Well Ace, no custom casted dungeon is complete without furnishings and adate

http://stores.castlekits.com/Search.bok?category=DUNGEON+DECOR+BY+MEGA+MINIS

I figure I can outgeek all of you by using this comment as a personal ad:

Nerd goddess wanted!

errrg, have to sit this one out.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is great (or so I've been told). Start with Eye of the World and you'll be hooked.

You know... if you're into that sort of stuff. Freak.

Dave S,

I'm on book five. My wife got me hooked on that series. Does that just double my geek factor or increase it exponentially?

(PS: I bought her the new Harry Potter so she could take it on our honeymoon. I have no comment on rumors of Dobby the House Elf bedroom role playing)

A coworker once told me that he walked in on his older brother when they were kids starring at himself in the mirror with a naked barbie doll straddling his... you know.

"Nerd goddess wanted!"

I'm afraid bbeck is spoken for.

Planet of Dinosaurs - goofy early 70's hairstyle and costumes, scantily clad bimbos, moronic space ship captain, preposterous dinosaur animations.

It doesn't get any better than that for laughs.

Wheel of Time ran out of gas by about book 7. I couldn't take one more heaving bosom. For awhile, I thought I would have to name a boy "Rand." Then a short, round, scruffy dude with a pony tail moved into our neighborhood. Yep, name was Rand. Plans change.

As a kid, I thought I would get rich when I grew up by inventing a "crunching and munching" bag like Gurgi's. Does that mean anything to anyone?

I'm currently getting into the anime 'Neon Genesis Evangelion,' (up to ep. 3, no spoilers please) which is all about some kid controlling a giant robot which protects the earth against invading giant monsters (and, yes, now that I type that out, I realize that sounds like something no adult should be watching, but it's surprisingly good).

Neon made me think back to my youth and this show that used to run on this Detroit UHF channel called 'Johnny Soko and His Giant Flying Robot' (ran back to back w/ Ultraman) Same premise as Neon, although the Soko kid wasn't actually inside the robot like the Neon kid - Soko controlled "Flying Robot" through a voice attuned wristwatch as I recall.

Anyway, I loved that show. It think it spoke to the nerdy japanese salaryman inside every 8 year old American boy, but I figure Soko musn't have got much play outside of Detroit, or else he and flying roboy would be as much a part of our common childhood heritage as, say, Scooby Doo.

Here's my questions. Did anyone outside the Detroit area ever see 'Johhny Soko?' Was it like a big, great show in other's childhoods or was I just some freaky kid? Did it suck and I'm just not remembering it right? Also, the Japanese theme of kids controlling fighting robots, how broad is this? Is there a whole well defined subculture of this stuff? Are there any smart cultural essays online bout this that someone could point me too? Just wondering.

Science Fiction (Military)
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers

John Ringo
A Hymm Before Battle (first of a 4 book series)
Through the Looking Glass

David Weber
On Basilisk Station (first of a multi-volume series)
The Apocolypse Troll

David Drake
Hammer's Slammers
Ranks of Bronze

Ace is Galdstaff, Sorcerer of Light.

Ray, Jonny Sako definitely showed outside of Detroit. I saw it in New Jersey on a Philiadelpia station, and had much the same reaction you did.

And yes, kids controling giant robots is a common theme in Japanes pop culture, or at least was.

Ray Midge,

LOL.

Johnny Sokko was, I recall, aired briefly in Chicago.

Ultraman had a longer shelf-life than poor Johnny Sokko, probably a year or two.

My best friend and I used to recreate the poorly dubbed and outrageously stupid dialogue of Ultraman.

Typically, we would silently move our mouths in a myriad of contortions and then blurt out something like, "And now you shall die." And then quickly follow that with more silent mouth movements, ala the characters on Ultraman.

This, of course, would crack us up.

Every time.

...

Maybe you had to be there.

...

But it was hilarious.

Really.

I've gotten hooked on this weird-ass show "One Piece" on Cartoon Network. It's long (they've produced 150+ episodes so far), and the US version is a bit censored (one character sucks lollipops instead of smokes cigaretes), but the damned thing's addictive. they start rerunning it from episode 1 tonight at 10 EST.

Nickelodeon's "The Life and Times of Juniper Lee" is fun, too, with some good writing and great voice performances. Not bad for what I thought was going to be a half-assed "Buffy" ripoff. This week's "Monstercon" episode was pretty funny.

Books? The above-mentioned Aldenata books by John Ringo, as well as the "Looking Glass" series (any book that starts off with a multi-kiloton explosion that I could see from my front porch gets a couple of extra points).

If you're not watching "Battlestar Galactica," you're missing some great dark TV SF.

"Serenity" is out at the end of next month, so you have time to catch up with "Firefly" before then.

Story of my life. Guys want to talk about geek stuff instead of worshiping my feet.

Sigh.

Ultraman, I loved too. The whole 'holds that pen thing up in the air to activate?' Used to do that at home with a pen along with him. The flying to the sun to reenergize? Forget about it. It's like we were flying htere togeter, me and Ultraman.

But Johnny Soko? Whole nother level. The notion of controlling a gian flying robot WITH MISSILES FOR FINGERTIPS just like reached into some previously dormant 'flying robot' portion of my brain and lit that thing on fire. I was certain it was the best thing there ever was and could ever be. Why every TV/movie didn't feature a giant flying robot was beyond me.

Anyway, I guess I'm more interested in the kid controlling the robot to save the world thing - I know the whole 'gundam wing' robot mecha warrior is huge. I guess I'd be interested in that too though, why the Japs love robots period, while other cultures aren't quite so over the top. Any good stuff out there?

I live for Sci-Fi Friday - Battle Star Galactica and Stargate, who could want any more. Okay, so having McGiver back in the script would be cool, but I will live.

Well, thursdays are cool to with a squad night at Aces High, but I will stick with Fridays. . . . maybe, yes, I will - I hope. Sure, yea, that's it Fridays for sure.

Wait, there is miniture gaming on Saturdays. Nothing better than moving a bunch of metal soldiers about the table! Except for maybe Battle Star Galactica and Stargate. Nahhh. Well, maybe - NO Fridays are still it!

Except for Mondays. They replay all the Stargates and last Galactica . . . . . . . Nah - Fridays call they are all new!

Except for . . . . . (you get the drift)

Regards

Starship Troopers = great book. Nice, and conservative in a lot of ways.

But for my all time favorite sci-fi (tied with Chung Kuo, of course), is Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Un-freaking-believable.

Anyone read that? Four books, which, unlike Chung Kuo, just got better and better.

Oh, and Zorachus by Mark Adams. My namesake.

swords 'n' sorcery and heavy Christian/Platonic philosophy. And lots of blood.

And yes, I have so had sex recently. With a woman.

I've always wondered why in the bleeding hell every Ultraman episode had the guy trapped under a Jeep with the transmogrifier just out of reach. Thirty seconds or more of his struggling to reach the thing that would make him big and neoprened. Did you ever notice how he never finished a fight? That stupid chest light would start bleeping and he would fly off. Japan thanks you for leaving a temporarily stunned, but sure to be surly later, monster hanging about. For geek cred I can offer my collection of Grendel action figures. The Matt Wagner Grendel, not that gimpy Beowulf one. Wheel of Time series got old for me. Nothing against the writing, but I felt that Jordan was just piling crap on without too much direction. That always leads to a hurried and dissapointing finale. Prefer George R.R. Martin's GAme of Thrones Series. Moviewise, I still love A Boy and His Dog. The only thing I ever liked Don Johnson in, and the best adaptation of a Harlan Ellison story yet. An aside to skinbad: Do not hurt Gurgi's tender head with groanings and moanings. That series deserved the Caldecott and then some. I'm currently reading it to my neice and nephew (11 mos.) and they will be the better for it.

MacGuyver looked incredibly bored and unconvincing for his last few seasons of Stargate. Good riddance.

Not that either of those shows compares to the Best Show on Television (BSG).

No one has mentioned anime yet?

I love Heinlen. The first 'grown up' book I read was Starship Troopers. But my all time favorite is Time Enough for Love. The scariest movie I saw as a kid was The Thing From Another World. They showed it regulary on the Friday Night Creature Feature :)

Also, I think Stephen King is one of the best authors in the horror genre, ever. There is nothing he has written that I haven't read (AFAIK).

Ray, do yourself a huge favor and stop with episode 24 of Evangelion. Seriously. The ending is not only a cheap cop-out, it doesn't even make any sense. They basically ran out of money and ideas simultaneously, and then tripped at the finish line. The movie End of Evangelion was an attempt to make up for the fact that the series ending sucked, but even that attempt blew.

Five words - Star Wreck: The Next Pirkinning

The Stand by Stephen King. Best fantasy/epic book ever. I've read it half a dozen times, if not more.

I really enjoyed The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, and the Great War/Settling Accounts series. I just finished the latest, and it was good, but Guns is still his best.

"Armor" by John Steakly is a helluva fine book which(that?), imho, rivals Starship Troopers.

The movie Starship Troopers sucked ass. However, their was a 3-d rendered version "cartoon" which stayed fairly close to the book. Can't remember the name. Good watching.

Crap, I can never get that to work right. Anyway, you can check the link at www.starwreck.com.

As in stuff that I, personally, geek out to - it's all video games for me, baby. I'm one of those nerds who squealed like a stuck pig when I found out that I could play Mario Kart online with my friends on my Nintendo DS this fall. I just love the games that embrace novelty as the big thing - so Katamari Damacy , Electroplankton (it makes music out of anything!), Geist (you can possess dog food), etc. are all tops on my list.

I, admittedly, watch Star Trek: The Next Nerderation, but I adamantly refuse to get into those Kirk v. Picard arguments (since Picard, hands down, could kick the shit out of Fatty Von Shatner). I also watch Adult Swim, but not nearly as much anymore since they moved Cowboy Bebop to an ungodly hour.

Cowboy Bebop is the best space-borne bounty hunting anime show on God's green Earth. It deals with a trio of (broke, unlucky) bounty hunters (as well as a dog and a girl called Ed) who cross the galaxy in search of a well-paying bounty and a chance at some decent food. It also has the usual drama about love, past relationships, et cetera. It was probably one of the first (and best, by far) anime shows I've ever seen (outside of Speed Racer, Thundercats, and Voltron - they don't count because I was too young to know what "anime" was at the time).

God, I can't believe I went on for that long. I'm going to clam up now, lest I make this sound like a LiveJournal comment. =D

And here I was going to reccomend Simmon's Hyperion Cantos. Oh vell.
A movie is in the works (rights purchased/pre production hell stage) though I fear for how they could render The Shrike on the big screen.

Illium & Olympos was disappointing

"The notion of controlling a gian flying robot WITH MISSILES FOR FINGERTIPS just like reached into some previously dormant 'flying robot' portion of my brain and lit that thing on fire."

That would be the 'multiple-dick' part of your brain, there, Ray.

Jesus Franklin gun-totin' skateboardin' Roosevelt Christ. Look at this thread. Just look at it!
You people make fun of the libs calling themselves the 'reality based community.'

I don't know why I keep coming back here.
Honestly. Noooo frickin idea.

TV: Battlestar Galactica, great show

Movies: Serenity, only for the hard core nerd Firefly fans though.

Books: Ian M. Banks has a lot of socialist themes, but his Culture novels are pretty good. China Melville is supposed to kick butt, but I've never read his stuff and he is also quite the leftist.

Dungeons and Dragons geekery: The ENnie awards were just announced: http://www.enworld.org/ennies/index.php?
... there should be good stuff there. The Valus Campaign Setting got the shaft though. Green Ronin does a lot of hippie stuff, if that influences your purchases.

... I now return to lurk in my room in the home where I still live with my Mommy to avoid the taunting jeers of the cool kids. Will I never know the touch of a woman?

We meet again, Mr. DeVore.

Hyperion rocked. I stopped reading SF for a while after that because I didn't think it could be done better.

And yeah, Ilium was a letdown. There was a Hyperion-based short in _Worlds Enough and Time_

I ate it up. I never missed a universe as much as I did that one.

My Dear LauraW,
It's precisely because we get our dose of fantasy in books and such that we can be as serious as we are in the real world.
Who do you trust with the country's future? A has been senator from MA, or a man who has wielded a +5 Holy Avenger against the Drow?
Scratch that. Bad question.

Do you see Howard Dean reading a good sci-fi book? I think not. Unless they're printing it up in Ladies' Home Journal or Moonbat Weekly.

OK, let's see, good sci-fi/fantasy novels...

Like Dave, I do like Robert Jordan's richly-detailed Wheel of Time series, but with one caveat: for the past couple of books, the storyline has bogged down in endless descriptions of what the characters are thinking, and for every plot twist he finally reveals, he adds two or three new ones so you need a program to keep track of what's going on from one book to the next. (Which, considering his books come out about once every two years, only complicates matters.) The first five or so books in the WoT series were much more fast-paced. Hopefully the latest in the series, due in October, will start moving the storyline again. Maybe Rand al-Thor can use the One Power to light a fire under Jordan or something...

A superior fantasy series is George R.R. Martin's fantasy cycle A Song of Ice and Fire, the first book of which is A Game of Thrones. It's every bit as richly detailed as Jordan's WoT universe, and much faster paced. Book 4 of Martin's series, A Feast for Crows, is due in November.

Don't laugh, but I also enjoy J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. They're like Tolkien's Middle -Earth novels and C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, both of which I enjoyed as a child, but the plots are sufficiently involved and the setting is so well detailed that adults are every bit as enchanted by Rowling's storytelling as children are.

Harry Turtledove...what can you say? Some of his novels border on the silly (the Worldwar/Colonization series) but The Guns of the South is a true classic. So is the alternate-history series began with How Few Remain, that, like Guns of the South, chronicles what might have happened had the Union and Confederacy remained seperate nations. That series continues with the three-bookGreat War books , (alternate WWI), the three-book American Empire series, (the period between the wars), and now the Settling Accounts novels (two books published out of what I believe are a projected four; alternate WWII settting). If you haven't read Turtledove, start with How Few Remain and work your way through the whole series. Turtledove also wrote an excellent dark fantasy series, the Darkness novels (published by Tor), a five-volume magical-fantasy version of World War II.

David Weber - pretty much anything he writes is worth reading, especially the Honor Harrington series (the first book of which is On Basilisk Station). It's space opera that reads like Tom Clancy and Star Wars crossed with Horatio Hornblower, and is excellent. Weber has also co-authored with the aforementioned John Ringo (the Aldenata series) on the Prince Roger novels about a spoiled prince and his bodyguards marooned on a hostile planet, surrounded by enemies. March Upcountry is the first of four books (and counting) in that series. Needless to say, I like Ringo too.

David Drake specializes in novels of futuristic military confrontation, and has published too many fine novels and short story collections to recount here. His best-known works are the Lt. Leary novels and the Hammer's Slammers stories.

Eric Flint is the author of a variety of novels that range from - and combine - fantasy, sci-fi and alternate history. He has co-authored with David Drake the superb fantasy/alternate history Belisarius series (six books, starting with An Oblique Approach, and concluding with the upcoming The Dance of Time), and also is the author of the 1632 series, on which he is cooperating with Dave Weber and a host of other authors.

Finally, S.M. Stirling. Another sci-fi/alternate history specialist with a slew of fine stories under his belt: the Draka novels, the outstanding space opera/fantasy seriesThe General (co-authored with David Drake), a three-book cycle of novels based on the Terminator films, the Island in the Sea of Time time-travel trilogy, the related novels Dies the Fire and The Protector's War (upcoming), the alternate history adventure The Peshawar Lancers, and the time-travel/alternate dimension thriller Conquistador.

Anyway, those are my must-read authors. I hope you enjoy their works as much as I have.

I prefer to fantasize about Lipstick's feet.

Lauraw,

Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. And, oh, you can just suck my giant rocket tipped fingers.

Thanks ever so much.

The guy who created Stargate married my college roommate. Does that count for any dweeb points? I went to their wedding too....

No?

OK, well, it was all I had...

'Night all

Dave in Texas, they're the stuff of fantasies.... :)

I prefer to fantasize about Lipstick's feet.

Yeah, locked behind the small of my back, while I pleasure myself between her silky inner thighs.

(Hey, she already went to bed, so she's not even going to read this.)

Yeah, but I'm still awake.

Ick, man. Ick.

Regarding CollegePundit's posting: "...I adamantly refuse to get into those Kirk v. Picard arguments (since Picard, hands down, could kick the shit out of Fatty Von Shatner)..."

Oh, really? Two words: "flying kick"!

Come to think of it, two--make that ten--MORE words: "Double, simultaneous-to-each-side-of-the-neck karate chops." !

So there!

But you're right in that it probably wouldn't have hurt JTK to have a nice salad once in a while.

Michael, it's only 8:00 on the west coast. So I am still awake enough to dedicate a haiku to you:

Batman strikes again
But his cape droops in the wind
Much like his johnson

:)

Also, "Cowboy Bebob" is a snooze.

p.s... Anybody remember "Eighth Man"?

Lipstick:

Hey! You said good night! Get out of here while we talk about you.

:>)

Gotta second the Song of Ice & Fire by Martin. The first 3 books in the series are better than any other fantasy books, except for LOTR. Martin makes characters that are believable and get you to feel something about them. For pure war-porn (a nice genre of fantasy in my land) Clancy is still the best. Scalzi's Old Man War is good, kind of like bubble gum Starship troopers. Ender's Game & The Worthing Saga both by Orson S. Card are probably my favorite sci-fi books.

Wes,

I read the first 6 or 7 books, and I agree with you. They stopped keeping my attention at that point, I think. I never picked the series back up, but I was thinking the other day that I might start at the beginning again. It's been years.

Oh, I forgot.

Raymond E. Feist is pretty darned good. Start with Magician and just go.

About 12 years ago I randomly picked the first two out of that series as 2 of my "8 for one cent" in one of those book clubs (do they still have those?)... it was the best random pick imaginable.

Arghh... while we're at it... I know everybody who reads those things knows already, but Weiss and Hickman's Dragonlance Legends series was really freakin' good way back when I read them. I remember thinking that they would make one hell of a movie.

Another author I enjoy: David Gemmell. His books don't have a ton of fantasy - they're mostly 'one guy cuts another guy's throat with a sword' novels.

Fun reads, though.

Wes mentioned George R.R. Martin's ongoing A Song of Fire and Ice and I redouble. The only series I can compare this to in terms of total imerssion is LotR, and Martin's characters are actually better than Tolkien's.

Best starship combat has to be Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. She actually makes it all work within the confines of the speed of light and orbital mechanics; how long it takes for information to travel, how to use planets to both shield you and accelerate. Great stuff.

Глупые бегущие американцы собаки все умрут, когда хорошее российское ядерное оружие достигает ваших берегов!

Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.

Blood Music, by Greg Bear.

Marrow, by Robert Reed.

Покажите мне русскую подводную лодку работает.

дурачок

I just got back from GenCon. Not from playing in events (though I did some of that), but from running RPG events at GenCon.

Everything I've read by the "Two Davids" (Weber & Drake) is some of the best sci-fi I've read (and up to about the mid-1980's I read everything sci-fi including the mags ...I was corrupted into the genre by a sympathetic grade school teacher and the original Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in 5th grade). Hmm ...imagine Victor Davis Hanson writing sci-fi; that's what you kind-of get with these two guys.

The mil-sci-fi stuff is more like the "hard" science fiction of Azimov, and the early Heinlien ...or maybe like the best of the Pournelle & Niven collaborations (The Mote in Gods Eye would make the basis for a GREAT script Ace), except the main purveyors of the stuff (Drake, Weber, & Ringo) well, they're better writers.

Somebody mentioned Stirling ...I dunno. The Hyperion series ...well, I was really excited by "most" of the first book ...couldn't put it down ...but it ended up disappointing me (and I did think to the point of about 80% through the first novel that it just might be "the best" novel I'd read in maybe 20 years); I felt he just frickin' ran out of steam around the 3/4 point. And the subsequent books in the series weren't nearly as good as Hyperion (or rather, most of Hyperion). THAT said ...it's still a must read.

Oh yeah. Nobody's mentioned it yet, but you can read a LOT of Weber and Drake and Ringo at the Baen Books website (along with a bunch of other worthwhile authors). Free ...Entire Books. Very cool publisher. Buy their stuff (and support my current favourite writers).

I'll also second the specific mentions of the Honor Harrington series, the Belisarius series, the Hymn Before Battle series (indeed, the later books of this future conflict scenario, way past the point of the solution of the Posleen part of the conflict, are everything that you wish the original Star Wars could have been: erudite, provocative, hard sci-fi), and throw in the March Upcountry series for good measure.

Nothing in those to disappoint in those if you prefer hard-sci-fi.

By the way, if anyone's wondering what "Splodydope Atta" said, it translates roughly to "The stupid cowardly American dogs will die when a Russian weapon reaches you."

You know, I gotta add, it's just further evidence of the idiots controlling the film industry that no one has picked up the March Upcountry for a movie, or even a TV series.

The possibilities are soooo obvious .....

10,000 Quatloos on Kirk!

Evangelion is teh suck! Seriously, it's a leading candidate for the most overrated anime of all time.

Pallas by L. Neil Smith : SciFi Gun pr0n.

The Aldenata series by John Ringo is some of the best military sci-fi i have ever read, and i read a whole damn lot of it. Also, the Bolo series created by Keith Laumer is extremely good. As stated before, almost anything written by David Weber or David Drake is worth reading, but i found the best books by Weber to be In Death Ground, and The Shiva Option. Its not really space opera, just a whole bunch of ass-whoopin. A less well known series is the StarFist series by David Sherman and Dan cragg. Its been out for almost a decade now and has something like 11 books, and it just gets better with each one. As for TV, Battlestar Galactica is the best sci-fi show on right now, by far.

Субмарина не ядерная бомба.

Boy, THIS thread brings back some memories!
used to love the earlier sci-fi novels and shows. The Foundation series, most anything by Heinlen, plus the Martian chronicles, and of course the BOLO series by Keith Laumer.

Anyone here remember the old UFO series? Still one of the better sci-fi military shows, especially when it came to the toll a secret hi-tech but high risk war took on the people involved.

I'm probably revealing too much about my age group here, but anyone else remember the early Irwin Allen sci-fi efforts? Land of the Giants, especially, was cool, and the Time Tunnel started my love for history that I still have.

As for games, I mostly liked more historical stuff, but I was a big star fleet battles fan, back in the pre-computer game days. Starfire was cool, too.

Bite me Osama.

Shawn,

LOL.

Flying Kick

LOL.

Double Karate Chops to the Neck.

Priceless.

Поистине. Мой русский не хорош.

Я люблю Россию, и я надеюсь никакое оружие от той страны не будет использовано здесь.

Has anyone picked up the $1 DVD "Slipstream" that's in the dollar stores?

What's that ducted fan plane in the flic? That thing looked WAY cool.

But wait...

There's more.

Here: Ultraman FAQ

Ultraman Ace.

I did not know that.

I gotta say it - Ultraman looks...ummm...a tad poofy.

Well Ace, no custom casted dungeon is complete without furnishings and a date

Bondage is certainly part of the AOS Lifestyle™

I'm afraid bbeck is spoken for.

Heh.

Speaking of Ringo, I have autographed copies of A Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front. I got them when I attended StellarCon about 5 years ago, where I got to meet and spend some time talking to Jim Baen (a rather, um, flirty fellow) and John Ringo, whom I ended up corresponding with for a while. No dirty jokes, please, I was married THIS time and he's a gentleman. In fact, Ringo might be interested in reading this site because he is a conservative. I assume people have seen him as a talking head on Fox News (without his glasses). I used to post at the Baen's Bar site but it went offline a lot and I kept forgetting my password.

The Empire of Man series by Weber and Ringo is good, too. I have a few of Weber's books autographed, but I was sort of put off by him because he was wearing a beret and some fake insignia at the time, which struck me as a little odd.

The best novel ever is Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, but it's probably too cerebral (not enough azz-kicking) for you gentlemen. For the best lead character of all time, you need Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber. And for fun, his Jack of Shadows is good as well as Doorways in the Sand.

Starship Troopers is fantastic, as is Have Space Suit -- Will Travel, both by Heinlein. Most people considered Stranger in a Strange Land to be his masterpiece, but I didn't enjoy those as much as others of his I've read.

The Mote in God's Eye is great, as is Lucifer's Hammer and The Legacy of Heorot and Oath of Fealty, all by Niven n' Pournelle (Heorot was by Stephen Barnes, too). Mote might make a good movie but Heorot would be a lot easier to adapt...and Hammer would be a great mini-series if they could refrain from making it PC.

Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man show why he is considered the master of prose. "A Sound of Thunder" is about to be released and I don't know WHY they picked that particular short story to adapt, but I'll probably go see it because I want to encourage Hollywood to adapt more real stories from real authors.

I've seen the trailer for CS Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe," and it really looks like a great adaptation. I grew up with these books and I will be CRUSHED if they screw those up. I'll be even more upset than the time I saw that "Starship Troopers" abomination.

And did someone mention "Firefly?" Hey, we're talking about having a movie party here on the weekend "Serenity" comes out. Yeah, geeky, but the food will be good.

And Kirk would kick Picard's narrow sagging geriatric azz across the galaxy, so don't EVEN start.

That's enough for now. Just doing my part to fulfill any obligation I may have as the Geek Winner here.

Later,
bbeck

The Dune series by Frank Herbert isn't for everyone. I don't say that by way of apology, but merely as preparation to say that I'm nevertheless surprised that I couldn't find mention of it anywhere in this thread. Those books should appeal to a segment of the Right and I expected to find other representatives of that segment here. You see, for one thing, I agree with Allan Bloom that the Right are those who maintain an awareness of natural inequality; the Dune books are steeped in the "pathos of distance" between the highest and the many. Also, the series stresses the importance of religion throughout, and does such a good job that it should cause intelligent atheists to nod in agreement. Dune and its sequels should appeal to conservatives who treat "the law of unintended consequences" as a principle of action; they begin and end with crashing instances of the "operation" of that "law." Moreover, although Frank Herbert rarely drops names in the series, the books suggest his deep familiarity with classical and modern philosophy, especially political philosophy. I find Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Leo Strauss in the books, and indeed they were written late enough that they could well have been partly the outcome of Straussian influence. The books are fine preparation for the study of political philosophy; before I had ever studied the notions of sect, philosopher-king, philosopher-legislator, philosopher-poet, and founder-captain, I had already seen them exemplified by the Bene Gesserit, Muad'Dib the Kwisatz Haderach, and Leto II, Worm and God-Emperor. I had already seen the difference between conquering and ruling. I had already seen the difference between the goodness the Founder and the goodness of the citizen. I already had some idea of the difference between the excellence of the philosopher and the excellence of the scholar. I had already seen the difference between the cautious "prudence" that slowly leads to decline and death and the real prudence of the one who sees what must be done and who does it "without any respect" and "in every mode." And before I ever confronted the teaching on philosophic exotericism, my imagination had been furnished with the examples of the Bene Gesserit's long secret and their long enterprise.

Did anyone else but me read the Thomas Covenant series? Excellent books, and there is at least one new book out, but I haven't read it yet.

(Смех) Вы не имеете никакого выбора, капиталист, который является свиньей!

Рай рабочего победит!

This is off-topic, but since you all are just talking about dork stuff, I'll post it here anyhow.

The Iraqi version of the TV show Cops:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1057014

Good for them.

DB:
I read some of those Thomas Covenant books when I was a kid. I was probably too young for them at the time; I remember finding them fascinating but very disturbing.

Slublog,

So, Russian weapons are that low a qualitiy nowadays? Glad my AK is Romanian, then... (I'll have to be careful with my M-44 and my Nagant Gas-Seal revolver, though!) ;-D

I managed to finish Ken McLeod's "The Star Fraction" without all the Trotskiism making me grind my teeth too much, but the cloning bringing back a dead guy with all his memories at the start of "The Stone Canal" was a bit much for my Reality Suspenders. (Perhaps it's explaned later in the book) I'll give "The Cassini Division" a go as soon as I figure which pile it's in. Linda Nagata's "Limit Of Vision" is pretty good, as is C.S. Friedman's "This Alien Shore". (Plus TAS has Whelan cover art. Hubba-hubba!) Greg Egan's "Axiomatic" is also a great one for ideas. In particular, the short story "The Moat" (IIRC) was one of the niftier ones.

The Thomas Covenant books seemed like well, insanity to me ...they turned me off the genre almost totally (unfairly, as I've since told myself ...but when you lose the "habit" of following a certain node, there ya goes ...took me a long time to bother looking at anyone writing those huge tomes after that). Gad, but I almost recall reading that he did actually go nuts (an admission of too many corners of a mind cluttered with scads of useless trivia, and an admission that it matters little enough to be bothered to use the systemic memory of the Net to google a confirmation). NOT, mind you, that I'd spread rumours (well, maybe).

BBeck, I loved Zelazney's work, too ...mostly I recall 'em from the old (do they still publish???) Fantasy and Science Fiction and Analog and Astounding 'zines (all of which I had subscriptions to for years ...talk about dating yourself ...and remember the delight of the first few installments of his Chaos works (as I recall, they were in novella format ...but its been a LOT of years since I read anything by him).

Y'know, with Bradbury, it was his Something Wicked This Way Comes that did it for me as his seminal piece (although I'd never dispute The Martian Chronicles as his "essential" bit) ...a tiny kernel of which has remained with me over the years (the story, and the disquieting oddness of it ...I was at a fairly impressionable age when I read it).

Dune I must have read - I dunno - a dozen times? when it first came out. I followed the series for awhile after that, but ...well, I think I started to get bored of the whole thing.

Oh. And speaking of the old sci-fi mags just brought to remembrance CJ Cherryh's Faded Sun series. I remember reading the first installment of the first of those was published (in F&SF I think) and being very impressed with it. And so the suggestion that if you haven't read those and you like mil-sci-fi, you should. I liked 'em, at least.

Now ...for pure geek thrall confession ...I was a devotee of the Lensman series by White back in the day ...and I, umm, well, I, uh: damn. I also read (and adored) ALL the Doc Savage books by Dent.

Prize?

Brandon:

Surely you mean the Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith, also author of the Skylark series.

Forced to read Dune at university for class.

Dune book == tedious.
Dune movie == tedious.

Battlefield Earth book=great, movie=tedious.

Hollywood ruin many good books. *HORRIBLE* things done to Phil Dick stories.

Kornbluth ROCKS. "Marching morons" story remind me of USA Democrats. Ha ha.

Rene,

If you're going Old School with Kornbluth, how about "Scanners Live In Vain" by Cordwainder Smith, or Henry Kuttner's "Home Is The Hunter"? C.L. Moore's "No Woman Born"? Alfred Bester's "Demolished Man", "Fondly Fahrenheit", and "The Decievers"?

"Did anyone else but me read the Thomas Covenant series? Excellent books, and there is at least one new book out, but I haven't read it yet."

DB, yes, I read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant in high school and college. I absorbed some of Covenant's personality and, for a few years, I sortof "became" him. "Don't touch me." I also admired Bannor, Mhoram, Hile Troy, and even Vain. And isn't it easy to see, on reflection, that those five are rather similar characters?

I puzzled over the fact that there seemed to be only six seven names of the Earthpower. One possibility--a very Platonist one--is that the seventh name is the whole: "Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mil khabaal!" (I admit I still get a chill.) Another possibility, in keeping with the theme of "effective choice," is that the seventh name of the Earthpower is--yours.

Eventually, I came to appreciate that you do, in fact, either see health and disease, or you do not. The superiority of sight over law is visible in the fact that Vain knows something is intolerably wrong when his arm is prematurely changed to wood. And I came to appreciate that the Staff of Law does have to be made by one who sees and that the very same staff is deadly in the wrong hands.

Where is the which of the what-she-did?
She hid the Bell with a blot, she did.
But she fell in love with a hominid.
Where is the which of the what-she-did?

How about "Battle Beyond the Stars" with Richard Thomas? The ship had boobs!

I just came home from work (yes, a bar) and I cannot believe you people have touched my heart without making me puke. G-d Bless You.

Donaldson's Covenant was second rate Tolkein, thus I read all I could get my hands on; however, I'd rather read Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings over and over, ad nauseum.

On the other hand, Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat was very brisk, as much as Bill the Galactic Hero was fantastic toilet reading.

In the end, just give me some Faulkner while I watch Bill "Gimme da Girdle" Shatner whoop-up on R. McDowell, something the Limey-cum-Frog, Stewart/Picard, couldn't achieve-- fuckin' pussy. Hell, that dyke Janeway could kick Jean-Luc's ass. (Oh, Voyager...mmm... Seven of Nine...aah, space hookers with no clue...please, let me teach her, and I don't care if she's over 30 with kids...Uh, I gotta go to bed and do stuff....).

I have to second DaveS's reccomendation of Raymond Feist...I am halfway through the authors preferred version of Magician (it's actually 2 books, "Apprentice" and "Master"). Great writing and great stories...also very fast action.
I'm surprised I haven't seen my favorite author in this thread: Terry Goodkind. His Sword of Truth series is fantastic. Each book is a self-contained story, so you don't NEED to read them in order...though it does help. He usually does without too much rehashing of the previous books too...just enough so you're not lost. The only thing that might turn someone off is he seems to have some issues with women: He has strong, good women characters but almost all of them have had brutal lives, or are brutalized in his books. I guess it fits more with the old-world, men-dominated worlds these stories take place, but it can be a turn-off. Just a warning. Still highly reccomended.
Finally, read some David Eddings....the Belgariad and Mallorean series are incredible.

Somewhere among the piles of my stuff I have an original, prepublication signed by Frank Metzer copy of 'Egg of the Phoenix' - which was the prize at a GenCon for winning the RPGA tournament event back in the day.

I understand that it's worth about $1,000-1,5000, depending on the geek doing the purchase. I wish I could find it - as does my wife.

In the meantime I've turned up some mint condition AD&D Role Player Character sheets, a set of unpunched Divine Realm pieces, my Gary Gygax signed Players Guide - well used.

Ray Midge:

Another poster mentioned that the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion was less than satisfying. The series is still very worthwhile, though. RahXephon is an anime series in the same vein as NGE, and Dual: Parallel Universe is sort of NGE-lite.

You might also check out Full Metal Panic and Vision of Escaflowne.

For a great fantasy series you should read Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series starting with Jhereg.

I'm pretty sure no one here will stone me for saying Heinlien was on f'ing fire, but I'm partial to two of his works that don't get mentioned alot. Glory Road and The Number of the Beast are rolicking good rides that make you want to be in the book. All they needed were a couple of hot gypsies thrown in. Anyone catch that reference?

Another author I'm fond of is Steve Perry. No, not the lead singer of Journey, but the writer of the Matador series. Sci-fi and martial arts, what's not to love?

Damn, this is what I get for staying offline Monday night, watching First Blood and Moonraker instead.

Okay, let's see. . . how geeky can I get.

-- Turtledove novels. Unlike Wes above, I found the best books of his were the original Worldwar series. Cool concept, nifty execution. However, I don't read him anymore because HE NEVER FINISHES STORIES. They just keep rambling on, and on, and on. Like my posts.

-- Robotech. Bar none, my favorite cartoon of all time. I ate this stuff up as a kid, even going so far as to gamemaster the role-playing game. Even now, I'm getting psyched that they're finally making a sequel for the show, The Shadow Chronicles.

-- I know he's a lefty-borderline-Marxist, and I know it bleeds into his writing, but man, I really dug Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Rarely has there been such a realistically imagined sci-fi world as his version of colonized Mars.

-- I didn't watch much Ultraman growing up, but I did watch a lot of Spectreman.

Power. . . from space! He'll save. . . the human race! Yet we'll never know his face. . . he's Spectreman!

-- I think D20 is overprocessed steaming synthetic bullshit.

-- I know what D20 is.

-- The RPGs I owned and ran campaigns for at some point or another: D&D, AD&D, Gamma World, Traveller, Battletech (actually, I owned a copy of the orignal *Battledroids*-- that's geek cred right there), Top Secret, Twilight: 2000, Robotech, RECON, Heroes Unlimited, RIFTS, Car Wars, Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu (of course), and the game that I spent by far the most time playing/running, West End Games version of Star Wars.

-- I haven't bought, let alone played an RPG in over a decade.

-- The wargames I owned: Tactics, Advanced Third Reich, Red Storm Rising, The Hunt for Red October, A Line In The Sand, Axis & Allies, Fortress America, Diplomacy, Supremacy (man, I miss that game), Victory Games' Civil War, AirCav, Team Yankee, Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and many more.

-- I had an Atari, a C64, PCs, an NES, a Sega Genesis, and now an Xbox.

Excuse me, after revealing all of this, I now need to contemplate seppuku.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Hmm, where to begin...

Harry Turtledove: Interesting ideas and decent enough writing style, though perhaps a touch wearing in large doses. His large series' (Videssos, Darkness, Worldwar/Colonization, HFR/Great War/American Empire/Settling Accounts) are competently executed, but his writing (or perhaps editing) seems better in his smaller stuff. Guns of the South is the best I've seen from him, and I also enjoyed The Two Georges (alt-history after a peaceful settlement of the American Revolution, in collaboration with actor Richard Dreyfuss, of all people), and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, a cute geek-riff on the magic-as-alternate-technology idea.

George R. R. Martin: Heard the hype around Song of Fire and Ice, but Martin lost me with the earlier Wild Cards books. Huge potential for exploration of realistic themes revolving around comic-book style superheroics pissed away with arrogant leftist-kook assumptions and wallowing in badly-written gratuitous perversion (the latter problem, if I am correctly informed, continuing in the Song of Fire and Ice books). At least the shared-world aspect of Wild Cards lets him dodge some of the blame.

Heinlein: The Starship Troopers movie...as I've seen said elsewhere online, a Mobile Infantryman without his power-armor suit is like a Jedi without his lightsaber. I believe the cartoon (which DID have the armor) was called Roughnecks.

China Miéville (not Melville): Vastly overrated, and a clueless Euro-leftist Tolkien-hating egomaniac, though he can put together a nicely-polished paragraph. Drop some acid, hook up the old SNES and play Shadowrun and Final Fantasy III/VI, all while watching the Heavy Metal cartoon and reading The Difference Engine, and you'll get a feel for how a book like Perdido Street Station might have come about. For various reasons better left unspecified, I will say that it may appeal more to the George R. R. Martin fans around here than it did to me...

Robert Jordan: I'll admit it, I'm a fan of his style and characterization, and while he did seem to wrest himself free of his editors a bit for books 7 and 8, things have been a bit tighter more recently. Here's hoping the trend continues in book 11, due in October. The attempts at meta-mythology can make some of his stuff seem derivative (or give it an excuse for being derivative, depending on how you look at it), but it only came close to bothering me with the Aiel. As David Spade might say, I liked them better the first time I saw them - when they were called Fremen. Which brings us to...

Frank Herbert: some nice storytelling in his stuff, adapted from a fascinating period of history (decadent and declining Byzantium confronts the rise of Islam), but in these post-chaos theory times, the blithe assumptions on subjects like ecology and weather control seem as quaint as anything in a Doc Smith space opera.

---
Orignally Posted by BumperStickerist: In the meantime I've turned up some mint condition AD&D Role Player Character sheets, a set of unpunched Divine Realm pieces, my Gary Gygax signed Players Guide - well used.
---

BumperStickerist, do you mean Divine Right pieces? The fantasy board-wargame, set in Minaria? If you want to replace your copy, a 25th-anniversary edition of the game was released recently, and was available here, though they seem to be out of stock at the moment. An online version is under development at www.divinerightonl!ne.com (replace ! with i, darn spam filters).

And finally, heres a contribution I'm a bit surprised no one's made yet: Tim Powers. Well researched and wonderfully written work that blurs the line between alternate history and fantasy, with a touch of horror. The Anubis Gates (Egyptian sorcery, time-travel conspiracy, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), On Stranger Tides (Caribbean pirates, voodoo magic, and the Fountain of Youth), and Declare (Kim Philby, the Great Game, fallen angels, Noah's Ark and Utnapishtim's herb of immortality) are all well worth a read.

Dave at Garfield Ridge,

Vampire: The Masquerade? That's not just geeky, but uber-Goth geeky. And yes, I played it too. Sitting around listening to Sisters of Mercy and Tones on Tail, being a Lestat wanabe. Ah, sweet geekyness, where is thy sting?

Like Dave I have and love Robotech, DVDs, roleplaying etc. If it weren't for the Valkeries costing more than $75 a pop ( and space issues) I'd have a fleet. Of course I also have Twilight 2000 and both versions of the SW's roleplaying games to say nothing of the Knights of the Old Republic I&II RPGs.
I have A&A, plus the extended/revised rules, plus two sets of repleacement/extra pieces. Also have Fortress America, Red Storm Rising and Shogun. Aside from KOTOR I haven't been able to play any of them in years.

Has Larry Niven been mentioned yet? His Known Space (Ringworld. Man-Kzin Wars) are a fun read.
The Houses of Dune series was OK, but the Butlerian Jihad series sucked. Niether of them have the political critique of Herbet's original series.

Brass-- yeah, definitely uber-goth, but I was interested in it mostly from the RPG angle-- I collected or borrowed from friends pretty much every major game released between the late 1970s until 1992ish.

I was as far from goth as you could get, but I had a few friends who liked the whole "sulking Vampire angst" thing, so I ran a campaign or two of Vampire for them. I wasn't really a big fan, but I give the crowd what they want.

Actually, here's something for geek cred: I nearly always was the DM/GM for my campaigns because I was the only one who ever bothered to buy the books AND read them. Trust me, there are few things worse in life than try to explain THAC0 to someone who doesn't care enough to buy the damn books but still wants an excuse to hang inside on a hot summer night.

Effin' parasites.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Okay, let's see how thoroughly geeky I can make this...

Dune. First book was absolutely terrific, one of those books I've re-read so many times I've lost count. Second book, not quite so good. Third book, not quite as good as the second. By the time you reach the sixth, you're talking major suckitude. And Brian Herbert's extensions of the series don't even bear thinking about.

Harry Turtledove, IMHO, is greatly overrated. His prose is fairly pedestrian, and all of his major seriesfeature the same two obsessions: socialism, and black-white race relations in the US. And his "Guns of the South" alternate history is really, really inexcusably long. I kid you not, I think the plot is advancing at the rate of less than 100 pages per year of alternate history. I read "Worldwar" and enjoyed it, but mostly because I couldn't resist buying the first book, which had a cover featuring Nazis fighting giant iguanas.

S. M. Stirling, OTOH, is absolutely terrific. His alternate histories have much more creative premises than most of Turtledove's work, and both his writing and his research are considerably better. I had the guy pegged as a South Park conservative type, but it turns out that he regards himself as an FDR liberal. Occasionally he shows up at DU and elsewhere, vainly trying to talk sense to the moonbats. I'd recommend just about anything he's written.

I'm surprised Neal Stephenson isn't getting more attention. He's one of the most original writers out there, and he genuinely dislikes political correctness and the current brand of liberalism. This shows up in both The Diamond Age (his best hard-core SF book) and Cryptonomicon (more of a genre-bender). Definitely not for everyone, but I think he's pretty impressive.

On the older writers, well, you name it, I've read it. Probably many times. I've even got a worn paperback of Ringworld that Niven autogrqaphed for me when I was about twelve years old, and I didn't have to do any of the questionable things bbeck did to get it.

And his "Guns of the South" alternate history is really, really inexcusably long

Actually, "Guns of the South" is a stand-alone book, and his best.

The war between the states series started with "How Few Remain" and has been long, but a good read.

Another of his books I enjoyed, despite the slightly feminist slant, was the one he wrote with Judith Tarr, "Household Gods." I liked how the protaganist's 20th century notions were all pretty much shot down by the reality of Roman life.

Oh, sure, I'm away for a day or two and Ace posts a thread I really wanted to participate in before it died off. *Sniff*. Bastard.

Anyhow:

Best Books: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Some of the best scifi in the last twenty years, and a must for any "hard" sci-fi geek. Dan Simmons' Hyperion books are also great. Ray Bradbury's The Marian Chronicles is the best old-school stuff. Frank Herbert's first three Dune novels (pretty much crap since then). 1970's vintage Harlan Ellison (Shatterday is a great story, as is Demon With a Glass Hand). And don't leave out The Watchmen graphic novel, which is sort of like the Moby Dick of comic books.

Best Movies: Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy has decisively uprooted Star Wars as the cornerstone of the sci-fi/fantasy film genre. Blade Runner is also a bedrock item, as is Alien. For pure geekery, I'll throw in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I'm not a huge anime fan, but I think Akira really launched that genre on American shores and is a superlative example of the genre. Miyazaki's Spirited Away is also superb.

Worst trends: "Chick lit" fantasy of the kind shoveled out by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lois McMaster Bujold, et. al.. Horrendous crap, oughta be sold in the Romance aisle wrapped in a Harlequin cover. Certain kinds of quickie "military sci fi"; subliterate writing, lousy plot, wooden characters. Horrible. Movies going away from "thinky" sci-fi and into badly written effects-laden summer crap-fests.

Actually, I liked How Few Remain more than Guns of the South.
GOTS relied on a Deus Ex Machina-type thingy (time travel from the 21st century to the 19th) to get the story going.
HFR was a real "what if", where one small and plausible change altered the future.

But the dialog in his books can get very dull. If I read "ain't that the sad and sorry truth" one more time in this one book, I was going to smash something.

For anime, Ghost in the Shell and Ghost II: Innosensu, of course.
;-)

And of course Neal Stephenson should be on the "gotta read" list of any true sci-fi geek. Cryptonomicon for the Linux/crypto nerd, Snow Crash for the absolute apogee of cyberpunk (makes Gibson's stuff look like the crap it always was, IMO), and The Baroque Cycle for sci-fi geeks with a historical bent.

Never was much into Heinlein, but The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress might be required reading if we ever establish a colony on Luna.

James P. Hogan's books Code Of the Lifemaker and The Immortality Option. They're kind of hard to find, but absolutely wonderful books.

And for a rather obscure movie: Silent Running with Bruce Dern. Sure, it's a comsymp leftie "save the planet" ripoff, but c'mon -- it's got Bruce Dern in it!

Actually, "Guns of the South" is a stand-alone book, and his best.

I stand corrected, Slublog. Actually, I agree with you: Guns of the South was one of his best books, far more tightly written than usual. I even liked How Few Remain, but the series has slowed to a crawl. Right now it's about 1940 in Turtledove's alternate universe, and I'll bet we're at least three or four great big volumes full of leaden prose away from 1945.

Nice to see Vernor Vinge get a mention. A Fire on the Deep and the sequel were terrific, and anyone who spends as much time with RPGs and the Internet as the geekazoids in this crowd absolutely must read "True Names." It's one of the basic texts of the cyber era. Speaking of which, now that I think of it I'm amazed that no one has mentioned William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I've always thought Neuromancer was one of the most filmable novels ever. Of course, "Johnny Mnemonic" was butchered on the way to the screen, so maybe I'll be just as happy if they leave Neuromancer alone.

I even liked How Few Remain, but the series has slowed to a crawl. Right now it's about 1940 in Turtledove's alternate universe, and I'll bet we're at least three or four great big volumes full of leaden prose away from 1945.

Agreed, but the sad thing is that I keep buying the damn things so I can know how the story ends.

If it ever does end.

Given the state of the war in the latest of the series, I'd say we're at least near war's end.

utron:

Neuromancer has been in development hell for a number of years now; last I heard, it was going to be an all-CGI thing. (Read: absolute crap.) The book was at best *okay*, but Gibson has never been one of my favorite authors.

If you're looking for a book that would make a great disaster movie, read Mother of Storms by John Barnes. Super-hurricanes, AI's, political skulduggery, and a porn actress who is not only portrayed sympathetically, but ends up being the main protagonist of the book!

For those who are into robots and AI, read Society of the Mind by Eric L. Harry. (He did a great war novel in Arc Light also.) It's out of print now, but find it: the premise sounds a bit silly, but he really carries it off. It's worth finding in a secondhand bookshop.

Never understood the appeal of Snow Crash - it seemed like a watered-down Neuromancer with plenty of silliness added.

I miss the slightly more obscure old guys: A. E. van Vogt, Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg, John Brunner, Joe Haldeman, Mack Reynolds, Clifford Simak, Jack Williamson, Ted Sturgeon, Michael Moorcock, Fred Saberhagen, etc. I must have a couple thousand sci-fi books in my basement (a bit less than that if you don't count Perry Rhodan), mostly pre-1985, and it just seems like the older books have more of a sense of the nobility and destiny of man.

Geoff:

If you like old-school sci-fi, you ought to check out Fritz Leiber. He did some really neat stuff back in the 1950's (he was a formative influence on Ray Bradbury). Conjure Wife is my favorite, but it's really hard to find these days.

Fred Pohl's Man Plus and Jem were really cool novels, and were recently re-issued.

I'm surprised that more people aren't giving Asimov any props here. His prose line wasn't the most elegant, but he had a way with storytelling: the Lije Bailey novels (The Naked Sun, The Caves of Steel, etc.) are pretty darn good -- especially if you like Blade Runner, which can be seen as the stepchild of these novels.

And Philip K. Dick -- Blade Runner was adapted from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but he wrote lots of other good stuff. Radio Free Albemuth was pretty good.

Never been a big Terry Pratchett fan, but people I trust rave about his books, so there ya go.

2 older cartoons I used to love but no one remembers anymore: Battle of the Planets, which I remember as a precursor to Voltron, and Star Blazers, about a battleship (I remember it was almost but not quite as an actual WWII battleship) floating through space. A great way to spend a Saturday morning.

Monty:

Thanks for the tips, but I already own a dozen of Lieber's books, as well as Man Plus and Jem.

Asimov and Dick were indeed outstanding authors, though a bit less obscure to modern readers than the group I was waxing about.

Totally agree about Pratchett - just not funny. Steven Brust's Phoenix Guards books, on the other hand, absolutely slay me.

If we go old school, we should remember E.E. "Doc" Smith. He was the inventer of space opera.

Geoff: you're right about the Phoenix Guard books. I have re-read those several times and I always find my speech pattern mimicking theirs for a couple of days later. Drives my co-workers nuts, worse than talk like a pirate day.

Right-o for the correction on the Lensman series author EE "Doc" Smith (damn, what was I thinking). Oops.

And I could not remember the name of the book Cryptonomicon last night for the life of me (and I even went looking through my shelves for thing, which I'm sure I still have a copy of, somewhere): I thought Crypto a very good read beginning-to-end.

And AE Van Vogt? Y'know, I actually stinkin' read Korzybski's General Semantics in my salad years because of some fascinating mention of "non-Aristotleian logic" that caught my inquiring mind in one of his stories (the bastard ...hmpf, I just googled, and it turns out that he turned that story into a series called the Null-A worlds); reading G-S ruined me for all time (and no, I didn't follow all the math, and yes, it took a looong tedious few weeks to get through the non-math section of that work).

Anyways ...thanks to all for reading suggestions, *most* of which (well the ones that I've not heard of, let alone read) I've put into The To-Read List.

Great thread, Ace.

'The Mirror of her Dreams' and 'A Man Rides Through' are Stephen R. Donalson's best books - though in three series he has three protagonists with serious issues. _Serious_ issues. 'The Mirror' books are excellent though.

Otherwise ++ to what bbeck said.

Asimov always deserves more props - the first person to publish in each of the Dewey decimal categories.

Niven's Known Space++

A lot of Heinlein's lesser known works take a single concept and explore it - there's a lot of philosophy being explored under the thin veneer of space operas and pulp fiction. What Ayn Rand would have written if she could condense thoughts from 'epic' to 'novella' and still have an engaging story.

Lois McMaster Bujold has two major series, both good.

Jim Butcher and Kelley Armstrong both (independently) written series about 'what if magic was real and hiding in modern America' with interesting and fresh twists.

Charles Stross' 'The Family Trade' is amusing.

Lawrence Watt-Evans has a pile of humorous fantasy flings. 'The Misenchanted Sword' and 'With a Single Spell' are both hilarious. (What kind of spell-checker doesn't recognize 'misenchanted', sheesh.)

Feist's 'Magician' series++

Too many people are ignorant of one of the first real modern "space trilogies": C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength. They're a little old-fashioned, but are very good books nonetheless. Sort of a grown-up version of the Narnia books.

Samuel Delany wrote some good sci-fi in the 1970's. My favorite is Dhalgren. Trippy, dude.

Greg Bear's Blood Music is absolutely freakadelic -- made me paranoid of my own blood! And if you're into robots and AI, I'd recommend Eric L. Harry's Society of the Mind (you may have to hunt for it, though; it's out of print, alas). Harry also did an excellent war novel called Arc Light.

Arthur C. Clarke's story collection The Nine Billion Names of God is a great way to get into his stuff. (Tales From The White Hart is also good, but very hard to find these days.)

And Peter Straub wrote two of the very best horror/fantasy novels of the last few decades in Ghost Story and Shadowland. Signet re-printed them not long ago, so you should be able to pick up a copy at the bookstore. Highly recommended.

And let me throw in a special shout-out to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which is still the best PBS documentary ever made. It's also one of the best DVD collections I own, and I watch it about twice every year.

After the recent dustup here I notice no one is bringing up Elfstones of Shanarra. Or is it just because it blows?

Crap. Did I really put in an href link, and forget to include the link? Yes. Damn.

So, correction: a link to Amazon.com and Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics ...not a sci-fi title, but the seminal work on General Semantics (this doesn't refer to plain ol' semantics, or the study of language btw) that influenced AE Van Vogt that I previously ref'd when someone else brought up Van Vogt.

...only real philosophy geeks will check out Null-A stuff. But the itself story was good (from a perspective of 40+ years): how can you resist the very idea of a "cortical-thalamic pause"?

Crap. Did I really put in an href link, and forget to include the link? Yes. Damn.

So, correction: a link to Amazon.com and Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics ...not a sci-fi title, but the seminal work on General Semantics (this doesn't refer to plain ol' semantics, or the study of language btw) that influenced AE Van Vogt that I previously ref'd when someone else brought up Van Vogt.

...only real philosophy geeks will check out Null-A stuff. But the itself story was good (from a perspective of 40+ years): how can you resist the very idea of a "cortical-thalamic pause"?

The very first book SciFi book I read was "Red Planet" by Heinlein. I think I was about nine.

It was a formative book for me, and it caused me to spend some considerable resources (well considerable for a kid anyway) trying to find more Heinlein to read.

I also read "Princes of Earth" by EP Dutton. It's been out of print for a long time, but I remember it fondly.

Also, no one's mentioned AE Van Vogt, the "Weapon Makers" or Slan. Jommy Lives!

RM

Brainy345, the ship in Star Blazers actually *was* a WWII battleship-- the sunken Japanese ship Yamato was converted into a spaceship (Yamato in the original Japanese version, Argo in the American-converted cartoon).

Space Battleship Yamato is one of the few converted Japanese cartoons where I find the Japanese version is actually better. They gutted a lot in the translation.

As for Battle of the Planets, God, did I watch a lot of that show. Gatchaman, the original Japanese series, got the same butchering as Yamato, but when I later watched Gatchaman long after childhood, I realized neither show really appealed to me anymore. Go figure.

Still, the Princess was all kinds of hotness, and the Phoenix was one bitchin' ship.

Speaking of translations/conversions, the three "generations" of Robotech were far from literal translations. It's a mash-up of three completely separate Japanese shows, kinda like seeing a TV show with B.J. & The Bear, The Fall Guy, and Miami Vice all combined into one series-- or, as I like to call it, THE GREATEST SHOW IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

Personally, after watching Macross and Mospeada (gens 1 & 2), I still found the Robotech version far superior in scope. Man, how I would love it if anyone got a sick crazy idea in their head to make live-action movies out of that story.

I AM SUCH A GEEK. I need to get laid, seriously. Too bad bbeck is married.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield RidgeBrainy345, the ship in Star Blazers actually *was* a WWII battleship-- the sunken Japanese ship Yamato was converted into a spaceship (Yamato in the original Japanese version, Argo in the American-converted cartoon).

Space Battleship Yamato is one of the few converted Japanese cartoons where I find the Japanese version is actually better. They gutted a lot in the translation.

As for Battle of the Planets, God, did I watch a lot of that show. Gatchaman, the original Japanese series, got the same butchering as Yamato, but when I later watched Gatchaman long after childhood, I realized neither show really appealed to me anymore. Go figure.

Still, the Princess was all kinds of hotness, and the Phoenix was one bitchin' ship.

Speaking of translations/conversions, the three "generations" of Robotech were far from literal translations. It's a mash-up of three completely separate Japanese shows, kinda like seeing a TV show with B.J. & The Bear, The Fall Guy, and Miami Vice all combined into one series-- or, as I like to call it, THE GREATEST SHOW IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

Personally, after watching Macross and Mospeada (gens 1 & 2), I still found the Robotech version far superior in scope. Man, how I would love it if anyone got a sick crazy idea in their head to make live-action movies out of that story.

I AM SUCH A GEEK. I need to get laid, seriously. Too bad bbeck is married.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Not only am I such a geek, but now I am a dork who double-posts too-- within in the same post!

Loose shit.

Hey, I had to cut and paste to save what I wrote given the shitty always-crashing blog Ace has here.

Utron, above: I even liked How Few Remain, but the series has slowed to a crawl. Right now it's about 1940 in Turtledove's alternate universe, and I'll bet we're at least three or four great big volumes full of leaden prose away from 1945.

Actually, Utron --**SPOILER ALERT!!!**-- Turtledove is up to the winter of 1942-43 in the Settling Accounts books; in the latest, Drive to the East, the Confederate spearhead just surrendered after being cut off and trapped in the ruins of Pittsburgh (read: Stalingrad). I've heard alternately that "Settling Accounts" will ultimately be either a trilogy or a four-book cycle, depending on the source. (The "Great War" and "American Empire" novels each were trilogies, weren't they?)

Monty: thanks for reminding me of John Barnes' Mother of Storms. You're right: that would make for a helluva movie.

And for fantasy, how about Simon R. Green's Blue Moon Rising and Beyond the Blue Moon? It's thrilling fantasy adventure with a good dose of both horror and humor. Green also did two short story collections featuring the protagonists of the Blue Moon novels: Swords of Haven and Guards of Haven.

Older SF...Anybody other than me enjoy Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer?

And is there anybody out there familar with Daniel Keys Moran's "Tales of the Continuing Time" series? Moran's novels in "Continuing Time" - 1982's Emerald Eyes, 1988's The Long Run, and 1994's The Last Dancer - were set on a futuristic Earth, dominated by a tyrannical, French-dominated United Nations bureaucracy, and featured an ongoing struggle between the froggy UN and a loose confederation of rebels, hackers, telepaths and rogue AIs. The series blended everything from hard cyberpunk SF to fantasy, and was hugely entertaining, particularly the last two books. The only other thing I've come across that Moran wrote were a couple of tales for Star Wars short-story collections: "Last Man Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett" and another, from the collection Tales from the Mos Eisely Cantina, which I think was called "The Devaronian's Tale."

Anyway, if Moran wrote any other books in the Tales of the Continuing Time, I'd like to find them; they were pretty good.

And speaking of Star Wars...another good SF writer is Timothy Zahn, who did the "Grand Admiral Thrawn" novels in the Star Wars universe, as well as the non-Star Wars, military SF Cobra and Conqueror trilogies. Personally I found the novelized sequels Zahn contributed to the Star Wars universe (as well as those of Michael Stackpole and Barbara Hambly) to be more entertaing than the films. Too bad George Lucas didn't let Zahn or Stackpole write the "prequel" trilogy; maybe that way Darth Vader wouldn't have turned out to be a spoiled brat...

Did my eyes blow their circuit breakers partway through, or did nobody mention F. Paul Wilson in the libertarian S.F. and horror genres? I'll match "The Keep" (not the movie) and "The Tomb" against anything by Lovecraft. Ptui! The Adversary kicks Cthulhu's butt, and Repairman Jack is my all-time favorite character.

bbeck, "For the best lead character of all time, you need Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber." I could agree, but you've got to say whether you prefer Corwin or Merlin. Corwin's got it for ability to transcend his early upbringing, but Merlin was more versatile. God, I miss Zelazny.

Heinlein, 1. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 2. "Citizen of the Galaxy", 3. "Starship Troopers", and 4. a whole bunch of others in no particular order. I'd put "The Number of the Beast" in the starting lineup, but his "heroes" couldn't stand to be in the same room as "Lensman Smith", being practicing zwilniks. Then they all wound up in that gathering all the threads of his other novels and hop into the hot tub, then the sack that he did when his brain tumor was encroaching on his creative areas. I always felt I owed him another read, but at times I was disappointed.

OK, "Wheel of Time". What can I say? I noticed the Orc and Black Rider analogues early on in book one, and Jordan kept separating the protagonists and pursuing separate plotlines and jumping from one to the other. I know Tolkien did the same, but for heaven's sake he did finally put an end to it all. As far as I know the Dragon Reborn is still at it. And don't get me started on the Darkover Laran ripoff!

Oh, and to nail down my status of geek, I do have to mention Tarzan and John Carter. I think their invincibility whetted my appetite for Repairman Jack.

Theodore Sturgeon.

For those of you who have not read this man's works, the name is probably meaningless.

For those who have, you know.

He was a groundbreaking author and if you are around a used book store, keep an eye peeled for one of his collections of short stories. My personal favorite is The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon, which contains such awe-inspiring flights as Shottle Bop, The Skills of Xanadu, There is No Defense and Maturity.

He was a tremendously gifted writer who worked in a (at the time) obscure field.

I gotta great big Hell Yeah! for F. Paul Wilson's The Keep. I didn't really follow up with the other books, but that one book did indeed kick much ass.

I liked Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, but I thought Footfall was just silly: Baby Elephants invade the earth! I liked The Legacy of Heorot, but lots of Niven/Pournelle fans thought it was a weak effort, so what do I know? Pournelle's solo efforts like The Burning City leave me cold, too.

I guess I should throw in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series here. It contains some of his best work, and some of his worst; but it's hard to beat for sheer scope and reach. If King is remembered for any of his work in later decades, I suspect it will be for the Dark Tower books.

It strikes me, reading over this thread, how much really good sci literature is out there and how much really shitty sci fi film is out there. You'd think that Hollywood could do something with all that great source material, but not much so far. And most of the good stuff has been on TV: Babylon 5 is the best of the lot, followed by Farscape. (Don't even start with Star Trek unless you wanna get smacked.) The new Battlestar Galactica has gotten a great start, but I'll need another season to determine if it's really going to take place alongside Babylon 5 as the best on television.

And I'd include HBO's Carnivale in the list of good sci-fi, although I guess it's more fantasy than sci fi.

Oh, God, how did I forget about Wilson's "Repairman Jack" novels? Fantasy, horror and SF, all dressed up with crackling prose and fast-paced, hugely entertaining plotlines.

For that matter, I'm also a Dean Koontz fan, even though it seems that he's been writing the same basic story over and over for the past thirty years, changing little more than genres (from fantasy to SF to horror to adventure and back again).

Koontz's novels all have five basic elements or combinations thereof: the troubled hero and/or heroine, the plucky kid, the evil villian, the icky monster, and the implausible plot. Mix together and half-bake in an oven at 350 degrees for about an hour, and there you have it: the next bestselling Dean Koontz thriller. More often than not, his stuff works: the Christopher Snow novels (Fear Nothing, Seize the Night); Phantoms, Whispers, Twilight Eyes, Strangers. Sometimes, it doesn't (Odd Thomas, Cold Fire, Intensity). Still, there probably isn't a bookcase in America today that doesn't have at least one of his books on it.

...and another one from the "obscure" file: Davd Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series (A Day for Damnation A Rage for Revenge, etc.). His books are dense in both philosophy and action; in that way, he's like Heinlein, trying to be both didactic and entertaining. He squeezes out like one book a decade; the next one is due any time now.

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris is better than either crappy movie made from it.

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. If you think Harry Potter is the best the Brits can do in terms of fantasy, read this book -- it'll change your mind in a big damned hurry. Great book.

Mangas Colorados. . . I did NOT just hear you insult Cthulhu.

Take it back. Take it back now. TAKE IT BACK!!!

And while we're talking about George R.R. Martin, has anyone read his horror novels Fevre Dream and The Armageddon Rag? If not , go to your local bookstore and buy them. Now.

As for Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, I'd throw it in, Monty...into the nearest trash can. He lost me by book four of the series; it just seemed to be a complete mishmash of both genres and popular culture references tossed in almost at random. I got the feeling that he was tossing in everything but the kitchen sink (he even wrote himself into the series, at one point) and I just gave up on it.

King's best work, I think, was done in the first half of his career: Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Christine (my personal favorite), The Stand (#2 on my list), and The Tommyknockers. And his short story collections, like Night Shift. After The Tommyknockers, though, he just seemed to run out of ideas. The only good novel he's done in the past fifteen years, IMHO, is Bag of Bones, his ghost-story homage to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

Here's another personal favorite author, one who blends dark fantasy and horror: the English author Phil Rickman (December, Curfew, the Merrily Watkins supernatural mysteries). Rickman writes creepy, Celtic-flavored horror novels set in the wild country along the English/Welsh border, steeped in the actual legends of the region. In terms of both characterization, storytelling and plot development, he's every bit a match for Stephen King at his best.

And finally, how about the splatterpunk police procedural/suspense thrillers written by "Michael Slade?" "Slade" is the pseudonym of a Canadian defense attorney who specializes in criminal insanity, and he has written some truly terrifying thrillers such as Headhunter, Ghoul, and Death's Door, making full use of his professional expertise. If you're prone to nightmares, then don't read Slade.

Monty,

Boooo for insulting the Solaris movies. Yes, I mean both of them.

Were they good? No, not really (both sucked in their own ways).

That said, that is a trend we must strive mightly to continue. Intelligent science fiction movies must be encouraged, even when they fail.

For all its faults, I enjoyed Soderbergh's Solaris ten times more than the majority of studio-produced crap. As for Lem's version, well. . . long and boring, but still trippy, and made all the more charming because of *when* it was made, and the subtle digs it takes at the Soviet system (and gets away with).

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

One book that every sci-fi geek has on his or her bookshelf (not a novel, oddly enough) is Douglas Hofstader's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. I bought it in college, but never read the whole thing until almost ten years later. It is a very dense, complicated, but vastly interesting read. It's one of those "desert island" books. It's kind of like James Joyce's Ulysses: a book most people have heard of, but few have actually read.

I absolutely loathe Koontz's stuff, but maybe it's just me. I thought Strangers was okay, but that's the only novel of his I've been able to read all the way to the end. Ditto Frank Herbert. Lincoln Preston and Douglas Child's Relic was a good fast read (shitty movie, though).

And speaking of the Preston clan: read The Cobra Event by Richard Preston. This is an absolutely terrifying (and well-written) account of a bioterror attack on New York City. One of the few thrillers I've read that actually gave me nightmares. (Richard Preston also wrote the non-fiction The Hot Zone, an account of the Ebola virus.)

Purely personal preference but:

BestSci-Fi movie - Alien (Bladerunner close second)
Best Fantasy Movie - Lord of the Rings
Best Porn Sci Fi Movies - Sex Trek
Best Soft Sci Fi TV - Lexx
Best Hard (non-porn)Sci Fi TV - Star Trek Series, for good and bad.
Best SciFi Short Story Writer - Arthur C Clarke
Best Hard SciFi Trilogy - Isaac Asimov's Foundation
Best Fantasy - J.R.R.Tolkien
Best Sci Fi Novel - The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle. And, it could also could be made into an incredible miniseries, even a Peter Jackson style Trilogy of movies.

Worthy of mention: Neuromancer, Childhood's End, The Martian Chronicles, Starship Toopers, Ender's Game, George R.R. Martin's stuff, Grass, stuff by the three B's - Bear, Brin, Bender.

Not the Frank Herbert of Dune fame, but the Herbert who crapped out junk like The Fog, The Jonah, The Spear, and any number of other shitty paperbacks.

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris is better than either crappy movie made from it.

Lem...Now there's a good, classic SF author. And another good one from behind the old Iron Curtain is Yevgenii Zamyatin. Zamyatin's "We" is a classic.

And let us not forget Futurama, possibly the best sit-com in the history of television. (Not just animated sit-com, either, but sit-com of any kind.) *Sniff* I miss Bender! Futurama was ten times funnier than The Simpsons and much more sharply written (episodes like Godfellas and Jurassic Bark are good examples). So naturally Fox canceld it and let the crapfest known as The Simpsons contiue to fester.

One third of Star Trek was good in any given story-line (although DS9 had a higher percentage and Voyager a lower one). But there was a load of crap larded in there. Babylon 5 is a sterling example of how to do TV sci-fi right, and I'm just not willing to settle for less any more. As I posted before, Battlestar Galactica is off to a bravura start, and I hope it keeps up with the quality it has shown so far.

Ah, I had the name wrong: it was James Herbert, not Frank.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Piers Anthony yet. I got through the 7th and 8th grade, ok and maybe a couple years after that, on the Xanth series. I've been kinda wanting to go back and read some of those again and see if they still read as funny lo these many years later as they once did.

Tried to post earlier, but the World Wide Black Hole of Death ate it.

Anyway, I haven't seen anyone mention Ursula Le Guin, and I liked "Lathe of Heaven", "The Dispossessed", "Rocannon's World" and "Left Hand of Darkness".

Also, Gardner Dozois' annual "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthologies are excellent. There's (in my ever so humble opinion) about four or five instant Hollywood blockbusters in each edition.

Philip K. Dick's "Man in the High Castle" and "Penultimate Truth" were good.

Walter Tevis's "Man Who Was Played by Bowie in the Disappointing Movie" and "Mockingbird" were also pretty cool.

Plus, a jillion short stories by Silverberg, Damon Knight, Cornbluth, Nivon, etc. Too many to list.

Wes, I agree on Bag of Bones. Great book. My favorite newer book of his is the short story collection Everything's Eventual. The nice thing about his shorter stories is that he can take the good ideas he often has and not water them down with 600 pages.

No listing of geekery fiction would be complete, in my humble opining, without mention of the startling similarity of plotlines between the Hornblower series of novels and the Aubrey series of novels. That both are based upon the British Navy in Napoleonic times is no excuse for the similarities in the timelines each series follows. Except maybe for the bits about Trafalgar.

Cornbluth = CM Kornbluth, methinks. (Not that I recall ANY of the stories any longer ...but I knew that name wasn't right at least).

Sherri S. Tepper's Family Tree
The biggest surprise (not ending, but somewhere around the middle) ever. Maybe I was just stupid not figuring it out before the giveaway, but I actually stopped reading the book for a few days to savor the "Wow, how could I not see that" feeling.

I'm waiting for the first movie to show Sakharov's PK-5000 head to head with Freeman Dyson's Project Orion.

http://spacebombardment.blogspot.com/2005/08/lunar-landing-verison-of-project-orion.html

Thosands of tons of Nuclear combat!

As best I can tell, only one mention so far of Dragonlance. The first 2 trilogies are awesome. The rest, eh. Then again Weiss and Hickman didn't write most of 'em.

Somewhat fantasy but I suppose really historical fiction -- check out Dorothy Dunnett's The Chronicles of Lymnond. Very good. Very hard slogging - but very good.

I like G.R.R.M's stuff -- I am 2/3rds through book 2.

Growing up I read Lloyd Alexander's book -- so skinbad -- the "crunching and munching bag" brought back fond memories.

Great books: "Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clark for great quantum physics stuff. "Eyes of Heisenberg" by Frank Herbert for genetic engineering stuff.

Did anyone else but me read the Thomas Covenant series? Excellent books, and there is at least one new book out, but I haven't read it yet.

Yes, I have an autographed copy of White Gold Wielder, although I wasn't a big fan of the series.

Brandon mentioned Doc Savage. Yay, I love Doc and still have some of those old paperbacks by Kenneth Robeson/Dent. I remember seeing the movie with Ron Ely -- not a great adaptation but still fun.

And CORWIN is the hero, natch. Merlin was cool but he lacked Corwin's swagger. I miss Zelazny, too; he died way too young. I have an autographed copy of the 2-hardback set of The Chronicles of Amber and it's all beat to heck from being read a million times.

And I saw that someone mentioned Fritz Leiber. The Lankhmar series is really good, MUCH better than the fantasy novels that got cranked out after DnD became popular. I enjoyed DnD but I really hate the influence it's had on literature. Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga is good, too.

And the Lensman series and Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series and Dickson's Dorsai series and Dickson's Dragon and the George series and Robert Aspirin's Myth series and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and Robert Sheckley's short stories...

Geez, it's been a while since I've read some of this stuff.

Later,
bbeck

The problem with the Thomas Convenant books was that he spent most of the time doing VSE and being completely self-absorbed in his leprosy. Made for a frustratingly ineffectual protagonist.

Doc Savage - oh yes, and the movie *was* fun, even with the stupid twinkle in his eye. I mentally associate that series with everything Burroughs wrote, as well as the Cap Kennedy series and whatever that 30-odd book series was about the guy in grey with the ungodly fast reflexes who kept searching for Earth.

Anybody remember the TV Series The Starlost?

The problem with the Thomas Convenant books was that he spent most of the time doing VSE and being completely self-absorbed in his leprosy. Made for a frustratingly ineffectual protagonist.

But wasn't his leprosy, and the habits he had to learn to protect himself from the disease what made him into an effective protagonist? The habits of the VSE along with his crippling self-doubt were his armor. Err, i think. It has been at least ten years since i read the series so I am a little fuzzy on the details.

DB:

It's true that the theme of the Thomas Convenant books relied heavily on his leprosy - I'm just saying that the plot was bogged down as a result.

It's true that the theme of the Thomas Convenant books relied heavily on his leprosy - I'm just saying that the plot was bogged down as a result.

OK, I will concede that after the umpteenth time he explains how important to his continued existence it is to go through the VSE, one would hope that the author would have presumed that we get it already.

skinbad--

I didn't see any other mentions of it, but yes, Gurgi with his crunchings and munchings means a lot to me. Went back and read the whole series again recently, and they stand up well considering how enamored with them I was as a tween.

For you poor, unenlightened souls, we're taling about The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Disney screwed them all to hell with a cartoon version called The Black Cauldron.

DB:

It also tends to dampen the swashbuckling fun when your hero can be permanently incapacitated by bumping into a table. And he's constantly preoccupied by that fact. And it's become the core of his existence. Ooops time for a VSE. And now he's been reduced to a self-absorbed observer in a heroic fantasy. Hmmm, how long since my last VSE?

Hootowl:
My 9 nine-year old is just starting the series - lucky little devil.

I shit you not, I think my first attempt to comment is what broke mu.nu. I click post, the comment window spits back the 404 and no more Intraweb for munuvia. This should have been about comment 133 or so.

Wheel of Time - check, got monotonous after book 7, but maybe the massive break between book 10 and 11 will get him back on track. He has a very systematic and scientific take on magic which probably comes from his being a nuclear enginner.

Feist et al - check, my favs being the Empire trilogy. A lot of his collaborative stuff is good (minus Murder in LaMut, it just grates on me)

Evangelion - check, really really strange at the end, but the movie's alright of you're looking to see something with a cubic fucton of animated blood.

Haven't seen anyone mention Steven Erikson yet. He's a Canadian author who's got a half dozen fantasy books out, but only two released so far in the States (Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. He's got a rabid canuck, brit, and aussie following.

If you're looking for real anime geekery, get Excel Saga and watch it with the AdVid notes turned on, and be ready to pause... a lot.

Rahxephon - check, similar to Eva, just trade a bit of Judeo-Christian gobbledegook and AT fields for an Aztec/Myan/Inca theme plus brown-noise powerful music.

Firefly - meh, so far I don't see what everyone thinks is so damn orginal about this show. Much of the setting and even some particluar set pieces are lifted right out of anime such as Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop. And don't even get me started on the lousy dynamics and control of the Alliance cruisers. There's a reason vehicles normally have two axes of symmetry and engines along the center line. The best description of the show that I've seen is, "One-liners in space."

Macross Plus is a decent show featuring early attempts to blend CG with cell animation.

Damn I wish www.gamerjargon.com was still up. That site ruled for this sort of discussion.

I'm sure someone already mentioned this, but Firefly, now replaying on some channel before the movie comes out, is a good show. It's very funny in skewering action-hero cliches.

And, as a doube-super-secret geek probabation bonus, the premise seems lifted COMPLETELY from classic sci-fi RPG Traveler.

Yeah, we all need to get invites to bbeck's Serenity party. I think yaminohasha was a little harsh - Firefly may derive a lot from anime, which in turn derives a lot from manga, which in turn derives a lot from a long history of horror and sci-fi literature, comics, and the Japanese male's inexplicable lust for underage girls' panties. For American television, Firefly is very refreshing.

While I find it extremely difficult to read any sort of fiction anymore, I will always fondly remember a preadolescence steeped in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. My subsequent fascination with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke does not withstand the scrutiny of an adult's critical eye, unfortunately. Clarke, in particular, I find absolutely unreadable now. I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed Dune by Frank Herbert and Watership Down by Richard Adams, but I haven't looked at them in decades, and couldn't say whether the writing still holds up. Fortunately, at sixteen, I encountered John Brunner's hallucenogenic Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up and Jagged Orbit, which made me realize there was nothing more bizarre and "futuristic" than the world I was actually living in. So I wrapped up my lingering need for "alternative reality" fiction with a few classics that have served me well in interpreting the contemporary scene: Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Trial and Metamorphosis by Kafka. Aside from the occasional feverish reading of just about anything William Gibson or Neal Stephenson care to write, I have to say I can no longer enjoy the genre like I once did.

Thomas Covenant wins for the most gratuitous use of the word "inchoate".

Sturgeon "obscure"? No man who said "90% of everything is crap" can ever be obscure. Although I never really cared for most of his novels.

"Scanners Live in Vain" is a different story from "Game of Rat and Dragon", right? Same author and universe, of course, but I keep forgetting if one is an alternate title.

Cliff Simak wrote the only science fiction that can be called "pastoral".

Heinlein wrote one decent book (Harsh Mistress). Beyond that, they all suck.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, but none of the rest.

"Fondly Fahrenheit"--reet!

Some other favorite Golden Era short stories whose authors I can't always remember: "Mimsy were the Borogroves", "Cold Equation", "Thunder and Roses" (maybe? it's Sturgeon, I'm nearly positive), "Nightfall", "Day Million".

And, speaking of Frederic Pohl, most things he wrote through Gateway (which leaves out the rather horrible JEM and Man Plus, I believe).

I've outgrown Zelazny's Amber series, and Brust's series is just an updated version (and besides, who needs to live through his divorce angst?). Phoenix Guards isn't science fiction, but it's very funny, particularly the dialogue.

Connie Willis's short stories are brilliant; her two collections are a must have in any collection. Most of her novels are outstanding, except that last one which sucks. But Doomsday Book and Lincoln's Dreams are brilliant.

Neal Stephenson just can't manage the last third of a book. But his first two-thirds are fun. When he and his uncle write as Stephen Bury, they finish better.

I even saw someone mention The Faded Sun series, which I didn't much care for, but I thought I was the only one who'd read.

If someone mentioned Matt Ruff, I missed it. He wrote a book that was a huge underground hit in 1988, called Fool on a Hill, and then we had to wait forever for the next one--which was well worth the wait. Sewer, Gas, and Electric. Don't miss. You don't often find books with both Ayn Rand and Walt Disyeny, much less a walking great white shark named Meisterbrau.

"Disyeny".

No, it's not the soviet version. Just a typo.

Cal -

"Scanners Live In Vain" is set during a time of interplanetary travel. "The Game of Rat and Dragon" takes place during an interstellar voyage.

I agree with the comments onGRR Martin's Game of Fire and Ice series.Also,he's written the script(this is an oldie) for Zelazny's 'The Last Defender of CXamelot'.I've never seen it,but it's probably out on video and I think it was Zelazny's best short story.
I do agree with the writer who recommended"A Boy and His Dog" with Don Johnson.For some reason,women don't seem to appreciate this as much as guys.(Hint,"Do you even know what love is?""Sure I know.A boy loves his dog".
Re Thomas Covenant:I've always felt Democrats liked him and Republicans liked Corwin in the orignal Amber series.Finally,a recommendation;Jack Vance's Lyonnesse series.Start with "The Green Pearl".

I'm sure someone already mentioned this, but Firefly, now replaying on some channel before the movie comes out, is a good show. It's very funny in skewering action-hero cliches.

Yes, Ace, I did! I didn't see the series originally, I ended up buying it on DVD because of Jennifer over at Demure Thoughts. About half the episodes are good, and the others are, uh, not...but the cast and characters are top rate.

We're hoping to have a "Serenity" party here at the end of September when the movie comes out. I have mixed feelings about the movie because I've read a couple of spoilers and I'm not happy, but I'll go see it just to support the show itself and kick Hollywood in the tail for cancelling an above-average show.

And Adam Baldwin is chin-drooling hot, which ALWAYS helps.

Later,
bbeck

I really dig on Lieber, not just because his heroes are interesting and fun, but because he's quite a good stylist.

He has some aphorism -- "in writing, the sense of sight is more important than the other four together" -- and that aesthetic of vivid visuals comes across in his writing.

Leiber won me over when he described a rapier penetrating someone like "angelfoodcake" in "Ill Met In Lankhmar," lol.

Later,
bbeck

If you invent a Gurgi "crunchings and munchings" bag, I want it, even if I haven't reread Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain in about ten years. One of my swords in the collection in Maryland is named Dyrnwyn, even if I haven't found a good engraver yet.

Me, my big addiction lately is the new Battlestar Galactica. I think last night's was perhaps the best yet.

Dave, you played TW2K? Damn, that's some military gaming cred right there. I bought it but couldn't get my normal gaming buddies to lay off Battletech or Shadowrun for a weekend to try it. I still have all my Battletech stuff with me for when I can find a game, my 1st edition AD&D stuff and what's left of my Shadowrun stuff is all packed in MD under half a case of .303 British.

Gaming, late night repeats of Space Cruiser Yamato/ Star Blazers, Robotech, Voltron (the lion kind), and a library copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. This is the way intellectual infantry NCO's are made, man. I'm going to go on another DVD buying binge in Iraq this time.

Anyone read Bujold's Miles Vorkosigian novels? I found a few of those, they're not bad.