Read a good book lately?

[Skyryder]

That is the conundrum. Is it fiction?

No but still worth reading.

Rogue Warrior about a Navy Seal is not a bad yarn. Not fiction


There was another I read about a guy who went undercover in Northen Island.

Don't recall the name unfortunatley. Will try and recall it later.

Skyryder

[Swoop]

Rogue Warrior about a Navy Seal is not a bad yarn. Not fiction.

Sounds like a goatfuck to me...

Here is a good read.
Responsible for the Entebbe raid.

[Blue Babe]

I've just finished "Jessica" by Bryce Courtney It was so sad at the end.... Can't say too much as Doug hasn't read it yet. When he's finished "The Potato Factory" (same author) I'll read it In the meantime I'll read "Harry Potter's Last book to keep me going

[Wolf]

The past master of such character ambushes was Roger Zelazney. He would apparently spend days writing a background novella simply to flesh out a single character. He’d then dump this apparition into the plot of the main work, sometimes for a mere paragraph or two. The power of the technique comes from the author’s confidence and understanding of the character, and what’s not revealed about him.

Most good authors do that, and most writing tips I've read recommend writing a details background of your characters and the place they live in. Niven and Pournelle wrote ten times as many notes about the society, technology and characters in their "Mote in God's Eye" epic as they wrote in the book itself.

It is easy to spot who has researched well, created good character profiles or is speaking from experience, even if they don't say a lot. Their words carry weight and are confidently arranged.

Science fiction is nothing more or less than what any other fiction is: its a mirror that is hung up by an author so that we as readers can examine and think about things that the author thinks we should think about.

A couple of examples:

Some of Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories explore societies where organ harvesting is extremely commonplace and the uber-rich and powerful rulers prolong their lives indefinitely by replacing damaged bits so, in order to ensure a steady supply of organs, pretty much every crime carried the penalty of death and dismemberment - to be used as an organ/limb donor.

A US Senator read the stories, realised that ever since the advent of blood typing the potential had been there to turn condemned criminals into a source of fresh blood and that it would only get worse as advanced organ transplant techniques were developed, resulting in a society such as Niven described.

Result - he proposed a bill before the Senate that was passed into law prohibiting any compulsory harvesting of anything from condemned criminals - blood or body parts - to ensure that, in the US at least, people would not be condemned to death for their blood or their organs.

Owing to the fact that many of the operations Niven referred to are still not possible, the story was set in the far future when such surgery had been perfected - technically science fiction but very strongly a social commentary and a warning of what the greedy and powerful could do given the chance.

SciFi writers can write what the hell they like; it's all fiction.

Not strictly correct. SF readers also tend to be heavily into science fact and often shoot down scientific inaccuracies - and don't think they won't write to the author via the publishing house and point out the errors.

I'm not talking Star Trek's let's-create-a-temporal-paradox-every-week or "come to a complete stop (whatever the fuck that is in space) from fast-enough-to-travel-106-light-years-in-under-a-week in less than 2 seconds" bullshit. Serious SF readers know that's pure shit. I'm talking about well thought-out "technology suggests technology, can have serious societal implications, how can technology and or people solve the issues?" stuff.

One of my favourite authors wrote a story in which he fucked up a basic piece of solar system physics and the editor did not pick it up. Shitloads of fans wrote in, it was corrected in the second and subsequent editions and now the first edition is worth serious gold because he screwed up. Point is, everyone knew it.

Cock up something basic like one of Newtons laws or Einsteinian mathematics and you can be sure to get a lot of emails and letters from readers.

[Ocean1]

One of my favourite authors wrote a story in which he fucked up a basic piece of solar system physics and the editor did not pick it up. Shitloads of fans wrote in, it was corrected in the second and subsequent editions and now the first edition is worth serious gold because he screwed up.

Ringworld?

[Wolf]

Ringworld?

You total fucking GEEK!

[Ocean1]

You total fucking GEEK!

There's a first edition lurking around here somewhere, if the kids haven't sent it off to the shop with one of the occasional purges...

The freelance materials and astrophysics work subsequentially done on Ringworld's design and environment and mailed to Niven's publisher was so impressive in both volume and complexity that they published it as a research paper. Before that nobody had calculated the strength of materials required to build a Dyson Sphere let alone an orbital ring. Niven had also neglected to explain one of the inherent instabilities in such a structure, an oversight he corrected in Ringworld Engineers iirc?

[Wolf]

Niven had also neglected to explain one of the inherent instabilities in such a structure, an oversight he corrected in Ringworld Engineers iirc?

MIT (I think) students running through the halls chanting "The Ringworld is falling".

And in Ringworld Engineers it is revealed that many of the drives set in place to stabilise the ring have been stolen/cannibalised so there is only one drastic way to shift the ring back on course - with far-reaching implications and a major quandry for a Pak Protector. Very good in-depth stuff.

[Ocean1]

Very good in-depth stuff.

Indeed. ANd not just the science. Luis Woo is one of my favouritest characters, one very impressive dude. Not to mention the Kzin...

[Wolf]

Indeed. ANd not just the science. Luis Woo is one of my favouritest characters, one very impressive dude. Not to mention the Kzin...

One of the things I like about most of Niven's stories is that people are very much people no matter how far they've journeyed or how long they've lived - very evident in his Known Space books.

Places like "Mount Lookitthat" and "Wemadeit"; Crashlanding City/"Crashlanders", creatures named after old Terran fiction (like the Bandersnatchi) or what they looklike (Pierson's Puppeteers) and playing practical jokes like making an enormous robot with a bunch of simple robotic parts and a large amount of polystyrene and setting it to walk due east on the westbound moving walkway at the same speed as the walkway... (fuck, if we had the off the shelf robot technology and moving walkways, that's precisely the sort of shit I'd pull).

Definitely like the Kzinti as a race and Speaker-to-Animals/Chmee in particular.

Must be Niven's favourite as well as he got most the best lines...

My four favourite SF heroes for years were Louis Woo, Speaker-to-Animals, Nessus and Beowulf Schaeffer. Even though they weren't always particularly "likeable"...

Edit: Someone should buy the film rights and make a few of them. "These are the voyages of the starship "Lying Bastard", it's ongoing mission: to seek out new life and new civilisations and perform Rishathra with them..."

[HenryDorsetCase]

Cock up something basic like one of Newtons laws or Einsteinian mathematics and you can be sure to get a lot of emails and letters from readers.

It sounds like we've read a lot of the same books. I quite like the stuff where just to make the story work they say "Well, here we have mastered faster than light travel (kind of) but all the other laws applicable to this universe still apply: so no instant communication between far flung planets etc (Thinking of CJ Cherryh's Merchanter stories here).

Having said that, Ive just finished reading Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" which I surprised myself by enjoying immensely. Goes to show a good writer will hold your attention no matter the genre. I loved his "Neverwhere", Anansi Boys and American Gods also.

[HenryDorsetCase]

The freelance materials and astrophysics work subsequentially done on Ringworld's design and environment and mailed to Niven's publisher was so impressive in both volume and complexity that they published it as a research paper. Before that nobody had calculated the strength of materials required to build a Dyson Sphere let alone an orbital ring. Niven had also neglected to explain one of the inherent instabilities in such a structure, an oversight he corrected in Ringworld Engineers iirc?

Greg Benford's (who IIRC is a professor of rocket science or something) The Martian Race is good in similar vein: Take existing technology and make it get to Mars and back. Put these people in the situation and see what happens. Its a while since i read it, but my recollection is that the science based stuff was really good, but the characters werent so good.

Pleased someone mentioned Zelazny also. One of my favourites: the Amber books are great, and he won a Hugo for Lord of Light in the '70's, which is amazingly good even now.

Who has read Samuel R Delaney's books: Dhalgren in particular? (I actually like the early stuff too like Empire Star and Babel 17 though I think the author has kind of disowned it......... his later stuff didnt grab me the same way)

[Kickaha]

My four favourite SF heroes for years were Louis Woo, Speaker-to-Animals, Nessus and Beowulf Schaeffer. Even though they weren't always particularly "likeable"...

Those and Gil Hamilton on my list

[Ocean1]

Pleased someone mentioned Zelazny also. One of my favourites: the Amber books are great, and he won a Hugo for Lord of Light in the '70's, which is amazingly good even now.

Good stories, but I prefered Doorways in the sand, brilliantly unorthodox and bloody funny.

[Wolf]

It sounds like we've read a lot of the same books. I quite like the stuff where just to make the story work they say "Well, here we have mastered faster than light travel (kind of) but all the other laws applicable to this universe still apply: so no instant communication between far flung planets etc (Thinking of CJ Cherryh's Merchanter stories here).

Heinlein's "Friday" - someone thinks having to rely on mail delivered by FTL ship (taking weeks or months) is stupid: "why don't we just use radio?"

Niven and Pournelle put a lot of thought into implications of technology in Mote in God's Eye - Need "FTL" travel and communications to be able to maintain a huge Interplanetary Empire but how do you wind up with an unexplored star system in the middle of it? They spent ages working out all the logistics on that. And as Niven said in one of his laws: "Technology sugggests technology" which means you have one thing (matter/energy conversion teleports a la Star Trek) you also have other things (matter replication).

Babylon 5 did very well with their technology - jump gates allowing "FTL" travel and communication (via subspace relays and, I gather, direct subspace links) but also having to stick with pure Newtonian physics for the shorter distances - accelerate, cruise, decelerate, match vector... - and smaller ships that can't carry a jump point generator.

They did far better than Star Trek with its 2-second full stops from Warp 8 and spaceships that coast to a stop when the engines stop working...

Those and Gil Hamilton on my list

Yeah, ol' Gil the ARM is quite cool.