Comments | outlawcoon: As a note

outlawcoon

As a note

Oct 28, 2009 09:02

I came back to make this comment to dorsai but I wanted to make it more visible to anyone reading my last post--feel free to make your own list as well! We did debate the list that I posted among our group but I'm thinking from the responses that there may have been iconic books that we missed entirely. There have certainly been books on my list that ( Read more... )

pop culture, books

Comments 9

(The comment has been removed)

touchstone October 28 2009, 18:43:30 UTC

There are a number of decent sci-fi authors who are more recent than Azimov / Clarke / Heinlein et al, but it doesn't feel to me like many of them have stood out as being the one author that you know everyone will have tried. The older stuff, I figure even non-hard-sci-fi folks will have tried once, because they're classics.

If I were going to make a list of modern authors that I'd guess a geek who was into hard sci-fi would have tried...hrm. Benford, Brin, Bear, Bova, yes. Charles Sheffield. Alan Steele.

For post-singularity sci-fi, Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Iain Banks.

Military sci-fi...David Weber. Elizabeth Moon. John Hemry / Jack Campbell (same person, different series; if you've only tried the Campbell books, go find the Hemry ones, they're good).

Missing a bunch, but those are all folks I'd guess someone who was specifically a modern sci-fi fan would have checked out at least once :)

outlawcoon October 29 2009, 01:29:01 UTC

I'm not a huge hard sci-fi person but I would think Pohl makes it too.

(The comment has been removed)

Thread 8

speaks October 28 2009, 18:31:50 UTC

Your list is spreading through my friends list like wildfire, to people I am pretty sure you don't know.

You're officially a trend.

outlawcoon October 29 2009, 01:29:21 UTC

Woot! :)

kingfrog November 2 2009, 21:08:44 UTC

Sometimes hard sci-fi is fun, and sometimes it's not.

The series I'm currently reading tends to drag when the author side-tracks to give me a lesson in solar fusion mechanics or orbital dynamics...I already understand orbital dynamics at the level necessary for the book, and his detours into the inner workings of the sun were about three or ten pages longer than needed for his story.

That, and he has a distressing tendancy to do what Tom Clancy does and suddenly start telling you what's going on with some troop of chimpanzees in central Africa. But unlike Tom Clancy, who would make sure that somehow that troop of chimps related to the main plotline later, this guy just wanders off, and the chimps are never to be seen again. ARGH. Like I CARE whether "Tuft" succeeds in taking over the troop or not! THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO BE DESTROYED BY THE SUN!!!