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

I've been reliably told that yes they are all good.I like all the Banks I've read so far-very interesting writer.

Incog.

re-reading Nights Dawn, taking more time this time and improves with second reading, you can tell that the story was planned from the start rather than bimbling along. Which is quite an achievment for 3 books each well over 1000 pages.

CH

I was amazed how well the story held together over ~3000 pages. When I read PFHs short stories I thought he had lost it - but I'm really enjoying Fallen Dragon at the moment.

Liam.

I enjoyed the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy, but I'd say it's definitely Space Opera rather than true 'hard' science fiction. Not that that's a bad thing, obviously, but it's good to be clear about these things.

For example, Dan Simmons' 'Hyperion' and 'The Fall of Hyperion' start off like fantasy, but turn out much harder than you expect. Although strangely, I felt the two sequels ('Endymion' and 'The Rise of Endymion') were much more fantasy than the originals - anyone else read them and have opinions? (If you're thinking of reading them, bank on reading the first two as a block - I believe they were written that way, and you'll be disappointed if you only have the first and get to the end, because you'll want to keep reading.)

Had a bad bout of insomnia last night so I finished Ian.M.Banks Inversions.Very good.Also finished Nightfall by Asimov and Silverburg over the weekend and was able to just about keep up with the science.Just dipping into Time Out of Joint by Phillip.K.Dick now.

Incog

BTW has anyone read Perdido Street Station by China Meiville yet?I loved it myseld and kept thinking of Dickens and Melvyn Peak when I read it.I see Meiville's new book,Scar is out in HB but at £17 it's just too much.I shall have to wait until it's out in PB.

Incog

I'm going to cause a riot now and suggest (please don't kill me) that Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke (put down that blunt instrument!)...

aren't very good writers.

Now I'm not saying they don't write good sci-fi, or that the stories aren't entertaining, when I was 12 I was an avid reader of both Asimov and Clarke, but coming back to them in my old age I find that actual writing, the description, the dialogue, the characters, are all very wooden and two-dimensional.

The trouble with both writers, and a huge portion of science fiction, is that they put the science fiction before the story.

Michael Crichton could be accused of the same thing with both the Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, but I'm going to let him off simply because both stories were chillingly believable.

It's no coincidence that a lot of the best science fiction of the moment is coming from writers who will beat you with an ugly stick if you tried to call them science fiction/fantasy writers. These are people who want to write about weird and wonderful things, but are also interested in making the characters as believable and three dimensional as possible.

Of course it's also down to the said people being pretentious a-holes who are in denial about wanting to write grown-up Flash Gordon comics, but for now we'll leave that.

The science fiction that I would term "good" sci-fi actually occurs when the sci- part is thrown out the window.

H.G. Wells, one of the founders of the whole genre, basically only used scientific patter to replace magic, to make his fantasy stories a bit more plausible. In an illuminating essay he explains that the key to such stories is to include ONE fantastic element, and keep everything else and mundane and realistic as possible.

I think it's this that makes his stories not only readable, but even plausible today. The up-to-the second technobabble of time travel in Star Trek is usually disproved within a week. H.G. Wells's time machine is still a possibility because he never tries to excuse its existence with any form of indepth explanation.

Likewise, Ray Bradbury's space ships aren't powered by super-tachyon-ion-drives, they're powered by rockets, and that's all you need to know.

John Wyndham is another master of this trick. In the Midwich Cuckoos the invasion is spookily low-key, and the Trouble with Lichen doesn't really bother with the technicalities of elongating life, but asks how it will affect our society.

Compare this with Arthur C Clarke's book about a device that can disarm all weapons, which I gave up after a third of the way through not just because of the paper-thin and cliched characters, but because they spent some much time actually coming up with this technology in the first place!

Another great example, and one of the best time travel stories I've ever read (and I've read a few!) is Making History by Stephen Fry. Admittedly we are halfway through this book before the Time machine is actually used (to teleport a sterility pill into the water supply of the village where Hitler was born) but this time is spent getting to know the characters. We deal not only with the hypothetical "What if you could kill Hitler" scenario, but the main character's anxieties about the future, his history thesis and his girlfriend dumping him, as well as the obligatory Mad Scientist(tm) dealing with his guilt about... well I don't want to ruin it for you.

Girlfriend trouble and history thesises (sp?) might sound like something out of a boring teen angst drama, but that's the point. The characters here aren't Captain Scarlett types, they're boring, ordinary people like us, and THAT is when Science Fiction becomes Good Fiction.

I agree wholeheartedly.SF should be about the people inhabiting the hardware not the hardware and good SF is perfectly possible.H.G.Wells wrote literature that just happened to have an element of SF.The trouble is many good writers won't touch the genre because it has a geeky nerdy impression to it.It's a shame that many(until recently) felt they have to defend their choice of reading/writing matter from some literary snobs but as Terry Pratchett recently pointed out such people are being left behind.However SF won't truly be considered acceptable until it is recognised as a perfectly legitimate form of literature to be taught in schools,colleges and universities.

Incog.

Asimov and Clarke not good writers???

Hmm. Who was it, after reading (or trying to read) "Foundation", who said Asimov had captivating ideas, but that he wouldn't employ him to write junk mail? Oh, that's right - Douglas Adams.

It's funny, when I first read that quote I wanted to punch Douglas Adams's lights out. I thought he was being incredibly presumptuous, given that he was some upstart English graduate who'd written a couple of paperbacks and here he was slagging off a chemistry PhD and multiple Hugo winner who wrote more in his days off than Adams did in his entire career.

But then I was only fourteen.

Looking back - and more importantly, READING Asimov again - I can see why I thought that, but also why Adams said that. When I was fourteen, I didn't WANT character development, angst, believable dialogue or any of that rubbish. If I wanted that, I could read Thomas Hardy. No, I wanted ideas, ideas, ideas - visions of the future, of what my life would be like in the far distant 21st century. And I got them, and they were good.

It's easy to dismiss golden age and new wave and even to a certain extent some cyberpunk sf now that we're all sitting here wearing soft contact lenses, listening to mp3 files on our solid state players that we plug into our powerful home computers connected to a global network. We're living in their future.

Think about what you remember from stories. It's not the characters (can you describe Susan Calvin? Name a character from Rendezvous with Rama? Does it MATTER if you can't?). It's the IDEAS. Is there anyone in the world who doesn't use the word "robotics" - an Asimov coining? Is there an sf fan anywhere who couldn't tell you the three laws of Robotics? Or what "any sufficiently advanced technology" might be mistaken for? Ideas like communications satellites, orbitting hotels with centrifugal gravity, ark ships for slow interstellar travel, all these things fire the imagination. It's not surprising, to me, that characterisation suffered against such a backdrop.

These guys were not writing about people, and most of them didn't claim to be. They were delineating the bounds of the possible. They were anticipating the ethical questions we'd have to face, regarding cloning, space travel, overpopulation and other issues. Their answers may have been trite, or simplistic, but they were the only ones addressing them. That was why they were valuable.

"writers who will beat you with an ugly stick if you tried to call them science fiction/fantasy writer"

Interesting... the writer I thought of *first* when I read that was Harlan Ellison. Multiple Hugo award winner. But he has specifically said on several occasions that if anyone calls him a science fiction writer he'll go round to their house and beat them up.

At this point in an act of shameless self-promotion I'm going to provide a link to an entry...

A593282

Enough blather.

H.

"However SF won't truly be considered acceptable until it is recognised as a perfectly legitimate form of literature to be taught in schools,colleges and universities"

It already is. George Orwells "1984" has been taught in schools. Of course, they just pretend it isn't sci-fi to satisfy the brandy-soaked, guffawing, stupid old men who decide what is and isn't "acceptable" literature.

One book is not enough.

Who said that?ME!!!!

Look I hate SF that contains two dimensional characters.I hate ANY book that just has 2 dimensional characters.I got bored with 50's and some 60's SF very quickly because of this(and yes I was a teenager too)I mainly got bored with them because the men were barely rounded and the females were hardly cardboard cutouts.It's one of the reasons I hate Heinlein and can't read his stuff.I want to read about people who face problems that are beyond the normal and see how they cope with almost insurmountable difficulties whilst still being ordinary and having the usual gamut of emotional baggage that I would read in what is considered to be 'good' literature.Of course there should be an element of reading for fun(I love The Stainless Steel Rat)but unless I can believe in a character/s it won't ever work what ever the genre.Ideally I'm going to get both interesting characters and interesting ideas in a good well written SF book.I too find the Foundation books now rather slight and uninteresting as I now do the Lensman series of books by Doc Smith which when I was a teenager I loved.However War of the Worlds is still a great read as is The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham.However I like new interesting authors too of whom there are many still to be read.

Like I said one book is not enough.

Incog

I don't like the term literature, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams (mentioning his name seems to be a sort of ultimate argument winning tactic on H2G2, kinda like mentioning Marx or Lenin in Communist Russia) You would have to find the most liberal, inclusive professors in the known world to have any of them even considered as literature. Nobody has ever read any of them to improve their minds and you will not find critics debating the hidden meanings of the Discworld series (which isn't to say people shouldn't)

However most people would agree they are good writers who write characters that are, if not realistic in the traditional sense, can at least remain believable as long as the book cover is open.

So, instead of trying to argue literary merits, I suggest we stick to what makes good stories and good writing.

I think Douglas Adams' quote about Asimov sums it up perfectly.

Thing is, captivating ideas and great imaginings about the future are fine, and as people have already said are captivating from the ages of 12 to 14/15.

However the thing about H.G. Wells was he was doing just that. Before War of the Worlds I don't think anyone had ever considered that life on other worlds might invade, or that they'd have technology like the heat rays (the first recorded use of the ray gun is in this book) As well as being the first, Wells is also in many ways the best. He realistically portrays aliens who have evolved differently from humans in many ways (although they have ray guns, they don't have the wheel, and unlike many of their descendants, these Martians are not humanoid) they're also scarily similar (Parallels are drawn between the Martians and the British Empire. The bizarre anatomy of the aliens is presented as a possible extreme of human evolution) In all the Star Trek episodes, sci-fi movies and books that I've read I've never come across a more realistic set of aliens. Yet despite this blue-sky imagining, Wells' also keeps things realistic through the variety of reactions people have to the aliens. Their initial disinterest and overconfidence, followed by terror. The artillery man's hopeless dreams of a new society, the priest's complete mental breakdown and the narrator's despair.

There are very few books that manage to evoke an "Oh my god, I could see myself in that situation" reaction, and that H.G. Wells can do this to people almost a century after his death is a tribute to his skill.

Basically, I don't care if H.G. Wells is good literature. War of the Worlds is the best darn alien invasion story I've ever read.

A good book is a good book.Nuff said.

Incog.

Just finished Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton which was excellent and Endymion by Dan Simmons which was great up until the ending which sucked because it was no ending at all.I hate it when books are actually written as part of a series in a way that you get no ending.
Where are all the standalone books gone.It's all huge money spinning trilogys,Quadruplogies and.....endless never finishing series.Sorry having a senior moment.

Sigh!!!

Incog.

Icog, now you have got me going on a favorite rant - books that don't say in large letters on the cover "Part x of a series of z" - I hate it when I find in small print, usually in the "Also by this author" a list of other books that are obviously part of the series.

I have a rule, which I nearly always stick to , and that is never start a series untill all parts have been published and have appeared in our library.

CH

I think sequels are just wrong, full stop. When you pick up a book, you want to know that you have the whole story, everything that happened in this particular imaginary world, between your two covers. If, after the writer has reached the "end" of this book, there's still more story to be told, then maybe the writer hasn't done his job!

And if, by the end of the story, the loose ends are tied up and everyone has their happy/tragic endings, it seems a little bit unfair to me to then yank them back into the thick of things.

Of course, it's kind of understandable if you have a set of likeable characters, both readers and writers alike will want to come back to them again and again, and there are a few exceptions to this all-hating rule.

Exception One: A series such as the Discworld, where characters recur, and often develop over time, but each book is a completely isolated story. You can understand Wyrd Sisters without having read Equal Rites, and you can understand the Fifth Elephant without having read Guards! Guards!

Exception Two: The Trilogy. In this case a book is often just split into three sections (IE: Lord of The Rings- A sequel to the Hobbit admittedly, but Lord of The Rings is just so unbelievably wider in scope as to be allowed) Another example is the Trucker's trilogy, where each book is so completely different from the others as to justify it being three different stories.

However I can't stand 27 book epics set in entirely different universes. At this point the story vanishes and you end up with history books of what never happened, characters vanish, since no character is strong enough to stand such a beating. Plus, you can't emerse yourself in such an epic the same way you can with smaller works simply because it takes so long to get through them.

Fat Mammoth - an exception, surely, must be made for Known Space? Larry Niven has set many, many novels in that universe, some of them featuring recurring characters, some not. Yet each stands on its own, and at the same time enriches the universe.

And if you want a realistic novel of alien invasion, try "Footfall", by Niven and Pournelle.

And if you want roundly realised aliens which are completely non-humanoid, "The Mote in God's Eye" is a good one (also good characterisation in that one).

If you want REALLY non-humanoid, Robert L. Forward has written some corkers. I have to say I don't think much of the characterisation of the humans in his books - but his imagination for aliens is unparalleled, and more to the point, carefully thought out by a man with a PhD in gravitational physics. If you want as realistic an idea as possible about what aliens might be like living in the ocean of a binary planet, the atmosphere of Saturn, or in the surface of a neutron star (!), try "Rocheworld", "Saturn Rukh" and the *excellent* "Dragon's Egg".

H.

I agree with Fat Mammoth about The War of the Worlds. It's a very well-thought-out invasion novel and the fact it was written in the 19th century makes it even more impressive.

I really want to read "Footfall" now.

I don't know about Larry Niven. I've never been a fan of Space Opera (Okay, that's a complete lie, I watch Star Wars avidly when I was a kid and like anybody interested in Sci-Fi anything with laser beams and space ships played an essential part in my upbringing) Let's say the "idea" of Space Opera.

I'd argue that Space Opera isn't Science Fiction in that it has more in common with Greek Epics and Arthurian Legend than the works of writers such as Mr Wells or Mr Verne.

I'd like to suggest a more specific definition for Science Fiction than simply somthing that has technology we haven't got or a phenomenon we haven't experienced. I'd say that a science fiction story would have to have a "What if" premise involving the technology or phenomenon, and that premise alone should be enough to power the story, however many other variables fall into it.

Under this definition Wells, Verne, Wyndham, Asimov, Adams, Clarke and even some Kafka fall into the Sci-Fi category. Conversely Robert Herbert's Dune, the Uplift series and a hell of a lot of others that are placed under the genre for the sake of the laser beams, wouldn't fit into it simply because the "spaceships 'n' laser beams" part is there simply to provide a backdrop, not a catylist to the story.

Other writers, such as Michael Marshall Smith, may start off safely under the definition with stories such as "Spares" (A book about clones kept to provide donor organs) but then go off into silliness because the writer begins to cram too many other ideas in (in this case a weird alternate-universe vietnam war style affair and a city that's actually an artificially intelligent plane)

Falling under this definition doesn't necessarily make a writer a good writer though, and I don't think scientific realism does this either. H.G. Wells came up with corkers such as helium as the main ingrediant of anti-gravity plating, a Time Machine made with quartz and glass, and animals anthropomorphised using advanced vivisection. None of which stand up particularly well to close scientific inspection. On the other extreme Arthur C Clarke researches and explains the science in his books in minute detail, which gets very boring, especially since the more cutting edge science has a tendency to become outdated after ten years or so.

And imaginite non-humanoid aliens are fine, so long as there are so realistic humanoid characters around, even if humanoid in thought instead of form.

"I don't know about Larry Niven. I've never been a fan of Space Opera"

A lot of Known Space is not Space Opera at all, it's sf so hard you could cut diamonds with it. "Protector" is an absolute classic "what if", but if I tell you "what if" *what*, I'll spoil it. Just read it... Similarly, "The Integral Trees" and the sequel "The Smoke Ring" (not Known Space) are a stunning vision of how it could be possible to have an entire human-habitable ecosystem existing in perpetual freefall, with all the consequences of that on a "lost colony" society.

I think your definition of sf is more or less what I call "hard sf", and in fact I had a few ding-dong chats about the difference between that and the soft stuff as part of the Peer Review process for A593282. It's really one of those "angels on the head of a pin" arguments, I think.

The only question worth discussing is - "hard, soft, whatever, is it any GOOD?".

"And imaginite non-humanoid aliens are fine, so long as there are so realistic humanoid characters around, even if humanoid in thought instead of form."

Well, all those Forward novels I mentioned go to some lengths to suggest astrophysically plausible ways in which the human characters can get into reasonable proximity to a small neutron star, a planet in orbit round Barnard's Star, and the atmosphere of Saturn. "Mote" has far more actually human characters than aliens, but has a convincingly alien society, psychology, life cycle, technology and motivation, etc. plonked into the middle of Jerry Pournelle's otherwise uninspiring and completely human "Future History" universe (I'd say read "Mote" and its sequel "The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye" and leave the rest...)