I’ve heard of it, have it. How about 100 Short Short Science Fiction Stories, also edited by the Good Doctor?
It had a sequel, The Judas Rose, about how the linguist women got Laadan out into the general female populace.
True. Fell in love with it when I was 16. Sometime I’ll buy you a drink at the Seventh Saint…
Also, Maeglin–thanks for mentioning Lord Dunsany. Had never heard of him, but looked him up and read a little on-line. You’re right. Beautiful. Haunting. Thanks for heading me his way.
I love this one. Most Arthurian books make Guinevere so wimpy. She didn’t take no stuff from anyone in this one.
Anybody ever read Half-Past Human and The Godwhale by J.S. (I think) Bass?
I’ve read the fantasy short shorts also. I remember my favorites were the ones with irreverent takes on religious themes: “Displaced Person,” “Give Her Hell,” “Your Soul Comes C.O.D.,” and especially “Final Version.”
There was also a truly heart-breaking one whose title I forget, ostensibly about a woman whose son thinks his dead brother is still alive.
Code of the Lifemaker is pretty good and Thrice Upon a Time is one of my all-time favorites.
But I do have a warning about Hogan’s newer stuff: Hogan’s brain has apparently melted. In one of his newest books The Cradle of Saturn Hogan announced that he was now a devout Velikofskian(sp) and his “hard sf” will now reflect the Velikofskian truths. A friend who managed to get through it said it was ungodly bad. Keep in mind that I have no objection to a book about a universe with alternate laws of physics. Hogan claimed that Velikofski’s “laws” applied to this universe. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Fenris
My favorite science fiction book is definitely “Evolution? The Fossils Say No!” by Gish
T.J. Bass, I think. I’ve read’em both, and liked them. At times the sf concepts cme fast and furious. For some reason Larry Niven seems to hate these books – I don’t know why.
Curiously, these seem to be the entire Bass ouevre. I can’ find any record of his writing anything else.
Oh, * ** NOOOOOOO!!! ** *
!@#$%!!! Unmentionable expletives!!! I * loved * Hogan’s work. And he was a skeptic, for Pete’s sake! What on earth could have happened to him?
Brain-eaters. Gotta be brain-eaters. If you check out his homepage here
you’ll see what I mean. I thought it was an elaborate put-on, until my aforementioned friend read his (almost) newest and said that Hogan is serious. It’s scary, frankly. Apparently, a good chunk of The Cradle of Saturn is Hogan railing against the evil scientific establishment that refuses to admit the genius of Vel’s work.
One quote from his essay about good ol’ Velikovsky that’ll give you an idea of where Hogan’s coming from:
Like I said: Brain-eaters. The only possible explaination.
Fenris
barton said:
Yes! Great book. Story structure non-linear. Very intense, interesting characters that get you involved. Even the “good guys” have negative personality traits - the antihero syndrome. And the similarities to Starship Troopers cannot be overlooked, while definitely a different story and going a different direction. (Basically the concept of body armor and battling giant insects.)
Speaking of which, another obscure book that I recall being rather interesting: Body Armor 2000, a collection of short stories and novellas, with the common theme of body armor. Curiously, I don’t recall what happened to my copy.
Okay, I confess, I also have read “War With the Newts.” I was young, and didn’t particularly care for it, but it has stayed in my mind, and if I re-read it now, I think I’d enjoy it.
My favorite unknown author is Cordwainer Smith. Almost all his stuff came out in paperback in the 70s, and I collected and read em all then. Now, of course, as I type I have brain fade and can’t remember even one of the titles. But take my word for it, they’re great.
I also love the early Jack Vance, before he got elephantiasis of the novel and started turning out perfectly enormous books. The “Planet of Adventure” series (City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, and The Pnume) is great; Vance’s prose has a wonderful alien feel to it. The Demon Princes series is also lots of fun.
Incidentally, my prejudiced and probably indefensible opinion about book lengths is that if a paperback novel is thicker than five/eights of an inch (1.6 cm), the editor needed to be more forceful with the author. Anything thicker has too much extraneous material and should have been ruthlessly trimmed.
The Garrett books by Glen Cook. GREAT, especially if you like Fantasy AND detective novels.
Rocketeer: some Cordwainer Smith titles that come to mind
The Lady Who Sailed the Soul
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard
The Ballad of Lost C’Mell
Drunkboat
Norstrilia
Some of them are short stories that appeared in the SF magazines of the early 60s
Smith was Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, who died in the mid 60’s
Back in ythe seventies Ballantine which had not yet spawbed Del Rey books) published “Th Best of Cordwainer Smith”, which had about half of his connected stories. They published the other half as (I think) “The Rediscovery of Man” (I gues they didn’t want to call it “The Second-Best of Cordwainer Smith”). They also published his book “Norstrilia”. (Norstrilia is about a largely desert world that has huge creatures that produce a spice that among other things prologs life and that other people in the galaxy want, but this young kid is now running the planet and…Hey, does this remind you of anything?)
The New England SF Society publishes Norstrilia and the short stories, in definitive editions.
Wow! What a great thread I haven’t been following! (This is what I get for not venturing into IMHO much…)
A few that no one’s yet mentioned:
Raising the Stones and Grass by the wonderful Sherri S. Tepper.
Soldier of the Mist, a lesser known work of Gene Wolfe.
All of the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison.
Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner.
And my favorite from the late DeCamp; Lest Darkness Fall
Let’s see… these are mostly fantasy with hints of sci-fi, but I love em dearly…
The Exiles Series by Melanie Rawn. Absolutly WONDERFUL books. I’m waiting for the third to come out. Hehehe… she puts women in charge of everything…
The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. Don’t know how I can across these, but they are VERY good. I loved all three.
Oh, and we’ll throw in one pure sci-fi type thing. I was reading through Mercedes Lackey’s short story book entitled “Fiddler Fair” and I fell in love with the first stort called “Aliens Ate my Pickup.” One of the funniest things I’ve EVER read and I’ve read a lot of amusing things…
I’ve been wanting to get these… I found a couple of White Wolf novels at a second hand store (In fact I have yet to read one) and I enjoyed the one I did read which was ‘As One Dead’ but I need to find somewhere I can get those books here. I’m sure there is one somewhere.
I thought everyone had heard of these–surely the entire Esperanto-speaking world (such as it is) knows of Jim DiGriz! And the Dead Man has to be the greatest consultant any detective ever had. Soldier of the Mist was a little odd, even for Wolfe, but it was a good read.
FTR, my favorite Cordwainer Smith short is “The Game of Rat and Dragon”.
These were the first books I searched for on-line (to replace copies that had been loaned). Blind Voices was pretty easy to find, but I didn’t find Sue till last spring, at Dream Haven Books in Minneapolis.
I think, if someone likes Bradbury and Sturgeon, they’d enjoy these stories. A bit more raw and edgy, but very personal and warm too. More fantasy than SF.
Interesting that nobody has mentioned Philip K. Dick’s * Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? * or * We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. * The basis for two of the most famous SF movies ever, yet I doubt very many people remember them or have read them. (I’ve never read them either). Does anybody consider them forgotten favorites?