Science Fiction : search and destroy

I would describe it as mindblowing.

well it uh "inverts" all the standard tropes of hard sf. sorta like how Elric is an inversion of Conan

as Clute points out in his afterword, it initially lays out a standard hard sf approach of "that kind of science-fiction tale in which a clearly defined protagonist (almost always male) leaves his endangered home on a great adventure, during the course of which he begins to understand the true nature of his world and, through a clearly defined, science-based cognitive breakthrough, comes to grips with the danger that threatens it", but then goes in the entirely opposite direction

Shakey otm, actually

yeah i can see that, although ultimately i think that makes it not so much parody or deconstruction as just... not hard sf.

lol I see we already covered Inverted World upthread

been idly reading some of wife's old Anne McCaffrey books as well

Really digging Stephen Baxter's Voyage, an alternate history in which NASA heads to Mars immediately after Apollo. Very plausible and well thought-out

inverted world owns

if i loved the middle third of accelerando, hated the first third and was iffy on the last, should i keep going with stross? more interested in sentient pyramid schemes disguised as aliens and lobster neural tissue talking with russian translation software than i am in cory doctorowisms and dilbert refrences

Wait, this is so weird, I totally came into this thread to say that I was reading Accelerando and disliking it, should I persist? Somehow the main character seems to have no qualities except for being right about everything and smarter than everyone, and this bores me. I'm not sure if I'm in the first third since I'm reading it on my phone.

In other news, s1ocki and others are about the amazingness of THE INVERTED WORLD, which makes it it painfully clear how fundamentally NON-WEIRD much contemporary SF is by comparison. Priest's 1970 book Indoctrinaire has many of the same qualities and is worth seeking out. And perhaps craziest of all is Priest's story in the 1983 Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.

Also: 1970s Robert Silverberg is indeed well-worth coming back to. I couldn't get through more than 10 pages of Blindsight. China Mieville is readable and has good world-building but his sentences are in love with themselves in a fundamentally ugly way. Among Others by Jo Walton is a very fine thing indeed, though it presses pretty hard against the boundaries of the genre.

iirc accelerando originated as a series of short stories which is why it may seem uneven. can't tell you anything else about stross as it's the only one i've read (and didn't care so much for).

Priest's story in the 1983 Granta Best of Young British Novelists issue.
Is it "The Miraculous Cairn"? Have a copy of The Dream Archipelago but haven't actually read that one yet. Also have a copy of his new one, The Adjacent. Read the first section at the end of last week and started in on the second but haven't had time to get back to it.

Ooh, I just bought The Inverted World today. I'm curious about the new one too.

There's definitely a cairn in it so I'm guessing yes?

Cool. Love that Dream Archipelago stuff, although haven't got round to reading The Islanders either. Been dipping into Ersatz Wine which is his earliest short stories along with a lot of autobiographical information.

Inverted World is so great - the edition w the afterword noting how the book is a satirical inversion of traditional hard sci-fi tropes is eye opening. I may have mentioned this somewhere else around here.

also a big fan of Silverberg's late 60s/early 70s work. Dying Inside, The World Inside, Son of Man (maybe the most genuinely psychedelic sci-fi work ever - just a guy wandering through a constantly shifting, phantasmagoric landscape), Tower of Glass... good stuff!

China Mieville is readable and has good world-building but his sentences are in love with themselves in a fundamentally ugly way

this is also spot on. I find him tiresome.

What is the cutoff date with Silverberg? Thought "Sailing to Byzantium" was ultimately a snooze.

1976

eeph the manfred macx stuff is the first third and i agree its pretty bad. when they get to his daughter and it becomes a space opera set in a VR sim of elizabethan england hosted on a spaceship the size of a can of beans it becomes kinda cool. then it just gets bad again

some funny paralells w Miles Davis - both took the latter half of the 70s off, and both returned in the 80s with much more popular/mainstream work. I read a bunch of his 80s stuff in hs but have no interest in revisiting it now and it all looks pretty boring/pedestrian afaict. Not that all of his 60s/70s books are masterpieces, but in general he was much more wide-ranging conceptually. Was good at just going with the times, I guess.

xp

just a guy wandering through a constantly shifting, phantasmagoric landscape)
Have you read Robert Sheckley's Mindswap or Options?

haven't read any Sheckley

waddaya waiting for?

dunno! Options sounds pretty fun/Malzbergian.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/04/april-fool-not-so-much-dangerous-as-unconvinging-harlan-ellisons-lemgthe-last-dangerous-visionslemg

"What is the cutoff date with Silverberg? Thought "Sailing to Byzantium" was ultimately a snooze."

Basically it was he retired and got burned out. But from 1967-1976 he was amazing. Don't sleep on short story collections from that period either.

Speaking of April 1 announcements,

Bacigalupi and Watts to Collaborate on Depressing Dystopian Shared World Anthology

Paolo Bacigalupi hasn't been mentioned this thread, but he's a nearish-future worldbuilder focused on climate issues, with a dark appraisal of humanity. The collection Pump Six and Other Stories and novel The Windup Girl are recommended, thereafter its diminishing returns. Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities are the young adult novellas for the IPCC report reading teen in your life.

Yeah the Windup Girl is amazing. Rest is okay.

To be honest I also like Mieville and find him very entertaining, but I get the complaints too. City and the City and Embassytown are probably better if you've never read the other stuff though.

“Peter and I got talking about how much we loved shared-world anthologies, like Thieves World or Wild Cards,” said Bacigalupi, “but were put off by the unreasonable optimism of their settings. We think science fiction is ready for a pessimistic future of bleak, uncompromising wretchedness."

I think I need to delve into this guy's work IMMEDIATELY.

Thieves' World was unreasonably optimistic?

We think science fiction is ready for a pessimistic future of bleak, uncompromising wretchedness

uh sci-fi has been mired in this for the last 30 years more or less, I don't really see this as a new or necessary advancement

im super down with the mieville thoughts on this thread. some of his world building is astonishingly good tho. the city and the city is great, particularly if you pretend it's about montreal (it isnt).

dig silverberg's dying inside.

does anyone fuck with hyperion? i think its tremendous.

(the series doesnt quite resolve itself but that first book is amazing)

hyperion is pretty amazing

would make a great miniseries

Dan Simmons?

I like, just finished fall of hyperion after what I guess was 8 months? I still don' tknow how I felt about it. It seems like those two books could have been half as long and still gotten their point across, kind of. I dunno, I was disappointed in the end. Not sure whether to embark on empyrion, since it took me forever and two attempts to do the hyperion books. maybe I should read something else.

recommend me something.

book or movie

oh book please.

fantasy okay too.

i have a trip to the lake coming up.

Inverted World. But maybe you already

Or better yet, The Adjacent

i already inverted. what's the adjacent? same author?

Yes, his latest and greatest

oh that looks cool.