Unofficial Forum Reading List

Is there anyone in the forum who has heard of Jesse Stuart?


45/70, I don't know what NHL means


munk
 
munk said:
Brin had a peer who was good also, Niven?


munk
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Niven wrote some great stuff. Ringworld was practically a classic. I read everything he wrote up until perhaps 20 years ago. I wonder if it holds up today.

As I recall, he and Jerry Pournelle were friends and wrote some stuff together. Jerry was never a very good writer, IMHO.

David Brin, Rudy Rucker, Vernor Vinge are all excellent with lots of good ideas. Vinge's Real Names is a classic novella about anonymity where the Net is ubiquitous.

I love Rucker the most. The Hacker and the Ants is a delight. His Software/Wetware/Freeware etc. series is also so much fun and there are lots of good ideas. He wrote a really fun fiction book about the fourth dimension and his non-fiction is quite good.

Vinge's best work IMHO is still the Across Realtime series which postulates "bobbling", putting yourself in an impregnable field of energy where time passes instantaneously so you can essentially travel into the future (one direction only).

Have you read any Robert J. Sawyer? His stuff is really good hard science fiction with excellent ideas in them.
 
As I am re-reading what I wrote, it occurs to me to discuss a few other types of books.

Hofstadter's Godel, Escher Bach was a wonderful read. As was Metamagical Themas.

The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose's last book (he just came out with a new one) is also wonderful. All three of the above books are about the nature of consciousness and computing and well worth reading if you like intellectual adventures.

I enjoyed Jared Diamond's previous books, Guns Germs and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee. I don't think I agree with his geography-as-destiny argument but the books are terrific nonetheless.
 
'Postman' was very good. The book, anyway.

I read 'American Gods'. Liked 'Neverwhere' better.
 
Cognitive Fun-
it sounds to me as if you were reading in the period of time after I quit reading SF and reading in general. You are right about Pournelle.
The names just float off of your tongue, Cog, while I have a hard time recalling even those once dear to me.


munk
 
by a guy named Jared
Diamond, It's about the evolution and cause of western civilization winning out..... great book, won a pulitzer prize and it's actually readable....
will wonder never cease? fair warnin not light reading and your think cap will be required....
 
cognitivefun said:
Hofstadter's Godel, Escher Bach was a wonderful read. As was Metamagical Themas.

The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose's last book (he just came out with a new one) is also wonderful. All three of the above books are about the nature of consciousness and computing and well worth reading if you like intellectual adventures.
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If you like this stuff you'll probably like the several collections of math stuff Martin Gardner put out years ago. You will also enjoy his other stuff on philosophy, magic, etc.
 
Howard Wallace said:
If you like this stuff you'll probably like the several collections of math stuff Martin Gardner put out years ago. You will also enjoy his other stuff on philosophy, magic, etc.
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yep, I have a number of his books in my collection.
 
munk said:
Norm, I don't know why you threw Spillane in with Hammet and Chandler- other than a kind of type cast, they have nothing in common. Maybe you could call Spillane an impaired reader's version of Chandler. I'm sorry for my harshness, folks. But I'm pleased to see some of your selections follow along my own. Did Wambaugh write something called the Black Marble. ???
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Nothing in common? Hmmm! That's like saying that Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury are unrelated. Other than being written a couple of decades later it is clearly the same genre, that of Crime Fiction. For that matter I should have added John D. McDonald to the list with his Travis Mcgee stuff.

Different writing styles, and Chandler is a better writer, but they are clearly strongly related IMO. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was inspired by both Chandler's Phillip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, and Spillane even said so in his later years.

Wambaugh's did write "The Black Marble." I think his best is still his older stuff, "The Blue Knight", "The Blooding", "The Onion Field", "The Choirboys", "The New Centurion", etc. Some of his stuff is just laugh out loud hilarious.

munk said:
Anyway, what I really found amusing is that the Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not only the Best Heinlein, imho (nothing like a little initializing!) as it avoided the down-right wincing silliness of most of his stuff, but is is indeed worth metioning with the best of SF.
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Wow, twice in one post! (-: I'll have to disagree again. It's like you're talking about someone else. Heinlien can be called many things, but an author who's work could be categorized as "wincing silliness" he is not. I have read every word he has written 6 or 7 times over, have spent years searching for his almost unobtainable hardback first editions (for the purpose of comparison, I was able to obtain almost every one of Asimov's first editions within a couple of years; Heinlein's are just not available because of the huge demand they have) and he was clearly an inspired genius, again IMO. His weakest work was "The Number of the Beast", of which I was fortunate enough to get one of the firsts. If you will check the publishing dates for that work you will see that it coincides directly with when he was experiencing severe problems with the blood flow to his brain (some kind of arterial blockage), and was depressed and sleeping 16 hours per day. I find the work incredibly muddled and put it down to that. His juvenile series of work is inspired. Perhaps as a mature adult reading something targeted for boys age 10-14 would give you the impression you have of his writing being silly. (?)

Try reading "Friday", or the earlier "Citizen of the Galaxy", or the Hugo award winner "Double Star", or "Sixth Column" or the brilliant "Door into Summer" and see what you have been missing. Not just SF (Speculative Fiction), he takes on major moral and political and philosophical issues in all his books. His libertarian outlook is great to read and his projections for the future were decades ahead of his time.

BTW, If you want to read a great book by someone who was clearly Heinlein inspired and is an excellent writer (who is also a knifemaker and blade nut), read Michael Z. Williamson's "Freehold". It's like Heinlein's previously mentioned "Friday" on steroids, and has some wonderful characterizations of a truly free future society, combined with some cool military action and a few neat sword / blade references. MZW also has his own web site and makes some beautiful daggers and other knives I am hoping to add to my collection someday.

Regards,

Norm
 
Norm, I loved Heinlein's juveniles (now there's a genre that seems rather extinct unless you count Animorphs).

Have Spacesuit Will Travel

Starship Troopers

the one with the twins, one of whom goes in a starship, what was that called??

I also loved Puppet Masters (very scary actually).

And the short story that is a delight to read, And He Built A Crooked House, wow!!

Svashtar, thanks for the Williamson recommendation. You have probably read L. Neil Smith, along the same lines and very Heinlein-inspired, no? But Smith is sadly not a very good writer :( His libertarian heart is in the write place though.
 
cognitivefun said:
the one with the twins, one of whom goes in a starship, what was that called?
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Cog, that was "Time Enough for Love." If I'm not mistaken. One of my favorite Heinlein novel's!
I wish I could say I had some hardbacks of heinlein's and damnit I should've had as I grew up in his era but just never thought about it then.:rolleyes: :grumpy:
But like Norm I do have several of Asimov's in hardback.:D
I need to get down under my bookshelf cabinet and dig out all my old SciFi book's and read them again.
Like Munk I can't recall which book goes with which title many times anymore.:(
 
Norm, seriously , I respect you and your point of view. but do do not agree with you at all. Yes, though I grew up with his books, loved his books in fact, (I may have even met him by accident once! long story?) in all earnestness what I said previously is still my founded, reasonable conclusion of his works. That doesn't mean they are not also enjoyable, exciting, and thought provoking. It does not even mean he was not pivotal. I do not need a primer on him. I have read, and re-read most, if not all of his published works. I've read most of Louis Lamour too, though he's not Shakespeare.


I knew a man once, a friend of mine, who had the largest personal library of recorded music I'd ever seen, before or since. He easily could have been a professor of music, his knowledge of both the music itself and the historical context of the time in which it was introduced was nothing short of astounding. He played and read music himself, and was also extremely knowledgable about literature. ( he was a genius, as a matter of fact)

He put on a Nick Drake album as a joke, to show me how bad and sappy this music was. I wasn't overwhelmed by emotion, but it wasn't bad. I'm not sure how, but I ended up borrowing it along with a stack of records he lent to me to listen to.

I now own all of Nick Drake's songs. He's great. My friend laughed and laughed; in fun, not derrision. He respected my ear more than his own. He relied upon it many times. But we parted over Nick Drake. I could see what was trying to break through, and all he could hear were the sappy arrangments.

To each his own!!


munk
 
Hey! Cognitive Fun: I loved both the book and movie Starship Troopers.

I never understood why the critics panned the movie. It wasn't the book, but in it's own way, I thought it was great.



munk
 
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