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Hippiekinkster -> RE: sci-fi novels you should read (9/25/2010 9:31:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: calamitysandra
The Peace War by Venor Vinge.
Hell, anything by Vernor Vinge (I am going to HAVE to visit Köln).
A Deepness In The Sky was superb. The On/Off star, and the "Spider" race that lived on its sole planet... just brilliant.
I'm more into Fantasy these days, but I grew up on Ace Doubles.
http://people.uncw.edu/smithms/ACE_doubles.html
So many great authors. Andre Norton (first real SF book I read - "The Stars are Ours!" IIRC (hey, it was almost 50 years ago. memory fades)); L SPrague de Camp; Keith Laumer; Isaac Asimov; A.E. Van Vogt; Philip K. Fat; Poul Anderson; Robert Silverberg; Harlan Ellison, and so many others...
I got hooked back in the 2nd or 3rd grade with a series about an eccentric scientist named Mr. Tycho Bass (Basidomycetes), who convinces two young boys to build a rocket ship that will take them to a tiny moon, "Basidium", only 50,000 miles from Earth. Wow, these books really captured my imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Cameron
Then there were the Tom Swift books that I somehow inherited. The series started in 1910. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift
When I was about 14, I got turned on to the Doc Savage books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Savage
I still have about 60 or so of the Bantam reprints of the Doc Savage series.
I'm really not, and never have been, a fan of the "cyberpunk" stuff. Dystopias are boring. Except for Horselover Fat's stuff. That's the kind of shit Rethuglicans fap to... welfare queens and commie Leebrils take over the planet, leaving it up to (cue "Ride of the Valkyries" (da da da DA da DA DA DA DA DA...) TeaPartyman!!! to come to the rescue! Saving America for the Koch, Scaife, Wyly, Hilton, Perot, Hunt, Bush, Kennedy, yada yada Families from the irrational, unjust demands that the Great Unwashed be paid living wages and get some decent health care!)
SF has always been about "What If?"
Read "Dune" again. Or watch it (not the Kyle McLachlan one). It's about the politics of a scarce commodity, oil or water, take your pick. It's about the lengths powerful factions will go to to control said commodity (Harkonnen = Bush, IMO).
As I said, I prefer the Fantasy genre. Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, L.E.Modesitt, David & Leigh Eddings ( a favorite; The Belgariad quintilogy is superb, IMO), Tolkein, and the like, afford me more avenues of Escapism, as it were.
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