Matadora is awesome.
In Other Worlds is freaking fantastic. It starts with a great hard-SF premise, complete with real formulas and all that jazz (at least from what I read in some other reviews written by people who claimed to understand that braniac stuff), and then quickly turns into a dimension-hopping, rip-roaring, action-adventure with crazy power armor and one of the most hideous and fearful creatures I've ever encountered in a work of fiction. Attanasio has created a species of alien that scares the crap out of me. Totally righteous - can't wait to plow through the rest of the novel.
In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
It is safe to say that I loved this book. It's part transrealist fiction, part superhero story, and part farflung adventure, all wrapped up in a cosmic SF package absolutely teeming with big ideas, scary monsters (I mean really scary, like the scariest I've ever encountered in a book), and interesting characters.
Attanasio packs almost each and every page with something awesome; he throws caution to the wind and just lets the narrative rip. Some people might have a problem with how scatter-shot the whole thing is, but for me it totally worked. I was reminded of the old Hong Kong films from the '80s and '90s; In Other Worlds has that same kind of "why the hell not?" approach to its structure and execution.
My only complaint is that there is too much action at the end. I am not a huge fan of drawn-out action sequences in fiction, and I would have preferred a more cerebral ending, and was secretly hoping for something more like The Stars My Destination, which would have worked perfectly.
Anyhow, I'm really looking forward to reading more from this author, because as it stands In Other Worlds is just about perfect.
I started Theodore Sturgeon's The Synthetic Man (a.k.a. The Dreaming Jewels). I hope I didn't do myself a disservice by making More Than Human my first Sturgeon. It'll be hard for anything to live up to the expectations it created.
The Dreaming Jewels is awesome; it was my introduction to Sturgeon and pretty much blew my mind. I think that Some of Your Blood, Godbody, and To Merry Medusa are better than More than Human, but only slightly. I'd rate his novels:Quoting Killed_by_Smalls (view post)
1. Some of Your Blood
2. To Merry Medusa
3. Godbody
4. More than Human
5. The Dreaming Jewels
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6. Venus Plus X
Started this this morning:
It's a crazy, 1970s on the road style SF adventure, mixing in elements of western, SF, martial arts, drugs, sex, and all kinds of crazy things. In the first few chapters the main characters meet a trucker who is a Lord of Creation. The Lords of Creation drive their trucks around the vast and desolate highways protecting them from being destroyed by a reality-destroying force called The Disruptor. It's very, very cool and inventive so far.
Farren, the author, is kind of a super star of the UK underground. He was a lyricist for Hawkwind and Motorhead, a musician, and a journalist for NME.
Quest of the DNA Cowboys - If Ralph Bakshi had been a SF author in the 1970s, this is what he would have written. This book is insane, and insanely good. Totally my kind of SF. It's a totally weird road-trip adventure with tons of strange creatures and characters, social commentary, and a completely gonzo sensibility that throws caution to the wind. Farren lets it rip.
Roadside Picnic was good although very different from Stalker. Stalker strips it down and abstracts it and turns it into a very personal and allegorical piece. The book has more of a noir vibe. It's about a variety of stalkers going into the zones and taking out valuable objects to sell. It's still quite a thoughtful book in a different way though. Although I much prefer the structure of Tarkovsky's film... introduce all the characters and their struggles, go into the zone towards the room, get out and wrap up. The novel jumps between characters, time and place and the overarching structure just seems much less purposive than Tarkovsky's. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
Finally worked out the perfect analogy for The Quest of the DNA Cowboys: it's the novelization of Galaxy Express 999 directed by Ralph Bakshi. There really isn't a plot, other than a series of interconnected adventures and scenarios, punctuated with lots of sex and drugs, a little bit of rock and roll, and a counter-culture vibe straight out of the 1970s.
Quest of the DNA Cowboys, by Mick Farren
Ever wondered what Galaxy Express 999 would have been like as a novel written by Ralph Bakshi? If so, might I suggest reading Mick Farren's SF, on-the-road adventure novel, The Quest of the DNA Cowboys.
Quest is pure '70s. There is lots of drugs and sex, a little bit of rock and roll, and it contains the kind of counter-culture messaging of an Easy Rider. There are three different narrative threads. The main arc details the adventures of two young men named Billy and Reave. Their "quest," as it were, is simple: to leave the confines of their small country town and head out into the vast expanse of the wasteland to find themselves and adventure along the way. The second narrative is a bizarre one dealing with a trinity of female alien beings who find themselves drawn towards Billy's and Reave's hometown of Pleasant Gap. And the third narrative arc deals with the debauchery of a super-high-class society and the things they do to alleviate their boredom.
The world that Farren creates is a very interesting one. The very physical fabric of the universe is falling apart; reality itself is deteriorating, and thus travelers need to carry portable stasis fields in order to keep their surroundings intact. There are lizard-driven carriages, truckers who call themselves the Lords of Creation, a bohemian village populated with immortal teenagers, a decrepit rundown town full of ghostly inhabitants on the verge of vanishing, and a region of land in which a war has been waging for centuries.
The only thing the book lacks is a cohesive plot. There really isn't much of a quest, nor is there anything driving Billy and Reave along on their journey outside of the desire to have new experiences. It's pretty much set up as a series of scenarios and chance meetings with bizarre characters, after which Billy and Reave move on to the next seemingly random encounter. I enjoy this kind of adventure, but I can see others having a problem with it.
The book ends on a major cliffhanger, and it is the first part of a trilogy. Although I don't really think it's a trilogy as much as it is one longer book broken up arbitrarily into three parts. If you're interested in reading this, I highly suggest getting the omnibus version so that you can read it as one novel. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of Farren's creation, and I have a feeling that it will end up being one of the better books I read this year.
If any of you guys remember Reaver from over at RT he had his first novel published (Haywire) and it's available on amazon in print ($9.99) and kindle ($4.99) versions. I got my copy yesterday and plan on reading it during my vacation. I don't read too much sci-fi but Reaver's a good dude so I figured I'd give it a shot and give him a plug over here.
http://www.amazon.com/Haywire-Justin...1951775&sr=1-5
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Catastrophe: Season 1 (2015) A
Rectify: Season 3 (2015) A-
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True Detective: Season 2 (2015) A-
Wayward Pines: Season 1 (2015) B
Currently Playing: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (replay) (XB1) / Contradiction (PC)
Recently Finished: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) A+ / Life is Strange: Ep 4 (PS4) A / Bastion (replay) (PS4) B+
Ringworld was okay. It's strongest aspect is that it is quite conceptually interesting in places. It has a lot of cool speculative tech and the universe it builds up feels quite vast. That said the world building is pretty good only up to a point. From time to time I had trouble visualizing any given scenario and I think this was more of a problem with Niven's descriptions than with me. As is the case with most sci fi the female characters here are an absolute joke, more or less sex dolls for the protagonist. In fact all of the characters are thinly sketched. It kept me engaged enough to read it through fairly steadily until the end though so I guess the narrative is okay.
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
Never read Ringworld, and never had much of a desire to. Not sure why.
So far, Nine Hundred Grandmothers is fantastic. The reasons that Lafferty is so highly praised by other writers are becoming abundantly clear. Like Sturgeon, Lafferty is simply working on a different level than most of his contemporaries. Also like Sturgeon, I can understand him being a writer's writer, and it also makes some sense that his stuff has been OOP for so long - I can't imagine there being a big market for this stuff. Of the five stories I've read, I've loved three ("Nine Hundred Grandmothers," "The Six Fingers of Time," and "Frog on the Mountain") liked one ("Land of the Great Horses") and disliked one ("Ginny Wrapped in the Sun"). Of the ones I've loved, "The Six Fingers of Time" is my favorite. It's a very well-written story about time manipulation (think bullet-time), with some secret-society conspiratorial stuff mixed in.
It was definitely worth reading for some of the concepts but the sexual politics are awful and there's probably more technical jargon (given that it's 'hard' sci fi) than you enjoy.
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
Yeah - I think that's why I've avoided it. I tend to not read the hard-SF, as I prefer the soft sciences in SF more. I probably should at least attempt it, though. I've owned it for years, ever since I was reading through the Hugo winners.
There's quite a bit of humor in it and the characters feel much pulpier than most hard sci fi so it makes it a bit less stately than most hard SF.
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
I dug the crazy invention of The Crack in Space and had some admiration for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I just finished A Scanner Darkly, and now I am firmly a fan of Philip K. Dick.
Great novel. One that transcends genre. Just an all around great piece of American literature.
The other two I read were strong but also all over the place. I may have talked to you about that before - how he races through ideas that other writers could spend entire books on. But Scanner built such a strong portrayal of drug addiction. The pros, the cons, the pleasures, the idiocies, the tragedies. There's a compelling focus to the story - if ever it wanders, it makes sense as the wanderings of people under the influence.
Barely sci-fi.
The afterword, with Dick listing the names of real people who suffered so much from it, really got to me.
Also: pretty funny. The failed suicide of Freck and the business with the ten-speed bike made me chuckle quite a bit. Love how Freck picks out an Ayn Rand book to hold as a suggestion of his misunderstood genius qualities.
It's true - PKD would cram more ideas into one of his novels than many authors would into a dozen. While this is sometimes cool and entertaining, it almost always makes for spastic reading.
ASD, OTH, is extremely focused, and almost entirely character driven (The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is probably his most character driven, and it also the most un-SF of all of his SF novels). And, like you said, the tangents it goes on make sense because of the characters.
And yes, it is hilarious. Many of his books were very funny. This is why I really like the film of ASD. It's the only film based on one of his books to nail the humor - Linklater understands Dick's humor. I think they were very similar in this way. Slacker even feels Phildickian without any SF elements.
I'm curious as to what you would think of VALIS.
About a 1/4 of the way through Roadside Picnic. Man is it ever good. How did Tarkovsky turn such an exciting, suspenseful, and quickly paced novel into one of the dullest films (Stalker) ever made? It's almost like he read a completely different book than the one I'm reading. The voice of the main POV character is simply fantastic. He's such a bad ass. Also, the book as a wicked sense of humor. Really glad I didn't let the film keep me away from this.
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