From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <012fe3dde4beb2b0345ab999e964d4d8@csplan9.rit.edu>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Date: Thu,  4 Dec 2008 13:29:59 -0500
From: john@csplan9.rit.edu
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Very Off-Topic: Anybody here reads Sci-Fi? :)
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 5978b91a-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> Hey, doesn't anybody like Orson Scott Card?
>
> His books (specially Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow) are probably
> among my top-5.
>
> --
> Juan Cespedes
> http://www.cespedes.org/

Ender's Game is fine.  I don't think I read Ender's Shadow.  However,
I read the Homecoming books and got suspicious part way into the first
one...  by the time I approached the end I was confirmed in my
suspicion that he was rewriting the Book of Mormon (albeit with a
slightly more believable storyline than the original).  This turned me
off so strongly that I haven't read any of his other books since.

Go Heinlein is my recommendation, the early stuff especially.  Try his
Expanded Universe.  Then after you get a taste for his writing, read
Stranger in a Strange Land, followed by Starship Troopers, and see
what got all those hippies so riled up.  Avoid the later stuff where
he essentially goes crazy.

VERNOR VINGE.  Ron and others will appreciate his novel "The Peace
War", in which Lawrence Livermore National Labs has taken over the
world.  "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" are also
brilliant.

Dune is essential, as noted earlier.  Skip anything by Brian Herbert.

Charles Stross' "Atrocity Archives" is excellent too, but I'm a sucker
for techno-Lovecraftian stuff.

And yes, read Jules Verne and H G Wells.  I got "A Journey to the
Center of the Earth" in 3rd grade and read it until the cover fell
off...  then read it a few more times for good measure.



John Floren, Duke of Off-topic