What I was trying to say was that I found the quality of the Ringworld series to deteriorate to quickly. But you are right - I should have mentioned Known Space. I haven't really gotten into it - I've read N-Space and enjoyed it and Niven himself mentiones it as a good place to start.
Agree with you on Lucifers Hammer and Mote. Great book. Haven't read the other two, but has been meaning to pick them up.
I just started the Hyperion series, and after that, the Foundation trilogy. Would you put the Ringworld series in this kind of class of a whole universe unfolded for the reader? I'll need something to read after the Foundation books!:)
I'm not the one you are responding to but: yes. And no. The ringworld series fall off to quickly, in my opinion. Ringworld Engineers is okay (for a Niven book, which means better than most:-) and does a good job of answering a lot of the questions raised in the first book.
The Ringworld Throne is.... not something to bend over backwards to get your hands on. It's really two stories, one of them not really related to the Ringworld (could have happened any where) and one... just bad.
Your are certainly ripping through the master pieces. It's kind of sad that you read Night's Dawn before you read the Foundation books - you would have gotten more out of Night's Dawn if you had read more classics first.
I would recommend that you read some robot stories by Asimov before you read foundation. The more classics you have read, the better you'll understand the new classics. Names: Heinlein, Harrison, EE 'doc' Smith (If you had read Doc Smith you would have had double the fun when you read Peter Hamilton), Poul Anderson.
When you are done with your current reading plan: go for everything by Iain (M) Banks, read everything else by Simmons, check if you like John Barnes, I've aversions to David Brin, but can understand why most people like him, Ken Macleod, Linda Nagata,....
You are right, but they do give the people with something interesting to say the time to say it.
It doesn't take long to write a "first post!" or similar, but it take a while to both read the article and write an intelligent responce to it. If you know that you have twenty minuts to do it, you'll use those twenty instead of rushing it.
There may be more fluff, but the quality of the rest may rise...
It's fairly cheap and it would probably mean that people with something intelligent to say about the article, will actually read all of it and think about what they want to say instead of just pressing "reply" in the hopes of not being bumped to post #132 (#131 is a comment to a "first post" and #133 is a comment to a "imagine a beowulf..." post).
The last time I actually spend a long time on an article it actually ended up drowning in a lot of noise (well, somebody hopefully read it, but the story was to old for it to get any mod-points).
As long as you don't let people post before the story is fully public...
The Matrix is to movies what wolf3d or doom have been to games. It has set a trend, a particular style of filming which lots of movies seem to be aping
Sorry, but just about everything in The Matrix is either stolen from Hong Kong (john woo) movies or japanese Anime. The movies you think are aping The Matrix is in reality aping these earlier movies.
It would be more presice to say that The Matrix is to movies what Duke Nuke'm 3D was to games. It stole everything good that worked from Wolfenstein 3D and added multiplayer and better visuals.
I say "stolen" you may want to say "was inspired from"....
It is not compatible with the forthcoming Memory Sick Pro format.
I'm sure that they did that on purpose.
I for one will never you a gadget that uses memory stick. Sony needs to open up the standard or forget about it.
Memory stick is way to expensive and have way to many broken promises behind is (1Mb sticks should have been here last year, and now people will never get them, as they will be mem-stick-pro).
Seriously! I've a fairly good site going - more than 300 reviews, which is lots more content then most book sites (which are mostly just lists of top selling books on amazon).
I get about 150 unique visitors a day (not enough to make money on banners so I don't have any, but more than must Science Fiction book review site), and that has, on average, given me 10us$ a month (thats the total from both amazon us and amazon uk). Even with the review copies, that some publishers are nice enough to send me thrown into the calculation, this is less than I spend on the site.
I would love to read and review full time for my own site (there wouldn't be much point to it if I did it for somebody else..), but I'm not prepared to learn how to live on bugs and leftovers.
Besides I still enjoy programming as a professional... (changing to php has given me new life).
The hard drive noise isn't to bad with the new fluid baring drives and the fans can be changed (pdf). But you are right, it will never be totally quiet.
The greatest plus of the xbox is MAME. Galaga is still my favourite game:-).
It looks a bit better than an xbox, but other than that it does nothing that an xbox with xbmp can't do cheaper.
My modded xbox with an 120gb hard drive and xbmp has played everything that I've thrown at it (movie wise), including old divx formats that this thing can't handle. Cheaper (Getting MS to subsidize your hardware helps, thanks Bill!).
Besides the usual online calls of "I need a medic", there's usually lots of clapping when somebody gets off a good shot, cheering and booing, misc. small talk between level loads.
We actually meet an hour before our bi-weekly sessions and eat together. Lots of fun.
Why not just write "internet cafe" or "net cafe" instead of Baang, which nobody know what mean? later on you could tell us that they are call Baangs in korea.
Why is it that people seem to go out of the way to make/. headlines either stupid or impossible to understand?
Anyway, I've been playing C/S on net cafe for a couple of years here in Denmark (bi-weekly).
Lately a lot of people has shifted towards Battle Field 1942 though.... could be the next big thing..
It has been a bit since you read any new science fiction hasn't it?
Even though you post has some trollish elements it is, with in the narrow confides of the examples you mention, somewhat correct. Heinlein was an offbeat loony, with strange tastes (but still a wonderful read). Niven I won't comment on as I cant remember any of the Ringworld novels except the first one (my very effective "garbage in - garbage out" filter triumphs again!). But that's doesn't translate to every and all science fiction books and definitely not to much published the last ten years and the question was about "new science fiction authors". Also I have to question why you have to tell us this... are you trying to save us or are you simply trolling? Anyway, no thanks.
I would say that science fiction has done a lot of growing up the last ten years. There has been a blooming of new writers that both have their technology and their characters right. Maybe not all the time and maybe not both part to perfection, but it's a lot better than in the post war "golden age" (was that the second or third golden age? I lost count...).
As for the original question:
But as others has suggested, try diversifying a bit. Try a bit of horror, a bit of crime, some elitist literature. It's all fun if it's well written. If you are afraid take some on some authors that you already know from science fiction, like Dan Simmons for horror, Asimov for crime. For something that you can pull out of your hat if you should meet a bunch of elitist snobs I recommend Poul Auster (The New York Trilogy is probably a good place to start), sometimes he's so far out that it kind of borders on science fiction or at least fantasy (only they label it magic realism).
My top list of new authors (what was the definition again?), in random order:
Iain (M.) Banks. Both his science fiction and his mainstream fiction is wonderful. His culture novels are not to be missed. Start of with something like Against A Dark Background.
John Barnes: Funny dark and witty often with a very dark view of the future.
Linda Nagata: Most of her (all to few) books work with in the same universe and most looks at the question of what we can make of man.
Peter F. Hamilton: For epic space (soap-) spaceopera this it the guy to go to. Endless never ending pages of action.
Ken MacLeod: For a political (leftwing) look at a possible future Ken is the man. Provoking and interesting alternative the topias of the seventies (his first series is the best - The Fall Revolution).
Neal Stephenson: Cyberpunk (I hate that word) done right. What William Gibson would write if he had the talent.
Greg Egan: Edge technology all the way. Egan always takes his ideas to the limit. Either we go to the lowest level (quantum is just a stop on the way) or we go for the upperlimit (experimenting with the total of totally).
That's it - there are lot's more, but those are some of my favorites. But again, treat your self to something different once in a while, just don't over do it to quickly like when I tried to read one my wifes Karen Blixen novels:-S.
If I remember correctly the case was more about Newsbooster stealing content from the news sites than them linking to them. If I remember correctly, what they where doing was pretty much the same thing as news.googl.com is doing (took the headline and a bit of the article and then linked to the original article).
It may be your opinion, but your argument doesn't hold.
There where "artists" like Britney Spears before napster or even the internet.
Musicians didn't make (lots of) money before the invention of radio and records. Right now technology makes it possible for (some of them) to make lots of money. It a few years technology has made it impossible for most of them to make (lots of) money.
If everybody "stole" their music, the record labels wouldn't have the money to promote artists like Britney Spears and only musicians who where willing to promote their own music (by giving it way) would make money (on t-shirt and live acts).
Things change - learn to live with it. In the old days musicians had to play at least a couple of gigs a week to make a living. My guess is that those days will return.
I think that Will Smith proved that he can play without acting like a moron all the time in Six Degrees of Seperation.
He has been on the slippery slope towards doing an "Eddie Murphy" lately (not a positive ting), but I'm having a hard time seeing how he can do his usual "everything I say is funny, so why aren't you laughing" rutine in this setting.
But this is hollywood, so I guess that you are right, be prepared for a big disappointment, but hope for the best.
The letter combination DVD isn't to be found anywhere in the article.
There's talk about 1000gb harddiscs, but not DVDs.
One of the stupidest headlines on/. in a while...
As to the idea it self: why? I don't need to excatly what or how I said something to my friends or family. In fact I dont want to...
One good idea, that they don't mention, would be automatic transscription of the audio conversations, thrus making them searchable. Now, that would be nice...
If you are ten people, one of them could be fired, by your argument, without anybody noticing.
Let me turn it around - how many procent do you need before it matters? 12? 15?
But I agree, one can't upgrade everytime theres a 10% speed increase. One has to do the cost/benefit thing carefully first (and then ignore the c/b and just spend, spend, spend - the only way to get the economy back on track;)
Slashdot Mirror
The article doesn't say - it just says "better", but does anybody have any idea how good conductores these nanotubes are?
Besides the other advantages already mentioned:
A magnetic (or maybe optical) stabilizer would be possible. Something that compensates for small shakes. This would improve accuracy tremendously.
That would make the perfect sniper rifle.
You actually have a collection of "The Catcher in the Rye"?
Dude, the copyright date isn't the same as the year you are allowed to read it. You do not have to buy a new one every year...
(ducking and running away laughing...)
What I was trying to say was that I found the quality of the Ringworld series to deteriorate to quickly. But you are right - I should have mentioned Known Space. I haven't really gotten into it - I've read N-Space and enjoyed it and Niven himself mentiones it as a good place to start.
Agree with you on Lucifers Hammer and Mote. Great book. Haven't read the other two, but has been meaning to pick them up.
Ah.. so may books - so little time.
I'm not the one you are responding to but: yes. And no. The ringworld series fall off to quickly, in my opinion. Ringworld Engineers is okay (for a Niven book, which means better than most
The Ringworld Throne is
Your are certainly ripping through the master pieces. It's kind of sad that you read Night's Dawn before you read the Foundation books - you would have gotten more out of Night's Dawn if you had read more classics first.
I would recommend that you read some robot stories by Asimov before you read foundation. The more classics you have read, the better you'll understand the new classics. Names: Heinlein, Harrison, EE 'doc' Smith (If you had read Doc Smith you would have had double the fun when you read Peter Hamilton), Poul Anderson.
When you are done with your current reading plan: go for everything by Iain (M) Banks, read everything else by Simmons, check if you like John Barnes, I've aversions to David Brin, but can understand why most people like him, Ken Macleod, Linda Nagata,....
You are right, but they do give the people with something interesting to say the time to say it.
It doesn't take long to write a "first post!" or similar, but it take a while to both read the article and write an intelligent responce to it. If you know that you have twenty minuts to do it, you'll use those twenty instead of rushing it.
There may be more fluff, but the quality of the rest may rise...
It's fairly cheap and it would probably mean that people with something intelligent to say about the article, will actually read all of it and think about what they want to say instead of just pressing "reply" in the hopes of not being bumped to post #132 (#131 is a comment to a "first post" and #133 is a comment to a "imagine a beowulf..." post).
The last time I actually spend a long time on an article it actually ended up drowning in a lot of noise (well, somebody hopefully read it, but the story was to old for it to get any mod-points).
As long as you don't let people post before the story is fully public...
Sorry, but just about everything in The Matrix is either stolen from Hong Kong (john woo) movies or japanese Anime. The movies you think are aping The Matrix is in reality aping these earlier movies.
It would be more presice to say that The Matrix is to movies what Duke Nuke'm 3D was to games. It stole everything good that worked from Wolfenstein 3D and added multiplayer and better visuals.
I say "stolen" you may want to say "was inspired from"....
(for more information read here and here).
John Sundman who has written this article has also written a quite interestion book called Cheap Complex Devices (he mentions is in the article).
It's kind of wierd and strange - the idea is that the novel was one of two novels written by a computer program.
I've reviewed it here.
And as always the really weak link is the human one...
:-)
But then again getting the password of a single user reset may be a big thing for that user, but in the overall scheme of things, it's not much.
As for Merlin; well, just downloading the 35mil Credit Card numbers, could take a while
I'm sure that they did that on purpose.
I for one will never you a gadget that uses memory stick. Sony needs to open up the standard or forget about it.
Memory stick is way to expensive and have way to many broken promises behind is (1Mb sticks should have been here last year, and now people will never get them, as they will be mem-stick-pro).
.. and expect to live of the amazon procentage.
Seriously! I've a fairly good site going - more than 300 reviews, which is lots more content then most book sites (which are mostly just lists of top selling books on amazon).
I get about 150 unique visitors a day (not enough to make money on banners so I don't have any, but more than must Science Fiction book review site), and that has, on average, given me 10us$ a month (thats the total from both amazon us and amazon uk). Even with the review copies, that some publishers are nice enough to send me thrown into the calculation, this is less than I spend on the site.
I would love to read and review full time for my own site (there wouldn't be much point to it if I did it for somebody else..), but I'm not prepared to learn how to live on bugs and leftovers.
Besides I still enjoy programming as a professional... (changing to php has given me new life).
Good luck on changing your life...
The hard drive noise isn't to bad with the new fluid baring drives and the fans can be changed (pdf). But you are right, it will never be totally quiet.
:-).
The greatest plus of the xbox is MAME. Galaga is still my favourite game
It looks a bit better than an xbox, but other than that it does nothing that an xbox with xbmp can't do cheaper.
My modded xbox with an 120gb hard drive and xbmp has played everything that I've thrown at it (movie wise), including old divx formats that this thing can't handle. Cheaper (Getting MS to subsidize your hardware helps, thanks Bill!).
There's usually lots of communication going on.
Besides the usual online calls of "I need a medic", there's usually lots of clapping when somebody gets off a good shot, cheering and booing, misc. small talk between level loads.
We actually meet an hour before our bi-weekly sessions and eat together. Lots of fun.
Why not just write "internet cafe" or "net cafe" instead of Baang, which nobody know what mean? later on you could tell us that they are call Baangs in korea.
/. headlines either stupid or impossible to understand?
Why is it that people seem to go out of the way to make
Anyway, I've been playing C/S on net cafe for a couple of years here in Denmark (bi-weekly).
Lately a lot of people has shifted towards Battle Field 1942 though.... could be the next big thing..
Even though you post has some trollish elements it is, with in the narrow confides of the examples you mention, somewhat correct. Heinlein was an offbeat loony, with strange tastes (but still a wonderful read). Niven I won't comment on as I cant remember any of the Ringworld novels except the first one (my very effective "garbage in - garbage out" filter triumphs again!). But that's doesn't translate to every and all science fiction books and definitely not to much published the last ten years and the question was about "new science fiction authors". Also I have to question why you have to tell us this... are you trying to save us or are you simply trolling? Anyway, no thanks.
I would say that science fiction has done a lot of growing up the last ten years. There has been a blooming of new writers that both have their technology and their characters right. Maybe not all the time and maybe not both part to perfection, but it's a lot better than in the post war "golden age" (was that the second or third golden age? I lost count...).
As for the original question:
But as others has suggested, try diversifying a bit. Try a bit of horror, a bit of crime, some elitist literature. It's all fun if it's well written. If you are afraid take some on some authors that you already know from science fiction, like Dan Simmons for horror, Asimov for crime. For something that you can pull out of your hat if you should meet a bunch of elitist snobs I recommend Poul Auster (The New York Trilogy is probably a good place to start), sometimes he's so far out that it kind of borders on science fiction or at least fantasy (only they label it magic realism).
My top list of new authors (what was the definition again?), in random order:
Iain (M.) Banks. Both his science fiction and his mainstream fiction is wonderful. His culture novels are not to be missed. Start of with something like Against A Dark Background.
John Barnes: Funny dark and witty often with a very dark view of the future.
Linda Nagata: Most of her (all to few) books work with in the same universe and most looks at the question of what we can make of man.
Peter F. Hamilton: For epic space (soap-) spaceopera this it the guy to go to. Endless never ending pages of action.
Ken MacLeod: For a political (leftwing) look at a possible future Ken is the man. Provoking and interesting alternative the topias of the seventies (his first series is the best - The Fall Revolution).
Neal Stephenson: Cyberpunk (I hate that word) done right. What William Gibson would write if he had the talent.
Greg Egan: Edge technology all the way. Egan always takes his ideas to the limit. Either we go to the lowest level (quantum is just a stop on the way) or we go for the upperlimit (experimenting with the total of totally).
That's it - there are lot's more, but those are some of my favorites. But again, treat your self to something different once in a while, just don't over do it to quickly like when I tried to read one my wifes Karen Blixen novels :-S.
(shameless link to my own site with information all these authors)
Oh, also try picking up a magazine (my favorite is Interzone), that's a good way to find new authors.
CNN has an article on the original case.
If I remember correctly the case was more about Newsbooster stealing content from the news sites than them linking to them. If I remember correctly, what they where doing was pretty much the same thing as news.googl.com is doing (took the headline and a bit of the article and then linked to the original article).
But the sentence still doesn't make much sense...
...or I would have been able to see that there should be a negation somewhere in the last part of that sentence. My bad.
Arg! It's an evil plot to make me look silly. Hand me that roll of tinfoil please....
... or he would be able to tell us about them!
It may be your opinion, but your argument doesn't hold.
There where "artists" like Britney Spears before napster or even the internet.
Musicians didn't make (lots of) money before the invention of radio and records. Right now technology makes it possible for (some of them) to make lots of money. It a few years technology has made it impossible for most of them to make (lots of) money.
If everybody "stole" their music, the record labels wouldn't have the money to promote artists like Britney Spears and only musicians who where willing to promote their own music (by giving it way) would make money (on t-shirt and live acts).
Things change - learn to live with it. In the old days musicians had to play at least a couple of gigs a week to make a living. My guess is that those days will return.
He has been on the slippery slope towards doing an "Eddie Murphy" lately (not a positive ting), but I'm having a hard time seeing how he can do his usual "everything I say is funny, so why aren't you laughing" rutine in this setting.
But this is hollywood, so I guess that you are right, be prepared for a big disappointment, but hope for the best.
I wonder who'll play the role of Susan Calvin...
The letter combination DVD isn't to be found anywhere in the article.
/. in a while...
There's talk about 1000gb harddiscs, but not DVDs.
One of the stupidest headlines on
As to the idea it self: why? I don't need to excatly what or how I said something to my friends or family. In fact I dont want to...
One good idea, that they don't mention, would be automatic transscription of the audio conversations, thrus making them searchable. Now, that would be nice...
Really cool pictures. I love the first two - they look like something from a Kraftwerk LP (or CD) cover.
How many people are "we"?
;)
If you are ten people, one of them could be fired, by your argument, without anybody noticing.
Let me turn it around - how many procent do you need before it matters? 12? 15?
But I agree, one can't upgrade everytime theres a 10% speed increase. One has to do the cost/benefit thing carefully first (and then ignore the c/b and just spend, spend, spend - the only way to get the economy back on track