31–40 of 291 posts
I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
And, how do different interpretations of data compete to become "real"? For example, if you look at it one way it's a city, another way it's a collection of data cells to be colonized, etc.
Some really have staying power and some really don't hold up. I found Foundation and Mote in God's Eye rather disappointing.
I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.
Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…
re Stranger in a Strange land I think it's a book like Catching in the Rye. Our (American) culture has changed so much that modern readers think "what's the big deal with this". The drugs/orgies etc in Stranger in a Strange Land have much less of an impact on a generation that grew up with easy access to hard core drugs and hard core porn.
That's probably it. I remember watching Deer Hunter...maybe in '99 and I just couldn't believe how bad a movie it was. Obviously, to people still in touch with Vietnam (in 78), the impact was...greater.
Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…
The book's most glaring weakness, however, is that many of its characters suffer from I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely-what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome (Harkonnen, in particular, has a James Bond Villain-esque penchant for such speeches.)
Regardless, the book has been absolutely foundational to the genre. Nearly every convention of the modern space opera can be traced back to Dune.
It's a pity that no one's ever been able to crack the book's code on film. Understandable, though, as so much of the action is psychological and the drama internalized.
Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better.
That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to life.
Whether he's writing for Wired about expats in South East Asia (which dove tails nicely with Cryptonomicon) or extra dimensional aliens in Anathem, he makes the world come alive and the technology and methodologies clear.
He also makes me laugh out loud. Very few books have done that.
I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.