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

One book then, as far as sci fi goes.

Enders Game.

There, see? I can do sci fi too

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card btw) is stunning. I was a bit dissappointed in the sequel books however.

I might have mentioned this before (too lazy to read back) but John Scalzi is a new author with two books out that are just incredible.

Heinlein's politics and beliefs can get a bit tiresome after a while, but he has written some total classics. "Starship troopers", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - awesome.

As for TV, nothing comes close to the new Battlestar Galactica. It's the first TV SciFi where the actors are real. There's no clunky sets or cheesey wooden acting a la Star Trek. I used to like Star Trek, but can no longer stand watching it because when compared to BSG it's just embarrasingly bad (90% of Next Gen included). It also has a decent amount of sci-fi action - I don't remember any other TV series that has made my jaw drop so often.

I also like Lost. It's a SciFi show masquerading as a primetime TV drama.

Anyone see "Children of Men"?

Ste

Children of Men was tip top.

A bit depressing mind.....

Children Of Men?
Oh, you mean the one with my cousin Clive in it.
Yep, Clive Owen is my cousin

Tsk tsk, and you´re just sitting here posting on h2g2 while your cousin is out making something of himself. Shame on you.

Anne McCaffrey wrote the Pegasus trilogy, which is about what would happen if some people actually had psychic powers and it could be proved. I read the first one, Pegasus in Flight which was decent.

"Heinlein's politics and beliefs can get a bit tiresome after a while, but he has written some total classics. "Starship troopers", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - awesome."

I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress! My physics prof had the class read it for extra credit -- a major character was a computer.

Don't know if the story is apocryphal or not, but supposedly, after being treated for the brain disorder he'd had for more than a decade, Heinlein looked back on his body of work from that time, and claimed he didn't know what he was writing... Some of which *I* liked, some of which were just...hmmmmmmmm.

It seems that no matter how much we try to usher this thread back to it's heading, we keep bringing up long dead authors and seriously mature authors like Anne McCaffrey and there is obviously a reason for this.

A previous poster mentioned Gibson as someone to read. Cyber-punk was the item in question, probably an allusion to his Neuromancer novel. It's twenty three years old now and it still rings bells and so it should as it is the first novel ever to win all three major science fiction awards: the Nebula, the Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Memorial Award and it ushered some new terms into our lexicon.
But it is still 23 years old: where is, where are the new multi award winning novels from young twenty somethings?

Youth, in reality has nothing to do with it and many a great SF/Fantasy Author has grown into his/her path as they have aged and experienced 'stuff'.
Why is it that each new generation of SF readers and to a lesser degree fantasy readers allude to the 'Greats'?
The answer is simple and it is that they are instantly readable because they quite often fore-go that hard science beloved of what was and is still called the cutting edge in relation to Authors and the avant-garde readers who revel in describing it thus.

It dates, and it dates really really quickly and only the lucky few can bypass this intersection in the road to acceptability and sage nodding of heads by future readers.

Someone mentioned Olaf Stapleton, he's been called one of those writers whose vision is so unique he is almost a genre unto himself and of course there are many others.

A guy called Daniel Keyes wrote a novel called :- Flowers For Algernon.
It won the Nebula award and was made into an Oscar winning movie titled 'Charly', it starred Cliff Robertson who won the best actor Oscar for his role in this film. The novel is purest science fiction and it gets a guernsey in the all time 100 best novels of Science Fiction.
This kind of success is almost generational in it's in-frequency and it admirably conforms to the heading of this thread.

There are many more of course and the interesting thing will be in their naming from a majority UK constituency here at H2G2 intent on a quick quirky post and still we have no immediate mention of Brian Aldiss or Moorcock and that rather odd fellow Ballard (Look where he lives and his perfectly rational reasons for being there).
There are younger authors but will they stand the test of time? Some have, and a Commonwealth Author comes to mind who is rising into that pantheon...Damien Broderick.

"Don't know if the story is apocryphal or not, but supposedly, after being treated for the brain disorder he'd had for more than a decade, Heinlein looked back on his body of work from that time, and claimed he didn't know what he was writing... Some of which *I* liked, some of which were just...hmmmmmmmm."

I've never heard anything about this, do you have a link relating the story?

I've checked Heinlein's wikipedia entry and there's no mention of a "brain disorder" depite his entry going into a great deal of detail about his life.

Sci-fi/fantasy/horror fans should try the Necroscope books too... (Brian Lumley I think... Though I always get him mixed up with other authors and usually get it wrong).

While the original books are more fantasy horror, later he gets really really sci-fi, and the spin offs are excellent (in my opinion). House of Doors is another good stand alone horror/sci-fi of his... Lots of aliens forming our mythology, invading our minds and our space... House of Doors (second visit) is however, rather poor in my estimation...

Oh, and I never read the sequels to Enders Game because I loved wanting more and couldnt bear it to be spoiled...

If you are wanting to read about the emergence of psychic powers then, whilst Anne McCaffery's Pegasus in Flight is not bad I would say read Intervention by Julian May. An excellent book in all respects. It may then lead you onto her Saga of Exiles, which really made me go 'Wow!' at the end (I read Intervention first, even though Saga was written previously, and I would recommend that you do the same). Hope this helps and until later....
BCNU - Crescent

>> Getting back to the topic of books, does anyone know of some good SF dealing with the internet as the focus or the antagonist of the story? <<

You could try Iain M. Banks' Feersum Endjinn.

RF

I find Brina Lumley to be an awful writer. Really poor.

I went through a phase of reading his books as a teenager (sex and violence woo hoo) but now they just seem to be utter tripe.....

There is an element of what you say about Lumley that I agree with, but his more expanded ideas on the Wamphyri (sp?) and his visions of the universe and so on I quite liked. Certainly the E.S.P branch spin off from the Necroscope series I liked quite a lot, and a lot more recently than when I read the original. Even with the first ones, I preferred the sequels to the book Necroscope itself, though I like the concept anyway...

Oh, lets not be recommending that tedious old bore Banks again. Neal Stephens is much better at the iternet stuff than Banks can ever hope to be, paticularly 'Snow Crash'. 'Ghost in the Shell' is a better example of the effect of the internet on it's environment than 'Feersum Endjinn', and it doesn't look as though it was written by a deliberate illiterate to boot.

As for 'newer' authors - try Jon Courtenay Grimwood - he is by far and away the cleverest of the post-cyber-punk years, though I would love to tap his mind as to how much of an influence George Alec Effinger's Marac Audrin novels were on his 'Arabesk' trilogy.

Most tv SF is by definition Garbage, though the exceptions are 'Battlestar Galactica', 'Farscape', 'B5', and 'Heroes' from what little I've seen of it. 'Lost' is just nonsense masquerading as the emperor's new clothes.

I know I mentione dBallard somewhere in the backlog (the serious author who fights to stay in the SF ghetto), and I'm pretty sure I must have mentione Moorcock as well, though he seems to have moved away from SF over the last two decades. Aldiss I'm indifferent about.

OK, I got one, new author, original and brilliant, but aimed at teens. Still amazing though: Eoin Colfer. Worth a read and you can rattle through them pronto. So far I think he has written three in the "Artemis Fowl" series and another, the name of which escapes me. Admittedly, there is a fantasy element, but more leaning towards science.

Go on, give it a go!

"I've checked Heinlein's wikipedia entry and there's no mention of a "brain disorder" depite his entry going into a great deal of detail about his life."

I'm not sure of the type of illness; I'm maybe making an assumption about it being brain disease per se. The books in question were from the mid to late 70s. As for claiming he didn't intend them as they were, like I said, possibly apocryphal.

From the Wiki piece, in the Life section: "While vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, he suffered a transient ischemic attack[my note: a stroke precursor]. Over the next few months, he became more and more exhausted, and his health again began to decline. The problem was determined to be a BLOCKED CAROTID ARTERY, and he had one of the earliest carotid bypass operations to correct the blockage. "

There are four Artemis Fowl books, I'll think you'l find, but the only one of Colfer's books which is truly 'SF' is 'The Supernaturalist'. If we are looking at books for teens, then Garth Nix's 'Shade's Children' is as good a read as any adult author has given me for ages.

Quote..."Most tv SF is by definition Garbage"
Obviously a case of the ill-informed mixing with the fatuous.
I'm almost thinking it's a generational thing, this constant put down of efforts by the TV and mainstream network programming.

Statements are usually followed by assertions..."he is by far and away the"

Far and away the best what? (enter your own observations).
Most things are subjective when viewed from a distance or read and digested.

One man's rubbish is another man's avente-garde eye opener.
Each generation has it's heroes and one man's DR Who is another's Red Dwarf or the sublime Roy Thinnes in 'The Invaders'.

As for the supposed " SF ghetto", all one can take from that is the fact that the immense power and fiscal clout that the North American chapter of the world wide fraternity of SF/F authors is understated.