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Post by berkley on Oct 14, 2015 21:09:33 GMT -5
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke I watched a bit of the TV show... it didn't totally grab my attention, but for whatever reason my wife was inspired to get the book out of the library. She hated it so completely, she not only didn't finish it, but heckled me the whole time I was reading it. While I didn't quite hate it that much, I certainly wouldn't say I liked it. It's hard to call it a novel, because very little happens in it's 1000 pages. The author is brilliant at capturing the dialogue and flavor of early 19th century England. Unfortunately, she realizes this very early on and can't help but drone on for hundreds of pages about not much in particular. It's very clear she had a great time making up her history of British Magic, and it's clearly quite extensive. But the 100+ footnotes (which are sometimes several pages long themselves), do really do anything but add to the mood. The depth is completely useless, since nothing ever happens. We're just left with a bunch of names and events that don't really tie in to anything else. Sure, Mr Strange goes and help Wellington defeat Napoleon, but that's really a side light. Not to mention the fact that they completely ignore the War of 1812, even though that should have been something the various government types were worrying about. By the time the action happens (around page 800 or so), it almost has to be disappointing, since it was so long anticipated (and, might I add, entirely predictable). In such books, the characters are often the saving grace, but here they are pretty much straight from central casting, not much nuance or interest to be found. If you're very, very fond of 19th century English lit, you'll probably love reading this, just to let the setting roll over you... Ms Clarke does excel at that. Otherwise, either watch the TV show or skip it... there are far better things to spend the time reading 1000 pages on. I had pretty much the same reaction to this one myself. There were isolated things - lines, scenes, bits of dialogue or description - I thought very nicely done, but they were scattered amongst a lot of forgettable prose and the book as a whole was a disappointment. It's obvious Clarke is a talented writer, though, and I hope she can put that talent to better use in her future work.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 15, 2015 20:39:19 GMT -5
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
I grabbed this at random at the library, and it turns out it's a Hugo nominee... crazy. It's a bit of a hard book to describe.. I guess 'Arabian Fantasy'? Only there's no really out there stuff (no Genies, though they are mentioned, no flying carpets, etc)... just one big bad evil guy, and some heroes to fight him.
There's alot of tropes here, evil Kalif.. Robin Hood-type rebel, outland barbarian, religious fanatic, etc. but it all works really well. It's really well written, and the characters have character that help them to be more than what you quite expect.
Perhaps most importantly, the story tells a complete tale, while still leaving things open for a sequel.. that's a rare skill these days. I'd happily visit the Kingdom of the Cresent Moon again if the author ever writes the promised sequels (the book claims to be book 1)
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 16, 2015 12:30:46 GMT -5
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman I've read a lot of classic SF. However, the vast majority of it is pre-1970. I have read a fair amount from 1970 to the late 80s and from there it's beyond spotty. I've been trying to fill in some gaps in with modern SF, but also decided to fill in some glaring gaps in older books...and this is one of them. I'm not sure why this one never made my reading list. But I'm glad I read it...and I'm probably glad I read it now. I'm not entirely sure it would have had the same impact if I'd read it when I was significantly younger and was less familiar with the background. The Forever War is Haldeman's response to being a grunt in Vietnam. The troops don't know what they're fighting for. There's no clear objective. They don't understand the enemy at all. And the war just goes on and on chewing up people and resources. If I had a complaint about the book it would be that I never really feel a great deal for any of the characters. And that includes Mandella, the narrator. But it's an important meditation on war...and it is definitely once again just as relevant as it was when it was written.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2015 12:46:45 GMT -5
Read The Forever War way back when, around the time it won the '76 Hugo. IIRC, at the time it was considered sort of a real-world, & correspondingly quite cynical, take on Heinlein's inevitable glorification of war, the military, etc., especially as manifested in Starship Troopers. (The same was said about a decade earlier of Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero.)
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 16, 2015 22:25:17 GMT -5
Slave Ship by Frederik Pohl c. 1957 Mine is the 1966 printing: The other covers are much better! The book was very poorly named, as it has very little to do with slaves or ships. But rather, a near future where a religous Indo-Chinese alliance (called the Caodai) has taken over most of the world (all but the Americas) in the aftermath of a US-Soviet conflict. They call it a cold war, though there is lots of fighting... Pohl seems to mostly be mocking the term. The main character is a Yassarian-like Naval officer, who ends up working with a displaced Soviet (they are 'in exile' in the US) to see if they can learn various animal languages well enough to use them in military operations... seemingly suicide bomber-type missions. Things get urgent as the secret weapon that makes people just drop dead takes it toll. Of course, it's not that simple. There are strangely named pacifists that seem to be trying to turn the cold war hot... and the caodai seem desparate, too.. but why, if they're winning? Then ending is WAY out from left field. A very entertaining(probably unintended) precursor to Catch-22, with some really interesting stuff on animal communication, which dominates the first half of the book, and Pohl's afterward.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2015 11:44:14 GMT -5
My lord. I guess I should be happy that I run across groaners like these only every few books, as opposed to every book, but still ...
Read a new one called The Year of Fear: Machine Gun Kelly & the Manhunt That Changed the Nation over the last couple of days. The author is a former managing editor of USA Today (a spectacularly useless rag, to be sure, but presumably one where the standards of at least basic literacy are observed), among other things. Anyway, he apparently doesn't understand the difference between "exacerbated" & "exasperated," doesn't know that there's no such word as "doddled" (it's "dawdled") & has never grasped the fact that there's a "g" in "Pekingese" (instead, we got "Pekinese" not once, not twice, but three times ... & heck, I might be forgetting a fourth).
Offhand, I can't remember the details from the last time I ran into comparable idiocy in a book, though it wasn't that long ago, & I know I mentioned it here (or maybe in the "Meanwhile" thread). Memory tells me it was the same publisher -- St. Martin's, which once upon a time was a reputable house. Their apparent decision to dump all their editors awhile back wasn't a good one, I'd say.
It's almost enough to make me think this guy wrote the book via the Google vocal function. Jesus.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 18, 2015 18:02:39 GMT -5
I hate bad editing.... it takes one right out of the narrative.. there's really just no need for it.
Last Refuge of Scoundrels by Paul Lussier
I see what the author was trying to do here. He was trying to get at the heart of the American Revolution, and what it means to be American.
Sadly, he failed. This book spends far too much time making fun of the founding fathers (and doing so in very well tread fashion, at that), and far too little time making sense.
We're to believe a prostitute named Deborah was every spy and master planner behind every good turn of the Revolution? Too silly.
Not to mention the fact that it claims to be Washington reclaiming 'George' instead of 'the General' on his death bed, yet 2/3 of the book takes place before Washington was even on the scene.
It's really a (highly fictionalized) story of Washington's aide John Laurens(Lawrence), who is the subject of a great many historical fictions, and thus, well tread ground. Not much to see here... feel free to give it a pass.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 21, 2015 20:30:26 GMT -5
Four of Hearts by Ellery Queen This is my first Ellery Queen experience (who is both the pen name of the author and the title character). He's sort of a more smug, less British version of Sherlock Holmes.. complete with his own police detective to bedevil. The particular adventure puts Queen in Hollywood, where he's cooling his heels, waiting for a big time producer to explain to him what he wants from him. Turns out they think he can be a writer, and they want him to write the true story of two feuding Hollywood familes. When the feud ends, murder happens, and Queen is forced to use his primary talent. This was a fun look at 30s Hollywood... I'm not an expert, so I don't know how realistic it is, but it SEEMED pretty good, and was great fun. The mystery itself I thought at first was pretty vanilla, but there was a bit of a twist I didn't see coming, which was nice. Overall, a nicely written period piece which I'd happy read another of.
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Post by berkley on Oct 22, 2015 22:40:10 GMT -5
Here's a question: I've seen a few different "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthology series, though I've never read any of them myself. The earliest I've come across is the one edited by Judith Merril, which started in the mid-1950s, as far as I can tell. Was there a predecessor of any kind to that series or was it the first of its kind?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 22, 2015 23:00:13 GMT -5
Here's a question: I've seen a few different "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthology series, though I've never read any of them myself. The earliest I've come across is the one edited by Judith Merril, which started in the mid-1950s, as far as I can tell. Was there a predecessor of any kind to that series or was it the first of its kind? I can't say for certain, but I'd be shocked if there was a predecessor. SF simply wasn't published in books in any quantity before the mid-50s and it really wasn't until into the 60s before it appeared in appreciable numbers.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 22, 2015 23:07:27 GMT -5
Here's a question: I've seen a few different "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthology series, though I've never read any of them myself. The earliest I've come across is the one edited by Judith Merril, which started in the mid-1950s, as far as I can tell. Was there a predecessor of any kind to that series or was it the first of its kind? Groff Conklin was editing SF anthologies earlier than that. But I really can't find a annual series by any of the usual suspects.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2015 23:43:05 GMT -5
Using the Internet Speculative Fiction Database...it looks like the Year's Best series you mentioned started in '56, preceded by a year by the first anthology of Hugo Winners in '55, which was the first year of the World Science Fiction Convention.
These were preceded by the Star Science Fiction series edited by Frederick Pohl in 1953, but it didn't become a series until re-released in '72 as Vol. 1-so not a year's best collection, but a similar type deal...but I can't find anything earlier than that.
-M
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 23, 2015 1:15:18 GMT -5
Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg edited a series called Great SF Stories back in the 80s/90s. There were 25 paperbacks in the series.Each one was a best of... and they did it for the years 1939 thru 1964. Excellent selection and I consider them definitive. Plus you get Asimov writing an introduction to each story with info on the author and the stories' historical significance. There's about 15 or so stories in each paperback. They chose to end it with 1964 because in 1965 Donald Wollheim began his annual Best Of series which lasted into the 1990s.
These are the 2 series for short stories/ novellas I used for my SF background and I highly recommend them. The Asimov's I'm sure are out of print but the search would be quite worthwhile. I had the Merrill books and when I compared the selections I preferred Asimov's
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 23, 2015 6:51:32 GMT -5
That Asimov-edited series sounds really good... I'll have to track that down some time (When I catch up on what I've got)
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 23, 2015 11:19:05 GMT -5
The first 12 of the Asimov/Greenberg Great SF Stories were collected in hardcovers two paperback volumes to a hardcover, so a total of six hardcover volumes covering 1939-1950. They were published by Bonanza Books and used to be readily available on Ebay and sporadically available in the remainder section of Barnes & Noble. The breakdown of the series is here... www.goodreads.com/series/56188-isaac-asimov-presents-the-great-sf-storiesI agree with Ish that they are great volumes (though I haven't read all of them). But they are looking at the stories with 30-40 years of hindsight, whereas Merrill was judging roughly contemporaneous stories. If you want to go even further back Asimov's Before the Golden Age, covering SF of the 1930s is massive and daunting but very good. It was published as a hardcover in 1974 and subsequently as four paperbacks.
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