Books you should like

[Thanos]

but don't.

I'll go 1st. For yearrrrrs. I heard how awesome Dune was. Got it from the local library back in the 70's. Couldn't get past the 5th chapter. The movie came out tried it again, got through it but didn't like it. Took a course on it in collage and still no good. Sci-Fi miniseries comes out. I try again and it's just terrible. So deadly dull. I think I've made anther one or two passes at it but it's just bad. I can't get how this series has such a huge rep.

I read an article about it a few days ago and damn, I was ready to try again. It sounded like an awesome story. Then I remembered all the past times and came to my senses.

 

[Drakon]

The Riverworld series by Phillip Jose Farmer.

I picked it up after reading a Callahan's Crosstime Saloon story, and after 5 books of famous people fighting, acting stupid, building a steam ship and striving to get to a particular point on the strange planet, it ends with foot steps coming down the hall.

I have an obsession problem when reading fiction. I do nothing else, no sleeping, no showering, no nothing but reading. But after 2 weeks and 5 books, that was it. The story goes nowhere. Other than "what famous dead people will be named next," it was a waste of my time.

But that is my opinion, your milage may vary.

 

[Supplement Four]

I was never attracted to Dune until the SciFi mini-series. Like you, I had tried to read it in high school or just after. I was content to never read it until something about the Sci-Fi series caught my attention.

I don't know. Maybe it was just the right time for me.

I picked up Dune, and I've never had an experience like it. It's amazing. Yes, I've read other books that I like, but Dune...there's something about it that makes me feel smarter when I read it.

The concepts are incredible: A breeding program to produce the ultimate human. Possession. Women able to control their bodies so specifically that they can ingest poison and move it through their bodies without killing themselves. Giving up humanity and becoming an alien thing because you've seen the future and know what will happen if you don't--the awful cost of not being human, never being intimate with another human. Wow.

And the one that amazes the the most--the power to hook your claws into another human being so far that he loves you more than a woman loves her child. Sometimes, when people are rejected by lovers, they go crazy. Crimes of passion happen this way. It doesn't matter who you are. Remember the astronaut who wore diapers so that she could go as fast as possible from Texas to Florida because she had to scare off her rival?

I knew a guy that I worked with once who had an affair with a co-worker. When she broke off the affair (because the dude wouldn't leave his pregnant wife fast enough), I saw this guy degenerate into this state. I call it "The Horror". This guy had it so bad that he was staying late, digging through her trash in her office just to try to find out stuff about her personal life. He figured out her password and stole into her e-mail. He found out she was seeing someone and was going to jeapordize his career, leaving work, to fly to Florida (Florida again!) because in his head, there was a slight hope that she would spurn her new lover and take him back--and he was willing to do this when he had a major meeting with his boss' boss.

I talked him out of that one, and he's thanked me to this day. But, maybe you've seen this kind of obsession before. Although rare, he certainly wasn't the first I've seen in the grip of "The Horror".

Although not in the first Dune book, that's how I understand the grip the Honored Matres have over their male army. These men are in "The Horror" over these women, and dying in battle is the least of what they will do for their obsession.

I think those concepts are amazing.

True science fiction.

And, that, I think, is probably why Dune is the best selling science fiction novel in history. (It really is...look it up.)



So much of Herbert's Dune and sequel masterworks take place inside the head. I think they're impossible to translate faithfully to the screen. This aspect is why David Lynch's movie used so much voice over--trying to get inside a viewer's head, like the books.

I understand a new Dune film is in the works. I'm doubtful, but we'll see how it's pulled off.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I heard how awesome Dune was. Got it from the local library back in the 70's. Couldn't get past the 5th chapter.

I'm with you on this one. Can't recall if I ever got through them all. Lived in a remote area with limited ability to obtain alternate reading material.

My memory is terrible, I think it was a Clive Cussler book that jumped between numerous locations and characters and I had to keep flipping back and re reading things, then started taking notes (that bad memory) so that I could try to follow it. I remember liking the overall story plot and the parts with the main character but I just couldn't follow the intricate connections between the numerous characters and finally gave up.

 

[Timerover51]

I read Dune when it was first serialized in Analogue, which compressed it a bit, so that was okay. However, the rest of the books left me cold. The same thing with the Ringworld series. First book was fine, second one was so so, and did not read any more after that.

Probably the main one that I read once and never have gone back too, because I never really liked it was Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Once and done for that. About the same for I, Robot. I actually much prefer collections of Asimov's straight science essays than his fiction.

Jerry Pournelle's stuff is not bad, but he concentrates so much on getting the technology right, that character development sorts of falls by the wayside.

 

[Marchand]

Ringworld. I think the basic fail of the book for me was that the characters seemed like a bunch of smug, self-absorbed so-and-so's and so failed to get my sympathy on any level. Meanwhile, the sense of wonder didn't engage because the Big Dumb Object itself seemed overblown and implausible even by the standards of far-out space opera. I haven't read "Ringworld Engineers" but I've read it came about from someone explaining to Niven that there was nothing to make the Ringworld hold station around its host star. I suppose I have to admire the chutzpah in making more money out of someone pointing out your own earlier mistake.

Edit: oh yes, and Second Foundation. I say that even though (or because) Foundation is one of my favourite novels ever, and Foundation and Empire is a cracking read as well. By the time we got to Second Foundation, we get jar-jar-binsk'd with the annoying kid; and the prose style becomes excruciating - "ah, but what you have overlooked, oh not-quite-sufficiently-subtle one..." If that's how they talk in ten thousand years' time, I'm glad I won't be here to see it!

 

[leo knight]

I would second Ringworld. I read this in my teens. All the older SF fans I knew praised it. I loved the concept, so grand, so out there! But I disliked the characters. None seemed to come alive for me. They seemed like chess pieces or sock puppets, moving through the actions of the plot. Even at that young age, I was familiar with the term deus ex machine. Teela Brown, with her 'psychic luck', seemed like this to me. Wonderful setting, for me, though.

Dune took me a while. I bought it in my early teens, and I was too young to 'get it'. It sat on my shelf, and I read and re-read the glossary and appendixes and footnotes. However, when I finally did knuckle down and read it, I really enjoyed it. It felt like a historical novel to me. The setting seemed old, lived in. I could see the scenes in my mind's eye. I felt strongly disappointed with the David Lynch movie, and only watched the first disc of the mini-series. Yawn.

 

[leo knight]

I'll add "Legacy of Heorot" by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes. My friends all loved this. I thought I would too, based on the past work of the authors. I finished it, but it left a bad taste.

For those who haven't read it, it concerns a colony on a planet of Tau Ceti. Their ship travelled sublight, with the colonists in suspended animation. Some, maybe all, experienced brain damage from the suspension. For a long while, life seems idyllic, no predators or other threats. The security chief has nothing to do. But then livestock start to disappear. The colonists come to realize that a clever, stealthy, super fast, super strong creature is loose, and could threaten the entire colony.

Again, I enjoyed the concept, but I really disliked the characters. The authors used brain damage to explain all sorts of unwise character choices. I felt at times as if I was reading a novelization of a teen slasher flick.

My friends loved it, and seemed dismayed that I disliked it so much.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I wanted to like Foundation. I really did. I had heard so many good things about it. And then I read it all the way through. But... It just didn't work for me. I could tell it was written by a pacifist and the social interactions just seemed stiff. Maybe if someone made it into a good comic book or movie even. I'd read Prelude to Foundation years ago and liked it.

 

[Supplement Four]

I wanted to like Foundation.

I've only read the first in the series, so far, and it was easy to tell that the book was originally serialized in a magazine--which I think would be strange to read as you pretty much need all of the angles to make the story.

 

[aramis]

I would second Ringworld. I read this in my teens. All the older SF fans I knew praised it. I loved the concept, so grand, so out there! But I disliked the characters. None seemed to come alive for me. They seemed like chess pieces or sock puppets, moving through the actions of the plot. Even at that young age, I was familiar with the term deus ex machine. Teela Brown, with her 'psychic luck', seemed like this to me. Wonderful setting, for me, though.

Teela's story really doesn't come to a conclusion until Ringworld Throne.

It's well worth noting that Engineers has a lot of foreshadowing for Throne, and that teela's role in the story is more complex than just a deus ex machina... She is the unintentional villain.

To be honest, tho', I prefer The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring to Ringworld (but only by a thin margin).

 

[Highorbit_drifter]

OK, here goes nothing:

Caverns of Steel, the Naked Sun and Foundation.

While the underlying concepts are pivotal to SF I didn't like the writing, characters, the sexism and racism. I know a lot of that is culturally specific - the 1950's are a million years ago culturally, the past is an alien world. But that means it doesn't hold up at all for me. The racism thing is the worst - why call the robots "boy"? Asmiov didn't mention race in the books, but obviously the robots in part replacements for the powerless working classes. That just grated on me every time it came up. I just can't put it aside like I can stuff in Mark Twain's works.

 

[saundby]

The parallel was intentional. He wanted you to think about being offended by a machine being called 'boy', and about the use of that term for humans when treating them like machines. Asimov isn't racist, he's challenging racism.

 

[Spinward Scout]

He wanted you to think about being offended by a machine being called 'boy', and about the use of that term for humans when treating them like machines. Asimov isn't racist, he's challenging racism.

I wonder if that's why they did the same thing in the recent movie Prometheus. Holloway called David the android 'boy' and was very rude to him, from a Human perspective. And there was some criticism about it for a while after the movie came out.

 

[leo knight]

Teela's story really doesn't come to a conclusion until Ringworld Throne.

It's well worth noting that Engineers has a lot of foreshadowing for Throne, and that teela's role in the story is more complex than just a deus ex machina... She is the unintentional villain.

To be honest, tho', I prefer The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring to Ringworld (but only by a thin margin).

I read Ringworld sometime in the ten years before Ringworld Engineers came out. I could only react to how I perceived her character then. When I read a book, unless I know it's part of a series, I tend to judge the book on its own merits, at least as I perceive them. I don't, as a reader, think, "Well, that let me down, but maybe the next book will fix it!" That said, I did read Ringworld Engineers when it came out, and enjoyed it. I can usually enjoy almost any SF. Even if I didn't like the characters, I did love the concepts. After all, it's Larry Niven!

I tried to keep all my comments in this thread as subjective as possible, and explain my mindset at the time, since my reactions to the material have less to do with the works themselves than with my own mental filters.

 

[rancke]

I would second Ringworld. I read this in my teens. All the older SF fans I knew praised it. I loved the concept, so grand, so out there! But I disliked the characters. None seemed to come alive for me. They seemed like chess pieces or sock puppets, moving through the actions of the plot. Even at that young age, I was familiar with the term deus ex machine. Teela Brown, with her 'psychic luck', seemed like this to me. Wonderful setting, for me, though.

I generally liked Ringworld, don't remember Ringworld Engineers one way or the others, and were unable to finish Ringworld Throne (for lack of interest, not aversion). But even Ringworld had it's blemishes, and Larry Niven trying to sell me on the notion that if billions of people are involved in a lottery with odds of billions to one against, the winner needs something to explain his luck is one of them. The odds are 1:1 that someone will win, and there's nothing special about beating odds of 1:1.


Hans

 

[aramis]

I generally liked Ringworld, don't remember Ringworld Engineers one way or the others, and were unable to finish Ringworld Throne (for lack of interest, not aversion). But even Ringworld had it's blemishes, and Larry Niven trying to sell me on the notion that if billions of people are involved in a lottery with odds of billions to one against, the winner needs something to explain his luck is one of them. The odds are 1:1 that someone will win, and there's nothing special about beating odds of 1:1.


Hans

Thing is that Teela was a 6th gen lottery. And the lottery odds were roughly 1E6:1 against per each. So she was the product of 1e(6*6):1 odds. And that's before the history of her family with fewer than normal accidents, and a number of other factors that Nessus was looking for.

Note that one of the prequels (IIRC, Protector) in the ringworld cycle notes the specific odds and calculations when it's being set up.

If luck is heritable, then his probability math is pretty sound - it's the initial leap to luck being heritable that's the only issue.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I tried to read both of these based on suggestions of others but couldn't finish either one.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/147061474

Peter Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction - made it about 1/3 through before abandoning it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13496.A_Game_of_Thrones

GRRM's A Game of Thrones - got to page 80 and put it down.

 

[Supplement Four]

Peter Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction - made it about 1/3 through before abandoning it.

I loved the book, loved the universe, loved the designs and thoughts and science fiction.

It's got an opening scene that actually shows ships doing combat via missiles and the crew having to withstand the heavy G-Forces of combat maneuver.

Loved it.

Then...the guy's got to screw up all this amazing sci-fi goodness by bringing in...the undead.

Hated that part.

Couldn't finish the series. Tried. But, I just can't stand the undead angle--and it's the main point of the story.

GRRM's A Game of Thrones - got to page 80 and put it down.

Now, this, I think, is one of the best fantasy books ever written. GRRM's writing is purely masterful. The characters are alive.

Excellent book.

 

[aramis]

Now, this, I think, is one of the best fantasy books ever written. GRRM's writing is purely masterful. The characters are alive.

Excellent book.

I found it totally uninteredting for the first hundred pages... and quit. The characters were not interesting, there were too mny of them, and the few you get a sense of within the critical first 100 pages are unsympathetic psychotics. Further, I found the descriptions flat, the prose unfluid, and the dialogue unmemorable.

I keep hearing about it being the best thing of recent years, but then it starts sounding like soft ⌧ (and even not so soft ⌧) and figure it isn't worth retrying given the frequent reports of sexual excess described.

(don't care for Gor, either, for that reason.)