So...what is everyone reading now or

[YankeyMCC]

Planning to read in the not to distant future? For SF

I recently finished "Her Smoke Rose up Forever" a collection of stories by James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon. I confess I had never read any of her stuff before and the first story "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" almost made me regret purchasing the SFBC edition as my first taste of Tiptree. But the rest of the stories were just outstanding - if a little depressing overall, but I kinda like that.

And I recently went through a big organization effort with all my books and since I'm waiting for my next History book to come in the mail so I pulled out an old favorite to read now: "The gods Themselves" by Asimov. Reading Asimov is like comfort food for me, not that his stories don't provoke thought, it's not like reading some of the less stellar Star Trek books, and "The gods Themselves" certainly provokes a lot of thought - it so well fits as an allegory to our current energy/ecology crisis. But Asimov is like hanging out with an old friend.

[NewHampshireDem]

1. Just finished "Shriek: An Afterword" by Vandermeer

I'm about 1/2 through "Dies the Fire" by Stirling.

'Shriek' was outstanding. Vandermeer is very much like China Mieville, if you've read him.

DtF is ... well, pretty pulpy and not normally what I read, but it looked interesting so I picked it up. It's got a good plot, though the characters are really flat and the dialog is clunky (to say the least). The reviews on Amazon for the two sequels are pretty harsh, so I think I'm going to pass on them. :shrug:

I'll probably reread 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' once I'm done with it, though I have a nonfiction book I want to read to, 'The Traveller's Guide to New Zealand.'

[YankeyMCC]

2. I've not heard of Vandermeer or Mieville

I'll have to look into them a bit

[NewHampshireDem]

3. China Mieville and Jeff Vandermeer

Mieville writes stuff that I'd consider 'steampunk' though he's probably considered by most an 'urban fantasist.' I'm not really a reader of fantasy, but his 'Perdido Street Station' is on my Top Ten List. All of his books are terrific reads.

Vandermeer is the same way. 'City of Saints and Madmen' is hard to categorize in terms of fantasy/steam-punk. It's also not really a novel as much as a collection of documents. It mixes short stories, journals, history texts, etc. to build a dark world centered around the city of Ambergris.

[NewHampshireDem]

7. Just finished 'Dies the Fire' yesterday ... It was good, but clunky

I'd recommend it as a good bit of sci-fi escapism. It's plot overcomes its clunky writing and flat characters. 2.5 stars out of 5.

[Blue Fire]

18. I've started this book twice.

Couldn't make it into triple digit pages. Not that it's, well, bad.....just kinda falls flat.

[phantom power]

4. I'm reading "50 degrees below" by Kim Stanley Robinson

it's the second in a series that started with "40 signs of rain" (evidently the 3rd is "60 days and counting")

It's about a Younger Dryas event in the near future, and the National Science Foundation characters who track it and eventually try to stop it. Haven't got to the "try and stop it" part yet. It's set in the same universe as his earlier novel "Antarctica," which was also good.

I'm trying to finish reading it while it's still fiction. KSR has become one of my favorite authors. I recommend him highly.

[YankeyMCC]

5. I loved his Red/Green/Blue Mars novels

[Forkboy]

19. The best "hard sci-fi" I've ever read.

Great stuff,like all his books.

[YankeyMCC]

21. There's a really good piece in April/May 2007 issue

of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine about Hard Science Fiction. It's the "On Books" department written by Norman Spinrad. He draws some troubling connections between the increasing difficulty of getting Hard SF to market and the increasing anti-science attitudes in the US.

[Forkboy]

22. Cool,I'll look for that.

Thanks for the heads up!

[politicat]

6. McKinley's Sunshine and a lot of shorts.

The former is far better than it has any right to be and while being a departure from her previous body of work, it's even better for being so. I can't say much without giving a lot away, but it takes vampire mythology to a new place with strong characters that cope with their world.

I'm slogging my way through The Confusion (or trying to) because I don't especially enjoy the Jack/Eliza story line, but I know I have to get through it to get back to Daniel and Isaac and The System of the World. (I just wish she'd shut up, stop sleeping with everyone except Jack, and get over herself, and that he'd stop doing stupid things that he knows are stupid before he does them, but does them anyway.)

And short fiction. Always. (I've also got several non-SF pieces in play, but you're probably less interested in those.)

[YankeyMCC]

9. Well since this is the SF forum

I was just thinking of asking about SF but it may be interesting to hear what SF readers like to read outside the SF/Fantasy genre.

What might be an interesting tie in question is : Has a SF book or story lead you to read something else? For example I think reading Asimov's Foundation series has a lot to do with my interest in reading History.

[NewHampshireDem]

11. My job requires a lot of reading, so my free reading is usually SF

I'm a school administrator, so I read a lot of education journals and books. Once in a while I'll grab something the kids are reading that I haven't read. One of our hip, young teachers introduced me to Paul Aster's 'City of Glass' and Murakami's 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.'

Beside that, I usually read books about Buddhist phiolosphy, science (I like the popularizers like Brain Greene and James Burke), and, of course, politics.

Lately I've been reading anything I can get my hands on about New Zealand, since I'll be moving there within the next year.

[SheilaT]

8. Final Impact

by John Birmingham. It's the third of a trilogy in which a whole bunch of Allied ships get bounced back in time from 2021 to the Battle of Midway in 1942. Needless to say, all that advanced technology changes things a lot. What I like best is the way Birmingham has carefully thought through the differences in mores, standards, gender roles, and so on of the two different eras.

[YankeyMCC]

10. Souds like the same plot theme as

Final Countdown - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Countdown

In fact I just noticed under the trivia section of the wiki article that the "Axis of Time" novels are mentioned

[SheilaT]

12. There's a similarity,

but in the movie only one ship went back in time, and in the end did not participate in any warfare. The ending was a real cop-out, in my opinion.

The problem with most movies that are supposedly science-fiction is that they are made by people who know how to make movies, but actually know very little about science-fiction. They know how to do special effects, but neglect believable plot lines. What I wish would happen is that more of the old "classics" of s-f be made into movies, or in some cases, mini-series.

[Kutjara]

13. Accelerando by Charles Stross.

A great mindfuck of a book. I haven't been this buzzed about a SF novel since I first read Neuromance back in the early 80s. Stross takes Kurzweil's idea of the information "singularity" and runs with it from the present day to a distinctly posthuman future. I was just a tiny bit disappointed in the ending (it seemed a copout compared to what it could have been - but that might just mean a sequel is in the works), but the machinegun blast of ideas on every page more than compensate.

In ten years, I think Stross will be heralded as a predictor of the future the way Gibson is now (well, was a few years back).

[YankeyMCC]

14. That's been on my possible to read list for a while

I've read several of the short stories he's written in what I think is the same universe used in the novel. I enjoy the short stories, not sure I could get through a whole novel though. I only read a couple of Gibson books, I can only absorb so much cyberpunk at a time I guess - although I'm not sure Stross' Accelerando still fits that subgenre, or brings it to whole new heights at least - more interesting in my opinion but also more difficult.

[Kutjara]

15. You might have actually read parts of it.

From what I remember of the author's notes, several chapters appeared in short story form before he decided to expand the themes into a book. You probably read those chapters.

[Bridget Burke]

16. I just started "The Sky People" by S M Stirling.

He's known for Alternate History--this is Alternate History on an Alternate Venus.

From the Acknowledgments:

Thanks to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Otis Adelbert Kline, Leinster, Heinlein, and all the other great pulpsters for gracing my childhood with John Carter, Northwest Smith, "Wrong Way" Carson of Venus, and all the heroes gifted with a better solar system than the one we turned out to inhabit. From the jungles of Venus and the Grand Canal of Marsopolis, I salute you!

I aleady know there are airships, but the lesbian warrior-women haven't shown up yet. (Hey, it's Stirling's reality--let him play!) The sequel will be set on Mars, of course.

Lying on the stack are Avram Davidson's The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy & a couple of R A Lafferty's more obscure rarities. Two of my favorite authors & well worth the effort. But I was in the mood for A Ripping Yarn.

[Greyskye]

17. I haven't seen this one yet

I have really enjoyed Stirling's alternative history books. Really an excellent storyteller.

[Bridget Burke]

23. The paperback edition hasn't been published.

The fact that I'd buy a hardback indicates my fannishness!

There are several woman warriors, but Sterling made them het this time. The book would make an excellent movie--with CG for the amazing scenes.

The last chapter is a cliff-hanger set on another planet. The story will continue with In the Halls of the Crimson Kings.

[deepthought42]

20. Re-re-re-re-re-re-reading HHGTTG

Actually now I'm on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. :D

[JitterbugPerfume]

24. I never ever ever ever

get tired of Douglas Adams

In A Salmon of Doubt he even taught me how to make a proper cup of English tea.My (soon to be) Brit brother in law was impressed!

[TechBear_Seattle]

25. "Perdido Street Station" by China Miéville

A very interesting mix of science fiction and fantasy.


Perdido Street Station
China Miéville

[Ariana Celeste]

26. Children of Dune

I was just recently introduced to Frank Herbert's Dune series. I am in freaking LOVE.

[krispos42]

27. Re-reading "The Legacy of Heorot" n/t

[shimmergal]

28. Recent reads: "The Sparrow" by

Mary Doria Russell and "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" by Diana Gabaldon. Both excellent, IMO, and have that absorbing quality that draws you into the story's world, although the two are very different otherwise.

On order from Amazon, will probably read one or more next, three non-standard fantasies: "Beyond the Hedge," by Roby James (issued by Juno Books, a new publisher connected with the Wildside Press, a SF small/medium sized press-- they plan to publish female-oriented fantasy.) "Eyes of Crow," by Jeri Smith-Ready, and "A Rumor of Gems," by Ellen Steiber.

My non-fiction reading is mostly stuff I read as research for the freelance contract articles I'm writing. Currently I'm reading material for an article on the Grand Staircase / Escalante National Monument, which was given national monument status for protection by Bill Clinton in 1996. It's enlightening--if depressing--to see how the current administration is trying to reverse a hundred years' or more worth of conservation efforts, to give energy companies the biggest bonanza they can manage.

[JerseygirlCT]

30. The Sparrow was beautiful! nt

[FloridaJudy]

29. Neil Gaiman and China Mieville

American Gods and Perdido Street Station blew me away. On the basis of my raving about Gaiman and Mieville, Amazon has recommended Richard Morgan and Vernor Vinge. Is anyone here familiar with their work? If so, I'll check out the local book stores (I shamelessly exploit Amazon for the recommendations: 90% of them are uncannily accurate).