james_davis_nicoll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2009-03-15 12:52 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2009-03-15 12:52 pm
On a related note
What should go on a Top Ten "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking" list of once-popular SF?
I make an analogy between Card and the "Chinese" food we got in the suburbs long ago. When you first have some, it is a delight, and you are eager for more. And more, and more. It loses its freshness, but you still order it because it's the only damned thing you can get in your suburb other than hamburgers (1). Eventually there comes a day when you push the plate away, and say you'll never, ever, ever, have any of that crap again (2). But that first dish really was a delight.
Card was never one of my favourite authors. But "Ender's Game" was fun, and I sought out and read more Card, much more card. I carried on at least three books after I should have stopped, hoping to recapture that feeling. I have too much to read to give EG a reread, but yes, I suspect it might be a massive wtf.
(1) Where now hamburger is one thing that none of our 25 restaurants sell.
(2) And one day someone introduces you to real Asian food, whereupon you say "wtf?".
William Hyde
Card was never one of my favourite authors. But "Ender's Game" was fun, and I sought out and read more Card, much more card. I carried on at least three books after I should have stopped, hoping to recapture that feeling. I have too much to read to give EG a reread, but yes, I suspect it might be a massive wtf.
(1) Where now hamburger is one thing that none of our 25 restaurants sell.
(2) And one day someone introduces you to real Asian food, whereupon you say "wtf?".
William Hyde
I believe reviling A Case of Conscience robs The Wanderer of vital reviling time.
Am I the only one who thought that Ender's Game was rubbish? Even the short story (which is all I read, and which left only the tang of unsuspended belief behind). The only other Card I've ever read was called, I think, "Fat Farm" and again, the central conceit was so stupid I never bothered with him again.
inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population
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james-nicoll.livejournal.com
2009-03-15 07:09 pm (UTC)(link)
As demonstrated by the fact that there are people still bitching about New Wave SF decades after it went away.
I'm rather fond of it - some of the short bits were quite good - but the mind-boggling stupidity of the final solution to the frame story puts me off recommending it.
hm, well, I was 14 at the time, it's likely I'm remembering it better than it was. :)
No, there's no need, especially where the Ender's Risk Game novels are concerned.
I now see the bad parts of Stranger, but I can still see the good parts.
If you pull out the old SF Hall of Fame collections, you can find some real shockers in the short-story field. "The Marching Morons" comes to mind.
I remain somewhat bewildered at my one-time fascination with the Pern novels, but I suppose experiences vary.
Their initiation rites were loosely based on British reports about the Mau-Mau oath. [1] But worse.
Call it a hunch, but I'm gonna guess that was Pournelle.
[1] Which may not have been what actually occurred in a Mau-Mau oath.
Call it a hunch, but I'm gonna guess that was Pournelle.
[1] Which may not have been what actually occurred in a Mau-Mau oath.
"Ringworld"? Hell, the whole "known space" universe in general? Ignore the unobtanium-mediated physics, just the biology alone is more than a bit weird. And have you noticed how the human protagonists all seem to be Californian-descended millionaires? Just once I'd like to have seen some hint that poor folks still existed -- other than the odd token pickpocket.
Dune (and really, everything by Frank Herbert) - dear god that man manages to pack big heaps of misogyny into everything he ever wrote.
Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy would have to be quite high up, around the 3 or 4 mark easily, just on the strength of the Gypsy character who is also a prostitute with herbal powers that allow her to treat giant psychic cancer tumours.
Actually, will people look back on the 1000+ page doorstop novels in general with horror?
Actually, will people look back on the 1000+ page doorstop novels in general with horror?
Well, I still think the first story "Weyr Search" is pretty damn great. But the cliches and formula were beginning to set in as early as the second novel.
No, you're not alone.
Funny, though, when I first read the story I could believe the battle kids, but pseudonomous people on the Internet having political influence? No way.
Funny, though, when I first read the story I could believe the battle kids, but pseudonomous people on the Internet having political influence? No way.
And have you noticed how the human protagonists all seem to be Californian-descended millionaires?
I'll grant the California thing but Niven used to use a lot of working-class protagonists. Just off the top of my head:
Wossface from A Gift from Earth, his world's version of a black worker in South Africa circa 1965.
Beowulf Shafer, who made good money as a pilot but spent it so fast he had to keep looking for work. When we first meet him he is about to be tossed into prison because he cannot pay his debts. Shafer knows rich people but being so broke he has to take dodgy jobs used to be part of who he was.
The bartender from the Thank God the Chirps aren't Being Written by Baxter series, as well as the other bartender from "The Fourth Profession".
"A Relic of Empire" has a guy who used to be rich and then lost it all, forcing him to develop skills he never dreamed he'd need, like how to budget.
The couple from "The Soft Weapon" are basically running a taxi service.
Gil the Arm is a cop.
I'll grant the California thing but Niven used to use a lot of working-class protagonists. Just off the top of my head:
Wossface from A Gift from Earth, his world's version of a black worker in South Africa circa 1965.
Beowulf Shafer, who made good money as a pilot but spent it so fast he had to keep looking for work. When we first meet him he is about to be tossed into prison because he cannot pay his debts. Shafer knows rich people but being so broke he has to take dodgy jobs used to be part of who he was.
The bartender from the Thank God the Chirps aren't Being Written by Baxter series, as well as the other bartender from "The Fourth Profession".
"A Relic of Empire" has a guy who used to be rich and then lost it all, forcing him to develop skills he never dreamed he'd need, like how to budget.
The couple from "The Soft Weapon" are basically running a taxi service.
Gil the Arm is a cop.
There's nothing wrong with reading Rand. It's reading Rand and taking it as anything other than immature ramblings on the extremes of libertarianism that is painful. (I read some of it as a younger person and then read Atlas Shrugged as an adult recently and found it vomitous.)
Teenage savants who think that the world doesn't appreciate them will dig Heinlein and Rand and identify with them against the cruel world. Until they grow older and then realize that humanity is a community, imagine that.
I think it may be crucial for me that I read it just around the same time that I was starting to be heavily involved in the countercultural movement, the alternative spirituality movement ("New Age" philosophy) and also getting into political activism. I suspect that if I hadn't been the kind of person who was headed in that direction, it wouldn't have meant as much to me.
I'd certainly read a lot of science fiction prior to that, and have been a fan all my life, so I wasn't exactly a stranger to sfnal critiques of various elements of society (I was also reading the Kornbluth/Pohl collaborations and Delaney and what nascent feminist SF there was (Suzette Haden Elgin, for one) all the dystopian classics of the time and so on and so on).
I think some of the attraction had a lot to do with the combination of looking at everything from a fresh eye - as Mike does in the novel - and really thinking about how it functioned and whether it was actually necessary for it to function that way or could it be done completely differently, and the cynicism of Jubal who knows every con game in the book and tells us how it operates. This was very meaningful to the budding radical socialist that I was - showcasing two very different kinds of social criticism.
At the same time, Mike's "new religion" took me toward a serious study of non-monotheistic religion, which also influenced who I've become today. And although Heinlein's examination of alternative sexual expression in Stranger totally failed at re-examining homosexuality, still the questions made it easier to figure out my own non-heterosexuality when I came face to face with it.
There were certainly a lot of people at the time who didn't want any of that, and still don't, and lots of other people who had read or experienced something else that had already gotten them to similar places, but... for me, Stranger was one of the (many) books that were part of my learning to question what I saw around me.
I'd certainly read a lot of science fiction prior to that, and have been a fan all my life, so I wasn't exactly a stranger to sfnal critiques of various elements of society (I was also reading the Kornbluth/Pohl collaborations and Delaney and what nascent feminist SF there was (Suzette Haden Elgin, for one) all the dystopian classics of the time and so on and so on).
I think some of the attraction had a lot to do with the combination of looking at everything from a fresh eye - as Mike does in the novel - and really thinking about how it functioned and whether it was actually necessary for it to function that way or could it be done completely differently, and the cynicism of Jubal who knows every con game in the book and tells us how it operates. This was very meaningful to the budding radical socialist that I was - showcasing two very different kinds of social criticism.
At the same time, Mike's "new religion" took me toward a serious study of non-monotheistic religion, which also influenced who I've become today. And although Heinlein's examination of alternative sexual expression in Stranger totally failed at re-examining homosexuality, still the questions made it easier to figure out my own non-heterosexuality when I came face to face with it.
There were certainly a lot of people at the time who didn't want any of that, and still don't, and lots of other people who had read or experienced something else that had already gotten them to similar places, but... for me, Stranger was one of the (many) books that were part of my learning to question what I saw around me.
Ditto, along with the Ford and Duane novels mentioned above. I also have a weird fondness for "Bloodthirst" which I can't really explain.
True that Hamilton isn't SF, but she certainly seems to have had a large impact on the fantasy genre. (Urban fantasy, I suppose it's called.) She's also had a large impact on the romance genre -- there are countless paranormal porno romances out there now, all falling over themselves to try to prove that they're better writers than LKH. Whatever thrills 'em.
I can only hope that someone reaches the WTF? stage over LKH and LKH-inspired books, but there are so many of them now, it'll obviously take a while for the craze to die down.
I can only hope that someone reaches the WTF? stage over LKH and LKH-inspired books, but there are so many of them now, it'll obviously take a while for the craze to die down.
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