I like to read sci-fi novels with mind-bogglingly big ideas in them. One series I enjoyed was the Uplift Saga books by David Brin, which described a galactic society of races that gained status in each others' eyes by discovering pre-sentient life and "uplifting" them to intelligence. There were two fundamental forms of life in the books, oxygen-breathing types like humans and hydrogen-based life that lived inside gas giants and stars, and the great differences between these two groups meant that they could never interact but must exist side by side instead. Sometimes I feel this way about the Japanese and the English web: both are vibrant, constantly inventing new mini-trends and memes and fads, yet they're largely separated by the Great Wall of Language. Most Japanese people will instinctively click away from an English page they happen to land on, perhaps as a result of being forced to study it for all those years in school; likewise, most native English-speakers I know won't spent a lot of time trawling Japanese-language websites unless they're there for a reason. They come together at certain points, of course -- YouTube is a good example of a bridge that has joined the two halves nicely -- but by and large, English-speaking web surfers will tend to be more familiar with the latest "I Can Has Cheeseburger" cat jokes while Japanese fans watch videos of computer-generated vocal idol Miku Hatsune singing while waiving her leek back and forth.
5 comments:
Any good sci fi books to recommend? Someone from this blog recommended The Time Ships although I can't remember who it was. Anyway I'm reading that now and it's excellent, essentially a hardcore sequel to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells that rocks millions of years into the past and future.
Anything written by Dan Abnett won't disappoint. I suggest you start off with Horus Rising.
Looks good, I'll check him out. Others that I've enjoyed...
Hyperion (good, the only sci-fi written in the Chaucerean tradition that I know of, great if you're a Haruhi fan too since parts of the series are inspired by the books, and Hyperion is the book Yuki gives to Kyon)
The Forever War (my all time favorite book, perhaps)
Ender's Game (I recommend you read only the first one, skip the other bazillion books)
Dragonriders of Pern (ah, my old friend)
I like John Varley a lot, and just got done re-reading Titan-Wizard-Demon, which was good, although not as good as I remember from back in high school
It could have been me, since I recommend The Time Ships often. It's one of my favorites. I love how Baxter keeps the tone of the original HG Wells novel while cranking up the "mind-boggling". I also enjoyed his collection "Vacuum Diagrams".
Have you read anything by Alastair Reynolds? I highly recommend his Revelation Space series. I just finished "Pushing Ice" (a standalone story... so far) and it was excellent. Reynolds was also cool enough to quickly reply to my e-mail filled with nerdy questions.
Greg Egan's Diaspora is another high up on my list. His short stories are good too.
Recently I have read a lot by Charlie Stross. These are all good: Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, and Accelerando.
All in all short stories give you the greatest bang for your buck, and let you sample many new authors quickly. Often you get the same degree of mind boggling sense of wonder from a single story that would have been spread out over a longer novel. I get Gardner Dozois' "Year's Best" collection every year. It almost always has stories from all of the guys above, and many more.
That enough for ya?? ;-)
Thanks for the recommendation, if it was you. Yes, it's so cool how it reads like a 19th century novel yet blows your mind with ideas that are completely new. Thanks for the other recommendations as well, I'll hit Amazon now. (Amazon is the serious friend of someone who lives in another country like me.)
Oh, the Game of Thrones books by G.R.R. Martin are to die for too.
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