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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 16:24:30 GMT -5
I finished Dune this afternoon (in the oppressive heat of a July day with no AC because the power was out, good mood atmosphere for reading this book, but I would have preferred the comfort of the air-conditioned room I read most of the book in). I have to fall on the side of those who really liked it and was impressed by it. It certainly has flaws, and seems weaker in hindsight because we got used to the ground it broke being the de rigeur space of sci-fi in its wake, but there was quite a lot I could sink my teeth into and really groove to the experience of reading it.
I've also read the first handful of stories form Dangerous Visions featuring Lester del Ray, Robert Silverberg, and Frederick Pohl. I got bogged down in the fourth story by Philip Jose Farmer though.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 17:03:14 GMT -5
I am kind of sampling a lot of different things right now, mixing comics and prose. As I read my way through Dangerous Visions, I am also making my way through Worlds of Wonder. David Gerrold's book on writing sci-fi and fantasy and Language of the Night, Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of essays n sci-fi and fantasy, all the while still working through the Sci-Fi Chronicles book I mentioned in the sci-fi suggestion thread (I'm up to Lensman chronologically as I make my way through). I am still working through first Valerian collection for comics and have the second volume of RR's Le Bras d'Orin on the docket as well. I go back to work next week, so I need to finish off some of this pile this weekend.
-M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2017 0:06:54 GMT -5
I am kind of sampling a lot of different things right now, mixing comics and prose. As I read my way through Dangerous Visions, I am also making my way through Worlds of Wonder. David Gerrold's book on writing sci-fi and fantasy and Language of the Night, Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of essays n sci-fi and fantasy, all the while still working through the Sci-Fi Chronicles book I mentioned in the sci-fi suggestion thread (I'm up to Lensman chronologically as I make my way through). I am still working through first Valerian collection for comics and have the second volume of RR's Le Bras d'Orin on the docket as well. I go back to work next week, so I need to finish off some of this pile this weekend. -M How are you feeling about Dangerous Visions. Probably the most important SF anthology ever. I need to re-read it...it's been years.
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Post by berkley on Jul 22, 2017 0:36:04 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to finally reading Dangerous Visions in its entirety (I have read a few of the individual stories over the years) sometime in the next couple of years but I want to fill in some of the holes in my SF reading from earlier decades.
How is the second collection, Again, Dangerous Visions, BTW? I've always assumed it too is an essential SF anthology but it just occurred to me that I don't actually recall hearing or reading anything about it one way or the other.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 22, 2017 1:28:27 GMT -5
I read ADV first; got it from the Science Fiction Book Club. I joined just before it was published. It's worth reading. I don't remember thinking that either of the two books was significantly better than the other. The then-eagerly-anticipated third volume has still never been published.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 22, 2017 7:53:47 GMT -5
Dragon and Justice Timothy Zahn I'm not sure I posted the other reviews of this... this is the 5th of the series. I definitely think this series probably is just a bit too long. While we learn alot of answers to mysteries here... the story wasn't clamoring for them... settling the mystery of Jack's parents could easily have been undiscovered, or even been a side book. Tying it in to the bad guys of the K'da story is just a little much, it's a big universe, all the evil in it shouldn't come from one guy. We're also getting a repeat of the same moral schitck with Allison and Taneem... sure, its a little different in that we don't know exactly what Allison's deal is, and Taneem is sorta a 'rookie' dragon, but its similar enough to annoy me. There is just alot of Allison in this book, and she's completely uninteresting, IMO, and I'll be a monkey's uncle if she doesn't turn out to save the day in the end. Hopefully I'm wrong, since that'll be disappointing, but we'll see. Zahn does usually stick the landing on his books, so hopefully the fluff was just to make it so it was 2 trilogies long and we'll get a good ending
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2017 9:09:23 GMT -5
I am kind of sampling a lot of different things right now, mixing comics and prose. As I read my way through Dangerous Visions, I am also making my way through Worlds of Wonder. David Gerrold's book on writing sci-fi and fantasy and Language of the Night, Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of essays n sci-fi and fantasy, all the while still working through the Sci-Fi Chronicles book I mentioned in the sci-fi suggestion thread (I'm up to Lensman chronologically as I make my way through). I am still working through first Valerian collection for comics and have the second volume of RR's Le Bras d'Orin on the docket as well. I go back to work next week, so I need to finish off some of this pile this weekend. -M How are you feeling about Dangerous Visions. Probably the most important SF anthology ever. I need to re-read it...it's been years. I am into the 4th story of the anthology, so still a ways to go. I enjoyed the first 3 short stories (by Lester del Rey, Robert Silverberg, and Frederick Pohl), but I am bogging down in Philip Jose Farmer's novella Riders of the Purple Wage-but I have always had trouble getting into Farmer's prose style, so it's not entirely surprising for me. I need to buckle down and finish the novella, but I can't quite seem to get into it. I don't expect to like everything in every anthology, important or not, but I do try to at least read everything in it if I can to pus the limits of my comfort zone at times. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2017 9:59:08 GMT -5
How are you feeling about Dangerous Visions. Probably the most important SF anthology ever. I need to re-read it...it's been years. I am into the 4th story of the anthology, so still a ways to go. I enjoyed the first 3 short stories (by Lester del Rey, Robert Silverberg, and Frederick Pohl), but I am bogging down in Philip Jose Farmer's novella Riders of the Purple Wage-but I have always had trouble getting into Farmer's prose style, so it's not entirely surprising for me. I need to buckle down and finish the novella, but I can't quite seem to get into it. I don't expect to like everything in every anthology, important or not, but I do try to at least read everything in it if I can to pus the limits of my comfort zone at times. -M Interesting. It may be stylistic difficulties. I'm a huge Farmer fan. And that particular story won the Hugo for Best Novella and is generally acknowledged as a classic and probably his best short work. It's been probably a couple decades since I've read it though. I do think that stylistically you have to be in a certain mindset to get in to it, because it's a weird bit of writing.
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Post by Jesse on Jul 25, 2017 14:09:51 GMT -5
I finished Dune this afternoon (in the oppressive heat of a July day with no AC because the power was out, good mood atmosphere for reading this book, but I would have preferred the comfort of the air-conditioned room I read most of the book in). I have to fall on the side of those who really liked it and was impressed by it. It certainly has flaws, and seems weaker in hindsight because we got used to the ground it broke being the de rigeur space of sci-fi in its wake, but there was quite a lot I could sink my teeth into and really groove to the experience of reading it. -M I've been wanting to read this one for awhile. Do you plan of reading any of the other books in the Dune saga? I've heard Children of Dune was great but that Dune Messiah was not.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2017 14:27:45 GMT -5
I finished Dune this afternoon (in the oppressive heat of a July day with no AC because the power was out, good mood atmosphere for reading this book, but I would have preferred the comfort of the air-conditioned room I read most of the book in). I have to fall on the side of those who really liked it and was impressed by it. It certainly has flaws, and seems weaker in hindsight because we got used to the ground it broke being the de rigeur space of sci-fi in its wake, but there was quite a lot I could sink my teeth into and really groove to the experience of reading it. -M I've been wanting to read this one for awhile. Do you plan of reading any of the other books in the Dune saga? I've heard Children of Dune was great but that Dune Messiah was not. I eventually plan on at least trying to read the original books by Frank Herbert. I have no desire to read the continuations by his son or by Kevin Anderson or other pastiche writers for now. The problem is most of my books and comics (including the later volumes by Herbert) were packed up when we were switching the rooms of the house around and I was getting the finished attic space for my studio/office/comic room while moving our bedroom downstairs, but I ended up having surgery before I could get the upstairs repainted or stuff unpacked and it will be fall before I can really dig back into the project to try to start/finish the rest of it. The rest of the books are in a box somewhere upstairs under tarps/plastic as I was getting the room ready for painting, and I have no idea which books are where and won't until I make progress on the room upstairs sometime after mid-September when the weight limits for lifting post-surgery are upped to a more reasonable level and I can move boxes and such without constraint. Dune itself was left out because it was on a shelf down in the finished basement rather than on a shelf in my then office like the rest, so it was accessible. So when I can get to my books more easily, I will start the rest of the series (unless I get impatient and just borrow copies from the library). -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 29, 2017 14:00:50 GMT -5
The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I tend not to read short fiction in isolation, waiting for a collection or anthology. But I had a spare few minutes and was intrigued by this 2014 Hugo winner for best novelette. I'd never heard of the author, but the story description was very interesting. This is a super fun read. It's a bit alt-history, a bit pulp and I've seen it described as "punch-card punk" which is both a fun and apt description. Essentially a catastrophic event in the fifties causes man to come together and head toward the stars. The space travel is very Bradburyian, but the science is closer to real. Elma, the titular hero, is a 63 year old woman who was one of the astronauts who took man to Mars. And she longs to go back into space. Saying much more will reveal way too much of the plot. Needless to say this is a lovely story on a number of levels and I HIGHLY recommend it, especially since you can read it in a very short time...and for free. The Lady Astronaut of Mars.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 29, 2017 21:38:29 GMT -5
That's a great cover, too.. sounds good
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 2, 2017 15:04:24 GMT -5
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman Gaiman's second short-story collection, this one includes his Hugo winning short story, A Study in Emerald, which is a fun Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu mash-up; the Hugo nominated How to Talk to Girls at Parties; and The Monarch of the Glen, which continues the adventures of Shadow Moon from American Gods. I'd read this before, but it had been quite a while and I really wanted to read The Monarch of the Glen again since I'd recently re-read American Gods. As always Gaiman is well worth reading. Any anthology will have its ups and downs. But the downs here aren't very deep.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2017 15:21:51 GMT -5
I am currently reading The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics by James Kakalios (also author of the Physics of Super-Heroes). It is an attempt to explain/introduce/examine quantum mechanics ina math light way for someone like me approaching it from a layman's perspective. It's pretty clear Kalikos is a comics fan-his section titles are a dead giveaway-Section 1: Tales to Astonish, Section 2: Challengers of the Unknown, Section 3: Tales of the Atomic Knights, Section 4: Weird Science Stories etc. I am just starting to dive into it, mostly for research purposes to give myself a grounding for something I am trying to write, but I enjoy reading about this stuff in general, so I have enjoyed it so far. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 2, 2017 19:32:16 GMT -5
The Expert Dreamers edited by Frederik Pohl Looking at the line up of this book, it SHOULD be awesome. Most of the short stories, though, aren't stories so much as essays with an example. It does contain 'Lenny' by Asimov (one of my favorite robot short stories), but otherwise there's not much here unless you're a completist for something contained therein.
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