Post: #51

(12-22-2014 01:59 AM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Looking to read something new.

Just finished Red Shirts (Scalzi).
Read The Peripheral (Gibson) last month.

Both were...mediocre imo.
Red Shirts for the dumb plot.
Peripheral for the lack of plot, been there already tech, and forgettable characters.

WIA

You need to read the foundation series by Issac Asimov those are just amazing My favorite one is Foundation and Empire.

Make sure you don't look up any info about it before you get into it though, you really don't want to spoil yourself.

(01-15-2015 07:20 PM)WD-40 Wrote:  Weird that Time Enough For Love by Heinlein hasn't been mentioned yet.

If there is one red pill science fiction book- or red pill book for that matter- that absolutely everybody should read, it is this one.

Assume that you are a man who has lived a thousand lives - been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Knowing what you now know- from lived experience - what kind of life would be truly worth living? And what is the operating manual for living that kind of life - what life skills and mental attitudes must a man develop?

After rereading that book as a mature adult, the message finally clicked, and it changed the world for me.

I remember reading this when I was in 7th grade, it was just lying on my Dad's desk at home so I picked it up and started reading it, even though I couldn't really understand a lot of it I loved it, and I think that some of Heinlein's red pill-ness seeped into my head back then, giving me the foundations to see how the world really is in regards to women and not vehemently reject it like many other guys do.

Post: #52

(02-24-2015 07:51 AM)tattiemasher Wrote:  An honourable mention to 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', it's also in the post-apocalyptic mould, but I really enjoyed it.

The most recent sci-fi I read was 'Player Piano' by Kurt Vonnegut. The premise is a future world where automation and computer-controlled society renders most people economically inefficient and so the overwhelming majority of society is either propped up in monotonous maintenance work or enlisted in the army. It was good enough to get a thumbs-up from me, though I found some of the characters a bit hollow.

I loved A Canticle for Leibowitz. It's one of the few books that I keep thinking about days and weeks after I finished reading it.

For Vonnegut, perhaps my favorite of his is Sirens of Titan.

Post: #53

(02-27-2015 01:46 PM)Socrates Wrote:  

(02-24-2015 07:51 AM)tattiemasher Wrote:  An honourable mention to 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', it's also in the post-apocalyptic mould, but I really enjoyed it.

The most recent sci-fi I read was 'Player Piano' by Kurt Vonnegut. The premise is a future world where automation and computer-controlled society renders most people economically inefficient and so the overwhelming majority of society is either propped up in monotonous maintenance work or enlisted in the army. It was good enough to get a thumbs-up from me, though I found some of the characters a bit hollow.

I loved A Canticle for Leibowitz. It's one of the few books that I keep thinking about days and weeks after I finished reading it.

For Vonnegut, perhaps my favorite of his is Sirens of Titan.

Good to see another fan of Canticle for Leibowitz, a real classic. I haven't read that Vonnegut book, but a quick look at the synopsis reminds me of a film based on his works, 'Between Time and Timbuktu'. It pieces together various novels, but the main character travels via the Chronosynclastic Infundibulum from 'Sirens of Titan'. Check it out if you can find a copy.

Post: #54

Anyone remember "Tales from the Crypt?" The stories in the series were based on comic books from the 50's. These were the comics that pushed the envelope back then and became the catalyst for the establishment of the "Comic book code Authority" in the USA.

Anyways, they also had a "Science Fiction" line called "Weird Science." I collected these like a madman when I was a kid. Still have them buried somewhere. They had some great stories and even adapted some of Asimov's works as well as "I, Robot" in addition to others such as Ray Bradbury.

One of the most memorable (and well known) stories from these books was "Judgment Day" adapted from Ray Bradbury. It tackled the issue of race head on and upset the authorities back then. Link below that provides some insight to those interested.

https://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/ec...ement-day/

Post: #55

I just started reading Starship Troopers. Fantastic novel. I had put it off due to the cheesyness of the film but the two are almost entirely unrelated. Relevant to today's political climate.

Quote:“If you can't listen, perhaps you can tell the class whether 'value' is a relative, or an absolute?"

I had been listening; I just didn't see any reason not to listen with eyes closed and spine relaxed. But his question caught me out; I hadn't read that day's assignment. "An absolute," I answered, guessing.

"Wrong," he said coldly. " 'Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human — 'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible." (I had wondered what Father would have said if he had heard "market value" called a "fiction" — snort in disgust, probably.)

"This very personal relationship, 'value,' has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him ... and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted ... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

Quote:The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation.

Post: #56

Reaching way back on this...

(01-15-2015 07:20 PM)WD-40 Wrote:  Weird that Time Enough For Love by Heinlein hasn't been mentioned yet.

If there is one red pill science fiction book- or red pill book for that matter- that absolutely everybody should read, it is this one.

Assume that you are a man who has lived a thousand lives - been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Knowing what you now know- from lived experience - what kind of life would be truly worth living? And what is the operating manual for living that kind of life - what life skills and mental attitudes must a man develop?

After rereading that book as a mature adult, the message finally clicked, and it changed the world for me.

I absolutely loved this book until I tried to re-read it a year ago for probably the 7th or 8th time. Made it as far as the shift of action to Tertius before giving up in disgust. Heinlein may have been red pill in a lot of ways, but damn if he wasn't the bluest of blue-pillers when it came to his female characters.

Post: #57

If you're interested in SF classics, I recently read Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man" and "The Stars My Destination".

Both are good.

"The Demolished Man" is a criminal procedural involving telepaths (you can readily see where Bester and the Psi Corps in "Babylon 5" originate). Man uses telepathy and subterfuge to commit the 'perfect murder', cop who is also telepathic hounds him relentlessly while searching for tangible proof of his guilt (telepathy itself being inadmissible as evidence). Has a cool vibe to it, like the Rat Pack meets "Twin Peaks".

"The Stars My Destination" is an odd story, 'experimental' without being unreadable New Wave garbage. Guy wakes up in remains of a destroyed spaceship, has to figure out who he is and what happened to him (and the spaceship) while being dogged by an apparition of a flaming head. The story gets stranger and more baroque until the big reveal, at which point everything snaps into place like in the closing minutes of "Usual Suspects". Psychic teleportation is involved - it's a pity "Babylon 5" didn't borrow that idea from the real Bester, too.

Post: #58

I see a lot of the usual suspects in this thread (as well as some new ones I'll be checking out) and I'd like to recommend one I haven't seen mentioned.

My recommendation is 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi. Set in future Thailand it follows the POV of a genetically engineered prostitute and a corporate expat. I wouldn't tout it as the best book ever, but it's definitely worth a read if you're a fan of the sci-fi genre.

Post: #59

Great thread WIA.

Whatever you do people, stay the hell away from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time fantasy series. It has a great enticing epilogue and goes downhill from there.

Wasted my money and time.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth Book 1 Wizards First Rule is cool. The rest in the series is crap.

Outside fantasy.

I found Cabinet of Curiosities very interesting. Book was about a man who found a way to live forever.

And I cannot recommend enough the book of Proverbs as a massive life guide.

Post: #60

I like collections of high quality short stories.

Sci Fi is such a great imaginative platform to go crazy and set up an amazing short story.

I don't have time for those 15 telephone sized book series

Post: #61

Couple of thoughts to add:

I've mentioned this one in the "just finished reading" thread, but I'll mention it here so the right audience sees it. For bonus points, Dan Simmons sort-of recommends it in his own short story The Time Traveller.

I'd call it prrrobably science fiction though like a lot of time travel stories it sits somewhere on the edge between that and fantasy. It's Ken Grimwood's book Replay. In essence it's Groundhog Day done much, much better. You wake up in roughly your 18-year-old body (or earlier) with your present-day consciousness and you live through your life again. Unlike Groundhog Day, though, there are constraints, and twists to how this works ... and you're not the only one it's happening to.

It intrigued me because Simmons borrowed from the book in describing how time travellers of this kind try to contact one another: the traveller takes out public notice ads in roughly 1950s newspapers to the effect of "Do you remember Reagan, Challenger, Watergate, the Beatles? If so, call me at..."

In the fantasy aisle: The Wizard of the Pigeons, Megan Lindholm (that is, Robin Hobb under a pen name). A real prototype urban fantasy, but the joy of it is that it can be interpreted either as a hobo having magical powers and confronting a threat to his small alleyway world ... or it can be just as equally interpreted as a homeless Vietnam vet fighting to save his own sanity on the streets. You are never told precisely which way to take it, which is a hell of a ride.

And also in the fantasy aisle: The Sleeping Dragon, Joel Rosenberg. Takes the wish-fulfilment desire of many RPG nerds to actually be physically transported into their fantasy worlds and makes it literal, i.e. a party of players is thrown into the fantasy world, transformed into the very characters they play.

This book makes it a lot more dark-ish and gritty than you'd expect for novels of the period: the party of players are not Harry Potter kids, they're mostly twentysomethings some of whom have some real hangups and issues of their own. One of them gets killed roughly five minutes into arriving in the fantasy world. I'd skip the rest of the five book series, it doesn't have that big a pull, but the first is good stuff.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm