Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Karl Bunker's novelette "The All Have One Breath" mentioned an E.M. Forster novella, The Machine Stops. I didn't know the author of Howards End & A Room with a View wrote SF, but apparently he wanted to rebut H G Wells's visions of a future scientific utopia with a scientific dystopia of his own. So, he has a future society living underground due to air pollution totally dependent on The Machine. Unlike a rogue AI story, The Machine isn't sentient and has no will; it's just a bunch of machines for proving air, food, water, entertainment (it writes poetry) & plays music. It's just that people have become so dependent on their technology they practically worship it.

Oh, and Forster has anticipated FaceTime instead of in-person interactions. (He didn't anticipate Siri, though; people's apartments are filled with buttons and switches.) Which is pretty impressive for 1909.

G33z3r wrote: "Karl Bunker's novelette "The All Have One Breath" mentioned an E.M. Forster novella, The Machine Stops. I didn't know the author of Howards End & A Room with a View wr..."

The Machine Stops has been on my tbr for a few years now and still haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully I will soon!

Anyway I finished I, Robot and loved it. My first 5/5 book of the year. Asimov was ahead of his time in so many ways and I'm glad I finally read something of his. Very talented writer and love his humour too. I'm now super interested in reading his other robot books. Especially since I also love detective mysteries.

Anyway I'm now back with good ol' Fitz and have started Fool's Errand

NekroRider wrote: "Anyway I finished I, Robot and loved it. My first 5/5 book of the year. .... I'm now super interested in reading his other robot books...."

You'll find that Asimov cleverly repackaged his robot stories in many different collections, usually throwing in a little something new to incentivize buying again. I usually recommend Robot Visions and Robot Dreams as the most complete set (including all the stories from I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, and The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories, plus one new story in each. Together they're more complete than The Complete Robot :) Then there are the novels, The Caves of Steel & The Naked Sun. And later Asimov decided to connect his robot stories to his Galactic Empire and Foundation stories with The Robots of Dawn (I didn't see anything wrong with Asimov having three separate story universes, but there it is.)

NekroRider wrote: "The Machine Stops has been on my tbr for a few years now and still haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully I will soon!..."

It's old enough (1909) to be in the public domain (in US, anyway); I couldn't find it on Project Gutenberg, but it is in Wikimedia.

G33z3r wrote: "NekroRider wrote: "Anyway I finished I, Robot and loved it. My first 5/5 book of the year. .... I'm now super interested in reading his other robot books...."

You'll find that Asimov ..."

Thanks for the tips! I'll be on the look out for Robot Dreams and Robot Visions. Would you say it's best to read those two sets before moving on to Caves of Steel?

NekroRider wrote: " I'll be on the look out for Robot Dreams and Robot Visions. Would you say it's best to read those two sets before moving on to The Caves of Steel?..."

Nah, you can read The Caves of Steel anytime; that you've read I, Robot already gives you all you need. The Naked Sun is definitely a sequel to Caves, but the short stories can be read in any order.

G33z3r wrote: "NekroRider wrote: " I'll be on the look out for Robot Dreams and Robot Visions. Would you say it's best to read those two sets before moving on to The Caves of Steel?..."

Nah, you can..."

Great, thanks for the help!

G33z3r wrote: "NekroRider wrote: "Anyway I finished I, Robot and loved it. My first 5/5 book of the year. .... I'm now super interested in reading his other robot books...."

You'll find that Asimov ..."

I found a website a while ago that gave the minimum set of books to buy that has the full coverage of all the stories. I, Robot wasn't on it, though frustratingly that's the easiest one to find in used bookstores. I didn't keep the site since I wrote it down, but I also only wrote down the ones I was missing so I can reproduce the list easily. Google should find it for you though.

I finished the The Riddle-Master of Hed last night & enjoyed it, although not as much as I used to. It's beautiful in a complex fairy tale sort of way, but I had a lot of trouble with Morgan's anti-death crusade. I liked it better years ago when I first read it than I do now, but it's still pretty good so I left it at 4 stars. My review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If you're interested in reading it, make certain that you have all 3 books in your possession before starting the first. It ends on a huge reveal & starting the second book immediately is a must. I couldn't the first time (actually, didn't get to it for years) & I can tell you it is painful.

Finished A Swiftly Tilting Planet, it was still strange but at least I could understand what was going on (as opposed to A Wind in the Door which made no sense at all). In fact it had some really interesting aspects. Plus it had a unicorn which fit into my unicorn reading theme for the year. That was just by chance but still nice.

On my eReader I finished Blue Hearts of Mars, very YA but not too badly written for a free book, unfortunately there was a big section where the guy "dumps" the girl for her own protection but she angst about it instead of understanding that it was actually a sacrifice on his part, otherwise she was a decently strong female lead.

Also finished Unicorn vs Goblin (in the Phoebe series). The Goblins are very minor part but they are cute and annoying :)

Thus I can start three things today

1. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold a little early for the group read but my library will be wanting it back eventually!

2. Razzle Dazzle Unicorn by Dana Simpson to read whenever I need something light or a laugh

3. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander on my eReader since Tor gave it away for free and I missed the group read last year

I've finished The Last Unicorn and gone on to SS-GB. I think it could be argued that any alternate history could be counted as SF, but this book (as far as I have discovered so far) doesn't really have any SF or fantasy elements, so I don't think it counts :)

I finished the The Shades of Magic Series by V.E. Schwab this morning. Overall, I enjoyed the series, though had a hard time getting into it at the start and felt the ending a little longwinded. The middle was superb though, especially the second book, A Gathering of Shadows.

Today, I'm going to start Soon I Will Be Invincible. Looking forward to some comedy!

Tony wrote: "I've finished The Last Unicorn and gone on to SS-GB. I think it could be argued that any alternate history could be counted as SF, but this book (as far as I have discovered so far) ..."

Temeraire is alternate history but is definitely fantasy, it's Napoleonic times but if you had dragons (and used them as airships in warfare), there's nothing SF about the dragons :)

But as you said, yours didn't have SF or F elements in it...then I might lean towards the SF as it kind of counts as a "parallel world" which is an SF concept, even if it's not explicit

I am working my way through Snow Crash, while also listening to Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. The difference in styles is refreshing, switching from a mystery to a comedy is keeping me on my toes :)

Couldn't decide which trilogy to commit to, so I read a couple of stand-alones by new-to-me authors & enjoyed both.

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, set mostly in 2144, focuses on patent piracy (more piratical than it sounds) of bioengineered drugs; the two main POVs are the pirate and the indentured robot partner of the international pair sent to hunt her down.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden blends sci fi and fantasy. Set in nearish future South Africa, it includes newly sentient robot personal assistants and a street drug that brings out your inner animal deity.

Undying by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

I have just started reading The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable , it has some incredible illustrations, and I do love a bit of Discworld

Finished the Only Harmless Great Thing (it was only 59 pages after all). At first I was confused about why people wanted elephants to suck on radioactive paintbrushes, but then figured out they were painting watch dials so they would glow in the dark. Otherwise it was different and very good.

I didn't have a plan of what to read next on my eReader so picked the first standalone I came across - A State of Disobedience by Tom Kratman. It was free from Baen

Andrea wrote: "Finished the Only Harmless Great Thing (it was only 59 pages after all). At first I was confused about why people wanted elephants to suck on radioactive paintbrushes, but then figured out they were painting watch dials so they would glow in the dark...."

As I mentioned in out group discussion last September, the Radium Girls & Topsy are actual historical items.

G33z3r wrote: "Andrea wrote: "Finished the Only Harmless Great Thing (it was only 59 pages after all). At first I was confused about why people wanted elephants to suck on radioactive paintbrushes, but then figur..."

Yep, that's where I figured out what was going on, it was helpful even though I couldn't bring myself to read the wiki page on Topsy, it was enough to know it was a real event (minus the nuclear explosion)

I finished The Warrior's Apprentice, Bujold writes a fun story with fun characters. Look forward to the discussion.

My next book isn't SF or F, it's been a while since I read one of those :)

Kowal's The Calculating Stars was too soft a scifi for my taste. Her alternate history has a huge meteorite impact wipe out a big chunk of the US East Coast and trigger a climate disaster that accelerates the space program to put men (and women!) on Mars, etc.. Our 1st person woke female protagonist, a WASP pilot from WW2, wants to be an astronaut. Within that context Kowal re-writes the 1950s space program to discuss a host of social injustices.

Enjoying an odd book I picked up called , set in the far future, with a near-steampunk kind of vibe.

Tchaikovsky's novella Expert System's Brother starts off feeling like a fantasy, but in a couple of pages it becomes clear there's a technology behind what seems like "magic", though the characters don't know it. It doesn't take long to deduce the source & reasons, if the details will take more time. A couple fo characters go off to explore, learn, and wrestle with the wisdom of it all with incomplete understanding. Some interesting ideas in an enjoyable, quick read.

Written in Fire by Marcus Sakey

In this third book in the 'Brilliance' trilogy the threatened civil war between 'average' people and 'brilliants' with extraordinary abilities is about to start. The series ends with more of a bing than a bang (IMO)….but it's okay. 3 stars

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I enjoyed Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War 5-book series back in the day. A decade later Moon revived the story with Vatta's Peace, a duology of Cold Welcome and Into the Fire, in which she brings the star-spanning space opera down to earth (or a planet, at least) for fist a survival story and then a hidden conspiracy to be unravelled. There's lots of action, but it's disappointingly more like a contemporary crime/spy action adventure than scifi (somewhere out there are interstellar space ships. The main character used to be an Admiral of a space fleet; Now she's in command of an inflatable life-raft and robbing trucks. (What's the opposite of "topping"?)

Aside: Anyone notice all of Moon's space opera heroines get kicked out of the military? Heris Serano, Esmay Suiza, Kylara Vatta. Jus' sayin'.

Started re-reading The Warrior's Apprentice last night for group discussion starting tomorrow.

I also started the Warriors Apprentice last night ... for the first time!

Rachel wrote: "I also started the Warriors Apprentice last night ... for the first time!"

You're in for a treat. Great series.