/lit/ - Literature

>>22670550
>What I really want is another good series; something that draws me in and builds a world ill give a shit about and rewards my interest.

Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, the one talented jewish writer, John Carter of Mars series, and if you're looking for straight-up fantasy, then read the Belgariad, which is a 5-book epic fantasy series well worth your time.

>>22667818
Tolkein would be Asimov. Foundation beat Lord of the Rings for greatest series of all time.
G R R Martin? I dunno any fat lazy scifi writers.

>>22628102
>>last book you read
Foundation by Asimov. This anon described my feelings perfectly >>22629825
The Apple series is not exactly a high brow adaptation but the Empire's plotline makes it so much more interesting to follow.
>>current book you're reading
The Three-body Problem by Liu Cixin. I'm at the beginning, and find the backdrop of the Cultural revolution for a sci-fi book very refreshing.
>>next book you plan to read
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clark. I'm a sucker for first contact novels (like Lem's Fiasco or Eden).

>>22628102
>last book you read
Asimov's Foundation. the overall idea was interesting but the writing was beat and the whole thing was just a slog. I won't be reading any more.
>current book you're reading
Wagner's Death Angel's Shadow (Kane books). 3 short stories. Kane kicks ass, what's not the love
>next book you plan to read
either Buddhism as Philosophy or Denial of Death or Lord of Light. I need some non-fiction and/or religious/spiritual/psychological related.

>>22613202

Then I'd argue that for you mostly you'd want authors from the sixties on, although Asimov and Heinlein both dealt with humanity. The Foundation is as much about the individual vs history as anything else, for example. But you'd probably find something interesting in the era of the late 60s onward. After Dune you have a lot of authors exploring the human condition more specifically in some more proactive ways.

>>22613211
He was the godchild of Sun Yat Sen and a close friend of Chiang Kai Shek. Cordwainer's real name was the embarrassingly white Paul Myron, but he kept his fiction writing a secret because his day job was using his connections to Asia to become a prominent psychological warfare expert throughout the region. Permit me some psychological inspection but I think that Cordwainer Smith was a declaration of intent: a cordwainer was a leatherworker and shoemaker, a smith was a craftsman of metal. He intended to make fine materials out of the traditional Chinese stories he grew up with, and also propogate catgirl fetishism in the west.

>>22613149
You have the lesser known today but still all time greats of Robert Silverberg and Poul Anderson. Frederik Pohl as well started putting out some real crackerjack work in this era that I nebulously define as the late 60s through the 80s (maybe I oughta give Dune the credit as the first "modern science fiction novel" for starting this era? Ech!). This is the era where you can view the Hugos and Nebulas at their most useful: an industry award by and for the industry that runs on the blood of the newfangled fan convention circuit.

I will devote slightly more time to this era because I feel its perhaps the most complex set of inflection points in terms of whether or not you'll enjoy science-fiction from any given author or not. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Jules Verne, Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft, Cordwainer Smith, running down the great names through those decades in general you would seldom find their stories "objectionable". You would get a sense whether or not you liked their prose, figure out their general matters subject and get on with the process of reading their works or not. Clarke's got a new book about a big dumb object in space? I'll check it out. Asimov's trying to dip back into the Foundation inkwell? I'm checked out myself. Aside from the cases of some gender issues, you can run the Bechdel test on the early Hugo winners if you want to waste a few months, one could read the entire gamut of science fiction from whatever protostory you want to claim started the ruckus all the way up until the new wave of lets say around Dune's release so I can make the ohsoclever joke of After Dune or AD.

AD you start to get into wildly divergent approaches to science fiction that make it really hard for me to tell you if the science fiction is worth reading for you or not. Are you interested in serious technical explorations of possibility? Or are you interested in fantastical adventures draped in the robery of science? Or are you interested in a roman a clef about a homosexual time traveler (this being a major twist in Dangerous Visions made quite tame today)? Do you want thrumming sexuality and provocative gender discovery? The use of what-ifs to not interrogate the future but rather our present? Some can argue with me but this era is when science fiction transformed itself into a new beast entirely, one that I think subsided a bit in the 90s and 00s but then came full swing in the modern era of the genre.

(cont.)

>>22578958
Asimov is entertaining, intelligent and has wild and good ideas, I read the whole Foundation series. His prose is mediocre though, and his characters are all much more intellectual than the average Joe (which is why I like reading Asimov, but some people might find it bad)

>>22548817
There's not really a clear line and there are some overlaps that point out where the subgenres fall short. If I have science fiction that doesn't really stretch itself too far, everything feels like a natural iteration of what already is, yet the author themselves have no real care for the science of it at all does that really get to the appeal of what hard science fiction claims to offer? In contrast what if there is the fantastical but its handled in loving detail and thoroughly explained and worked through.

I find it more useful to categorize things by the intent vis-à-vis technology's place in the plot. Ringworld is very hard scientifically but that's mostly just to allow for a playground to explore, its an adventure novel. Contrast that with Foundation which is much softer and at its core has a made up discipline of psychohistory that has no real equivalent in modern science: the series revolves around it though and as best as he can Asimov focuses on the details of such a field of study and how it can be used and misused, what would it require to work, why anyone would pursue it. The hardness of science fiction seldom matters to me, instead I am obsessed with whether or not that author is focusing on technology and all else cascades from there or if the science fiction is in service of the narrative as either set dressing or to allow events to occur.

>>22543845
Sounds like Foundation by Asimov

Asimov's Foundation book 1 is OK, maybe a 6 or 7 outta 10 but it's not pulling me in hard. How are the other two books of the trilogy?

>>22537417
There's not really a clear line and there are some overlaps that point out where the subgenres fall short. If I have science fiction that doesn't really stretch itself too far, everything feels like a natural iteration of what already is, yet the author themselves have no real care for the science of it at all does that really get to the appeal of what hard science fiction claims to offer? In contrast what if there is the fantastical but its handled in loving detail and thoroughly explained and worked through.

I find it more useful to categorize things by the intent vis-à-vis technology's place in the plot. Ringworld is very hard scientifically but that's mostly just to allow for a playground to explore, its an adventure novel. Contrast that with Foundation which is much softer and at its core has a made up discipline of psychohistory that has no real equivalent in modern science: the series revolves around it though and as best as he can Asimov focuses on the details of such a field of study and how it can be used and misused, what would it require to work, why anyone would pursue it. The hardness of science fiction seldom matters to me, instead I am obsessed with whether or not that author is focusing on technology and all else cascades from there or if the science fiction is in service of the narrative as either set dressing or to allow events to occur.

>>22501017
>>22501875
Similar to these, I read several books at once and then tend to focus on just one until it's finished, it's rare to just read one after the other. I may or may not pick back up the unfinished books.
Currently reading:
The portable Jung - about 300 pages in
The Odyssey - like first 3 books
Quentintinos movie book (after the person who gave it to me asked if I ever finished it)
I started and read a few pages of JR
Religio Medici - almost done, it's short
Foundation by asimov - read the first like 10 chapters.

Hyperion is fun to read even though it's retarded. The sequels (3&4) are just ridiculous, and not as much fun because it's a single long and rather boring story, despite some of the outrageous/silly ideas it incorporates

Scifis I enjoyed more than hyperion:
>anything by the based wolfster
>dick
>asimov foundation series and I Robot (the characters are one-dimensional but it gets to the point and I enjoyed the "ideas")
>dune
to be desu I haven't read much else scifi, except something called Spin which was interesting but too long with weak characters

>>22447961
I wouldn't call Ender's Game a classic desu. The second reply pretty much nailed it. I would also say any of the "big four" HG Wells novels (not as great as the other recs but still influential), and at least a few short stories by Asimov in addition to his Foundation series, and also Frankenstein.

>>22447961
>I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Around 11 pages or so, but from a vibrant author that holds a special place in the genre.

>The Foundation series by Asimov

Asimov is a classic recommendation, not to everyone's tastes but the sociological and future histories contained are influential.

>Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 or Brave New World

Read one of the boiler plate dystopias

>Snowcrash

You liked Neuromancer, if you want to continue cyberpunk read a loving self-serious parody of it

>>22439837
Asimov is cool presenting complex ideas in an understandable way that makes sense. Fuck prose, Foundation absolutely clocks any other science fiction I’ve read. Doesn’t spend ridiculous amounts of time in the head of characters or any bullshit like that just tells a good story with interesting ideas.

How did you sisters even get through Asimov's Foundation series?

>>22435830

He seems to like Asimov and Foundation a lot I think he sees himself as a Hari Seldon type pragmatic leader

>"let's get into Asimov"
>Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism.
>The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series.
>The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories and novellas in 1942–50, and subsequently in three collections in 1951–53, for nearly thirty years the series was a trilogy: Foundation; Foundation and Empire; and Second Foundation.

Literally what the fuck, why is his bibliography so convoluted?

>>22397877
Isaac Asimov's Forward the Foundation really and truly set me on the path of reading as a lifelong hobby and pleasure.

>>22379338
2000 by Arthur Clarke and it's sequels handle society altered by the discovery of alien technology over vast differences. And does not resort to polemic dialog or lazy character tropes, which Cixin Liu does a lot.

Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov deals with a futuristic society over many generations, making you care about characters and their families, which Cixin Liu fails to do.

Ender's Game series by Scott Card, which is divisive here, but still manages to explain some complicated scientific concepts in a way even children can understand, which Cixin Liu fails to do at every turn.

And the best part? You could read all of those, have a much more entertaining time, enjoy much more diverse and nuanced plotlines, understand many high scientific concepts and still only have read a few more pages than Cixin Liu's trilogy.

>>22373087
Asimov's sincere attempt at exploring social interactions in the context of an interregnum, a new dark ages in the future. Psychohistory, the concept that you can't predict any one person but you can predict a crowd, is a very interesting field of study that Asimov pushes to the extreme in various facets throughout the series. The actual technology in Foundation is secondary and not of major import really, it exists in a narrative manner to allow the idea of an enlightened enclave of scientists to have the ability to persevere and act in some ways like Europeans giving away glass beads for supplies.

The characters aren't that great, they exist solely in service of the plot except for one glaring exception that remains a high point of the genre IMO, but you should expect that to some degree going into an Asimov work. It's a bridging work that connects the science fiction that loved scientific concepts and the futurism promised by the post-war boom with the growing social consciousness brought about by the Triple Revolution.

41)
Manlio rubbed his nose uncertainly, “And you’ve made your plans to meet this crisis?”
Sutt nodded.
“And I,” continued Manlio, “am to play a part in it?”
Sutt nodded again, “Before we can meet the foreign threat of atomic power, we’ve got to put our own house in order. These traders — ”
“Ah!” The primate stiffened, and his eyes grew sharp.

— Isaac Asimov, ‘Foundation’


42)
The cat is third, with some of the same qualities but a weaker, punier creature; he neither toils nor spins, he is a parasite on you but he does not love you...

— William Faulkner, ‘The Reivers’


43)
Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

— W. B. Yeats, ‘The Trembling of the Veil’


44)
How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science, — the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which Man’s Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl’s glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.

— Thomas Carlyle, ‘Sartor Resartus’


45)
You know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Go and do likewise, gents. The money’s out there. You pick it up, it’s yours. You don’t, I have no sympathy for you.

— David Mamet, ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’

>>22364680
When I was younger I accidentally lost the first Foundation book by Issac Asimov that my dad owned (It was a beat up first edition copy, shitty mass trade paperback as well.). I've kinda always have felt bad about it since then and I wanted to buy him a nice hardbacked set of the whole Foundation series for me, only problem is that for some reason I can't find any. Where would I go to find Hardback versions of books?