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The SF (as in literature) thread

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Ummon:
Given this is 'Everything Else', Street Fighter wouldn't make sense, no?



--- Quote from: ark_ader on November 21, 2008, 04:53:16 pm ---I love Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison.  Make Room Make Room is another.

Alan Dean Foster Spellsinger and Hour Of The Gate.

And while I'm on a SF kick - L.Ron Hubbard - The Invaders Plan (well the whole series too).  ;D

--- End quote ---

No, none of those really quaify. Scifi, fantasy, scifi, respectively.



--- Quote from: Peale on November 21, 2008, 11:31:32 pm ---I gotta admit when I saw the title I thought it was Street Fighter too.  I like Sci Fi much better.

I edited the main thread title.  Hopefully there won't be any more confusion.

--- End quote ---

I edited it better.



--- Quote from: saint on November 22, 2008, 09:06:41 am --- For what the OP wanted, you can call it SF or Science Fiction, but not Sci Fi. It's almost a religious argument in the making.

--- End quote ---

Heh. I'm not zealous about it, just particular. Which means I don't say 'science fiction', either. But your description distinguishing scifi and science fiction is adequate. Of course, it does somewhat blur the line that even with only 'SF' as a label is only fairly distinct, and often case-dependent. The Matrix I wouldn't consider SF or even science fiction. At best, it's an almost two-decades-old rip-off of the cyberpunk genre.

jim's posted a decent one above, though it could perhaps be articulated a little better.


Steve: I dunno. You may have to do some extra-curricular study.


So what is everyone reading?

Mamed for life:
I'm not really sure if I have the distinction right, but I recently read The Algebraist by Iain M Banks: bit of a slow starter but excellent once it gets moving. Crow Road (as Iain Banks) is brilliant as well: thats his fiction writing, as opposed to SF.

I've been working through Peter F. Hamilton's catalogue as well. The Commonwealth Saga and the Night's Dawn trilogy are some of the best books I've ever read, never mind SF (or Sci-fi, whatever). :dizzy:

 Getting the second part of the Void Trilogy in the next week or two, first part (Dreaming Void) I really enjoyed.

MfL

boykster:
Obvious unmentioned:

William Gibson - any book
K W Jeter - Farewell Horizion and his other original works (haven't read his trew/starwars/etc stuff)
Heinlein - anything other than the "boyscout" bunch of books, but even some of those hold up.  JOB is my fave Heinlein novel of all time

Ummon:
JOB is just a farce. Fun, but not SF or scifi.  I lost interest with Gibson in Pattern Recognition and put it down less than a hundred pages in.

Night's dawn is great - except the second book of The Naked God, which was sort of a let down, partly because he invoked a Deus Ex Machina sort of thing. Commonwealth was very similar. Mostly great and fun, but the ending of Judas Unchained, and the whole motivation of the 'alien', was unsatisfying. And the asian detective chick was annoying because she couldn't see her function was totally reliant on any particular social mores she happened to serve under (and arbitrary because of this).

The Algebraist was slow. But what caused me to lose interest was that it seemed the same forumula as his Culture novels without anything new. Add to that his recent Matter - the latest Culture novel - that adhered to the old formula but lacked any of the rich wit and intensely black humor common in the earlier books. Or maybe it was just me, I dunno.

boykster:

--- Quote from: Ummon on November 24, 2008, 08:55:17 pm ---JOB is just a farce. Fun, but not SF or scifi.  I lost interest with Gibson in Pattern Recognition and put it down less than a hundred pages in.

Night's dawn is great - except the second book of The Naked God, which was sort of a let down, partly because he invoked a Deus Ex Machina sort of thing. Commonwealth was very similar. Mostly great and fun, but the ending of Judas Unchained, and the whole motivation of the 'alien', was unsatisfying. And the asian detective chick was annoying because she couldn't see her function was totally reliant on any particular social mores she happened to serve under (and arbitrary because of this).

The Algebraist was slow. But what caused me to lose interest was that it seemed the same forumula as his Culture novels without anything new. Add to that his recent Matter - the latest Culture novel - that adhered to the old formula but lacked any of the rich wit and intensely black humor common in the earlier books. Or maybe it was just me, I dunno.

--- End quote ---

Find a copy of "The Man in the High Castle".  Thank me later.  Take that pompous, stick in the mud definition of "SF" vs Sci-Fi and read the authors who built the foundation of a legitimate branch of fiction that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for pulp novels and dime-store books. 

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