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Which Sci-Fi Writer are you?


Domi

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Arthur C Clarke for me. Now if I'd actually read anything by him.....

 

Space Oddesy 2001 is a good story, the movie is better though. Arthur C Clarke wrote it as they were making the movie, and in his own words he got to play around with seeing what worked and what didn't, plus Stanley Kubrick would have influenced this fairly strongly.

Space Oddesy 2010 is a decent and enjoyable story, the movie is crap though, the book much better

Space Oddesy 2061-onwards are worse. Only read if you REALLY must know what ends up happening to the characters

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Is this what you're doing instead of working on IWD2 NPC? ;)

 

I'm not into science fiction at all, so I have absolutely no idea who David Brin is, or if I've remembered it well enough to spell it correctly.

 

David Brin is an excellent author. I originally ran across him when I read a short story he wrote for Popular Science back in the early 90s, which inspired me to find more that he'd written. He's also known for slagging George Lucas pretty badly over Lucas's writing skills and the benevolent dictatorships that Lucas is known to like to espouse as the best form of government.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin

 

His best known novels are the Uplift saga series of books.

 

The Uplift Series

 

Sundiver (1980)

Startide Rising (1983)

The Uplift War (1987)

The Uplift Storm Trilogy:

Brightness Reef (1995)

Infinity's Shore (1996)

Heaven's Reach (1998) ISBN 0-553-57473-6

 

These novels feature a complicated universe where most (all) sentient life has been genetically engineered from near-sentient species with humanity being a possible exception. I'd definately recommend these books to anyone who may enjoy Sci-fi. The characters and societies are interesting, the plot is good and the books leave you wanting more. One technique Brin uses in these novels is to start part way through the story. I always felt like I started part-way through a series, but the technique ends up working to give the reader the feeling that you are only seeing one small aspect of all the things and stories happening.

 

The Postman (1985) (Filmed by Kevin Costner as a major motion picture with disappointing box-office numbers; Brin has spoken kindly of the film, a generosity shown by few of his fans, who found it deeply disappointing.)

 

The movie was crap. The book is actually pretty good, and quite enjoyable. I remember thinking when I read it that "hey, this could be a pretty good movie" not realizing that "The Postman" by Kevin Costner was based on the same story. Ugh too bad things turned out this way. The story itself is set in a post-apocalyptic world and was originally published in two parts as "The Postman" (1982) and "Cyclops" (1984). Both won Hugo Awards for Best Novella. The completed novel was also nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel. One of the interesting themes is how a lie told often enough and in the right way can end up becoming the truth.

 

 

In 1997 a film adaption was made of the novel. It was widely panned by critics, and was criticized for straying too far from the source material
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Darned fine story, ran in either Asimov or Analog early on. Brin is not always my style (run more to GR Dickson, Drake, et al) but... y'know, Fantasy enjoying non-sci-fi folks might start with Anne McCaffrey, the Pern novels, and even her "sci-fi", which is old-school Fantasy/Sci-Fi blend. Or, if you don't mind deeply mind-bending stuff, Jack Vance.

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Nope -- gotta read the originals, adult versions, like Dragonriders of Pern.

A little juvenile (consider the timeperiod though) - basically, Bards and DragonRiders (in psionic bond to flying reptiles) in an agrarian society built from a space colony gone horribly wrong, so wrong that most of the trilogy is spent relearning the ancient heritage. The original trilogy is reasonably good.

The "Melody of Harper Hall" YA spinoffs about Harper Hall are very Taran-Wanderer-ish. Kind of like The Ship Who Sang. Good for young teens, but sappy. The (much later) short stories I can't vouch for, having never read them. A step up from Edgar Rice Burroughs, but similar timeperiod for authors.

 

Of course, if you want the category "Horrible Camp but Fun Anyways", try Doc Smith's "Lensman" series. That whole series is fun, and is about as sci-fi as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet; a complete romp through a galaxy of White Hats (men and male aliens, of course, and the women who love them and just want to swoon) vs Black Hats (men and male aliens with some evil misguided women), complete with Master Guiding Race vs Ultimate Evil Corrupting Race, Space Pirates, Innocent Young Maidens Under The Influence of Drugs, Mental Powers, Q-Rays Slashing The Ether In Search Of The Cold Bare Steel Of Spaceship Walls -- heck, there are even short stocky axe-weilding Space Dwarves who Arrow Through Space Boarding The Evil Pirate Ships of the BOSKONE ;).

 

(now how the heck did I get this far off topic?)

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I read a couple of the Lensman series and I think the review of "This is what happens when the boy scouts take control and cleanup Denver + space opera are combined" They are almost entirely plot based, fairly sparse on the details and very campy. I felt like I was reading an outline most of the time. Still, they're decent fun if you like campy.

 

For the Anne Mccaffrey stuff, her middle stuff tends to the best, along with the early Pern books (but not the short stories). Her very early stuff is almost soft-core erotica at times, pretty much all involves female characters finding fulfillment in submission to their male "one true loves". Then I think her marriage went bad, she got a divorce and you don't see as much of that in her latter books/stories.

 

Unfortunately in her later novels, the good guys tended to become more perfect, anyone who disagreed with the "good guys" are either misguided and will see the error of their ways before the end of the novel, or will go from a minor disagreement to eating babies before the story is through. In the Pern novels, a semi-feudal agrarian society gets a bunch of spin put on some of the less appealing aspects (drudges become weyrfolk, and anyone doing really menial tasks are always mentally retarded, and its their way of contributing to society).

 

She's had a number of good series and books, but they defineately aren't for everyone and not every one is a hit.

 

 

One of my favourite Sci-fi authors is Timothy Zahn. I like pretty much everything he's written, though he is most famous for his Star Wars books. Lets just say, that if they'd chosen to make his first Star Wars trilogy of novels into movies instead of the Episode I, II, III travesties, then most people would say the new ones are light-years better than the original three.

 

Something Zahn is noted for is his excellent character focused stories set in various Sci-fi settings or situations. He isn't huge on the technobabble, and just tends to treat the science part as part of the setting, not the point of the story. His stories are definately character driven, though the plots are always enjoyable. One of my favourite series of books by him is the Conquerors Trilogy, in which the starting stages of a major interstellar war are seen from character on both sides (book 1: humans, book 2: Zizzarah (sp?), book 3: both)

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