Sci-Fi novels

confucius said:

Jeff Noon was just dull. everything about Vurt I should have liked, the premise is great... but I was bored SHITLESS. nothing. zilch. couldn't finish it.

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I am vindicated. Glad to see someone felt the same way. Trust me there are plenty to 'nu-sci-fi-post-cyberpunk' novelsits out there that can't tell a compelling, let alone interesting story for shite, despite what their sexy Designers Republic covers intimates, as the saying goes, never judge a book by its...

Noon's books have aged incredibly badly, but I remember seeing him do reading a couple of times (once at the Zap, I think) and he was fucking great. His prose works so much better if you read it aloud in his (or Mark Radcliffe's) voice

Glad to see mentions of Wyndham, whom I like far more than Ballard. And yes, the Bastable books are probably the best Moorcock stuff I've read.

He's more fantasy, but China Mieville is worth reading, as long as you avoid his first book, "King Rat", in which the Pied Piper turns up in London and attempts to mash up his flute-playing with Jungle to destroy the Massive. It's excruciating, despite listing more 1996 Jungle 12"s than Blissblogger listens to in a month

carlos said:

i read the first batch of these but not the whole series- but yes they are really good. the writing and the vision of the future is really memorable

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Yeah, I wasn't totally won over by the Long Sun series but the Short Sun trilogy makes up for it. His two recent novels while well written as usual were a bit meh for me.

I will definitely 3rd the Bastable books recommendation although I haven't read the last one (I'm collecting the paperbacks with the nice surreallish Meyer(?) covers )

The painted paperbacks are my Pavlovian triggers, Simon, as discussed on the blogs a while back (Psychbloke et al). There is a level of imagination and surrealism in some of them which are absent from most SF/Fantasy art these days.

How could I forget Norman Spinrad! "The Iron Dream" is the one you're talking about. "Bug Jack Barron" is also great: I look forward to a future where I might buy a pack of Acapulco Golds

I read his recent novel "The Druid King" about Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul and it was pretty good. It also retained some New Wave SF flavour/subversiveness in it's own way too.

Yeah I'll 3rd Wyndham too from what I've read. He probably doesn't reach the heights but it's good for what it is.

I love Wells too but I haven't read much of his stuff since school. I'm kinda saving him up. My ex-girlfriend gave me an anthology of all his short-stories which I'm going through at a leisurely pace.. I should go back one of these days. I read the non-SF The History of Mr Polly a little while back and enjoyed that immensely: he captured the sad life of a shopkeeper quite accurately.. I'm keen on checking out "Ann Veronica" too.

bipedaldave said:

also also:
the "B"'s: David Brin, Ben Bova, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford. Consitently high-quality hard SF.

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one of these days...

bipedaldave said:

i confess tho to a total lack of interest in any recent SF- is this an oversight, does anyone think?

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There's a lot of dross, yeah - but that's like any field I suppose. I kinda have a regard for the older writers but there's still some good stuff out there (eg. Gene Wolfe!).

A good anthology of recent SF was that Interzone one that came out a few years ago.

confucius said:

Jeff Noon was just dull. everything about Vurt I should have liked, the premise is great... but I was bored SHITLESS. nothing. zilch. couldn't finish it.

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I liked Vurt but I suspect that it was a lot to do with living in Manchester- here it read like a timely halluciogenic eulogy for the Hulme cresents.I'd wondered how the rest of the country would take it.
The rest of his books=downward spiral (Automated Alice-eek! one of the laziest books I've ever attempted)

It just shows what blinkered 'hipster bloggeratti' you all are when you've all completely bypassed Mick Farren's 'Dna Cowboys' trilogy and 'exit funtopia'.

The ultimate true cyberpunker/rocker, and lead singer of the Pink Faries and Deviants to boot!

Yr obviously not rockists, let alone fans of decent sci-fi!

As a SF avid reader this is my Dissensus favorite thread ever, sorry i discovered it too late, everithing that I have read is been cited, excet maybe the very interestic fascistic SF of Starship Trooper, not a great book but a must read (right now i didn't ever remember the exact name of the autor).

I was always unattracted by Asimov because too mainstream but recently read I, Robot and, folks, it's great.

There are many books cited in this thread i have to buy and read!!

Also has "I am legend" by Matheson being cited? Great book, and better are Matheson collections of short stories, also he was one of the writer for the "twilight zone" tv show.

Favorite ever writer: H.G. Wells and Ballard, definitely.

In this days i'm watchng DVD of Space 1999: anyone remember? K-punk, I know about your love for the greatest ever tv show on this universe, The Prisoner, or Dr. Who, you choose, but what about Space 1999? I would love to read an article from you about, even if you consider it orrible (very camp indeed, anyway....)

bye

confucius said:

Jeff Noon was just dull. everything about Vurt I should have liked, the premise is great... but I was bored SHITLESS. nothing. zilch. couldn't finish it.

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i got four pages in and gave up. sometimes you can just tell can't you. (like, on the wife's recommendation, i started salman rushdie midnight's children and literally couldn't get to the end of the first page)

shame with noon though as he's all up in that manc postpunk thing right

blissblogger said:

i got four pages in and gave up.

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I couldn't even bother to start it so maybe I shouldn't comment. But feathers ... It just didn't appeal....

sometimes you can just tell can't you. (like, on the wife's recommendation, i started salman rushdie midnight's children and literally couldn't get to the end of the first page)

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I managed a few more, but what a steaming heap of shit... Rushdie is an abysmal writer, a charlatan, a Pomonaut extraordinaire, painfully self-conscious and self-regarding... unreadable trash....

Buick6 said:

It just shows what blinkered 'hipster bloggeratti' you all are when you've all completely bypassed Mick Farren's 'Dna Cowboys' trilogy and 'exit funtopia'.

The ultimate true cyberpunker/rocker, and lead singer of the Pink Faries and Deviants to boot!

Yr obviously not rockists, let alone fans of decent sci-fi!

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Ha! I've got the post-apolcalyptic "Texts of Festival" on my shelf here. Not sure what to think though - a bit too nihilistic perhaps?

Maybe you're right - maybe I'm not rockist enough...

Women quite shockingly under-represented here (Le Guin the only woman mentioned thus far I think). About time that Octavia Butler got a mention: her Xenogenesis trilogy is rightly celebreated but my favourite is the lesser known Clay's Ark (I don't think there's a better book for viscerally rendering becoming-alien).

Pat Cadigan is also very under-rated.... Again I wouldn't go for the best known of her works (Synners) but for the techopsychosis of Fools (imagine Bowie/ Foxx identity-memory swapping/ Warholian theatre as an SF novel) and the delicately diagrammed implex of Tea from an Empty Cup (cyberspace whodunnit)...

O and Francesco - Space 1999, yes, I watched it... but it wasn't something that stuck with me... Not the kind of SF that ever got under my skin... too space operatic... but I recall liking the woman who could transform into animals, the rest of it forgotten I'm afraid...

I'm not sure how it ranks amongst SF classics but I thought "And Still The Earth" by Loyola Brandao was really great. Did any of you read it ever?

It's from the early 80s and set in a future Brazil where multinational corporations have bought up most of the land and turned what's left into almost uninhabitable polluted slums full of garbage melting in the intense heat where people live of government subsidized synthetic food (and where there are mandatory consumption quotas for all citizens). The main character's a pretty Kafka like office worker (I think his job is to verify the numbers from a machine that never makes mistakes) who keeps going on with his mindless tasks and routines until a persistant itch slowly transforms into a perfect circle cut straight though his hand. There's some real awesome Metamorphosis type stuff as he tries to ignore and then accept this bizarre hole which ultimately jars him out of denial (with some added harsh PKD action thrown in with his wife) and the book becomes him wandering around this ultra capitalist wasteland driven by memories of swimming pools and the smell of lawn clippings. It's mega bleak and one of the ones that really stayed with me anyway.

k-punk said:

Rushdie is an abysmal writer, a charlatan, a Pomonaut extraordinaire, painfully self-conscious and self-regarding... unreadable trash....

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disagree completely. a prose style as eloquent and masterful as rushdie does not come by often. sure it takes a little patience sometimes, but before you know it, the strange and miraculous engulfs the ordinary and the entire world starts to feel like a different place altogether.

he is atleast as good as Calvino (or maybe even Borges) on my list.

Mick Farren's blog

Speaking of Mick Farren, he's got a blog:

http://doc40.blogspot.com/

Sorry, I couldn't find the "blogs worth checking out thread"... and it's worth adding to your favourites.

k-punk said:

Women quite shockingly under-represented here (Le Guin the only woman mentioned thus far I think). .

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haven't read her but isn't there a female sf writer whose quite avant and highly regarded who wrote under the name James Tiptree

and then (literati slumming category) she who done the handmaid's tale

and marge (?) pierce (?), the woman on the edge of time (or something)

there were quite a few others of some stature in that sort of harlan ellison/robert silverberg american s.f. writers who went to workshops post-1960s zone, but as you can tell my brain is tired today and can't dredge them up

next time i'm in london i'm gonna to dig up the beautiful full colour illustrated encyclopaedia of sicence fiction i got for my birthday in probably 1978

blissblogger said:

and then (literati slumming category) she who done the handmaid's tale

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Margaret Attwood is generally not included as a sci-fi writer as she has been quite rude about the genre in the past. If she doesn't want to eb considered sci fi then that's her business.

Female SF writers

One female SF writer that I've been interested in checking out since reading a short bio of her in a magazine is Carol Emshwiller.

I found her own version here: http://www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller/
She sounds like a legend.

Anyone read her stuff? Any good places to start? Or should I just grab the first work that I find (as usual : )

and since we're talking sci fi

Here's an interesting list of Science Fiction that Socialists should read:
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/50socialist/full/

put together by China Meiville, who is excellent but more fantasy that sci fi (if we're making that distinction)

I'll limit myself to stuff no one has mentioned except for a raving Gene Wolfe endorsement. (also love Vance & LeGuin) People should rate Long Sun I think. It is not as spiritually rich (did I just say that?) but it has a lot of psychological depth, I think, which I didn't pick up on at all until I reread it.

I like Maureen McHugh: she won't blow your mind, but she is very human.

No one mentioned Samuel Delany. I like his work sometimes though it can be a bit grating (he likes his own prose too much, I think). I have a copy of `Dhalgren' at home which I have not yet been able to pick up.

How about Michael Shea? Not really SF maybe but the prose is lovely here too (at least Nifft, the first one; another backwoods library favorite for me at least).

After loving him as a 20-year-old I have come to hate John Shirley. I'd rather hear my preaching a little more subtly these days.

confucius said:

disagree completely. a prose style as eloquent and masterful as rushdie does not come by often. sure it takes a little patience sometimes, but before you know it, the strange and miraculous engulfs the ordinary and the entire world starts to feel like a different place altogether.

he is atleast as good as Calvino (or maybe even Borges) on my list.

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and he came up with "Naughty but nice" for the fresh cream adverts.