Talking SF until everyone’s eyes glaze over

[ChloeTzang]

Okay here we go. For those of us that love and adore Science Fiction (not that wish washy Fantasy stuff lol ) here we go. Our very own thread. EE Doc Smith. Frederick Pohl. AE Van Vogt. Roger Zealazny. Robert Heinlein (I want his babies) REAL SF. Not that crap by Scalzi. THAT kind of SF. Topics now open.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Okay here we go. For those of us that love and adore Science Fiction (not that wish washy Fantasy stuff lol ) here we go. Our very own thread. EE Doc Smith. Frederick Pohl. AE Van Vogt. Roger Zealazny. Robert Heinlein (I want his babies) REAL SF. Not that crap by Scalzi. THAT kind of SF. Topics now open.

The only way to get Heinlein's babies is to...

1. go back in time and seduce him.
2. hope his wife had some of his sperm frozen at his time of death.

Sci-fi enough for you?

 

[OneAuthor]

1. go back in time

She said "Doc" Smith, not "Doc" Brown.

Although I've always wanted to get my hands on that Delorean.

 

[ChloeTzang]

The only way to get Heinlein's babies is to...

1. go back in time and seduce him.
2. hope his wife had some of his sperm frozen at his time of death.

Sci-fi enough for you?

Im writing the story now! Lol.

 

[SimonDoom]

Would you characterize Neal Stephenson as science fiction? His novels aren't wholly science fiction but all of them include elements of science fiction to varying degrees. I haven't read the last two. I don't read that much science fiction but I've enjoyed most of his novels. Snow Crash was fantastic. Cryptonomicon was absorbing. I found The Diamond Age less so. His flaw is he's too wordy and tends to lose focus, but I still find his novels interesting.

I read Rendezvous with Rama for the first time just a few years ago, and thought it was excellent. Brilliantly conceived and imagined as an alien encounter story. Very different from most.

For my money, if you like Sci Fi you can't do better than The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. 1. It's got most of the most famous short stories from 1929 to 1964. A must read.

 

[TxRad]

The reason I write very little SF is I read so much in my younger days. Now when I start to write a SF story, I keep thinking, didn't I read this somewhere years ago? From the early 60's to the late 90's, I read every SF story I could get my hands on. Now it is all mixed up in one big pile.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Okay here we go. For those of us that love and adore Science Fiction (not that wish washy Fantasy stuff lol ) here we go. Our very own thread. EE Doc Smith. Frederick Pohl. AE Van Vogt. Roger Zealazny. Robert Heinlein (I want his babies) REAL SF. Not that crap by Scalzi. THAT kind of SF. Topics now open.

Since Van Vogt has been mentioned, I'm going to glaze everyone's eyes with some commentary.

I've always found Van Vogt's work to be stilted and difficult to access. I had trouble imagining much of his dialogue to have been spoken by humans. Biographical material I've read on Van Vogt suggest that he may have been the kind of social misfit that many SF readers of the era were.

In contrast, some stories published in the late 40s to early 50s by Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon were clearly written by people who were more aware of the world around them and probably participated in it easily.

When I started reading SF heavily, in the mid-'60s (yeah, that old), I found that those particular Leiber and Sturgeon stories to be vivid and well-written, but the futures they assembled were laughable. Would there be, in these far futures, women smoking Pall Malls while wearing fire-engine-red lipstick? I looked around my real world at the time, and saw young women in a counterculture that didn't look anything like the extrapolated 1951 of these stories.

Van Vogt's stories, however, hadn't suffered over time, in that particular sense. He had apparently had an Otherness all along, and his stories were just as Other by 1967 (and maybe now also). I still greatly prefer the Leiber and Sturgeon stories (and there were quite a few things they wrote that were not weighed down by their awareness of the world around them) to those of Van Vogt, but short shelf-life can be fatal in a literature of the future.

What I learned from this is that while it can be good for one to live in and enjoy the present, one may have to shed a lot of preconceptions to write about the future.

 

[SimonDoom]

Related question: what's science fiction? What are its boundaries? Are there works that are sometimes described as science fiction that you don't think are properly called science fiction?

For example, I don't think Star Wars is science fiction. It's fantasy with space ships. There's lots of magic, but no science. In contrast, say, to Star Trek, the episodes of which present many interesting science fiction questions and issues, Stars Wars doesn't raise any interesting scientific issues I can think of.

 

[NoJo]

Reading SF for me now is like listening to the Jonas Brothers doing Beatles covers. It might sound nice, but it ain't the birth of a new zeitgeist.

I was into quirky stuff from the get-go. My father wrote, and read, a lot of science fiction. I still get royalty checks from his stuff, fifteen years after his death, and forty years after it was published. My oath of anonymity prevents me from naming him.

The first non-children's book I read, when I was eleven, was a recommendation from my father, Bob Sheckley's "Dimension of Miracles" - it was written at the tail end of the psychedelic sixties, and was very funny and completely insane. Sheckley was a frequent Playboy contributor, and there was a lot of sex in his stuff. My own humor writing owes everything to him.

I also loved John Sladek and Tom Disch, who were similar. Doug Adams was another writer in that mold, but I never liked him , until I read of his admiration for Sheckley, which he hadn't read at the time he wrote Hitch Hikers Guide"

Phillip K Dick is still incredibly relevant -- his psychotic world resonated both with inward-looking acid-trippers in the 60's and with the virtual reality goggle-heads of today.

I went through a "hard SF" period - I particularly enjoyed "Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke, and Niven's "Ringworld" Trilogy.

The early Ballard was great: "The Wind from Nowhere", "Crash", and "The Day of Forever". I based the plot of one my stories here on his short story "The Man on the 99th Floor.

My favorite in the early "far-future earth" genre was Brian Aldiss' "Hothouse".

 

[vanmyers86]

One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was a canvas tote bag filled with paperbacks from several sci-fi authors: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, McCaffrey and LeGuin. I was 12, and had never read any of those authors before. Heaven! Every one of them knew how to craft a good yarn and tell it well. Heinlein (sign me up for a baby too - such a shame he and Ginny could not have children) and McCaffrey in particular influenced (and challenged) my thinking and writing.

Who has a nomination for all-time top sci-fi novels?

 

[Hypoxia]

My IQ tested high so when entering Junior High (7th grade) at age 12 circa 1962 I was enrolled in a Gifted Student program and given an Adult card for the (Carnegie) public library. That gave me TOTAL ACCESS to the stacks and the SciFi section. SF was just starting to go 'soft' then so I absorbed all that Golden Age and Silver Age stuff -- yeah, lots of space opera, but also the mandatory classics. And then a few years later came Chip Delaney... yow!

But where are our personal atomic helicopters?

 

[TxRad]

But where are our personal atomic helicopters?

The same place our flying cars and undersea cities are.

 

[ChloeTzang]

The same place our flying cars and undersea cities are.

I want orbital cities and domes on mars and farms on the moons of Jupiter and laser mining in the Trojan belt and a beanstalk elevator to low earth orbit.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Who has a nomination for all-time top sci-fi novels?

“Dune” - Frank Herbert
“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” - Robert Heinlein

 

[NoJo]

Hey, some of of them were spookily prescient though!

I remember John Sladek's mention of "President Reagan" in "The Muller-Focker Tape" -- in 1966 (not to mention his astuteness and accuracy in predicting the future of AI, which is pretty impressive, given the state of AI back then).

Also Nigel Kneale's 1968 depiction of the ultimate trajectory of TV output in "The Year of The Sex Olympics".

Personally I'm hoping that Brian Aldiss's 1961 predictions in "The Primal Urge" come to pass -- we're pretty close to it now, technologically -- the transformation of society after the fashion for sexual-arousal sensor pendants sweeps the globe.

 

[NoJo]

I can see from the posts here that what most people consider Science Fiction is escapist, fantastic stuff like Heinlein, but like "Gulliver's Travels", the genre has always been used as a form of satire, shining a spotlight on the present, by distorting it.

And female Science fiction writers have long used the genre (or dabbled in it, in some cases) to highlight gender issues.

 

[MetaBob]

As my kids approach a time when they graduate adolescent fiction they've discovered on their own (Harry Potter, Rick Riordan, Pendragon -- not that there's anything wrong with any of that), I guide them towards my SF/Fantasy wall, where the first book I show them is Heinlein's Red Planet, largely because it was my first exposure to SF but also because it stuck, also acting as a prequel of sorts to his infinitely deeper Stranger in a Strange Land.

On the SF side, there's tons of Larry Niven, Ursula K. LeGuin (The Dispossessed is a masterwork, and not her only one), Ray Bradbury (who I haven't read much of since high school), Asimov & Clarke of course, Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, David Brin, C. J. Cherryh, Harlan Ellison, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman, Frank Herbert's Dune (and not much else), Christopher Hinz, Fred Pohl, some Saberhagen and Robert Silverberg and Harry Harrison, John Varley, Joan D. Vinge, and Roger Zelazny (especially Eye of Cat with its echoes of Tony Hillerman), and a few writers from a previous generation like Hal Clement.

I don't actually read much SF any more ... it was my intro to the universe of adult fiction but also a kind of ghetto like any other genre. I still love its provocation and world-bending, and (try to) carry that with me in my own writing, but in SF just as much as in other places, it has to be about the story (and characters!) first, and some SF writers seem to forget that. Like, say, later Larry Niven and Saberhagen, who I suspect no longer bother(ed) with editors.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Who has a nomination for all-time top sci-fi novels?

Heinlein, "The Number of the Beast..."

Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"

Sorry, but gotta do it - Scalzi's "Old Man's War", my #2 favorite milfic novel after Heinlen's Starship Troopers.

Not a novel, but a series of short stories and novels - Herbert's "ConSentiency" [aka, McKie] setting - true alien minds and alien/human interactions, bureaucracy controlling and undermining bureaucracy, deliberate misuse of technologies, so many wonderful brain-stretching concepts...

Weber's "Honor Harrington" series

Another setting - www.orionsarm.com - far future weirdness with some interesting twists [In the spirit of transparency, I spent more'n a few years working with them on it under a different screen name. Not my creation, but I had pieces & parts within the whole]

Ringo's "Posleen" series

I could go on, but - too much already, I'm sure.

 

[ChloeTzang]

As my kids approach a time when they graduate adolescent fiction they've discovered on their own (Harry Potter, Rick Riordan, Pendragon -- not that there's anything wrong with any of that), I guide them towards my SF/Fantasy bookshelf, where the first book I show them is Heinlein's Red Planet, largely because it was my first exposure to SF but also because it stuck, also acting as a prequel of sorts to his infinitely deeper Stranger in a Strange Land.

On the SF side, there's tons of Larry Niven, Ursula K. LeGuin (The Dispossessed is a masterwork, and not her only one), Ray Bradbury (who I haven't read much of since high school), Asimov & Clarke of course, Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, David Brin, C. J. Cherryh, Harlan Ellison, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman, Frank Herbert's Dune (and not much else), Christopher Hinz, Fred Pohl, some Saberhagen and Robert Silverberg and Harry Harrison, John Varley, Joan D. Vinge, and Roger Zelazny (especially Eye of Cat with its echoes of Tony Hillerman), and a few writers from a previous generation like Hal Clement.

I don't actually read much SF any more ... it was my intro to the universe of adult fiction but also a kind of ghetto like any other genre. I still love its provocation and world-bending, and (try to) carry that with me in my own writing, but in SF just as much as in other places, it has to be about the story first, and some SF writers seem to forget that. Like, say, later Larry Niven and Saberhagen, who I suspect no longer bother(ed) with editors.

Hal Clement! Omg I love “Mission of Gravity.”

 

[Blind_Justice]

My heroes are William Gibson and Michael Stackpole. Cyberpunk and giant stompy robots. Also, I see your Heinlein, Chloe dearest and raise you some Perry Rhodan. (who is not an author but the hero in a loooooooong series of sci-fi stories. The German version of pulp magazines.) Nerdy enough?

 

[MetaBob]

Hal Clement! Omg I love “Mission of Gravity.”

Me too. Also its sequel Star Light, Iceworld even though it's seriously dated (1953! Cigarettes!), The Nitrogen Fix, and Still River. I also have Cycle of Fire but honestly don't remember anything about it.

 

[beachbum1958]

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
Neuromancer - William F. Gibson
Midori - William F. Gibson
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

 

[Handley_Page]

Dare I hope that Isaac Asimov may be included please?
And the "Lensman" series by E.E. Doc. Smith impressed me mightily back in the day. I have a couple of those old paperbacks now. . . .

 

[ElectricBlue]

Who has a nomination for all-time top sci-fi novels?

Not so much top novels, more my fave sci-fi writers.

For me, J.G. Ballard, with his weird atomic landscapes and obsessed characters with their sand sculptures and empty swimming pools. No one novel, specifically, but I love the mood he creates, especially his linked theme short stories. Asimov's robot detective novels, again because of the mood. I found good old Arthur C. Clarke majestic, but his characters were a little one dimensional (and it took Kubrick to make 2001 the supreme sci-fi movie). Heinlein was a fascist, from what I can see, and that was enough to stay away from him (although By His Bootstraps is clever). Ray Bradbury's Martian stories and Something Wicked This Way Comes, tick. None of them were particularly good at writing women, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons, so it took Anne McAffrey to do that (i quite liked her early Dragons of Pern stories, although that might have been the girl I borrowed them from).

More recently, China Mieville, but not his latest French Resistance thing (maybe I should give that one another go).

It's not sci-fi, but for me THE fantasy writer is Mervyn Peake with his Gormenghast novels.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Would you characterize Neal Stephenson as science fiction? His novels aren't wholly science fiction but all of them include elements of science fiction to varying degrees. I haven't read the last two. I don't read that much science fiction but I've enjoyed most of his novels. Snow Crash was fantastic. Cryptonomicon was absorbing. I found The Diamond Age less so. His flaw is he's too wordy and tends to lose focus, but I still find his novels interesting.

I read Rendezvous with Rama for the first time just a few years ago, and thought it was excellent. Brilliantly conceived and imagined as an alien encounter story. Very different from most.

For my money, if you like Sci Fi you can't do better than The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. 1. It's got most of the most famous short stories from 1929 to 1964. A must read.

I totally would include Neal Stephenson; imho if he’s not sci-fi I don’t think I understand the genre. Not really a fan, but I’ve read Snow Crash and Seveneves, the first two parts of which are still one of the most compelling and frightening things I’ve ever read.

I’m into old/vintage sci-fi short stories. In addition to the ones everyone’s already added, I’m crazy about Jerome Bixby (doesn’t get any better than “It’s a Good Life”) and Aldis Budrys.