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Post by Alpha Hooligan on May 23, 2009 17:19:37 GMT
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Post by Patrick on May 24, 2009 1:08:57 GMT
Mousey! Mouseeeeey! ;D
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Post by Flatypus on May 25, 2009 3:00:24 GMT
V was reactionary rubbish going back to pulp traditions before Star Trek the first time round. I want to see a series where the aliens aspire to all the ideals that religions have claimed but never upheld for centuries bringing the world together in peace and mutual co-operation to free ourselves from traditional poverty and repression, resulting in a world split between American Patriots fighting for the freedom to continue as backward mutually murdering tribes (with support from UKIP and the BNP no doubt) and 'Traitors' selling our 'independence' out to 'submergence' as equal participants in advanced mutually supportive galactic civilisation like Iain M Banks's The Culture. If They really are out there, the Patriotic Pillocks can no doubt pride themselves that They want nothing to do with us while we continue to behave like troupes of mutually antagonistic baboons with nuclear weapons.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on May 25, 2009 21:33:57 GMT
I've not read any "culture" novels, but I believe they are very good. I'm also tempted by Stephen Baxters "Xeelee sequence" as well. Just ordered these though...not exactly hard sci-fi, but very good fun according to the reviews... (pre ordered - what a title!) AH
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Post by Flatypus on May 26, 2009 17:01:48 GMT
There's really four kinds of SF that I'd identify. The obvious is the pulp stuff like Scientology - that is, like what L.Ron Hubbard was writing before he decided that licensing it as a religion would make him more money - cowboy stories. I don't read that but because it's all action, it has become the most familiar to the general public by being filmed. Then there's the alternative histories and steampunk stuff that aren't necessarily SF at all really like. I've read most of Harry Turtledove's stuff even if I don't believe that a treaty between the United and Confederate States would have stopped at just two. When there's one federation the choice is to join or not but once there's two there's the choice of not joining either. I reckon there'd be about half a dozen federations by now and Texas (but not Alaska). It's interesting that he gives the CSA British support and puts the USA on the German side in WW1.
SF 'Proper' falls into 'stories' plot-driven with decent characterisation like a lot of Baxter's and I suppose you could put Star Trek and Blake's 7 in there. I particularly like the way Ken McLeod had scientists (rather unrealistically) organising themselves to parody Trotskyist communes that over time became the real thing. Anybody able to make that sound reasonable in the 1990s has to be a pretty good writer! A lot of Isaac Asimov's robot stuff is similar because they are all detective stories. He really was a detective writer looking for wider settings and found them in robots behaving irrationally because they are too logical - as anybody familiar with computers should recognise!
Lastly, there's the big name heirs to Jonathon Swift, the creators of other worlds as a setting for their political ideas. Ursula le Guin has to come first and in recent times she's followed by Kim Stanley Robinson's history of Martian and subsequently solar system settlement. He goes into the detail of ideas I had in general outline. Once you settle a new planet with 18 months to worry about anything coming after you, you have a chance to escape old ideas and UN corporate control and start again.
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