Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library discussion

Heard today that Arthur C. Clarke died. Age 90, if I remember correctly. I'd thought he was older, to be honest. In any case, he's been a favorite of mine since I started reading SF. My favorites of his (I haven't read them all by far!):
Rendevous with Rama
Imperial Earth
2001 (I liked the next two sequels as well, I have to admit)

I never liked Clark's books, they was a bit weird for me. But It must be admitted that he had a great importance as one of the greatest "philosophical" writers.

De mortuis nil nisi bene.

I loved Childhood's End. It was the only book I read of his.

RIP Arthur C.

Clarke is one of my icons when I was reading Sci-Fi at an early age. I guess you could say i worshipped him until I started to see elements of homosexuality in his books. I know, how could I be so intolerant, but tose elements really turned me off, so I hardly read anything of his for a long time. Still, he is one of the greats of the genre.

Allow me to be the first to say...
WOW! How could you be so intolerant!!!

end.

I've never read any of Clarke's novels (I'm not a fan of the whole "aliens as saviors" mindset), and I have mixed reactions to those of his short stories that I've read; but IMO, one that's absolutely outstanding is "Second Dawn." It's a product of the genre's whole post-war fear of nuclear holocaust, but it's head and shoulders above the usual run of that literature: highly original (it depicts one of the most unusual alien races you'll ever encounter), philosophically deep and serious, and fascinating to read at the same time. It's the Clarke story they should have put in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame! You can read it in The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories (Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) --which, BTW, is one of the best anthologies of SF ever assembled.

If you are reading Clark's books and seeing deep themes you are reading to hard. This man came from the Golden Age of Hard Science fiction. He was about the scientific ideas. Characters are just vessels to move to the next idea. You have to love the Golden Age SciFi to love Clark.

All that aside he was huge and will be missed.

Jeremy, my wife also tells me I'm too analytical when I read. And it's true that Clarke wrote in the "hard" SF tradition, and got into the genre during the heyday of the pulps (though "Second Dawn" was written later), and your generalization would fit a lot of the writers of that school. But someone once said, "No generalization is without exceptions -- even this one!" I think most readers of hard SF (and I've read a fair amount of it --though I prefer the "soft" tradition) will say that the more serious writers of that stripe do often have deep, serious ideas. (Of course, I don't know how much SF of this sort you've read, since I haven't browsed your shelf.)

By "philosophical," I don't mean the characters engage in long dialogues or monologues about big ideas; I mean that the author has ideas or questions about basic issues of life, and tries to deliberately structure the story, and the way it's presented, to convey these to the reader. I think many readers would say that Clarke, for one, does this in a lot of his work; and I don't think all of us are seeing something that's not there. (If his fiction was only interested in presenting "scientific ideas," it would be hard to explain "Second Dawn;" his alien race there is, by our standards, scientifically primitive, so they don't have any technological gadgetry of the Verne sort.) Many sci-fi fans haven't read "Second Dawn;" if you're one of them, my suggestion would be not to dismiss it without reading it first.

Here are a few things you miht like to know about Clarke:

In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realized 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Clarke's work, which led to the global satellite systems in use today, brought him numerous honors including the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship, a gold medal of the Franklin Institute, the Vikram Sarabhai Professorship of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, the Lindbergh Award and a Fellowship of King's College, London. Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers above the equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

These are from The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation web site.

Werner, you may be right about Second Dawn, I am sure it is a differnt sort of book for Clarke. It is different because it was written later in his career. He kept relavent by changing with the times. He wrote with other authors like Stephen Baxter to stay relavant. Read solo Stephen Baxter work and you can see what "Hard Science Fiction" has evolved too. It is a fusion of realistic science and character development.

Jeff, what you posted is all true. We owe a lot to this legends ideas. What I don't understand is your post about homosexuality. I have no problem if you are seeing that in his works, I just can't find any themes of that nature in his works. What am I missing?

Jeff, your comment about an underlying theme of homosexuality makes me want to read this guy! I love how Sci Fi can take the societal norms of race, gender, sexuality, etc. and re-arrange them to test out what our society is missing by keeping these identities down.

I'll have to add some of his works to my ever-growing to-read list!

I'm a great fan of Clarke - sad to hear of his death. I guess I'm a "hard science fiction" nut - hadn't heard the term before - makes sense - now I know what to ask for when I'm sick of browsing shelves full of swords and dragons and princes (I do like JRRT and some others though).

"Childhood's End", "The City and the Stars", the Rama series would be my faves. And "The Sentinel" as a precursor to Kubrick's 2001 was an interesting idea. Found a couple of old vinyl LPs a short while back of him reading excerpts from some of his works - still in plastic wrap. Gotta un-junk my Thorens deck and dupe them onto MP3.

Are Hard Sci Fi defined as the "old" writers like Asimov, Farmer, Pohl. Lem and the Strugatsky brothers?

Possibly - but I'm thinking of it in terms of stories written around exotic or potential natural world phenomena. So, pick your natural world science or sciences, take a giant leap in whatever direction you can imagine and then construct a human readable story about whatever entities exist wherever you ended up.

"old" themes were travel through time and space, colonisation of other worlds, apocalyptic aftermath and so on. Newer themes explore bio-tech, the evolution of us into something else, other energy forms... but I guess like most endeavours the new builds on the old and the old never really dies out.

Recent sci-fi that I have in mind: Marianne de Pierres' "Parrish Plessis" series which is a post-apocalyptic tale with some gloriously imaginative bio-tech twists. (Edited to add: apparently this is of the "biopunk" genre. I'm just now learning some new terminology. Methinks goodreads was a good move.)

As distinct from Sci-Fa (fantasy) where the story tends to shun any and all "new" technology in favour of "Magic". So weapons of choice are based on whatever we had in our middle ages but pepped up with some individual's ability to control "elemental forces" - earth, air, fire, water.

Hmmm... maybe this discussion should be taken out of Mr Clarke's forum. Sorry - I'm new here - feel free to castigate and migrate...

Science fiction critics normally use the label "hard" for science fiction that's based strictly on extrapolation from already-known science (though it sometimes allows a free pass for faster-than-light travel --which according to Einstein is impossible-- or for telepathy or mechanical "translators" as a means of communicating with aliens who don't speak English). "Soft" sci-fi, on the other hand, doesn't attempt to ground its basic premises in known science. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells exemplify the difference in their novels about Moon voyages --hard sci-fi patron saint Verne's lunar explorers only circumnavigate the Moon after being blasted into space by a giant cannon (and his treatment is replete with brain-numbing mathematical calculations of "escape velocity," etc.); soft sci-fi luminary Wells just blithely posits the discovery of a substance that cancels out gravity, thus allowing for space travel.

As this indicates, the two approaches both have long historical antecedents. But in the 1920s, when the book/magazine publishing industry was developing genre niche marketing, U.S. science fiction became dominated by a handful of pulp magazines whose editors were committed to the hard sci-fi approach. Soft SF writers of that day, like Bradbury or Lovecraft, usually were published in other venues. This trend continued until the 1960s, when the soft tradition became more popular (though hard SF is now enjoying a resurgence).

Fantasy (set in an imaginary world) and supernatural fiction (set in our world) are really basically different from either type of sci-fi, in that they both ground their speculations, not in natural phenomena, but in magic and the supernatural. But all three genres are certainly speculative (and some of us like all three!).

Another pair of definitions I've heard is that "hard" sci-fi has science (real or extrapolated or invented, but consistent) at the core of the story -- it's a critical part of the tale. "Soft" sci-fi focuses on the interactions between characters. So for example Sheri Tepper's novels, although pretty much always set on other planets and with alien species well and thoroughly and consistently worked out, I'd put as "soft" sci-fi, because the main story isn't how they got to the planet or what kind of space suit they need, but rather how the main characters think, feel, interact; often the central conflict turns on something universal to thinking beings (love, faith, gender roles, etc). The issues in hard sci-fi are more often technical rather than social.

The terms hard and soft may have come from the sciences -- engineering, physics, biology are generally classed as "hard sciences" while sociology, psychology, etc are classed as "soft sciences."