[Hobbit]

Ok - for some it's summer, for others winter, for everyone it's mid-year! What have we been reading, what do you think?

Hobbit

[trailhound]

Continuing on R L Forward's Starquake.
Further, I read a story by Philip K Dick, "We can remember it for you Wholesale".
A very powerful writer. I sure can see why Hollywood digs him.

[Ken Korczak]

I was walking down Main Street of sunny Greenbush, Minnesota, (pop. 801) on Friday and who do I run into but my art teacher from junior high school, and I was in junior high about a billion years ago. Still, she recognizes me right away, and furthermore, instantly remembers that I am a SF fan.

After we have a short chat about the latest trends using organic form in modern scuplture, she asks me if I want to look through a couple of boxes of SF books she is planning to donate to the library, giving me first crack at them before they are sold on the cheap to raise funds for the library.

So I have a look the next day -- and HOLY CRAP! -- talk about hitting the jackpot! There's about 70 or 80 books -- almost all the books are first edition hard covers, all with their dust jackets and all in perfect shape. And the titles! Everything from Azimov to Zelazny!! Many of the books have supurb cover art. I would say about half of them are titles I have not yet read!! Novels, anthologies, short story collections!! One book is a collection of SF from the 1930s!

I bought the whole darn works! She offered to give them to me for nothing, but since these were to raise fund for the library, I made a dontation, and hauled off with my prize load!

My summer is set!!! My reading list complete in one fell swoop! I'll be reporting back on what I find -- thanks Mrs. Johnson! You were a great art teacher, and you're still cute!

[scooter13]

I just finished Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton this morning. Great story! Now moving onto Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. It's about the only Culture book that I have not read.

[Kamakhya]

Way to score, Ken!

I've just about finished The 1985 Annual World's Best Sf edited by Donald A. Wollheim. It was a pretty fine read. I really enjoyed John Varley's story, Press Enter and Octavia Butler's story Bloodchild. There was also a story by Connie Willis that I had not read before called Cash Crop. It was ok. There was a very funny story called The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything by George Alec Effinger. Lucius Shepard had a story called Salvador which was really pretty frightening. Stephen Donaldson was represented with What Makes Us Human. It was also good. All in all a fine year and a fine collection of stories.

Kamakhya

[lemming]

You go, Ken! What is it with art teachers? Mine was cute too... her name was Miss Arthur. :)

Kamakhya--I read Bloodchild, as part of an Octavia Butler collection though. Kinda creepy. But then that was the point!

I just finished reading The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (same author as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, which I didn't figure out until I was done with the book, but now I know). I liked it. It was written in 1975 and is seeded heavily with ideas taken straight from Alvin Toffler's nonfiction book Future Shock, a debt Brunner acknowledges straight out (and Toffler wrote a blurb for the back). That lent it quite a bit of richness, and a fair amount of it is basically right, too. You go, Toffler! Add to that background yer basic plot of guy on the run from evil government agency who wants to use his genius to no particularly good ends... who ends up with a girl both wiser than he and in possession of a pet tiger... and then they stumble across Utopia totally by accident... and get captured again by evil govt forces (you know this from page 1, so that's not a spoiler)... and end up doing awesome things anyway and... well, you get a pretty good romp. :D

It had a few things in common with <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>, actually, on looking back. But no worries, it's much shorter, the style is totally different (with random little interjections/quotes that rather reminded me of Slant by Greg Bear) and the espoused philosophy isn't the same. I'll be looking up more by this author, I think.

[cgw]

Just started Gateway by Pohl.

Where were all the cute art teachers when I was in school? My last art teacher (7th grade), if I remember correctly, was quite possibly the uglest women on the planet and had the personallty to match.

[Kamakhya]

Kamakhya--I read Bloodchild, as part of an Octavia Butler collection though. Kinda creepy. But then that was the point

Oh My...I read this story on my lunch hour. ACk!!! :p

It was disturbing yet believable. Butler has an incanny way of adressing some very difficult topics in ways that make sense to even the most common reader. They are not hard science stories, but they are hard social science. My personal favorites.

I have found that a common theme in her stories is what does it mean to be human, what is slave and master, what is freedom, etc. These kind of questions are very hard to answer, but Butler does an admirable, if pessimistic, job of addressing these questions, in the most creative manner possible. She is very likely becoming my next Le Guin. Her only downfall seems that she is too fixated on some ideas. LeGuin is broad in her approach, but Butler seems more myopic.


Kamakhya

[Kamakhya]

Lemming, I should have mentioned that I read Shocwave Rider a while ago and was blown away. What I really liked about it was that it clearly was the grandfather of cyberpunk stories. It was a bit dated, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

I have picked up an large number of Brunner stories from my dad, but none have come close to Shockwave Rider or Stand on Zanzibar or The Sheep Look Up. Still, I don't think Brunner gets near enough attention.

Kamakhya

[Ken Korczak]

You're in for a treat, cgw -- Gateway is one of the best SF novels of all time.

Do most people consider "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand to be Science fiction? I suppose it is. And the only other comment I'll have about "Atlas Shrugged" is: "Oy!"