "infecting the internet", or how someone caught a biological virus by looking at an infected system's VDT -- usually with some hackneyed explanation about how the flashing on the screen "hacked the person's brain". Don't get me wrong, it's fun to laugh at some joker lit major who saw "the Matrix" and figured he'd cash in, but reading the tripe he puts out is too painful.
I know, I'm judgemental. But, Jesus, a guy's gotta have his standards.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Period.
I remember an ex-roommate who was a sci-fi junkie, who owned a lot of crap books about women with beehive hairdos and silver skirts. Yawn. Dune. Double yawn. The 1st ep. of Star Wars, about trade alliances, taxation, etc. Yawn.
1984 was a good book because it was a good story, asking "what if" and talking about how humanity would deal with a given situation.
The book that my ex-roommate was working on, was not. I made the mistake of asking him to tell me what it was about: 45 minutes later, he was still going on about the physiology of the alien inhabitants and the political-eco whatevermajig construct societies these people lived in.
When I cut him short and asked him to describe the STORY, he went back to his diatribe about 2G cephalods and gas plasma treaties and whatnot.
A "world" only appeals to people as a vehicle for a good story. Luke wants to avenge his father's death, and goes to find some weird hermit in the woods to teach him how to kick ass: the black knight is a fallen hero in search of redemption. The same story that's been told in one form or another since the dawn of time. Frodo needs to find the courage in himself to take on basically every evil entity within a three thousand mile radius. THAT makes for a story, engaging characters, and a world we can believe in. We want Gandalf to have magic because if there's magic there's the kind of heroic quest you just don't get in a 9 to 5 kinda job. Problem is, too many sci-fi writers try to be Faith Popcorn on steroids and ignore the need to tell us something about ourselves, yeah?
Gibson: We're fundamentally evil capitalist grubbing SOBs.
Orwell: We all fundamentally want freedom and will fight for it to the bitter end.
Lucas: Within every farm boy, there is a hero. And buy my toys, fanboy!
Any questions?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
First, I'd like to disagree with what many folks have said. Science fiction is not like ordinary fiction. I've read good SF that's lousy fiction; I've also read stuff billed as SF which wasn't, even though it made good fiction. Of course, SF is better if it's good fiction as well, but it's not vital. For example, SF benefits from realistic, subtle characterisation, but some of the great SF works have paper-thin, ludicrous characters, and they still work. Why? Because of the ideas.
IMO, SF is about ideas. They don't have to be about hard science, though many of the best ones are. They don't have to be physically possible, though again they often are. They don't even have to be fully comprehensible. They only have to be interesting and imaginative, and worked through with the other prerequisite: logic.
Good SF, like good humour, takes an idea and works through the consequences logically. It asks "What if?", and then goes on to tell us. This is where I think it diverges from fantasy; fantasy isn't interested in the consequences of the initial idea, merely using it as a device on which to hang a story. In SF, the plot is bound up with the idea itself. Some of the best SF takes the idea to its ultimate extreme; this may present us with a cautionary tale or dire warning, or conversely hopes or goals.
Some good SF uses the consequence of that idea to tell us about ourselves; the differences from the world of the story highlight aspects of our own world. Some great SF uses it to discuss the nature of the universe, of time, perception or reality itself. But none of these are essential. As I said, to me the essence of good SF is simply a good idea, followed through logically.
To take a few examples: I don't consider Star Wars to be real SF; it might make great fiction, but all the SF trappings are merely devices to tell a story that could be told just as well, though less spectacularly, in other ways. OTOH, I do consider The Truman Show to be great SF, for the sheer audacity of the central idea, and the wonderful logic with which it's followed through. I count some Star Trek episodes as SF; many not (though not all of those are bad stories). Blade Runner isn't good SF because it features androids; it's great SF because it uses them to ask questions about what it's like to be an android, how we develop emotions, and whether we can trust our memories.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
You had me all through the crackhead interpretation of his work---that Heinlein wrote his characters as cautionary examples---but I think the gratuitous reference to "M$" was a bit much.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Heinlein hated the idea of women-as-cattle that conventional culturalists consider "proper".
Err... I'm a little fuzzy on what you mean here. Could you explain?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
OK, I obviously don't get this moderation malarky!
It's very simple. Asking /. what makes good scifi is akin to throwing a molotov cocktail into a munitions plant. The results are likely to be highly entropic.
His middle name was "Kindred". That's just weird.
There's a lovely biography of him here. Note the highlights: dead twin sister inspiring themes of duality, depression leading to meth addiction leading to incredible productivity but also debilitating paranoia. Also, the incredibly weird beliefs. "This system took the form of a ship in outer space, delivering highly concentrated doses of information to him through beams of pink light."
Also note the suggestion that Mulder's search for his sister on The X-Files is one big PKD homage.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Gotta agree with you on Hyperion. Endymion/Rise of had strong structure - I cared about what happened, but some of the execution and detail work left me a little tired. The details of the first 2 books just absolutely rocked my universe.
People like to think that Neo-Fascism is "the best parts of fascism," and they like to think of a military-centralized government as fascism. You do the math. It's mostly the movie (with the "Master Race" overtones that have Heinlein spinning in his grave) that prompts the "hey, that's fascist!" flag.
I like Heinlein's plug for enlightened democracies and rational anarchism. More accurately, stage 1 should be called "Heinlein turns politics upside-down."
William Barton: Dark Sky Legion
Now, this is not High Art(tm), but its premise is very original, and Barton manages to pull it off: a galaxy-wide civilization of human colonies, established and held together solely by slower-than-light space ships. Currently out of print, but well worth tracking down.
David Brin: The Uplift Trilogies
Space Opera at its finest. If you read Brin's other works and didn't like them, try it anyway. If you read Sundiver and didn't like it, keep going anyway. Featuring truly alien aliens, insights into the thought patterns of space-faring dolphins, psi weaponry, privacy wasps, and more ways to cheat Einstein than Tesla would've dared to imagine - and all that in impeccable prose. Dune looks positively deserted in comparison.
Stanislav Lem: Golem
Lectures on life delivered by a machine vastly more intelligent than any human could hope to become. This should rightly be impossible to do convincingly, given that the writer is human after all, but at least in the German translation he is frighteningly convincing. So, until I find the time to learn Polish to read the original, I have to operate under the assumption that Lem is either an alien or a time traveller. For me, that makes our own universe a lot more interesting than any of the above.
Being a former comic book fan I'm a sucker for a crafty plot even if the dialogue and characters suck.. Tom Clancy, for example, his characters are dull (except in "Without Remorse", DAMN that's a good book) and his dialogue is basically all support for his politics, but he can come up with some cool plot twists. However, some of the authors you mentioned have created truly memorable characters. How can you not remember Randall Flagg :) this all just comes down to pure talent.
IMHO, Ayn Rand is overrated. At a friend's urgent coaxing, I finally read Atlas Shrugged a few years ago. That book is certainly not SF, as the technological "innovations" that help propel the plot are extremely bland and mind-numbingly unimaginative. The book is pretty much just a heavy-handed parable that repeatedly bludgeons the reader with its points long after they have become obvious and tiresome.
If Rand were a more talented writer, she could have written Atlas as an allegory or a compelling story in its own right with the subtext of her political message woven subtly into its fabric. Instead, the book is a hamfisted piece of propaganda which bored the hell out of me. And I'm an unabashed pseudo-laissez-faire capitalist!
Friday wasn't conceived and bred as a sex slave, she was conceived and bred as the best possible human short of the "supermen" (from the original short story) that went off to Olympus. Circumstances forced her into the lowest social order that did include women (and men) bred as sex toys, but she rebelled. In many ways, the entire story is about her "father's" attempt to undo the damage caused by those early experiences. Had he not gone to jail unexpectedly, she would have had the best education available, etc.
In many ways, I see this thread as a plea to the reader to not let our own opportunities go unanswered. We all (or almost all) had our own shitty childhoods, but we have free access to libraries and the web, low-cost access to physical conditioning facilties, etc. How much of it do we use, how much do we just wallow in self-pity at our pityful educations, poor choices on TV and television, etc.?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I agree that Niven and Pournelle's collaborations have resulted in some terrific stories. However, Legacy of Heorot also involved a third author: Steven Barnes.
I met Barnes and Niven at a book-signing for Legacy and got to ask them a few questions about another of their collaborations: Dream Park. Niven and Pournelle are a lot of fun and Footfall is probably the greatest thing they ever did together, but Dream Park absolutely destroys anything else Niven, Pournelle or Barnes have ever done separately or in collaboration. I have read pretty much every Known Space novel, story and anthlogy I could find and I dearly love Ringworld, Protector and the Smoke Ring series, but Dream Park beats them all.
Leaving aside the rest of the novel, Friday has the best opening line, paragraph and chapter of any book I have ever read.
I can't remember the exact words off the top of my head, but the opening line was something like "I killed him as the door dilated closed behind him." You immediately knew that this novel would have action, violence, and a futuristic setting. I can only compare this to "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" that gives you humor, horror and violence in just four words.
The opening paragraph reinforced all of this. We learned that the speaker was an agent of some kind - not just a brutal murder, that the setting was the "Kenya Beanstalk" so it's definitely set in the future, and that there's a heavy police presence in the form of floating cameras.
The opening chapter had our hero running across a world very different from our own ("Alaska Free State?" "Illinois Imperium?" and a world with space travel, beanstalks, underground tubes... and horsedrawn transportation on the surface?!), and the betrayal of our heroine as she returns to her home base.
The writing was incredibly tight, it got you hooked and at least slightly familiarized with the universe without giving away much of the ultimate story.... No matter what you think of the rest of the novel, the opening chapter is stunning.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I loved Heinlein's earlier works and as a kid, I absolutely devoured his juvenile stuff.
I enjoyed much of his later work until I began to realize that it was virtually all the same. I Will Fear No Evil is basically The Number of the Beast but with a few changes thrown in. Well, all right, that's an exaggeration.
Fear explores gender roles and what happens to them when a person quite unintentionally undergoes a sex change, while Number explores the nature and origin of social mores and how unquestioned adherence to them could actually become detrimental at some point in the future, but essentially, they're both just ways for Heinlein to say that sexual taboos and stereotypes are all artificial constructs and we should just drop the pretense and fuck anyone we want (men, women, siblings, clones, parents, animals, machines, etc.) because it feels good and disease and mutant children aren't really a concern any more.
Obviously, this all began with Stranger In A Strange Land, but everything after Stranger was just variations on a theme and it got old. Perhaps if he'd bothered to actually flesh out new characters for each book, instead of putting a fresh coat of paint on the same supermen and superwomen that appeared in nearly all of his later books....
A couple names that i haven't seen mentioned often/enough that i feel manage to do this:
Vernor Vinge in his "Zones of Thought" books ("A Fire upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky") and his "Bobble" series ("Marooned in Realtime" and i believe "Peace War" though i haven't managed to find a copy of it yet) The first postulates that the amount of advanced technology and sentience possible varies depending on where you are. (in general, the greater the concentration of stars in the area, the "stupider" everything gets) The second deals in large part with the results of a technology that allows the user to temporarily stop time for everything in a small area.
S. M. Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" trillogy, which handles the idea of a medium sized group of people getting sent back in time far better than any other attempt i've ever read, dealing with both psychological and techological issues in great depth.
Michael Flynn's "In the Country of the Blind" is one of the the best conspiracy books i've ever read, and also one of the best books dealing with psychohistory/cliology.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
And the US are the Harkonnen?
Well, As someone who is trying to break into SF I can say if is far easier to define what makes SF truly awful.
-- Sexual Fetishisim: Any story written to legitimize the authors sexual fetishism will be awful beyond words.
-- The "Tacky Document Theory": Any time the full purpose of the story is to extoll some great historical document, the story will suck. ("we sought out the great ancient secret, and it began 'we the people...'"
-- Mmmm, Cruchy: The old "to serve man is a cookbook" was a great idea. It doesn't need to be written again folks.
-- The Dragon Ball Z effect: Any story where each heroic feat must out-do the previous until each character is destroying planets with a glance, simply must suck.
-- Did I mention sexual fetishisim? Really. It's bad. Don't do it.
Consider This Authoratative Guide to all thigs wrong with SF and SF fandom...
For instance, I will probably never be able to sell my novel unless I subtitle it "Not Gay Porn". The problem is that I have a character who's story arc, to be believable, has to start "very low". To that end, he starts the book naked in a cage. My intent is to make the reader think of him as property. It works quite well. But I know in my soul that any editor will see that and think "oh, god, another 'slave naked in a cage' book" and fire off a rejection without guilt.
(There is no explicit, and less than 100 words of implicit sex in the book, but how do you say that believably to editors that are being burried in alternate-star-trek-universe furry porn? 8-)
There really is a huge body of bad sexual frustration out in the SF community, at least among the "I'll become an author, then people will finally see my mind and accept me, and that will finally show my parents that I'm NOT a freak" crowd.
So, what makes SF "good SF"? The presense of thoughtful insight into the human condition, the presence of internal consistency in the authors vision, the presence of something to say, good punctuation, and the utter absence of Spock-as-a-wombat having sex with the dophinan Captian Kirk.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I was beginning to wonder if her name would come up. The Vorkosigan series, particularly the Miles Naismith story line, contains some of the most amazing stuff I've ever read in this medium. A little hack-ish around the edges, but fantastically engaging and enjoyable.
Oddly enough, numerous of my favorite sci-fi/fantasty books were written by women. I find the way women think through fiction to be slightly different from the male perspective in ways which I can't put my finger on, but which remain endlessly fascinating nonetheless. Welcome to the human race, I suppose.
-Fantastic Lad
ps. Anyone remember who was the author of novel "Greenhouse" (or whatever it was in english... only read the translation)? I remember it was written decades ago, and still it's got to be one of best sci-fi novels written... the idea of humans brains actually being just a parasite is at the same time funny, scary, and deeply ironic. And the idea of global warming (which lead to humans brains leaving human skulls as it became too warm for them!) wasn't much of a theory back then.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Good posting, except for the mis-spelling of the word Lotus. :)
Nice try, but according to the fons et origo:
Ou)d' a)/ra Lwtofa/goi mhdonq' e(ta/roisin o)/leqron
h(mete/rois, a)lla/ sfi do/san lwtoi=o pa/sasqai.
Odyssey, Iota 92-93
Yet the lotos-eaters did not determine upon destruction for my companions, but to them gave lotos to eat.
(The Greek is represented using betacode, a long-standing way of doing Greek in ASCII).
lwtoi=o is the Homeric genitive of lw/tos, as per Richard John Cunliffe, p. 253 of A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. Outside ascii, lw/tos is spelled lambda,omega,tau,omicron,sigma, or as transliterated, 'lotos'. This is also how e.g. Tennyson spelled in (in his poem, "The Lotos - Eaters", the title of which translates the word Lwtofa/goi (Lotophagoi) in the first line I cited from the Odyssey). "Lotus" is the Latinized spelling, and so is not incorrect, but is less correct than "lotos". If you want to be pedantic.
Not that this matters, but hey, I couldn't let that one rest, man. I'll take the karma hit.
To get back on topic, the earliest genuine science fiction is Lucian (Greek, about 2nd c. ad, to Homer's 8th c. bc.). And of course there's that Kepler story about going to the moon the earliest "modern" SF story (though hardly SF by our standards).
For recent science fiction, though, you can't beat Dune, you're right.
Wow, this was a blast from the past for me, as
that was one of the first SF books I ever read
-- thanks for the nostalgic memory
In fact, "The City and the Stars" may have been
the book that introduced me to the genre. It must
be time for a reread though, as I seem to recall
it as a sort of thinking person's Logan's Run,
which surely must be wildly inaccurate and only
just short of being an insult.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
A 3 year old can understand geosynchronous orbits. Its a 24 hour orbit. Ohhh.... complicated...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.