Cassie - Sci Fi Reading list please

[Fuddlemiff]

I hope you got lots of books, curiousa.

Rendezvous with Rama... Wow, that was a good ending. Very inventive throughout and a real page turner/tapper. But it does make me really want to read the sequels even though Sausage says they're bad.

For now though I'm going to read Childhood's End. Does anyone have other Arthur C Clarke recommendations? I have a collected volume of a ridiculously long list of his works.

 

[Cassie]

I decided to read The Diamond Age instead of Cloud Atlas, because I just saw Cloud Atlas and I can't stop wondering which actor played the characters in the book and I only read a few pages and it was kind of distracting I will read it later!

The Diamond Age (by Neal Stephenson) is one of those cyberpunk type books. It's really good, but at times I read an entire chapter and have no idea what just happened! Which is pretty typical of most of the cyberpunk I've ever read. I discovered it's best to just keep reading -- sort of power through the confusing parts, it's just the technobabble bits that are hard to follow. I love the humor, and I think I'm going to love the main character. NANOBOTS EVERYWHERE!

 

[CaptainWacky]

I'm put off reading more cyberpunk after I found the William Gibson books confusing.

 

[curiousa2z]

*red-faced* OK - came home with a knapsack FULL of books! But they were stuff by some of my favourite authors....

btw...I have a friend who has Arthur C. Clark novels on shelves that go on and on and on...talk about prolific! I know there are books over there I haven't read yet, so yeah, I'm with Fuddle - any MUST READS from Clark's works?

 

[Cassie]

I'm put off reading more cyberpunk after I found the William Gibson books confusing.

William Gibson's are pretty fuckdamn confusing, but I liked them... SOMEHOW? Neal Stephenson's are much less confusing. The main thing is to get used to the slang used by the characters. Once that happens everything clicks. It took me about 100 pages before I felt fully submersed into the world, but it is really worth it, because I am loving this book. Now that I know what some of the words mean, the parts that were confusing in the beginning all make sense.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I can't remember why I didn't read Snow Crash yet.

 

[Cassie]

I think Snow Crash was a bit easier to get into from the beginning. The Diamond Age is "post-cyberpunk" according to Neal Stephenson. They've moved on to nanobots, but people still have body mods typical of cyberpunk. The thing I like about Neal Stephenson is how he weaves humor into the story without making the story a comedy.

 

[Filthy Whore]

I loved The Diamond Age... LOVED it.

 

[Cassie]

Now that I'm INTO The Diamond Age I can't stop reading. I like it more than Snow Crash.

 

[Filthy Whore]

I read it quite a while ago and so many of his brilliant ideas were things that had never been introduced before, at least that I had read and I read a lot of SF back then. The "book" that she finds was absolutely incredible to me and I wanted one so bad. The whole cyberpunk idea was fun too and it felt real to me. The Diamond Age is one of my favorite books.

Another author I really like is Tim Powers. He's got a series called The Fault Line that I started with the second book, not knowing it was a trilogy. LOVED it. It's called Expiration Date. I think we talked about Tim Powers on here before, didn't we? He wrote On Stranger Tides, another excellent read that was turned into another Pirates movie that I haven't seen.

 

[headvoid]

I loved Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C Clarke. Rendezvous with Rama is an extraordinary book though. It's rights are owned by Morgan Freeman and it has been his dream for years to film it. I believe there are real script problems and the reality is that it is a high concept film that will need a massive budget. The lack of superhero makes it a little tricky. I imagine with new Star Wars films coming out there may be saturation.

It's a shame that people love BIG FUCKING BLACK SHIPS and shaky cameras and pastiches / references to old films at the moment. (JJ Abrams rant)

Rama needs a new Kubrick not an Abrams on it.

 

[curiousa2z]

you know, I don't recall reading either one...will see if I can dig them out of his collection. Thankee.

 

[curiousa2z]

p.s. funnily, it was literally only three weeks ago that I saw Morgan Freeman on the Late Night Show ( which I stay up for once every five years) and learned of his love for science, particularly physics.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Wouldn't the success of Gravity help Rama get made?

 

[Cassie]

p.s. funnily, it was literally only three weeks ago that I saw Morgan Freeman on the Late Night Show ( which I stay up for once every five years) and learned of his love for science, particularly physics.

Morgan Freeman does a show called Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and it is one of my favorite science shows.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I saw an interview with Morgan Freeman where he described why he wants to get it made so much (and incidentally he came across as a really interesting and thoughtful person). I think it's a fantastic book, but I can see why it'd be difficult to get made. Not only would it be massive in scale (mostly cgi, which is still very expensive if you want it done right), but it doesn't have the kind of ending that a lot of people would be satisfied by. Personally, I loved it, and I might never read the sequels as I liked having the story end where it did. I might've actually liked it even more without the cliffhangery final words.

Oh and I'm reading Childhood's End right now, which I'm quite enjoying. I don't know why I put off reading Clarke for so long, his writing is really interesting and thought provoking, yet effortless to read.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

Childhood's End went a little too far off the deep end for me, but I enjoyed it over all.

Spoiler

I know there are ways to justify it (blame the Overmind), but the whole sudden evolution spurt thing felt like a big cop out, after a story that had felt reasonably grounded. The book seems to want you to interpret it as "oh hey, sometimes evolution jumps ahead suddenly", which, to the best of our knowledge, it doesn't. There wasn't any pressure on humanity to make them suddenly psychic. And the stuff about the overlord aliens being in an evolutionary cul de sac was very fuzzy indeed. I couldn't get my head around that at all.

Pondering what to read next (probably more Arthur C Clarke, since I love his ideas even if this one was a little shark jumpy for me).

 

[CaptainWacky]

CASSIE (or anyone) have you read the Chronicles Of Ixia books? They're on the Amazon Kindle Daily Deal so I could buy all six for £6 and they seem to have good reviews.

 

[Cassie]

I haven't read them, but that's a good deal so you should get them, IMO!

 

[CaptainWacky]

OMG, I did it. And I also bought something called The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets. I'll buy anything that's 99 pence!