Seasonal Science Fiction - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2004/12/01/the-10-least-successful-holiday-specials-of-all-time/
You may disagree as to the science fiction content, but it is by John Scalzi
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
The Orwell essay-
The thought of Christmas raises almost automatically the thought of Charles Dickens, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, Dickens is one of the few English writers who have actually written about Christmas. Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature. There are the carols, mostly medieval in origin; there is a tiny handful of poems by Robert Bridges, T.S. Eliot, and some others, and there is Dickens; but there is very little else. Secondly, Dickens is remarkable, indeed almost unique, among modern writers in being able to give a convincing picture of happiness.
Dickens dealt successfully with Christmas twice in a chapter of The Pickwick Papers and in A Christmas Carol. The latter story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its 'bourgeois sentimentality' completely intolerable. Now in a sense Lenin was right: but if he had been in better health he would perhaps have noticed that the story has interesting sociological implications. To begin with, however thick Dickens may lay on the paint, however disgusting the 'pathos' of Tiny Tim may be, the Cratchit family give the impression of enjoying themselves. They sound happy as, for instance, the citizens of William Morris's News From Nowhere don't sound happy. Moreover and Dickens's understanding of this is one of the secrets of his power their happiness derives mainly from contrast. They are in high spirits because for once in a way they have enough to eat. The wolf is at the door, but he is wagging his tail. The steam of the Christmas pudding drifts across a background of pawnshops and sweated labour, and in a double sense the ghost of Scrooge stands beside the dinner table. Bob Cratchit even wants to drink to Scrooge's health, which Mrs Cratchit rightly refuses. The Cratchits are able to enjoy Christmas precisely because it only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because Christmas only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.
All efforts to describe permanent happiness, on the other hand, have been failures. Utopias (incidentally the coined word Utopia doesn't mean 'a good place', it means merely a 'non-existent place') have been common in literature of the past three or four hundred years but the 'favourable' ones are invariably unappetising, and usually lacking in vitality as well.
By far the best known modern Utopias are those of H.G. Wells. Wells's vision of the future is almost fully expressed in two books written in the early Twenties, The Dream and Men Like Gods. Here you have a picture of the world as Wells would like to see it or thinks he would like to see it. It is a world whose keynotes are enlightened hedonism and scientific curiosity. All the evils and miseries we now suffer from have vanished. Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished. So expressed, it is impossible to deny that that is the kind of world we all hope for. We all want to abolish the things Wells wants to abolish. But is there anyone who actually wants to live in a Wellsian Utopia? On the contrary, not to live in a world like that, not to wake up in a hygenic garden suburb infested by naked schoolmarms, has actually become a conscious political motive. A book like Brave New World is an expression of the actual fear that modern man feels of the rationalised hedonistic society which it is within his power to create. A Catholic writer said recently that Utopias are now technically feasible and that in consequence how to avoid Utopia had become a serious problem. We cannot write this off as merely a silly remark. For one of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world.
All 'favourable' Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness. News From Nowhere is a sort of goody-goody version of the Wellsian Utopia. Everyone is kindly and reasonable, all the upholstery comes from Liberty's, but the impression left behind is of a sort of watery melancholy. But it is more impressive that Jonathan Swift, one of the greatest imaginative writers who have ever lived, is no more successful in constructing a 'favourable' Utopia than the others.
The earlier parts of Gulliver's Travels are probably the most devastating attack on human society that has ever been written. Every word of them is relevant today; in places they contain quite detailed prophecies of the political horrors of our own time. Where Swift fails, however, is in trying to describe a race of beings whom he admires. In the last part, in contrast with disgusting Yahoos, we are shown the noble Houyhnhnms, intelligent horses who are free from human failings. Now these horses, for all their high character and unfailing common sense, are remarkably dreary creatures. Like the inhabitants of various other Utopias, they are chiefly concerned with avoiding fuss. They live uneventful, subdued, 'reasonable' lives, free not only from quarrels, disorder or insecurity of any kind, but also from 'passion', including physical love. They choose their mates on eugenic principles, avoid excesses of affection, and appear somewhat glad to die when their time comes. In the earlier parts of the book Swift has shown where man's folly and scoundrelism lead him: but take away the folly and scoundrelism, and all you are left with, apparently, is a tepid sort of existence, hardly worth leading.
Attempts at describing a definitely other-worldly happiness have been no more successful. Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia though Hell occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.
It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody. Almost all Christian writers dealing with Heaven either say frankly that it is indescribable or conjure up a vague picture of gold, precious stones, and the endless singing of hymns. This has, it is true, inspired some of the best poems in the world:
Thy walls are of chalcedony,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square,
Thy gates are of right orient pearl
Exceeding rich and rare!
But what it could not do was to describe a condition in which the ordinary human being actively wanted to be. Many a revivalist minister, many a Jesuit priest (see, for instance, the terrific sermon in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist) has frightened his congregation almost out of their skins with his word-pictures of Hell. But as soon as it comes to Heaven, there is a prompt falling-back on words like 'ecstasy' and 'bliss', with little attempt to say what they consist in. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.
The pagan versions of Paradise are little better, if at all. One has the feeling it is always twilight in the Elysian fields. Olympus, where the gods lived, with their nectar and ambrosia, and their nymphs and Hebes, the 'immortal tarts' as D.H. Lawrence called them, might be a bit more homelike than the Christian Heaven, but you would not want to spend a long time there. As for the Muslim Paradise, with its 77 houris per man, all presumably clamouring for attention at the same moment, it is just a nightmare. Nor are the spiritualists, though constantly assuring us that 'all is bright and beautiful', able to describe any next-world activity which a thinking person would find endurable, let alone attractive.
It is the same with attempted descriptions of perfect happiness which are neither Utopian nor other-worldly, but merely sensual. They always give an impression of emptiness or vulgarity, or both. At the beginning of La Pucelle Voltaire describes the life of Charles IX with his mistress, Agnes Sorel. They were 'always happy', he says. And what did their happiness consist in? An endless round of feasting, drinking, hunting and love-making. Who would not sicken of such an existence after a few weeks? Rabelais describes the fortunate spirits who have a good time in the next world to console them for having had a bad time in this one. They sing a song which can be roughly translated: 'To leap, to dance, to play tricks, to drink the wine both white and red, and to do nothing all day long except count gold crowns' how boring it sounds, after all! The emptiness of the whole notion of an everlasting 'good time' is shown up in Breughel's picture The Land of the Sluggard, where the three great lumps of fat lie asleep, head to head, with the boiled eggs and roast legs of pork coming up to be eaten of their own accord.
It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. That is why the conception of Heaven or Utopia varies from age to age. In pre-industrial society Heaven was described as a place of endless rest, and as being paved with gold, because the experience of the average human being was overwork and poverty. The houris of the Muslim Paradise reflected a polygamous society where most of the women disappeared into the harems of the rich. But these pictures of 'eternal bliss' always failed because as the bliss became eternal (eternity being thought of as endless time), the contrast ceased to operate. Some of the conventions embedded in our literature first arose from physical conditions which have now ceased to exist. The cult of spring is an example. In the Middle Ages spring did not primarily mean swallows and wild flowers. It meant green vegetables, milk and fresh meat after several months of living on salt pork in smoky windowless huts. The spring songs were gay Do nothing but eat and make good cheer, And thank Heaven for the merry year When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily! because there was something to be so gay about. The winter was over, that was the great thing. Christmas itself, a pre-Christian festival, probably started because there had to be an occasional outburst of overeating and drinking to make a break in the unbearable northern winter.
The inability of mankind to imagine happiness except in the form of relief, either from effort or pain, presents Socialists with a serious problem. Dickens can describe a poverty-stricken family tucking into a roast goose, and can make them appear happy; on the other hand, the inhabitants of perfect universes seem to have no spontaneous gaiety and are usually somewhat repulsive into the bargain. But clearly we are not aiming at the kind of world Dickens described, nor, probably, at any world he was capable of imagining. The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which 'charity' would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable. But does that mean we are aiming at some painless, effortless Utopia? At the risk of saying something which the editors of Tribune may not endorse, I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
Socialist thought has to deal in prediction, but only in broad terms. One often has to aim at objectives which one can only very dimly see. At this moment, for instance, the world is at war and wants peace. Yet the world has no experience of peace, and never has had, unless the Noble Savage once existed. The world wants something which it is dimly aware could exist, but cannot accurately define. This Christmas Day, thousands of men will be bleeding to death in the Russian snows, or drowning in icy waters, or blowing one another to pieces on swampy islands of the Pacific; homeless children will be scrabbling for food among the wreckage of German cities. To make that kind of thing impossible is a good objective. But to say in detail what a peaceful world would be like is a different matter.
Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. This is the case even with a great writer like Swift, who can flay a bishop or a politician so neatly, but who, when he tries to create a superman, merely leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms.
The thought of Christmas raises almost automatically the thought of Charles Dickens, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, Dickens is one of the few English writers who have actually written about Christmas. Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature. There are the carols, mostly medieval in origin; there is a tiny handful of poems by Robert Bridges, T.S. Eliot, and some others, and there is Dickens; but there is very little else. Secondly, Dickens is remarkable, indeed almost unique, among modern writers in being able to give a convincing picture of happiness.
Dickens dealt successfully with Christmas twice in a chapter of The Pickwick Papers and in A Christmas Carol. The latter story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its 'bourgeois sentimentality' completely intolerable. Now in a sense Lenin was right: but if he had been in better health he would perhaps have noticed that the story has interesting sociological implications. To begin with, however thick Dickens may lay on the paint, however disgusting the 'pathos' of Tiny Tim may be, the Cratchit family give the impression of enjoying themselves. They sound happy as, for instance, the citizens of William Morris's News From Nowhere don't sound happy. Moreover and Dickens's understanding of this is one of the secrets of his power their happiness derives mainly from contrast. They are in high spirits because for once in a way they have enough to eat. The wolf is at the door, but he is wagging his tail. The steam of the Christmas pudding drifts across a background of pawnshops and sweated labour, and in a double sense the ghost of Scrooge stands beside the dinner table. Bob Cratchit even wants to drink to Scrooge's health, which Mrs Cratchit rightly refuses. The Cratchits are able to enjoy Christmas precisely because it only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because Christmas only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.
All efforts to describe permanent happiness, on the other hand, have been failures. Utopias (incidentally the coined word Utopia doesn't mean 'a good place', it means merely a 'non-existent place') have been common in literature of the past three or four hundred years but the 'favourable' ones are invariably unappetising, and usually lacking in vitality as well.
By far the best known modern Utopias are those of H.G. Wells. Wells's vision of the future is almost fully expressed in two books written in the early Twenties, The Dream and Men Like Gods. Here you have a picture of the world as Wells would like to see it or thinks he would like to see it. It is a world whose keynotes are enlightened hedonism and scientific curiosity. All the evils and miseries we now suffer from have vanished. Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished. So expressed, it is impossible to deny that that is the kind of world we all hope for. We all want to abolish the things Wells wants to abolish. But is there anyone who actually wants to live in a Wellsian Utopia? On the contrary, not to live in a world like that, not to wake up in a hygenic garden suburb infested by naked schoolmarms, has actually become a conscious political motive. A book like Brave New World is an expression of the actual fear that modern man feels of the rationalised hedonistic society which it is within his power to create. A Catholic writer said recently that Utopias are now technically feasible and that in consequence how to avoid Utopia had become a serious problem. We cannot write this off as merely a silly remark. For one of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world.
All 'favourable' Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness. News From Nowhere is a sort of goody-goody version of the Wellsian Utopia. Everyone is kindly and reasonable, all the upholstery comes from Liberty's, but the impression left behind is of a sort of watery melancholy. But it is more impressive that Jonathan Swift, one of the greatest imaginative writers who have ever lived, is no more successful in constructing a 'favourable' Utopia than the others.
The earlier parts of Gulliver's Travels are probably the most devastating attack on human society that has ever been written. Every word of them is relevant today; in places they contain quite detailed prophecies of the political horrors of our own time. Where Swift fails, however, is in trying to describe a race of beings whom he admires. In the last part, in contrast with disgusting Yahoos, we are shown the noble Houyhnhnms, intelligent horses who are free from human failings. Now these horses, for all their high character and unfailing common sense, are remarkably dreary creatures. Like the inhabitants of various other Utopias, they are chiefly concerned with avoiding fuss. They live uneventful, subdued, 'reasonable' lives, free not only from quarrels, disorder or insecurity of any kind, but also from 'passion', including physical love. They choose their mates on eugenic principles, avoid excesses of affection, and appear somewhat glad to die when their time comes. In the earlier parts of the book Swift has shown where man's folly and scoundrelism lead him: but take away the folly and scoundrelism, and all you are left with, apparently, is a tepid sort of existence, hardly worth leading.
Attempts at describing a definitely other-worldly happiness have been no more successful. Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia though Hell occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.
It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody. Almost all Christian writers dealing with Heaven either say frankly that it is indescribable or conjure up a vague picture of gold, precious stones, and the endless singing of hymns. This has, it is true, inspired some of the best poems in the world:
Thy walls are of chalcedony,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square,
Thy gates are of right orient pearl
Exceeding rich and rare!
But what it could not do was to describe a condition in which the ordinary human being actively wanted to be. Many a revivalist minister, many a Jesuit priest (see, for instance, the terrific sermon in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist) has frightened his congregation almost out of their skins with his word-pictures of Hell. But as soon as it comes to Heaven, there is a prompt falling-back on words like 'ecstasy' and 'bliss', with little attempt to say what they consist in. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.
The pagan versions of Paradise are little better, if at all. One has the feeling it is always twilight in the Elysian fields. Olympus, where the gods lived, with their nectar and ambrosia, and their nymphs and Hebes, the 'immortal tarts' as D.H. Lawrence called them, might be a bit more homelike than the Christian Heaven, but you would not want to spend a long time there. As for the Muslim Paradise, with its 77 houris per man, all presumably clamouring for attention at the same moment, it is just a nightmare. Nor are the spiritualists, though constantly assuring us that 'all is bright and beautiful', able to describe any next-world activity which a thinking person would find endurable, let alone attractive.
It is the same with attempted descriptions of perfect happiness which are neither Utopian nor other-worldly, but merely sensual. They always give an impression of emptiness or vulgarity, or both. At the beginning of La Pucelle Voltaire describes the life of Charles IX with his mistress, Agnes Sorel. They were 'always happy', he says. And what did their happiness consist in? An endless round of feasting, drinking, hunting and love-making. Who would not sicken of such an existence after a few weeks? Rabelais describes the fortunate spirits who have a good time in the next world to console them for having had a bad time in this one. They sing a song which can be roughly translated: 'To leap, to dance, to play tricks, to drink the wine both white and red, and to do nothing all day long except count gold crowns' how boring it sounds, after all! The emptiness of the whole notion of an everlasting 'good time' is shown up in Breughel's picture The Land of the Sluggard, where the three great lumps of fat lie asleep, head to head, with the boiled eggs and roast legs of pork coming up to be eaten of their own accord.
It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. That is why the conception of Heaven or Utopia varies from age to age. In pre-industrial society Heaven was described as a place of endless rest, and as being paved with gold, because the experience of the average human being was overwork and poverty. The houris of the Muslim Paradise reflected a polygamous society where most of the women disappeared into the harems of the rich. But these pictures of 'eternal bliss' always failed because as the bliss became eternal (eternity being thought of as endless time), the contrast ceased to operate. Some of the conventions embedded in our literature first arose from physical conditions which have now ceased to exist. The cult of spring is an example. In the Middle Ages spring did not primarily mean swallows and wild flowers. It meant green vegetables, milk and fresh meat after several months of living on salt pork in smoky windowless huts. The spring songs were gay Do nothing but eat and make good cheer, And thank Heaven for the merry year When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily! because there was something to be so gay about. The winter was over, that was the great thing. Christmas itself, a pre-Christian festival, probably started because there had to be an occasional outburst of overeating and drinking to make a break in the unbearable northern winter.
The inability of mankind to imagine happiness except in the form of relief, either from effort or pain, presents Socialists with a serious problem. Dickens can describe a poverty-stricken family tucking into a roast goose, and can make them appear happy; on the other hand, the inhabitants of perfect universes seem to have no spontaneous gaiety and are usually somewhat repulsive into the bargain. But clearly we are not aiming at the kind of world Dickens described, nor, probably, at any world he was capable of imagining. The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which 'charity' would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable. But does that mean we are aiming at some painless, effortless Utopia? At the risk of saying something which the editors of Tribune may not endorse, I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
Socialist thought has to deal in prediction, but only in broad terms. One often has to aim at objectives which one can only very dimly see. At this moment, for instance, the world is at war and wants peace. Yet the world has no experience of peace, and never has had, unless the Noble Savage once existed. The world wants something which it is dimly aware could exist, but cannot accurately define. This Christmas Day, thousands of men will be bleeding to death in the Russian snows, or drowning in icy waters, or blowing one another to pieces on swampy islands of the Pacific; homeless children will be scrabbling for food among the wreckage of German cities. To make that kind of thing impossible is a good objective. But to say in detail what a peaceful world would be like is a different matter.
Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. This is the case even with a great writer like Swift, who can flay a bishop or a politician so neatly, but who, when he tries to create a superman, merely leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
October Recommendations-
When Making these recommendations I was
driven by two principles. Firstly the book should not be more than
400 pages. While some of my best friends are really long sci-fi
novels, all too often the really long novels seem to be a function of
loose writing rather than overwhelming amounts of things to say.
Short books can be finished even if they aren't perfect. My life is
not quite over, but I'm playing the back nine. If a book I'm reading
for pleasure can't get to the point in 200-300 pages, I don't have
the time to find out if it all comes together in the end. My second
principle is, no parallel plots that come together at the end. I've
had it with that and won't personally be reading anymore books where
one doesn't find out to the last page how the two plots are related.
My advice to such authors- write two books.
I overwhelmingly recommend my first
pick. Clarke writes well, the book is interesting and the Orwell
essay ties in really tightly with the subject matter. I would be
really curious to know if Clarke was familiar with the essay. For
the record, Orwell is a superb essay writer.
1) Childhoods End by Arthur Clarke +
“Can Socialist Be Happy ?” by Orwell.
The Orwell is a short essay about what
is utopia and what makes human beings happy. It speaks to the very
points explored in Childhood's End and makes marvelous companion
reading. It is very short and is freely available on the web.
Below is from a review of Childhood's
End-
"Childhood's
End" was first published in 1953, a time when the cold war was
in full form and people were beginning to truly look towards the
stars for other life and possibilities for exploration. "Childhood's
End" tapped into that fertile imagination to craft a story of
profound scale and meaning. It begins one day when numerous
spaceships suddenly appear in the sky above Earth. They are flown by
an alien species referred to as the Overlords. The purpose of their
journey to third planet of the Solar System is subject to much
speculation and fear. These aliens seem to be a benevolent race that
only wants to help humanity solve the problems that plague it. In
fifty years, these Overlords will end ignorance, poverty, war, and
disease. To what end do they do this, though? The absence of any
obstacles and struggles renders humanity complacent and inert.
2) Man in the High Castle by Phillip
Dick. I was widely blamed, err credited with picking Ubik. I
didn't. But this is supposed to be a much better book and should
give us an idea of whether we think he is worth reading or not. From
Amazon-
Dick's
Hugo Award-winning 1962 alternative history considers the question of
what would have happened if the Allied Powers had lost WWII. Some 20
years after that loss, the United States and much of the world has
now been split between Japan and Germany, the major hegemonic states.
But the tension between these two powers is mounting, and this stress
is playing out in the western U.S. Through a collection of characters
in various states of posing (spies, sellers of falsified goods,
others with secret identities), Dick provides an intriguing tale
about life and history as it relates to authentic and manufactured
reality. Tom Weiner reveals an impressive vocal range that delivers
the host of characters with distinct culture, class and gender
personas, which helps to sort the various plot strands. His prose
reading is engaging, though sometimes lacks sufficient emphasis and
energy. From
the Inside Flap
It's
America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still
survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as
common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the
United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany
and Japan.
This
harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established
Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the
barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it
Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it
may just be possible to awake. --This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
3) Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. I
read this recently upon the high recommendation of a good friend who
is an avid, but discriminating reader of sci-fi. Highly enjoyable.
It's a modern noir novel. It won't leave you pondering the meaning
of life or whether time travel is possible. It should leave you
going- hmm. From Amazon-
In
the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy,
monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race,
religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have
redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive
procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical
stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body
(or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a
screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .
4) Madd Mcadam – vol 3 of the Oryx
and Crake trilogy. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Why Is There So Little Science in Literature
Here's a link to an interesting article by our upcoming author, Gregory Benford.
Benford - Why Is There So Little Science in Literature
Benford - Why Is There So Little Science in Literature
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
A comment and a date-
1) comment- much like Atwood- (from google)
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and essayist who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre.
2) a date- he is coming to the chicago humanities festival (motto- I'll have two cerveza frias and some kultoor to go with that)
http://chicagohumanities.org/events/2014/journeys/william-gibson
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his landmark novelNeuromancer, CHF favorite William Gibson returns to the Festival. This autumn he’ll celebrate the publication of his latest work, The Peripheral, a high-tech thriller set partly in a decadent postapocalyptic future.
1) comment- much like Atwood- (from google)
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and essayist who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre.
2) a date- he is coming to the chicago humanities festival (motto- I'll have two cerveza frias and some kultoor to go with that)
http://chicagohumanities.org/events/2014/journeys/william-gibson
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his landmark novelNeuromancer, CHF favorite William Gibson returns to the Festival. This autumn he’ll celebrate the publication of his latest work, The Peripheral, a high-tech thriller set partly in a decadent postapocalyptic future.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Updated Schedule
| Date | Title / Author | Discussion | Recommender / Month |
| 10/20 | Timescape | Phil Zawa | Adam Ginensky / Dec |
| 11/17 | The Dog Stars Peter Heller | Jim Henderson | Patricia Dore / Jan 2015 |
| 12/15 | Adam Ginensky | TBD / Feb 2015 | |
| 1/19/15 | Patricia Dore | TBD / Mar 2015 | |
| 2/16/15 |
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Search for Intelligence Life Lottery
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/science/in-search-for-intelligent-life-consider-the-lottery.html?_r=0
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Timescape–Life Resembles Art
'Dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of Connecticut
By Barbara Liston August 5, 2014 2:12 PM
- "Dead zone" in Gulf killing thousands of fish
ORLANDO Fla. (Reuters) - Scientists say a man-made "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is as big as the state of Connecticut.
The zone, which at about 5,000 square miles (13,000 sq km) is the second largest in the world but still smaller than in previous years, is so named because it contains no oxygen, or too little, at the Gulf floor to support bottom-dwelling fish and shrimp.
The primary cause of the annual phenomenon is excess nutrient runoff from farms along the Mississippi River, which empties into the Gulf, said Gene Turner, a researcher at Louisiana State University's Coastal Ecology Institute.
The nutrients feed algae growth, which consumes oxygen when it works its way to the Gulf bottom, he said.
"It's a poster child for how we are using and abusing our natural resources," Turner said.
Turner said the zone has at least twice in recent years reached the size of Massachusetts, about 8,200 square miles (21,000 sq km).
The Gulf dead zone, which fluctuates in size but measured 5,052 square miles this summer, is exceeded only by a similar zone in the Baltic Sea around Finland, Turner said.
The number of dead zones worldwide currently totals more than 550 and has been increasing for decades, according to a report by Turner and Nancy Rabalais from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
The elongated Gulf zone typically hugs the Louisiana coastline from the Mississippi River Delta to the state's border with Texas, and some years extending offshore of Texas and Mississippi, Rabalais said.
The scientists said a growth in farmed land along the Mississippi River in the 1960s began increasing pollution. In the 1970s, levels of oxygen in parts of the Gulf fell below the needs of bottom-dwelling fish. The zone has been generally growing ever since.
Floods, droughts, storms and other factors affect the volume of nutrients flowing into the Gulf and account for year-over-year fluctuations, Turner said.
"It seems to have leveled out in size, but it could get worse" depending on changes in pollution levels, Rabalais said.
The report said federal farm policy impacts the amount of pollution in the river. Turner said corn fields, which lay bare most of the year and leach nutrients, are one of the biggest contributors to the problem.
A federal task force organized with river states in 2001 to reduce nutrient runoff has had no substantial success, he said.
(Editing by Karen Brooks and Sandra Maler)
Sunday, August 3, 2014
SF and the damaging effects of literary status envy
What is good sci-fi ? I think this is a really interesting article about literature and science fiction in the container of a discussion about politics in science fiction writing. The 'Evil League of Evil' - how could one not want to join such an organization. Yes Janet, I did find it on Instapundit :)
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6085
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Harlock: Space Pirate
Want some mindless fun? Watch “Harlock: Space Pirate” – great anime available on Netflix (and maybe other streaming sites?).
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
History of Recommendations
As complete as I could reconstruct…...
| Title | Author |
| Starship | Aldiss, Brian |
| The Alteration | Amis, Kingsley |
| Foundation | Asimov, Isaac |
| I, Robot | Asimov, Isaac |
| The Gods Themselves | Asimov, Isaac |
| Pure | Baggott, Julianna |
| SUPER-CANNES | Ballard, J.G. |
| The Time Ships | Baxter, Stephen |
| Blood Music | Bear, Greg |
| Darwin’s Radio | Bear, Greg |
| Galactic Center Saga | Benford, Gregory |
| Cities in Flight | Bester, Alfred |
| The Demolished Man | Bester, Alfred |
| A Case of Conscience | Blish, James |
| Fahrenheit 451 | Bradbury, Ray |
| Martian Chronicles | Bradbury, Ray |
| The Illustrated Man | Bradbury, Ray |
| The Uplift War | Brin, David |
| World War Z | Brooks, Max |
| Stand on Zanzibar | Brunner, John |
| The Sheep Look Up | Brunner, John |
| Cordelia’s Honor (Shards of Honor / Barrayar) | Bujold, Lois McMaster |
| Bloodchild and Other Stories | Butler, Octavia |
| Dawn (Lilith’s Brood) | Butler, Octavia |
| Parable of the Sower | Butler, Octavia |
| The Yiddish Policeman’s Union | Chabon, Michael |
| Alternate Realities | Cherryh, C.J. |
| Cyteen | Cherryh, C.J. |
| Downbelow Station | Cherryh, C.J. |
| Foreigner | Cherryh, C.J. |
| Childhood’s End | Clarke, Arthur C. |
| Rendezvous with Rama | Clarke, Arthur C. |
| The Star | Clarke, Arthur C. |
| Ready Player One | Cline, Ernest |
| Einstein Intersection | Delany, Samuel |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep | Dick, Philip K. |
| The Man in the High Castle | Dick, Philip K. |
| The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch | Dick, Philip K. |
| Diaspora | Egan, Greg |
| Schild’s Ladder | Egan, Greg |
| Deathbird Stories | Ellison, Harlan |
| To Your Scattered Bodies Go | Farmer, Philip Jose |
| 1632 | Flint, Eric |
| Accidental Time Machine | Haldeman, Joe |
| The City at World’s End | Hamilton, Edmond |
| The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein | Heinlein, Robert |
| Wool | Howey, Hugh |
| Darkship Thieves | Hoyt, Sarah |
| 11/22/63 | King, Stephen |
| Solaris | Lem, Stanislaw |
| Confluence Trilogy | McAuley, Paul |
| The Road | McCarthy, Cormac |
| A Canticle for Leibowitz | Miller, Walter |
| Cloud Atlas | Mitchell, David |
| Once a Hero | Moon, Elizabeth |
| Behold the Man | Moorcock, Michael |
| Altered Carbon | Morgan, Richard |
| The Mote in God’s Eye | Niven, Larry and Pournelle, Jerry |
| Love in the Ruins | Percy, Walker |
| Man Plus | Pohl, Frederick |
| The Story Until Now | Reed, Kit |
| Pavane | Robers, Keith |
| The Dark Beyond the Stars | Robinson, Frank |
| Red Mars | Robinson, Kim Stanley |
| The Years of Rice and Salt | Robinson, Kim Stanley |
| The Female Man | Russ, Joanna |
| Wasp | Russell, Eric Frank |
| Berserker | Saberhagen, Fred |
| Factoring Humanity | Sawyer, Robert J. |
| Hominids | Sawyer, Robert J. |
| Old Man’s War | Scalzi, John |
| Dimension of Miracles | Sheckley, Robert |
| Mindswap | Sheckley, Robert |
| Store of the Worlds | Sheckley, Robert |
| Brother to Dragons | Sheffield |
| The McAndrew Chronicles | Sheffield |
| The War Between the Worlds | Sheffield |
| Hyperion | Simmons, Dan |
| The Lensman Series | Smith, E.E. |
| First and Last Men | Stapleton, Olaf |
| Odd John | Stapleton, Olaf |
| Sirius | Stapleton, Olaf |
| Lord Foul’s Bane | Stephenson, Donald |
| Snow Crash | Stephenson, Neal |
| Halting State | Stross, Charles |
| Iron Sunrise | Stross, Charles |
| Singularity Sky | Stross, Charles |
| Her Smoke Rose Up Forever | Tiptree Jr., James |
| The Voyage of the Space Beagle | Van Vogt, A.E. |
| A Deepness in the Sky | Vinge, Vernor |
| On Basilisk Station | Weber, David |
| The Time Machine | Wells, H.G. |
| War of the Worlds | Wells, H.G. |
| Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang | Wilhelm, Kate |
| Humanoids | Williamson, Jack |
| Doomsday Book | Willis, Connie |
| To Say Nothing of the Dog | Willis, Connie |
| Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century | Wilson, Robert Charles |
| The Fifth Head of Cerberus | Wolfe, Gene |
| Day of the Triffids | Wyndham, John |
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