First book in The Foundation series...yes, it's taken me this long to get around to it...
SF/F Books: Chapter Two - What Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Neroon
- Start date
Last book read: SW Legacy of the Force - Fury
Currently reading: ST Titan - Sword of Damocles (2/3 of the way through)
Next in the queue: Dresden Files #3 - Grave Peril
Currently reading: ST Titan - Sword of Damocles (2/3 of the way through)
Next in the queue: Dresden Files #3 - Grave Peril
Let's see, just finished Chanur's Omnibus by CJ Cherryh. She's really an underappreciated author IMO, her Alliance-Union universe is fascinating. Chanur does a real credible job of showing a first contact from the point of view of the aliens, and making the humans seem odd and exotic! And Cyteen and Downbelow Station are wonderful. Want a chilling look at 1984 in a future tech standpoint, pick up Cyteen.
Also been doing some research in mythology, including the Ulster epic and the Chanson de Geste, part of the Matter of France that includes the Roland Cycle. Why? Because I'm a gaming geek and plan on using Scathach and Ogier the Dane as prototypes for characters in a new story.
Big thumbs up to the folks reading Leiber and Donaldson, two of my personal favorites.
And thanks for all the ongoing commentary, you guys have added a LOT of books that are now on my to do list!
Next up, Fatal Revenant by Donaldson (should be in my christmas stocking!), The Demolished Man by Bester, Perdido Street Station by Mieville, and more as my two year old allows.
Also been doing some research in mythology, including the Ulster epic and the Chanson de Geste, part of the Matter of France that includes the Roland Cycle. Why? Because I'm a gaming geek and plan on using Scathach and Ogier the Dane as prototypes for characters in a new story.
Big thumbs up to the folks reading Leiber and Donaldson, two of my personal favorites.
And thanks for all the ongoing commentary, you guys have added a LOT of books that are now on my to do list!
Next up, Fatal Revenant by Donaldson (should be in my christmas stocking!), The Demolished Man by Bester, Perdido Street Station by Mieville, and more as my two year old allows.
Seconded. It is still a favourite of mine having been read 5 times
I just finished Anansi Boys. Pretty good, and I liked that it had more humour than American Gods. One thing bugged me, though...
I didn't like how Spider ended up with Rosie. I thought she was too good for him, and I never really forgave him for stealing her from Fat Charlie.
I've finished reading the first three books collected in the First Book of Lankhmar omnibus. It's great stuff, highly recommended. I especially enjoyed re-reading the first two books, Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death, which lay out Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's respective origin stories, initial meeting, and first adventures together. My only quibble is that given the important events contained in them, I would've preferred "The Circle Curse" and "The Price of Pain-Ease" to be longer, more fleshed out stories, rather than the short housekeeping stories Leiber treats them as.
The third book, Swords in the Mist, is a more mixed bag. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" is outstanding (and this, together with "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" in Swords Against Death, is a forerunner to Terry Pratchett in terms of using a sword & sorcery milieu for satirical purposes). On the other hand, the other two lengthier stories in the collection have good, strong ideas, but execution that I didn't particularly care for: "When the Sea-King's Away" spent far too much time describing the step-by-step progress towards the point of adventure, and then not enough time on the result; and "Adept's Gambit" has Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser passive through much of the story as past events are recounted to them.
I then took a break from Lankhmar and zipped through Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. It's a very slim book, so it's a quick read. It's certainly worthy of its status as a classic. The writing is crisp and powerful. It keeps you on edge all the way through, very effectively evoking the horror of Robert Neville's situation. It's a very clever alternative take on vampires - one firmly rooted in science fiction rather than in supernatural horror/fantasy. There is one aspect, though, that didn't ring true for me, which is that
The third book, Swords in the Mist, is a more mixed bag. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" is outstanding (and this, together with "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" in Swords Against Death, is a forerunner to Terry Pratchett in terms of using a sword & sorcery milieu for satirical purposes). On the other hand, the other two lengthier stories in the collection have good, strong ideas, but execution that I didn't particularly care for: "When the Sea-King's Away" spent far too much time describing the step-by-step progress towards the point of adventure, and then not enough time on the result; and "Adept's Gambit" has Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser passive through much of the story as past events are recounted to them.
I then took a break from Lankhmar and zipped through Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. It's a very slim book, so it's a quick read. It's certainly worthy of its status as a classic. The writing is crisp and powerful. It keeps you on edge all the way through, very effectively evoking the horror of Robert Neville's situation. It's a very clever alternative take on vampires - one firmly rooted in science fiction rather than in supernatural horror/fantasy. There is one aspect, though, that didn't ring true for me, which is that
non-scientist Neville was able to figure out that vampirism is caused by a bacteria, whereas the full weight of the world's scientific community was unable to confirm that theory during the plague.
I read, at last, Do Androids Dream of Elecric Sheep.
Guh. Brain hurty. Guh.
So now, to cleanse my palette as it were, I'm on a short story kick. I've already gone through a volume of Harry Harrison's stuff called Prime Number and at the moment I'm plowing through The Best of Fritz Leiber. After that, Fred Pohl, James Blish, Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson, A.E. van Vogt, who knows? I may even go really wild and break out the John Wyndham.
Guh. Brain hurty. Guh.
So now, to cleanse my palette as it were, I'm on a short story kick. I've already gone through a volume of Harry Harrison's stuff called Prime Number and at the moment I'm plowing through The Best of Fritz Leiber. After that, Fred Pohl, James Blish, Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson, A.E. van Vogt, who knows? I may even go really wild and break out the John Wyndham.
Next by Michael Crichton.
V for Vendetta, the original graphic novel. Soon as I'm done, I'll read Phil Dick's posthumously published mainstream novel Humpty Dumpty in Oakland.
Star Trek Captain's Glory by William Shatner and the Reeves-Stevens.
I just received "The Children of Hurin" as a Christmas gift, and I plan to start reading it tomorrow afternoon.
I've only read a couple of chapters so far so I can't judge it right now. I liked the first two in the trilogy better than some but they're a bit slow especiallt the first one in the trilogy.
I'm reading M. John Harrison's book Viriconium, an omnibus of three short novels and a handful of short stories. I read two of the novels and most of the short stories back in the 1980s, but never found the second novel. Anyone who's interested in the New Weird (China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, etc) or who likes somewhat older writers like Jack Vance and Michael Moorcock or for that matter Mervyn Peake and Clark Ashton Smith should be familiar with this book. (I know Peake and Smith are nothing alike, but there are echoes of both here, I think.)
The first novel is fairly straightforward far future dying Earth stuff, distinguished mainly by Harrison's prose, but the later books add a lot of strangeness and surrealism. IIRC, I picked up the third novel, In Viriconium a.k.a. The Floating Gods, when Baird Searles reviewed it in Asimov's SF Mag back in the early '80s, using the same Baroque SF description that he'd used for Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. That, combined with the fact that I'd already read and enjoyed Harrison's '70s neo-space opera The Centauri Device (considered by critics a forerunner of the New Space Opera of Banks, Mcleod, et al), was enough to get me to go buy it.
Reading Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen a few months ago was what reminded me that I'd been meaning to get a Viriconium omnibus for a few years. Better late than never.
The first novel is fairly straightforward far future dying Earth stuff, distinguished mainly by Harrison's prose, but the later books add a lot of strangeness and surrealism. IIRC, I picked up the third novel, In Viriconium a.k.a. The Floating Gods, when Baird Searles reviewed it in Asimov's SF Mag back in the early '80s, using the same Baroque SF description that he'd used for Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. That, combined with the fact that I'd already read and enjoyed Harrison's '70s neo-space opera The Centauri Device (considered by critics a forerunner of the New Space Opera of Banks, Mcleod, et al), was enough to get me to go buy it.
Reading Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen a few months ago was what reminded me that I'd been meaning to get a Viriconium omnibus for a few years. Better late than never.
I'm starting Excelsior Forged in Fire and also a book called Wizard Lord (can recall the author's name but it looked interesting)
Similar threads
