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dangermousieIs anyone on my flist a fan of the old-school scifi? I mean Bradbury and Asimov era? Those type of books ate my childhood and the post is all about them, so if you aren't interested, you better skip this before your eyes glaze over.
I think my favorite author of them all would have to be Ray Bradbury. His books read almost the way poems do, and I have never reread certain portions of Martian Chronicles because they have made me cry too hard ("The Second Expedition" is OMGworthy but it tore my heart out). He wrote so many of his stories about a doomed, disappearing, fragile and beautiful world and his stories stick with me more as emotions than anything concrete. Just beautiful. Then there is of course Farenheir 451, which is one of the most brilliant distopias ever written (that image of the main character's wife surrounded by four television walls is chilling) and with a bittersweet, hopeful ending. I am actually trying to remember now if he is the one who also wrote the short story that deals with what would happen if tomorrow was the end of the world (and the main couple just puts their children to bed as usual) that's been haunting me for years.
I am less of a fan of Asimov (he is a great writer, but sometimes not my cup of tea), with the exception of a lesser-known, but IMO most brilliant, novel The End of Eternity, which deals with an organization that monitors time and makes changes so catastrophic events won't happen. But of course the other side of this coin is that nothing heroic happens either and humans stagnate, and that rearranging someone's life is always hubris and can be inhumane. The main character, Harlan, is a technician, the one who actually does the physical changing, and thus is ostracised even by other members: for they all envy the people who live within their timelines, for they cannot be allowed to get too attached to a period lest they wouldn't want to change it, they are not allowed relationships etc etc. And in like many of the best scifi novels, it examines what it is that makes us human and deals with isolation and love as salvation and many other really neat things. Go find it and read it, you won't regret it, honest.
Then there is Robert Sheckley, who wrote many wonderful novels, but my favorite is Status Civilization, which I am shocked has never been turned into a movie. Its hero is convicted of murder, and sent away to a penal planet, whose world is a twisted horrifying mirror to reality. I am bad at describing it, but it's a great book and highly recommended. This review of it gives a much better plot summary and take on it than I can (sample: "Even on those rare occasions when he does cast square-jawed, ultra-competent heroes (as the protagonist of The Status Civilization turns out to be), they function as straight men to the insane worlds they're forced to inhabit. Some of his stories read like Monty Python before Monty Python, or Hitchhiker's Guide before Hitchhiker's Guide. But the best have a wild satiric edge that brings the insanity of our own lives into sharp relief.") Then there is Clifford Simak, with my favorite of his novels being The Goblin Resevation, a scifi world where fairies dance on the green with the ghost of Shakespeare and it all makes sense.
On a more pulpy but still entertaining end of things, there is John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, which, once you get past the killer plants premise, is a rather grim book about the fall of civilization and offers no happy ending in sight, Harry Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy about Jason din'Alt and his interactions with the planet Pyrrhus and its inhabitants (and subsequently other worlds) which deals with march of time and ecology and other issues without being dull (also, Jason=hot), and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man with its fascinating future world with telepaths and someone still committing murder, the novel being part scifi, part psychological exploration, part mystery story.
In non-English authors, my favorites, without doubt are Stanislaw Lem and Brothers Strugatskii. Lem was a Polish scifi author, amazingly talented and very prolific, whose books have been translated into English (though I am unsure of the quality. His Russian translations were superb). Most Americans would probably know of him (if at all) in connection with his best-known novel, Solaris, which was turned into films twice, first by Tarkovsky and second time by George Clooney. Both of these are fine as movies, but they completely fail at book adaptations. Tarkovsky's movie puts the point on its head and Clooney's comes at it through tangents. The book itself is beautiful and lyrical and tragic and uplifting and all those other cliches. It has so much to say of the nature of memory, and what it means to be human, and the true alienness of aliens, and regret and love and longing. It's been translated into English for sure, and I really recommend seeking it out. My other favorite of his is Return from the Stars. I don't know if it's been translated into English, but it's worth seeking out. The best way (and perhaps the only way) I can describe it is this is a book that Remarque would have written if he wrote scifi. Considering Remarque is my favorite author, that is saying a lot. The novel is deals with a group of astronauts who return from their expedition to Earth that is two-hundred or so years in the future from the time they left (due to time dilation. It's no surprise to them and they knew of it when they signed on). Everyone they knew is dead and the world is familiar yet different. Humans have conquered aggression and violence through means of simple vaccine and they, men who have done deeds of great heroism and went through unbelievable horror, are faced with a world that is utterly safe but that also, as a side effect, lost all ability to be heroic. They are relics, not fitting in and suffocated by this world. It's like a grown-up in a toybox. The hero of the novel is faced with not just this, but his memories of their expedition and the traumatic, horrifying flashbacks. What they left behind is horrific (the expedition cost many crew members their lives and they kept yearning to get back) but it also makes them unfit for the current life, too bland. He (and his other crew members) are suspended between worlds. In a way, this whole thing reminds me of nothing as much as stories of WWI veterans, returning to a world which made them but into which they didn't fit in any more (told you, Remarque!) And there is finding peace through love (and no, the novel makes it affirming, not sappy) and healing and all sorts of amazing things. This novel is really worth seeking out. And then there are The Chronicles of Ion Tiji, which are the writings of a space Munchausen and are some of the funniest stuff I read (worth reading it just for his take on the time travel paradox alone). So yes, go seek him out.
And then there are Strugatskii Brothers, most famous of the Russian scifi authors. They wrote way too many good novels to recommend. Monday starts on Saturday is a comic masterpiece and (according to my Dad) gets working in a research facility dead on, even if the research facility is studying magic, but it deals so heavily with Soviet realities that a lot of its genius would probably be lost in translation. This is not true for Hard to be God, my favorite of their novels, and probably in my Top 10 of any books, anywhere. It's intelligent, and philosophical, and it makes you angry, and it makes you think, and it makes you hope. It involves a planet which is in a Medieval stage of development, so Earth sends in "on the ground" observers for study purposes, who are trained to blend in. The thing is, what to a researcher on Earth "interesting development, 200 people got killed in a routine feudal coup," to the person on the ground are his friends dying. Yet, they cannot interfere, shortcircuit the curse of history and give (e.g.) the more enlightened guys guns, as that would result in more death, more innocent people (only different ones) dying. But does standing back make you less human? When you start to see people not as individuals but as masses, there's problems. The main character, Anton, is probably one of my favorite fictional characters ever, and the end? Wow. You see him fall apart more and more during the book, as he witnesses more and more events he knows he should not interfere in, but is morally repulsed to let proceed. He is a good man, whose humanity is outraged more and more daily, and he is teetering on the edge of losing it the whole book, and when he finally is pushed over the edge? It is wrong, and he shouldn't have done it, there is no question of that. But there is also no question that if he did not act, he would forfeit a claim to his own humanity, because it would be inhuman not to have a snapping point. And of course his actions do not make it better. Basically, I am rambling. Oh, also? Anton/Kira=OTP. The book really does make a point that people as people, matter. Kira is not even a blip in a history book, she didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But of course, she was the world to Anton, and her loss is not better for him because history does not care one way or another. And every person who died in any of these events historians record, routine palace coups, book burnings, little wars, really mattered to somebody. But, and that's why I love it, interference does not make it better for others. These people are not ready for modernity. Interference allows you to save your own humanity, but no more. I don't know how something so hopeless comes across as so hopeful, but it does.
Then there is always Pierre Boulle, whose Planet of the Apes is a brilliant, brilliant satire and not Charlton Heston in a loincloth, but that's a whole other post.
And because what's a post without a link? Dandelion Girl, by Robert F. Young, a beautiful short story about time travel and love and aging. It's wonderful.
I think my favorite author of them all would have to be Ray Bradbury. His books read almost the way poems do, and I have never reread certain portions of Martian Chronicles because they have made me cry too hard ("The Second Expedition" is OMGworthy but it tore my heart out). He wrote so many of his stories about a doomed, disappearing, fragile and beautiful world and his stories stick with me more as emotions than anything concrete. Just beautiful. Then there is of course Farenheir 451, which is one of the most brilliant distopias ever written (that image of the main character's wife surrounded by four television walls is chilling) and with a bittersweet, hopeful ending. I am actually trying to remember now if he is the one who also wrote the short story that deals with what would happen if tomorrow was the end of the world (and the main couple just puts their children to bed as usual) that's been haunting me for years.
I am less of a fan of Asimov (he is a great writer, but sometimes not my cup of tea), with the exception of a lesser-known, but IMO most brilliant, novel The End of Eternity, which deals with an organization that monitors time and makes changes so catastrophic events won't happen. But of course the other side of this coin is that nothing heroic happens either and humans stagnate, and that rearranging someone's life is always hubris and can be inhumane. The main character, Harlan, is a technician, the one who actually does the physical changing, and thus is ostracised even by other members: for they all envy the people who live within their timelines, for they cannot be allowed to get too attached to a period lest they wouldn't want to change it, they are not allowed relationships etc etc. And in like many of the best scifi novels, it examines what it is that makes us human and deals with isolation and love as salvation and many other really neat things. Go find it and read it, you won't regret it, honest.
Then there is Robert Sheckley, who wrote many wonderful novels, but my favorite is Status Civilization, which I am shocked has never been turned into a movie. Its hero is convicted of murder, and sent away to a penal planet, whose world is a twisted horrifying mirror to reality. I am bad at describing it, but it's a great book and highly recommended. This review of it gives a much better plot summary and take on it than I can (sample: "Even on those rare occasions when he does cast square-jawed, ultra-competent heroes (as the protagonist of The Status Civilization turns out to be), they function as straight men to the insane worlds they're forced to inhabit. Some of his stories read like Monty Python before Monty Python, or Hitchhiker's Guide before Hitchhiker's Guide. But the best have a wild satiric edge that brings the insanity of our own lives into sharp relief.") Then there is Clifford Simak, with my favorite of his novels being The Goblin Resevation, a scifi world where fairies dance on the green with the ghost of Shakespeare and it all makes sense.
On a more pulpy but still entertaining end of things, there is John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, which, once you get past the killer plants premise, is a rather grim book about the fall of civilization and offers no happy ending in sight, Harry Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy about Jason din'Alt and his interactions with the planet Pyrrhus and its inhabitants (and subsequently other worlds) which deals with march of time and ecology and other issues without being dull (also, Jason=hot), and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man with its fascinating future world with telepaths and someone still committing murder, the novel being part scifi, part psychological exploration, part mystery story.
In non-English authors, my favorites, without doubt are Stanislaw Lem and Brothers Strugatskii. Lem was a Polish scifi author, amazingly talented and very prolific, whose books have been translated into English (though I am unsure of the quality. His Russian translations were superb). Most Americans would probably know of him (if at all) in connection with his best-known novel, Solaris, which was turned into films twice, first by Tarkovsky and second time by George Clooney. Both of these are fine as movies, but they completely fail at book adaptations. Tarkovsky's movie puts the point on its head and Clooney's comes at it through tangents. The book itself is beautiful and lyrical and tragic and uplifting and all those other cliches. It has so much to say of the nature of memory, and what it means to be human, and the true alienness of aliens, and regret and love and longing. It's been translated into English for sure, and I really recommend seeking it out. My other favorite of his is Return from the Stars. I don't know if it's been translated into English, but it's worth seeking out. The best way (and perhaps the only way) I can describe it is this is a book that Remarque would have written if he wrote scifi. Considering Remarque is my favorite author, that is saying a lot. The novel is deals with a group of astronauts who return from their expedition to Earth that is two-hundred or so years in the future from the time they left (due to time dilation. It's no surprise to them and they knew of it when they signed on). Everyone they knew is dead and the world is familiar yet different. Humans have conquered aggression and violence through means of simple vaccine and they, men who have done deeds of great heroism and went through unbelievable horror, are faced with a world that is utterly safe but that also, as a side effect, lost all ability to be heroic. They are relics, not fitting in and suffocated by this world. It's like a grown-up in a toybox. The hero of the novel is faced with not just this, but his memories of their expedition and the traumatic, horrifying flashbacks. What they left behind is horrific (the expedition cost many crew members their lives and they kept yearning to get back) but it also makes them unfit for the current life, too bland. He (and his other crew members) are suspended between worlds. In a way, this whole thing reminds me of nothing as much as stories of WWI veterans, returning to a world which made them but into which they didn't fit in any more (told you, Remarque!) And there is finding peace through love (and no, the novel makes it affirming, not sappy) and healing and all sorts of amazing things. This novel is really worth seeking out. And then there are The Chronicles of Ion Tiji, which are the writings of a space Munchausen and are some of the funniest stuff I read (worth reading it just for his take on the time travel paradox alone). So yes, go seek him out.
And then there are Strugatskii Brothers, most famous of the Russian scifi authors. They wrote way too many good novels to recommend. Monday starts on Saturday is a comic masterpiece and (according to my Dad) gets working in a research facility dead on, even if the research facility is studying magic, but it deals so heavily with Soviet realities that a lot of its genius would probably be lost in translation. This is not true for Hard to be God, my favorite of their novels, and probably in my Top 10 of any books, anywhere. It's intelligent, and philosophical, and it makes you angry, and it makes you think, and it makes you hope. It involves a planet which is in a Medieval stage of development, so Earth sends in "on the ground" observers for study purposes, who are trained to blend in. The thing is, what to a researcher on Earth "interesting development, 200 people got killed in a routine feudal coup," to the person on the ground are his friends dying. Yet, they cannot interfere, shortcircuit the curse of history and give (e.g.) the more enlightened guys guns, as that would result in more death, more innocent people (only different ones) dying. But does standing back make you less human? When you start to see people not as individuals but as masses, there's problems. The main character, Anton, is probably one of my favorite fictional characters ever, and the end? Wow. You see him fall apart more and more during the book, as he witnesses more and more events he knows he should not interfere in, but is morally repulsed to let proceed. He is a good man, whose humanity is outraged more and more daily, and he is teetering on the edge of losing it the whole book, and when he finally is pushed over the edge? It is wrong, and he shouldn't have done it, there is no question of that. But there is also no question that if he did not act, he would forfeit a claim to his own humanity, because it would be inhuman not to have a snapping point. And of course his actions do not make it better. Basically, I am rambling. Oh, also? Anton/Kira=OTP. The book really does make a point that people as people, matter. Kira is not even a blip in a history book, she didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But of course, she was the world to Anton, and her loss is not better for him because history does not care one way or another. And every person who died in any of these events historians record, routine palace coups, book burnings, little wars, really mattered to somebody. But, and that's why I love it, interference does not make it better for others. These people are not ready for modernity. Interference allows you to save your own humanity, but no more. I don't know how something so hopeless comes across as so hopeful, but it does.
Then there is always Pierre Boulle, whose Planet of the Apes is a brilliant, brilliant satire and not Charlton Heston in a loincloth, but that's a whole other post.
And because what's a post without a link? Dandelion Girl, by Robert F. Young, a beautiful short story about time travel and love and aging. It's wonderful.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 05:50 pm (UTC)I really like Bradbury; his stuff is quite poetic indeed. Have you read John Wyndham's The Chrysalids? It's a good read, I think :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:07 pm (UTC)And I'm a big fan of almost all his stories taking place in the same universe (though I think he has two main universes), just at different times.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:18 pm (UTC)Also long time favorites are A Brave New World (I was like the only one who had to read this one in high school who liked it) and Alas, Babylon, which is the only post-Apocalyptic novel to keep my attention.
I'm honestly not so much a sci-fi fan as a fantasy one. Spaceships and robots bore me. It takes a really good sci-fi novel to even get me to pay attention to it long enough to finish it. The ones I mentioned succeeded in that, so I consider it good writing. I think it's the bleakness of sci-fi that tends to turn me off.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:24 pm (UTC)Also
Date: 2006-06-21 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:43 pm (UTC)It's been awhile, but I remember loving A.E. Van Vogt, especially the Slan novels. Also second the rec for Alas Babylon--a classic of the genre (which is probably offputting right there, LOL, but really, it is). And probably my all time favorite SF story is "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw (complete with link to SciFi.com archive!).
no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:54 pm (UTC)I'm honestly not so much a sci-fi fan as a fantasy one.
I am sort of the reverse. I love scifi (older ones, not modern ones which are just space opera with a lot of gun descriptions) when it applies to the definition of using science to explore modern problems. Not a fantasy fan, I find most of them too fanciful and unrealistic.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 11:00 pm (UTC)I have everthing Asimov wrote, including a signed copy of one of his later Foundadtion novels. He was at a scifi convention at my collage back in 1983 and I was able to have him meet my mother, a long time fan for like 30 years or something, and sign/personalize a book for her. Have you ever read any Alan Dean Foster?
Bob
no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 02:41 am (UTC)I haven't read Foster but I heard really good things about him.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 04:38 am (UTC)I think you would like ADF, try something like Nor Crystal Tears, or one of the Flinx novels. His charaterzations are excellent and nobody does cute aliens like ADF.
Bob
no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 04:39 am (UTC)Did you ever read any of the Myth series by Robert Asprin, tons of fun!
Bob
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 05:47 am (UTC)