It wasn’t bat-guano insane ENOUGH. It reads like he tried be be insane and he tried to be serious and didn’t accomplish either.
Bat guano insane is “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”
Bat guano insane is any Retief novel by Keith Laumer.
TSMD reads like someone was doing drugs while writing the book - parts written while under the influence, and then strung together in more sober moments.
I didn’t like “The Martian Chronicles” either, but then I seem to be alone with the opinion that Bradbury sucks.
This. Squared and cubed.
That opening sequence is great, and I agree it would make great cinema as well. Even in the written word, it has in my opinion one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read:
“He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead.”
That sentence hooked me right away.
Except he should have been long since dead, since in an unheated tool locker aboard a powerless wreck of a ship he would have frozen to death. Granted, it would be hard for Bester to know that seeing as how no one had up to that point (real life, 1956) seen the effects of space on an unpowered, unheated craft. I don’t count things against an author that he couldn’t reasonably have known.
The line itself is balls out cool, and it is a shame it was wasted on such a travesty of a novel.
Actually, anything by Cordwainer Smith would upset some folks. By all that’s holy, never let them discover R A Lafferty…
So, all you fans, what is it that makes you call this book a classic instead of steaming pile of digested food?
Seriously, the fans are all like “ooh, love it, gush, gosh, wow, how can you not like it?”
Does anyone care to correct me on the points I listed above? Why don’t those things bug you in a book that’s supposed to be a classic? Or have I just missed everything important about this book? If I’ve missed all the important stuff, please enlighten me.
Hey, it’s your right to dislike anything; I won’t try to dissuade you. It’s possible that I’d find your favorites boring. Or worse…
In fact, I’m tempted to ask about what you really like–so we can abuse your choices. But that would be wrong!
Reading it now. Will see how it goes, looks good so far. Bedtime here, though. I’ll finish it tomorrow.
It picks you up and carries you with it or it doesn’t. Asking it to be logical is asking the wrong thing of it. It’s a romp, and a delightful one at that.
Keep us posted on Cordwainer - his stuff is built more on ideas vs. science as well.
My opinion of Bradbury is that he’s very, very good at doing things that I’d rather he didn’t. I tried reading The Martian Chronicles once, but damn, that’s just way too depressing.
This is more-or-less my take on it too.
This was one of the first long science fiction stories I read, when I was twelve or so. I remembered bits and pieces of it very vividly.
I re-read it again several years ago. There are all kinds of great images and episodes and ideas in it, plus big gobs of silliness. But the whole thing doesn’t hang together very well.
Still, just because it’s a mess doesn’t mean it isn’t a classic. The good bits make it worth reading. I’d even read it again.
Just finished Scanners Live in Vain That was a good story, well written and full of interesting ideas and people. The basic premise doesn’t fit with physics as we know it, but he handles it consistently and it isn’t something that you can prove wrong without actually sending someone into interstellar space. Not that it matters. The point was not the physics of the story, but rather a view of humanity and morality under extreme conditions.
That story deserves to be called classic. It is well written and self consistent. It paints a picture of a future and how humans (some at least) deal with the developments in technology and their consequences. It references things that are outside the scope of the story, but does so in a way that makes them comprehensible. When you finish the story, you see the plot line as the author laid it out, and know that you have reached a point that he was trying to bring you to, and that you are indeed at a place the author has seen himself and of whose existence he knew before he started you on the trip.
Besides all of that, he writes in a style that makes it clear that you are dealing with people who are not of your time and culture - but he still makes them and their conversations accessible to people of our time and our culture.
All of that makes Scanners Live in Vain a very good story, and one I’m glad was pointed out to me.
Do you truly not see a difference between Scanners Live in Vain and The Stars My Destination? Stars is lacking in consistency - there are numerous occasions where technology is used inconsistently - even Jaunting, the basis of the story, is not handled consistently. The society built around it doesn’t conform to the technology in use and available, preferring to build useless, dark mazes at the entrances to the houses to using the available induction fields to protect their privacy. The mazes are stupid, since once you’ve let someone into your house they can come back again anytime - Bester even tells you that all you need is to see where you are and to have have seen in person the place you are going. Anyone who has seen the inside of your house can get right back in anytime he wants to - unless there’s an induction field in the way, which is mentioned in passing at least twice. There’s the one time when Foyle makes his first attack on the Vorga, and towards the end when he is burning and jaunting back and forth in time. The police casually set up an inductioon field to keep out the rubberneckers. It seems that Bester just used the induction field as a McGuffin without realizing what an effect it would have on his fictional society - it makes a shambles of most of the societal changes he describes. There’s no need to keep the prisoners in the dark, and there’d be no “blue jauntes” with an induction field around the prison. There’s no need of any of the mazes and crap around ordinary homes, there’s no need to hide the women.
Actually, he missed a really frightful concept based on the blue jauntes - consider a suicide who intentionally jauntes into the wall or floor of a public building. Scary shit, and Bester didn’t consider it. Hell, it would have been a reasonable thing for a prisoner to do. Had enough of the dark and the repression? Blue jaunte into the wall and blow the prison to hell.
Bester seems to have read Blake’s The Tiger while hopped up on some kind of drug. The image of a human tiger on fire seems to have been what captured his imagination, and all the rest of the book is just window dressing aournd the burning “Tiger” - which Foyle most certainly is not. Read The Tiger - Blake obviously admires the tiger, and Foyle is certainly not worthy of admiration. He is, at the beginning, a loser who becomes an amoral monster who transmutes into a decent human who then transcends space and time to return to being a loser who returns to the only woman in the story he hasn’t raped or double crossed and in so doing retreats from the world stage onto which his greatness (ability to make interstellar jauntes) should place him. Foyle has no constant character, nor does he grow in response to the challenges he faces. He muddles along and does whatever next comes to mind, now appearing a monster, now appearing sympathetic, now being a nobody. It seems as though Bester himself didn’t know or care who Foyle is, using him as nothing more than a place holder to mark where the burning tiger may be - or maybe not, since Bester doesn’t seem too clear on that, either.
The sad thing is that it could have been a damn fine book. There are so many interesting concepts that Bester threw in to it. With a bit more care and a little give a fuck the man could have truly written a classic. Instead, he wrote a steaming pile of turd filled with little speckles of diamonds and other gems.
Somewhere above someone considered asking me the name of one of my favorite books for the purpose of ripping it apart as I’ve done The Stars My Destination.
I’ll name you one that is not a classic. It makes no pretense of being a classic. It is just a good story. For good measure, it (or at least the title) was also inspired by Blake’s The Tiger.
Here are the first seven chapters of What Distant Deeps by David Drake.
ETA: Only the first seven chapters are online, but it should give you an idea of what it is about.
I happen to have a copy of that book lying around for when I’m bored and need something to occupy my eyes for a while. It is part of a series of books all written around the same characters - I think What Distant Deeps is like number 8 of 9 or something.
It has interesting characters. It has amoral characters who are involved in all of the main events. It has good people and evil people and just plain jackasses. It has a plot, and consistently applied (if outrageous) physics for star travel. It is competently written, and also includes historical references - which Drake kindly explains in a forward to the book which is unfortunately not online. The forward relates this book to ancient history and to not so ancient history (the Contras and the Falkland Island war.)
I wouldn’t argue for calling it a classic, but then I wouldn’t call The Stars My Destination as classic, either. Bester’s work had good ideas but wasn’t well done. Drake doesn’t dump as many cool ideas in to a single work, but at least he writes competently and entertains.
Lest you all think I’m some young punk only interested in the newest, I’ll tell you that I’m over 40 and have a collection that ranges from some 1930’s “golden age” stuff up to books published in the last couple of years. I don’t often buy books any more because it is a pain in the butt to get english books here in Germany - yeah, Amazon, yada, yada. I like to flip through a book and sample it before I buy it, and that doesn’t work too well when you order online. I loved the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Keith Laumer’ “Retief” and “Bolo” books are great fun to read. Also none of which are classic material, but still great fun to read.
If The Stars My Destination weren’t billed so high above that which it has achieved, it wouldn’t have bothered me, either. If I’d bought it at a flea market somewhere having never heard of it, I’d probably just think “Eh, OK, entertaining, whatever.” The damned thing is pushed as something wonderful, though, and it just doesn’t measure up at all.
For anyone interested, the forward to What Distant Deeps is online on Drake’s own homepage.
My reading of the induction field is that it would incapacitate anyone in its area of effect, like when Gully attacked the shipyard - it’s not anti-Jaunter, it’s anti-personnel. It’s not a fence, it’s a minefield, and as such, isn’t the solution for stopping people from coming into your house (not if you want to live there, anyway)
I have the book, and it says no such thing. Only one-in-five survive the early jaunt experiments, before the process is understood, but it’s made clear that after the process is perfected, Jaunting is the norm not the exception. And the “certain compound”? Everyone has it if they’re healthy - and I doubt a senile person would have the “two faculties, visualization and
concentration” necessary, anyway. So I’m not seeing the inconsistency.
I like Bester’s tales because I like the diagrams. Hardly anyone else has his facility with telling a story through concrete prose (the guy who wrote House of Leaves is the only other one that comes to mind immediately). I suspect a lot of the inconsistencies that bug the OP are idiosyncratic interpretations (as mentioned in MrDibble’s post, for example).
I’m not sure if I would’ve picked Tyger/Stars as his classic, but his work overall has been both influential on its field and entertaining to many readers. Bester’s characters are bizarre and different from my own idea of what people are like, which could be argued to make it worse fiction or better science fiction, depending from what angle you gaze.
Got about half a chapter in and gave up. If I wanted to read about ren fayres, I’m sure there is a magazine about them. I’m not sure what all the ‘squire’ stuff is either - I suspect it is a laughable attempt to depict a British-style society I hate it when Americans do that without bothering to do any research.
Oh, and I have no axe to grind about Tiger, Tiger. Its well-written (Better than the Drake, anyway), but there are, as people have pointed out, plot-holes you could drive a bus through and Gully Foyle is a deeply unpleasant character (Yes I know that is - partly - the point, but still…)
I prefer Bester’s short stories - check out Fondly Fahrenheit and Time is the Traitor. for two of the best.