coosa, I wasn’t objecting to the highly eliptic orbit (though I think it highly unlikely a planet could maintain such an orbit; it would result in significant perturbation of other planets in the system and would likely be highly unstable itself). What I was criticizing was the fact that the planet brings with it the spores and yet Pern seems to have to deal with those spores even when Pern has travelled to the other side of the sun from the ‘red star’. Simple geometry tells ya that ain’t gonna happen. And, while I know that she has attempted in recent works to re-define her ideas on how the spores work, her statements in the original books left no doubt that the spores generated on the planet and were spun off into space. It was her lack of attention to detail that I was criticizing.
As for telepathy, why isn’t that possible? No one has ever ruled it out. Indeed, that is precisely the sort of assumption that a science fiction writer makes that makes the fiction SCIENCE fiction (as opposed to just any old fiction); you postulate something out of the ordinary scientifically, then you build up a story exporing the effect of your hypothesis in a given situation. But GOOD science fiction writers (e.g. Larry Niven) at least attempt to make sure the postulations are reasonable and not clearly impossible, which is why hard science fiction writers have difficulty discussing inter-stellar travel any more. McCaffrey started with an untenable hypothesis to explain her award winning short story about dragon riders and their search for a girl to take to their home to become a queen dragon rider (Weyr Search 1968 Hugo Award for Novella (tied with Riders of the Purple Wage, by Philip José Farmer) and Nebula Award for Novella). It is, thank god, the only such award her fiction achieved.
Now, mind you, she could have solved all this silliness by simply making the whole thing fantasy, without attempting to produce a scientific explanation; but, of course, she didn’t, so she opens herself to criticism. Lest you think this is nitpicky; Larry Niven apologizes regularly for his Hugo Award winning short story Neutron Star because it turns out that the scientific hypothesis that makes the story so delightful is off ever so slightly; the ship as it rounds the neutron star would end up spinning, making it impossible for the ‘hero’ to survive.
For anyone who wants to read some older science fiction that was considered good at the time, I refer you to the list of Hugo Award winners at WSFS Hugo Awards List. A list of Nebula Award winners is maintained at Nebula Awards List but I don’t vouch for the accuracy of the list; the official site of the SFWA, which makes the award of the Nebulas, doesn’t archive the past winners.
DS, I think the difference here is whether you prefer ‘hard’ science fiction over the moe fuzzy kind. I don’t think the Pern books were meant to be SF in the beginning - they were more like borderline fantasy. When the idea behind the story became wildly popular, McCaffrey did a pretty good job of going back and trying to clean up the inconsistencies and provide some sort of decent scientific explanation for Pern, especially for someone who is NOT a scientist. If you’ll check the ‘acknowledgement’ pages in the front of her books, you’ll see that she did quite a bit of consulting with REAL scientists in an attempt to be as accurate as possible. And I think she is intentionally vague about the timing, etc. of Threadfall because of the inconsistencies involved.
I think there is a big difference between someone who starts out knowing where they are going (for example, creating Ringworld) and someone who just sort of falls into a bigger story than they originally intended to create.
You’re just pickier than I am - I’m willing to overlook some minor glitches because the stories and characters are so interesting. Also, probably level of education or special interests play a large part in what we find acceptable - if I’m not aware that something is a mistake, it’s not going to bother me! But I have the same reaction to books that contain what are, to me, major inaccuracies about animals and animal behavior, since I notice those things.
Anyone want to go over to GD and debate what makes a good book, in our opinion?
God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Therefore, Ray Charles is God.
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
The Vampire Lestat (Anne Rice)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
(Philip K. Dick)
The Stand (Stephen King)
Different Seasons (Stephen King)
Burning Chrome (William Gibson)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Graphic Novel/Comic:
The Dark Knight
Violent Cases
Kingdom Come
Watchmen
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
For fantasy, I like stylists with a sense of humor. So at the top of the list are
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
A Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
Lord of Light by Zelazny (followed closely by Nine Princes in Amber and Creatures of Light and Darkness)
AMEN. I’m not a big book person, but a friend told me to read Hyperion. I think it was the first sci-fi book I ever read. Damn good. I’ve even re-read it a couple times. The second one was equally good. The third was OK, but not as good as the first two. I have to get me the 4th one in the series.
What? Only three posters have mentioned Asimov? I’ll have to bring his numbers up.
Anyway, favorite sci fi include:
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The Gil “The Arm” Hamilton stories by Larry Niven
Fantasy
Anything by Tim Powers, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett
The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
"It’s always heartwarming to see a prejudice overcome by a deeper prejudice.
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
LOTR and The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Out of the Silent Planet -
The Last Unicorn - Peter Beagle
No one has mentioned Shirley Jackson, I swear everything she ever wrote has put me under what can only be called a spell.
coosa, it is true that the understanding of the subject has a lot to do with the extent to which inaccuracies become bothersome. I’ve heard crime-thrillers picked apart by criminologists and criminal attorneys for things average people wouldn’t know about.
Weyr Search, the original story that McCaffrey wrote to start the Dragonrider novels was clearly fantasy. Dragons ridden by humans who communicate telepathically with them is the stuff of fantasy; there is no attempt to connect it to scientific advance. Would that she had stuck with the fantasy motif!
I wasn’t saying that McCaffrey’s stories weren’t worth reading; I have almost all her books, though I gave up trying to keep up with her now prolific pace. One of my more favorite ‘first contact’ novels is Decision at Doona; I thought at that time she did a credible job of making the story work and not blowing major assumptions. Compare that book to, say, Dinosaur Planet, which is one of her worst, and has more scientific holes in it than a sieve. In general, however, my main point remains: fun to read, maybe; a really good author of science fiction? No, sorry.
Science fiction suffers from the added difficulty of being, in its basic premise, a field that requires some knowledge and precision to be good. Fantasy can include anything you want; you simply have to make the story internally consistent and if you don’t, you can even explain that away with ‘magic’. Character development and story line become more important. But science fiction starts out with the premise that something has been invented, developed, discovered, etc. that has an effect on either society as a whole, or a situation in specific. It should be noted that science fiction does NOT include anything involving space travel: Star Wars is NOT science fiction; it is space fantasy. Similarly, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series is mostly fantasy; you can take all those books and put them into the eighteenth century on the high seas and get the same story lines (he even notes that himself).
I would never suggest that anyone rob themselves of the pleasure of reading simply because some author is less than accurate scientifically. But let’s at least understand the difference between the good and the ‘great’
My Shortlist of Fantasy: The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
Jack Vance’s “Lyonesse” and “Dying Earth” novels
George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series
The ghost stories of Ambrose Bierce
My Shortlist of SF: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe Luminous and Axiomatic, the collections of Greg Egan’s short fiction The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick (which doesn’t exist in that form, but, hey, a man can dream, can’t he?)
The Heinlein Juveniles (especially the last four: Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy and Have Space Suit – Will Travel)
Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
I didn’t hear about Banks until I crossed the sea. But he is INCREDIBLE! Highly recommended to all. * Consider Phlebas * is a great start to a loosely collected series (sorta like James Bond movies- you don’t have to watch them in a row, you can skip around. But Phlebas is the first). Iain M. Banks is his Sci-fi pen-name, Iain Banks is for his non-fiction (I just read Songs of Stone- wow.)
C.J. Cherryh is also wonderful Sci-fi reading, but her publishers force her to put out more Fantasy stuff (which is OK) than Sci-fi. The neat thing about her is that she isn’t afraid to let a story end without everyone winning…People die, ships crash and burn and no one lives. She doesn’t fuck up great stories by ending them on happy notes like Peter Hamilton. He had a GREAT story going with The Reality Dysfunction, then got lazy and finished the third book with a cheesy “Joe-hero saves the day” ending.
Too many books, not enough time.
I have so many thoughts going through my head that sometimes it’s hard to finish a
I’ve read too many to be able to rank them, so here’s a short list of SF/Fantasy I like:
[ul][li]The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury. Actually anything by Bradbury is great, but that book is especially good in that it explores Mars as something beyond a rock in space. It gives interesting views of Martians, showing how alien we’d be on a planet as alien to us as Mars is. Too bad what we now know about the planets precludes all of his storylines set off of Earth, but he never aimed at ‘hard’ SF. I also loved his Illustrated Man collection. He’ll get special notice in a lower list because of another, more plausible novel he wrote.[/li][li]Anything in the robot series by Isaac Asimov. This series got me interested in hard SF, a realistic break from the rather deep Bradburian near-poetry. His robots are tools to be used, not slaves to be freed (except for a few times), nor are they monsters hellbent on killing humans. His Three Laws are listed in one of his early robot stories, and they give him more plotlines then they preclude. His Foundation novels look great, but I still haven’t read them. :([/li][li]Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read his novels from 2001 to 3001, and seen 2001 and 2010. I loved all his novels, and I think the movie version of 2010 is better than it’s been written off as.[/li][li]Orson Scott Card. I’ve read all his novels in the Ender’s Game series. I’m not a religious person, and he is, and it does show in his novels, but I can deal with it as long as the author never preaches. Which Card never does. That makes me happy. :D[/li][li]Greg Bear. OK, I’ve only read one of his novels (‘Eon’, which I loved), but his short story Blood Music is a semi-plausible story that makes the best use of organic technology I’ve ever seen.[/ul][/li]
I think social commentary SF deserves special mention.
[ul][li]Orson Wells. This guy must have had some firsthand experience with Fascism and/or Communism. His two novels, Animal Farm and 1984, deserve a special place in every library and on required reading lists in every school. There’s not really enough good things I can say about this guy’s novels, except that everyone in the world should read them! Now![/li][li]Ray Bradbury. He gets second mention because his novel Fahrenheit 451 deserves to be enshrined right beside Welles’ works. If you ever wonder what would happen if the Immoral Majority ever got its way, read this. Then imagine yourself as the main character. This novel is why I lay awake nights at the thought of Pat Buchanan ever getting elected president.[/ul][/li]
“We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found . . . it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Pillars v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 78 So. 365, 366.
“What’s wrong with communism?”
Other than it’s oppressive, dehumanizing and has utterly failed everywhere it’s been tried, nothing is ‘wrong’ with communism.
-CalifBoomer
I’ve read too many to be able to rank them, so here’s a short list of SF/Fantasy I like:
[ul][li]The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury. Actually anything by Bradbury is great, but that book is especially good in that it explores Mars as something beyond a rock in space. It gives interesting views of Martians, showing how alien we’d be on a planet as alien to us as Mars is. Too bad what we now know about the planets precludes all of his storylines set off of Earth, but he never aimed at ‘hard’ SF. I also loved his Illustrated Man collection. He’ll get special notice in a lower list because of another, more plausible novel he wrote.[/li][li]Anything in the robot series by Isaac Asimov. This series got me interested in hard SF, a realistic break from the rather deep Bradburian near-poetry. His robots are tools to be used, not slaves to be freed (except for a few times), nor are they monsters hellbent on killing humans. His Three Laws are listed in one of his early robot stories, and they give him more plotlines then they preclude. His Foundation novels look great, but I still haven’t read them. :([/li][li]Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read his novels from 2001 to 3001, and seen 2001 and 2010. I loved all his novels, and I think the movie version of 2010 is better than it’s been written off as.[/li][li]Orson Scott Card. I’ve read all his novels in the Ender’s Game series. I’m not a religious person, and he is, and it does show in his novels, but I can deal with it as long as the author never preaches. Which Card never does. That makes me happy. :D[/li][li]Greg Bear. OK, I’ve only read one of his novels (‘Eon’, which I loved), but his short story Blood Music is a semi-plausible story that makes the best use of organic technology I’ve ever seen.[/ul][/li]
I think social commentary SF deserves special mention.
[ul][li]Orson Wells. This guy must have had some firsthand experience with Fascism and/or Communism. His two novels, Animal Farm and 1984, deserve a special place in every library and on required reading lists in every school. There’s not really enough good things I can say about this guy’s novels, except that everyone in the world should read them! Now![/li][li]Ray Bradbury. He gets second mention because his novel Fahrenheit 451 deserves to be enshrined right beside Welles’ works. If you ever wonder what would happen if the Immoral Majority ever got its way, read this. Then imagine yourself as the main character. This novel is why I lay awake nights at the thought of Pat Buchanan ever getting elected president.[/ul][/li]
“We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found . . . it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Pillars v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 78 So. 365, 366.
“What’s wrong with communism?”
Other than it’s oppressive, dehumanizing and has utterly failed everywhere it’s been tried, nothing is ‘wrong’ with communism.
-CalifBoomer
