scifi book recommendations

[captain beeheart]

The Book Of Revelations

[sister]

i sometimes have weird compulsions where i must try to read everything written by a certain author. here are some:

pk dick
samuel delany
stanislaw lem
and to a lesser extent
rudy rucker
and iain m banks (they're a little less prolific)

[Garlic]

Originally posted by captain beeheart
And sorry Garlic, but Jeff Noon is a piece of crap. 'Vurt' was pretty good, but it was down hill from then on... Pat Cadigan does what he THINKS he's doing but does it 100x better.

Really? I've read all of his books up to 'Nymphomation' and I liked all of them. But I haven't read any Pat Cadigan yet so I can't say whats better.

[soreback]

dune, but not the others

[captain beeheart]

Oooh shit, I can't believe we haven't brought up Stanislaw Lem, who wrote the original book of Solaris. Solaris is a real existential head-wrecker of a book, but for pure magical "how the fuck did his imagination stretch that far" fantastical far-future shit, check his 'Cyberiad'. He looks so far into the future, that Asimov's 'Foundation' books look like tomorrow's weather forecast.

KING, I know what you're saying about Toffler partly looking a bit silly now, but there's still so much he has to offer - especially his idea that sci fi should be taught in school alongside basic language, cos it helps people keep up with the exponential pace of change, and it helps to fight nihilism and fatalism by making people understand that the future is a multifarious thing, rich with possibilities. (I'm paraphrasing here). Read him alongside Marshall McLuhan and get excited about tech all over again.

[tangent23]

Originally posted by captain beeheart
You should also check out http://www.afrofuturism.net/ and especially the work of Kodwo Eshun, whose 'More Brilliant Than The Sun' is a wicked roll through the funkiest and most futuristic music of the 20th & 21st century, and its relation to sci fi and technology.

kool herc, i like eshun, i remember him from articles in the FACE or iD and he keeps popping up in docos about new music culture, speaking of detroit, does anybody know who that old tripped out guy talking to one of the old school producers in a doco, spinning out about some story where all the planets have a tone...that was mad, i'd love to track him down. i'll try to find the doco, late 90's i think, and i reckon eshun was in it.

also, i know we're gettin a bit off topic here, but

.<<RAMMELLZEE>>

where did he end up? i think he was waaayyy ahead of the curve

[captain beeheart]

Damn right, Rammellzee was/is the George Clinton / Lee Scratch Perry / Sun Ra of hip hop. All sci-fi heroes to a man.

[tangent23]

[Rammellzee 2001 quote from http://www.at149st.com/ramm.html]:

I sent these people to meet Jean Michel Basquiat to tell him I was coming for him. This would be 1980. We of the "burner" class did not like this puppet king who never hit a train a rolling page. FAB FIVE FREDDY, cause of my technique with the "burner," asked me to interrogate Jean Michel before he got too powerful but, society is society, and they want to believe what they want to believe in "that" art world of the 1980s. They had no interest in the "burner!" For me they had an interest in why I used the words Ikonoklast and Panzerism. an interesting military tactic to enter New York City. FRED and DONDI loved me for it! but, they also said I was going too far. They said I was performing heresy.

[endquote]

!

[tangent23]

To me the electro/futurism element of hip hop culture was always the most interesting, this idea that the future was funked-up, not all 2001 sterility.

i'm not sure what i want to say exactly, so i'll just stop here and think for a bit...

[perseus]

Originally posted by Garlic


Really? I've read all of his books up to 'Nymphomation' and I liked all of them. But I haven't read any Pat Cadigan yet so I can't say whats better.

i think Noon is better.

also, check out:

Kathy Acker, "Empire of the Senseless".

"Child of Fortune" by Samuel R. Delany (i think) is also great.

also, British philospher Olaf Stapledon wrote one of the most unusual and interesting early sci-fi books, "Last and First Men".

also, the best sci-fi collection i have read was published by SemioText(e), called "Semiotext SF" or something like that. excellent.

"Vermillion Sands" was also one of the best i can recall off-hand... (by J.G. Ballard).

and anything by San Jose State University Computer Science professor Rudy Rucker is highly recommended.

and did anyone mention Robert Heinlein (sp?) and "Stranger in a Strange Land"? one of the most classic.

[perseus]

Originally posted by captain beeheart

and especially the work of Kodwo Eshun, whose 'More Brilliant Than The Sun' is a wicked roll through the funkiest and most futuristic music of the 20th & 21st century, and its relation to sci fi and technology.

i have that book, but i can't say i thought it was that great... an interesting idea, but his writing style is very annoying - so much so it distracts from the content, and obfuscates it as well. to the extent it almost seems deliberate, as if he is afraid that if he just comes right out and makes his point it will look stupid, so he cloaks it in impenetrable prose that reminds me of an insecure teenager crying out for attention. maybe that's just my take on it though... i might try reading it again sometime.

[tangent23]

Oh yeah Heinlein!
RAy Bradbury as well : dandelion wine, Golden Apples of the sun

Bradbury is the master of beautiful economy. His short stories are something to aim for.

Asimov: old school i, robot series

i liked Noon for his British psychedlic funk, i'm finding Cadigan [Synners] enjoyable but very dense [could just be the typeface its printed in].

The best new school cyberpunk done in a gibsonesque [hah!] universe i've recently read is Richard Morgan's [Altered carbon].

China Mieville [Perdido St Station] is a cool read, kinda in that fantasy/sf interzone, the city itself is very much a major character, the world has a deep feel, industrial england with divergent evolution.

[mpyre]

My fave: foundation series by Asimov (mostly the early ones).

I wanna check out:

"Galaxies" by Barry Malzberg.

Never heard of it but James Cameron is rumored to be working on adapting it.

Oh...and I like the first two Rama books.

[captain beeheart]

Originally posted by perseus


i have that book, but i can't say i thought it was that great... an interesting idea, but his writing style is very annoying - so much so it distracts from the content, and obfuscates it as well. to the extent it almost seems deliberate, as if he is afraid that if he just comes right out and makes his point it will look stupid, so he cloaks it in impenetrable prose that reminds me of an insecure teenager crying out for attention. maybe that's just my take on it though... i might try reading it again sometime.

Yeah I know what you're saying - there's no doubt the man acts like he's really pleased with himself all the time. However, I don't think he's hiding his point at all. What he's trying to do - it seems to me, anyway - is escape from that bullshit academic/critical writing that, like cock-rock, thrives on big dialectics, big concepts, big solos, "profound" lyrics, single moments of "revelation" etc. Eshun tries to present meaning as groove-based music does - repetitive re-inforcement of ideas, multi-layered, multi-stranded, letting the ideas play of each other and accumulate meaning as the thing goes on. He's not always successful, cos there's not exactly a huge canon of writing to hark back to, so he's always experimenting. I think even when it doesn't work, it's brave and impressive, and almost entirely entertaining.

Plus, of course, the man has near-faultless taste in music. When I first got that book, Audiogalaxy was still running, and I spent practically a whole week staying up all night tracking down every piece of music he mentioned. After that much sleep deprivation and freaky funk shit I was living in a pretty fucking sci-fi existence, I can tell you!

[tangent23]

Richard Morgan [altered carbon] has a new novel set in the same world [broken angels]. If you like cyber-noirish, well written stories with lots of tech and violence, i can recommend these [altho i haven't read the 2nd yet].
In his own words:

scifidimensions: Can you give us a quick introduction to the universe of Altered Carbon, and your (anti?)hero Takeshi Kovacs?
Richard K. Morgan: OK - it’s about six hundred years from now and the human race has succeeded in colonising three dozen worlds in local interstellar space, largely thanks to the discovery of an extinct civilisation on Mars whose astrogation charts provided a nice clear map of where to go. It’s also a time when data technology has reached the level where a human personality can be digitally recorded, stored, transmitted and downloaded without too much trouble. There is no FTL travel (the colony barges all took a painfully long time to get where they were going - some, in fact, are still in flight), but it is possible to transmit data in hyperspace so close to instantaneously that the scientists are still arguing about the terminology. So that’s how most of the travel between worlds is done. You upload from a body at one end and get dumped in another one at the other. The process is called “re-sleeving“, and by extension bodies are referred to as “sleeves“.
The digitised personality angle also allows practical immortality for those who have the wealth to afford new sleeves and the will to keep on swapping them. Aside from this privileged class, the only other people who get extensive experience of the process are criminals. Serious crime is punished by forced digitisation of personality and cold storage on disc for anything up to centuries of real time. Meanwhile, your body is sold off to the highest bidder or broken down for spare parts. When you come out, you get whatever clapped-out sleeve the penal system has to hand.

interview here.

Also, recently finished Gibson's [Pattern Recognition], would be of interest to anyone who is into advertising/brands/marketing and internet as a major plot device is a netforum and the relationships formed there. cool as always, but not so future tech.