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

I second whoever mentioned Ursula Le Guin - even though some of them are a bit old now, what stands up about the stories is the human (and alien) personalities and characters. Her short stories are also good - The Compass Rose is a good place to start. Whether it's *proper* skiffy is open to debate.

Ah, SF defintions...

Le Guin herself has written about the difficulties of defining genre, and how critics and reviewers always have problems knowing quite where to put her. I think she is such a proficient writer that trying to put her in a specific genre is almost insulting. Obviously her books fit in a number of genres, or maybe she transcends genre.

Here's a brief poke at genre classifications by Le Guin from her website: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/AlternateTitles.html

There is alot of her older work that I haven't read and I tend to read her more 'fantasy' end of the spectrum. She is getting more prolific as she gets older and I love that there will always be plenty for me to go back and read.



btw Freddy I'm glad to see you didn't explode. Well done

When was I going to explode?

Ah...I see! It wasn't that kind of countdown!

You a Ursula Le Guin fan as well, then? I must admit, I've not read the Wizard Of Earthsea stuff, but a lot of her SF stuff is very good indeed. I think it's because she writes about people, rather than technology. She uses the device of SF to explore such things as sexuality, empathy, emotions, wish-fulfilment etc.

Oh yeah, total fan. She is one of my all time favourite writers. I agree that she is good with exploration of human issues. I would like to read her more SF work at some point. I have read The Word for World is Forest, which was one of the first of her books I read. It would be classified as SF maybe (alien culture meets human culture, set on another planet in the future)?


I musn't have read alot of 'high tech' SF because the idea of writing about technology without writing about people seems kind of odd. Or maybe I've just missed it. I guess something like The Matrix movies are high tech, but it's the other stuff (the story telling, use of mythology, exploration of consciousness etc) that worked for me. Although the technology is an integral part of the story too - if that's all there was I would be really bored.

I also love Le Guin's essays, and I now have a copy of her translation of LaoTzu's Tao Te Ching which I am getting to know.


Re exploding - you've obviously forgotten this: F19585?thread=197502&post=4965356#p4965356

Which is just as well methinks

In terms of books, I enjoyed these...

Rocannon's World
The Left Hand Of Darkness
The Eye Of The Heron
The Dispossessed
City Of Illusions
The Lathe Of Heaven
The Compass Rose

I haven't read any of those! My list is:

The Earthsea trilogy plus the handful of 'sequels' and associated writings.

Always Coming Home

Threshold

The Word for World is Forest

The Birthday of the World (a novella and some short stories)

Dancing at the Edge of the World (essays)


I guess your list is her SF books and mine is mostly her Fantasy.

Le Guin is fantastic, my thoughts...

I.M.Banks as has been noted earlier;
G.R.R.Martin is great too;
V.Vinge, “A Fire Upon The Deep” and “A Deepness In The Sky” are fantastic for getting across the size and scope of a galaxy full of intelligent life;
A.A.Attanasio, has not, I think, been mentioned here yet. His work, which I can’t remember the name of at the moment, about a life on a neutron star and something about them leaving to protect themselves from a preying entity, anyway it was a good story; Did some great stuff with Merlin and Arthurian legend too;
Brin, with “Uplift” series
Bear with “Eon”, “Eternity” and the series with the human Families – rooks, bishops etc. – hmm memory very bad at work today - deserve mention.
I.Watson is special
For Space Opera F.Saberhagen, with his “Beserker”series deserve mention.
Zelasny; Moorcock; Baxter; Varley; Egan…. the list goes on…

Hi, I'm diving in at the end here and haven't read the whole conversation so apologies if someone's already mentioned this. I'm not the world's biggest SciFi fan but I loved the film Cube, in which a bunch of total strangers wake up to find they have been transported into a giant outer-space cube-shaped prison. It's much more about the stresses and strains of their group dynamic than it is about being in space, which is what makes it so interesting. There's a sequel, too (Hypercube, indeed) but I haven't seen it for fear that it is awful.
I read Dune and found it quite a dry read in places, but it's got some good ideas and is quite interesting.
Stephen King's The Stand might count, in which the whole world dies of a nasty plague (apart from a few people who are immune) and an apocalyptic battle between good and evil follows. It's very long, but good.

I've found a good way to find good science fiction stories is to read the Hugo Award winners.

I've read quite a number of them, and often it leads me to find authors that I have never read before. Hugo awards are given by the world Science Fiction Convention.

This site lists the award winners.

http://www.worldcon.org/hugos.html

There are lots of great stories in there like

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin
and Ringworld by Larry Niven

I highly recommend them as enjoyable, thoughtful reads.

If you want ones that are more literary, try the Nebula awards given by the Science Fiction Authors.

I would always recommend the Starshield series or The Star of the Guardians by Margaret Weis. A fantastic Character author.

I will always remember the intro she wrote to the Star of the Guardians.

Not word for word quote

This is a Science Fantasy book. This is a book that is interested in how people deal with a Scientifically advanced world. I would considor this as Science Fantasy whereas Scicene Fiction has deveolved into a novel to hail the almighty god Technology.

And Ringworld apparently got both the Hugo and Nebula award.

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris struck a chord with me - probably because it's so short

*checks to see that one is not repeating oneself* http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=92419&post=2482939#p2482939 I found the following unputdownable:- Engines of Light trilogy by Ken Macleod Misspent Youth by Peter F Hamilton Deepsix by Jack McDevitt turvy

Did anybody else watch: The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne on BBC2 Saturday?

No I missed that.

If it was in the afternoon I had 5 teenagers playing on the Xbox in my living room so it might explain why I missed it.
Eveningwise I was just out of it.

I've just finished a massive tome by Peter F Hamilton called Pandora's Star.Excellent and I loved the surrealist cliffhanger ending.I look forward to the sequel.

Incog

Have you read Hamiltons 'Reality Disfunction'? If so, what did you think?

It seems to be a divisive book with those who both love it or hate it. I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to moving on to the next two in the series...

Read all three and they are brilliant if hard going at times.I persevered and enjoyed them enormously.I also enjoyed his Fallen Dragon novel as well.


Incog.

How about Stephen Fry's 'Making History'? I know he doesn't normally spring to mind as an SF writer, but this is pretty good (and, frankly, his best novel so far, or so I think). Makes you think, makes you giggle (especially the bravura recaffeinated coffee sequence near the beginning - had me in stitches).

Quite a lot of non-sci-fi writers have done one sci-fi book. Think of George Orwell's "1984" or P D James' "The Children of Men".

I'm currently reading "Dune" by Frank Herbert which is brilliant. One thing that really impresses me about it is that Herbert has not simply created a future environment and populated it with people who might as well come from his own time. The politics and environment of "Dune" are as far away from our own as the medieval age is and this creates an excellent atmosphere.