h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

O.k. so that's Heinlein. We could keep this thread going for months on Heinlein. Has anybody read 900 grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty ?
I mean someone tells you it's 'not literature' ? They only say that because they don't understand the stories..

TM.

Point taken, I just brought Heinlein up, as he seemed to have very little much said about him upto that point. And I believe he is 'one' of the heavyweights/fathers of SF. I particularly like his pokes at religion, and bureaucracy.
I will look out for Lafferty. Has anyone read the Neutronium Alchemist series by Peter F HAmilton, thoroughly enjoyable, best read from a modern author in a long time. Only fly in the ointment, is the ubiquitous "work in progress", so we have to wait until the New Year for the 3rd, and supposedly final instalment.
Thats providing all the prophets, soothsayers, and nuts are wrong about It being the end of the world!

Just saw The Phantom Menace. I suggest that this title is off limits in this forum.

It's a great movie if you're between 12 and 18 years old. But for grownups, I mean : JARJAR !! You've gotta be kidding.

And I'm getting annoyed with the fact that noone makes an effort to actually try to give some sort of scientifical explanation about The Force, Podracers, Sith, etcetera.

If you have to call it something call it Fantasy, (I say let's call it a fairytale...).

TM.

And did anybody read 'The Locusts' by Larry Niven ?

David Langford's column in the most recent SFX rails against a similar thing - people saying that this book or that book isn't SF for entirely spurious reasons, but mainly because SF is a publishing ghetto unworthy of mainstream fiction.

The recent culprits are the 'alternate history' books, which are no longer Science Fiction, they are 'Counterfactuals'. Langford points out that this means 'The Man in the High Castle' is no longer Science Fiction.

It's like when a major filmmaker makes a horror movie (take 'Silence of the Lambs' or 'Cape Fear') and then strenuously denies that it's horror. They're quite happy to use all the traditions and conventions of horror movies, but unwilling to confess to it.

The sad thing is, the mainstream press is quite happy go along with it, because their knowledge of any genre is usually pretty ropey to begin with. I'm reminded of what my younger sister would say when I suggested she read some SF instead of Jilly Cooper. 'It's rubbish. It's all made up.'

Indeed.

Yes Jim but what I'm saying is the opposite and that also holds true : there is a tendency to throw every crappy book with a mysterious title on the SF-shelf.

And how come writers only write blockbuster novels of over 1200 pages nowadays ? Have they forgotten how to be concise or are they getting payed more by the word...?

SF and Fantasy have always shared shelf space. What I find sad is when the SF shelves find themselves squeezed more and more by TV tie-in books. After all, Star Trek barely qualifies as Science Fiction as it is.

Of course, this is just a minor inconvenience in a world where the 'New Age' section is yards long and the Science section is lucky to get a single shelf. It's truly tragic that people would rather read David Iyck and Paul McKenna than Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan.

Darn Elmer...I must agree on that...

Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman?

I've always thought that the short story was the ultimate test of the writer's art, especially since most short stories require at least as much imagination as a longer work but for a fraction of the money. The ability to tell a compelling story in a few hundred words is becoming a lost art, I fear.

I have a large collection of short stories, especially by the likes of Asimov, who was a master of this form.

I think that a lot of the old time SF and fantasy writers are able to do short stories well. Guess this comes from writing for magazines which would have a few shorts in each issue and some serialised stuff.

Now as has been said the books are massive, and not necessarily any better in terms of character and plot development.

Asimov and Clarke used to exchange short stories written on postcards.

It was a point of pride with Asimov to write short stories so that the last paragraph - which with his stories was often the punchline of a horribly contorted pun - was over the page

Comics were the progenitors of some great 'one shot' SF stories from 50's era 'Astounding Tales' type stuff & Dan Dare in 'Eagle' through to 'Tharg's Future Shocks' (2001AD) and beyond to the respected 'coffee table' comic books out there now. Many of the serialized adventures had some great characters and situations. They made an average film out of Judge Dredd but comic books form a great hinterland between film and literature. Or am I just talking out my..?

They do and you're not

Nowadays you can still find short stories of considerable quality but you have to read Playboy and Omni and stuff to find them...just like in the old days, short stories sort of belong in magazines...

Orson ScotT Card started out with short stories so there is hope...

TM.

One author that I would want to see in this library that hasn't been mentioned yet is Ray Bradbury. The Illustrated Man is one of the best collections of short stories I have ever read. Also just this summer, I read a book by Orson Scott Card with the subtitle: The Redemption of Cristopher Columbus. I really liked that book. I don't know what kind of book it is, but I really like The Phantom Tollbooth by Nornton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth is a childrens book, but still very creative. I know we can't badmouth The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy here, but what do you guys think of the Dirk Gentley books? I thought that, as opposed to H2G2, they were almost too convoluted, but I ended up enjoying them.

My main problem with the first DG book at least is that the plot is largely cobbled together from a couple of Doctor Who scripts that the Blessed Douglas wrote while he was script-editing it. Now okay, one never got shown, but the other did and what's more important is that it was co-written with two other guys neither of whom even got a namecheck in the finished novel. Plus it was fairly poorly written...

What do you guys think about John Wyndham's stuff? (I'm thinking of Day of the Triffids, Kraken Wakes, etc, not his 30s output.) The content is SF but his style and tone is very mainstream and 'straight.' As I recall his books used to be O-level texts which is an honour(?) not many SF writers get...

Why hasn't anyone brought up Frank Herbert of Dune fame? I think this book deserves a mention (the movie on the other hand...).

I mentioned him in my top 5 earlier but not for Dune..although it's very good I prefer The White Plague...