Woo, lady pirates! I’m in.
Yay! Thank you. I hope you like it as much as I did.
Done. :)
Jeff (J. Lindell White) is a really good writer. The kind of writer who knows how to create a whole world, with tons of layers. One of my favorite things about his writing is how he starts chapters with quotes from other works of folklore within that world, and how carefully he stays consistent in maintaining that world. One of the best things I can say about him, aside from saying he’s wonderful to read, is that I trust him as a writer. I trust that he’s not just mucking about. That he’s done his homework and he’s not going to let me down.
@fire’s book is amazing as well. She set herself a really difficult task and has systematically worked to achieve it. Her book is a joy to read, and I cannot wait for you folks to be able to read it.
-xtien
It’s fun for a while, but then he sort of loses his way and it gets tired. The first few mystery plots all reprise some classic noir novel pattern, from Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald, et al.
The Hiero books were transformative for me as a kid. Post apocalyptic psi fantasy science fiction all mixed together?! They were probably the first works I read that were anything like that. Reading them as an adult, the concepts are still awesome, but the quality of writing suffers a bit.
They’re listed in AD&D as partial inspirations to Gygax, I believe.
The sequel ends on this huge cliffhanger; the war between the two main forces is finally in the offing, and the lead character is racing to reunite with his loved ones. Melodrama!
Alas, I believe Lanier had a stroke while mentally planning the third novel, lost his memory and some mental faculties, and had never told anyone what he intended for wrapup, so the series ends there.
One of these days, I’d love someone to compile - in print or on the web - a list of unfinished series such as this, and get input from the creators (if available) or opinions from experts on how those would have ended. Given how multi media so many things are these days (like the Firefly comics that ostensibly continue the story), I doubt that could happen.
I think he is Nero Wolf all the way down (Big Chief guy sits in his house and never leaves and other guy runs around a lot).
The main characters are from Nero Wolfe, kinda, though Garrett is much less smart than Archie. But the mystery plots come from other famous novels.
Just started The Peripheral by William Gibson. So far it reminds me of early Gibson. We shall see.
I finished the Eight Worlds books by John Varley (again). I had forgotten how much I loved them. Really looking forward to to the next book.
Me too! I’m 7% in or so, promising and interesting.
I just finished The Kremlin’s Candidate. It is the 3rd book in the Red Sparrow trilogy. I’m a big fan of the whole series and liked this one. It is darker than the other two, though.
The plot premise is the Kremlin is trying to get their US spy into a high position in the government. At first, I was afraid it would just be Trump rip-off, but it wasn’t.
I just finished two books. Monstrous Regiment, a nominally Watch centered Diskworld book. As per usual, it was brisk, entertaining, and good for on the road. Solidly middle tier Pratchett. Not quite Tiffany Aching, Going Postal, or Thud, for example, but was a fun read still. Great companion for a long time on the road.
But the book I want to talk about is Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. An extraordinary book, I think. I came to it because Neil Gaiman had cited it as an important book and the progenitor of Cyberpunk. Written in the 1950’s, I have to agree. One of the things about golden age sci fi is it can often feel dated. Be it modes of talk, technologies, stories, or characterizations. There is usually some trace, even in the best of the era, that the book you are reading isn’t modern.
This book, however, feels of a different time. It feels 20-30 years newer, right at home with Neuromancer or Snow Crash. First off is the protagonist. That might be the thing that most feels modern, he’s very much the anti hero type. Gulley Foyle is a right bastard, to be frank. He uses the gutter tongue of the common people’s, in a civilization that has colonized the solar system. In fact his mode of speech reminds me of the belter tongue of The Expanse. Cybernetic implants and mega corps form the core, and the intrigues and foibles of people in such power define the plot. Bester does seem to think through the impacts of changes in technology, and how that would shape society. Now some of his prognostications are hilariously wrong, Kodak family is one of the major movers and shakers in his book, but how ‘jaunting’, telepathic teleportation, impacts society is more than a superficial plot device.
But at its core it is a story of exploitation, of war, of powerful people who by virtue of their wealth and how they acquire it, live without a state. How when the chips are down they use the conflicts of man as a means of control and wealth. How they will betray their own side to make a buck, or even to prolong a conflict. It is that conflict into which our ‘hero’ strides, and as a tool of destruction manages to crack open their protective shell. A man, who through betrayal, becomes the instrument of vengeance that is needed.
It’s fascinating. Gulley Foyle is a thoroughly modern character, much more at home in the world of Takeshi Kovacs, or the Henry Case’s, than the contemporaries of his day. The Hari Seldon’s, the Paul Atreides, the Montag’s of his time tend to be much more altruistic, more noble, more definitely the ‘good guy’. Foyle is no such hero. Rape, murder, violence, and destruction are what he brings.
I don’t know how I had missed it, but I’m glad I read it now. When I saw it called one of the foundations of cyberpunk, and saw the date, I figured it was more to do with setting and technology. Mega corps and body modification technology, you see. But it’s not that. Well, it has that, but it’s so much more. It’s the ideas, the way those ideas interact with the world. The tone and style of person who inhabits the world. It doesn’t have the hacking and jacking in to the net, but it has the type of protagonist that fits that world. It’s a book that evolved the genre not because of the technology, but because of the tone. Not the veneer, but the very bones that make the genre tick.
Gulley Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space my dwelling place
The stars my destination.
Be sure to check out Bester’s other work. The Demolished Man, in particular, is also extremely good and influential. Unfortunately he didn’t write all that much, but it’s all worth your time.
PS: Walter Koenig’s character in Babylon 5 is named after him as J. Michael Straczynski is a big fan.
Is that actually a quote from the book?
If so, now I know where the Michael Mars books I read as a kid stole it from…
Michael Mars is my name.
America’s my nation.
Space-flying is my game?
and Mars my destination!
It is indeed a direct quote, it’s something of his catchphrase. Several mutations, but the same basic idea.
Have you read Stand on Zanzibar? It’s the next evolutionary step.
Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it really.
I will say that, having read Stars, the fact Bester went on to several major runs in the comic book world makes sense. Especially since he did Green Lantern, and is responsible for one of their slogans. His writing style definitely felt like it could adapt well into that mode.
So take a look at Stand on Zanzibar. It’s another weirdly not-really-aged classic (if unknown) sci-fi book. It is somewhat more recent (1968) but it does predict current social media, not in function, but in mode of speech! It is really something.
Brunner is a great writer. Some of his stuff is a bit dated now, but if you read it with understanding of when it was written it’s still hugely impressive. Shockwave Rider was the first cyberpunk novel, really, with like a hundred times as much understanding of computers and networks as William Gibson had with Neuromancer – because Brunner visited Xerox PARC and had them explain their early worm and virus research.