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/lit/ - Literature

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4573261 No.4573261[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

So /lit/, I keep bumping my head up against science fiction books and being disappointed. And I don't get it. I like a lot of science fiction movies, TV shows, video games; but books almost never work out for me, and it's frustrating. I wonder if anyone has any ideas what I'm doing wrong--picking the wrong books, following the wrong recommendations, or maybe I should just give up.

What I've liked: everything I've read by HG Wells: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau. Basically everything I've read by William Gibson: Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, the Bridge Trilogy, the new not-really-sci-fi books. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man. Everything by Thomas Pynchon, if that counts. Diana Wynne Jones, Tale of Time City.

What I've found OK: Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is great, but everything else sci-fi I've read of his is pretty boring. PK Dick: A Scanner Darkly. Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide, the first couple books.

What I've hated: Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age. Ursula K. LeGuin: The Dispossessed. (Really disappointed by that one because I'm politically on the same wavelength, but I couldn't stand it.) Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5. Frederick Pohl: Gateway. Frank Herbert: Dune. Bruce Sterling: Islands in the Net. Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide, the last couple books.

I also read a bunch of stories in the Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, which I can go over if helpful. I'm sure there's other things I've read too that I can't think of off the top of my head. Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, recommendations, general thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

>> No.4573279

1. Sticky selections
Your likes and dislikes make little to no sense to me.
2. Give it up.
Mature. (No offense) Move on. Expand your horizons to anything and everything else.

>> No.4573280

How could you, anon?
How could you list The Dispossessed next to the last two books of H2G2 and Dune?
Defend your opinion. What made you hate it? Did you hate Shevek? Did you hate Anarres?

>> No.4573304

>>4573279

I mostly read other things. (I'd be happy to give some examples of books in other genres I like.) I just feel like I want to enjoy this thing, that I enjoy in other media, in the medium it's supposedly most suited to.

>>4573280

I didn't feel like either planet was very convincing; Annares was moreso, but the fake US and fake USSR fighting over fake Vietnam on Urras made it impossible to believe, especially since it can't be Allegorical Earth, because Earth exists and people go there! I wasn't into Shevek as a protagonist and no other character seemed very interesting, even his wife really. Those are some reasons off the top of my head. It was certainly better written than most! Maybe my hopes were too high.

>> No.4573319

I see I forgot, though I swore I wrote, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, which I would put in the "OK" category; I loved the world and the format, didn't like the misogynist assumptions or the Voice of the Author guy. And that Donald dude was just a shitty boring asshole and I wish he wasn't even in the book, because every time he was onstage it was worse and worse.

>> No.4573324

Maybe try Book of the New Sun

I've seen good things about it on the board and it's next on my list

>> No.4573331

>>4573324

Looks like maybe it's more fantasy than sci-fi? But that's OK, I'll check it out.

>> No.4573336

>>4573304
Ok, first, Urras is NOT fake Earth. There is already a Terra in that universe.
Urras is capitalism taken to a logical extreme.
I guess your dislike is your own... bu didn't you enjoy seeing someone from a fully anarchistic culture trying to make heads or tails of capitalism?

Full disclosure: I started this book freaked out by the teacher forcing the boy to share the sunlight. (I was a very objectivist teen) By the end of the book, I got it, and was dying to live somewhere like Anarres.
Maybe you just don't like UKL's style?
Which is of course, heresy, but I'll let it slide.

>> No.4573347

Because ur add ridden pleb faggot who needs explosions.

The road By McCarthy is the best SciFi book since forever

And for some odd reason u listed more likes than dislikes yet say you dislike the genre lol

And don't bother with botns it doesn't have explosions

>> No.4573349

>>4573336

No, like I said, I like her style, just not the book. And, as I said, I realized it wasn't fake Earth, which actually made the (to me obvious) fake Vietnam War more annoying.

I wouldn't like to live on Annares of the book, though I certainly would like to live in a world like Shevek, or better yet Odo, dreams of.

>> No.4573355

>>4573347
it actually has fucking everything

>> No.4573358

>>4573349
Have you read the short story about Odo? (I can't remember the name...)
Very moving.
Well I dunno man... try Embassytown maybe. Or Hyperion.

>> No.4573357

>>4573347

I started on The Road, but lost it halfway through and I wasn't really into it enough to buy it again. Too depressing! (I like explosions, sure, but there aren't many of those in a lot of my favorite books. No shootouts in To the Lighthouse that I remember.)

I did list a bunch of likes but really it's a couple authors I like. I could go on reading Neal Stephenson just so I could have more books I hated to list, but that seems silly to me...

>> No.4573359

>>4573261
Perhaps it's because you only like science fiction visually? You like the aesthetic of sci-fi but when you read about it doesn't interest you?

>> No.4573368
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4573368

>>4573304
>I mostly read other things
Ah, alright then. Most sci-fi posters aren't into reading other things.

>fake US, fake USSR fighting over fake Vietnam
I haven't gotten that far and even I could see what was coming by chapter 4. It's that endless cycle of capitalism. I saw plenty of it in Star Trek.
>Fake US
They're dressed up like louis XIV though! (Having fun designing in my head. Want to make the movie so bad)

>> No.4573374

>>4573357
>dropped the road

Delete ur fucking thread ur duxkcum disgrace to this boats

>> No.4573380

>>4573359
This is a point I came up with a few weeks ago. I think genre fiction may be best suited in the visual formats or the authors are just more influenced by the films they've seen.

>> No.4573382
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4573382

>>4573374
>ur duxkcum disgrace to this boats

>> No.4573384

>>4573358

I haven't yet, but I will. And thanks for the recommends.

>>4573359

That might be it. But I'm not totally convinced. Maybe if I mentioned some media SF I like it would help? I love Children of Men, 2001, the Akira manga, Star Trek (especially the original and Deep Space 9), the first season of BSG, Starflight (the old computer game, if anyone's played that), X-Files, X-Com, the first Terminator, the first Alien, Metropolis, the original Solaris, a lot of old Twilight Zone episodes...I mean there's a lot that's visual/sensual but not all. And a good book has better visuals than anything, really.

>> No.4573386

>>4573368

I did like the subcutaneous magnetized jewels thing. I see what you mean of course, it's just a symptom of the whole thing. I would say Shevek was more of a problem, he's a moralizing bore. I just wish there was another strong character for him to bounce off of.

>> No.4573395

I've never read sci-fi except for The Time Machine, what would you rec me?

>> No.4573403

>>4573386
He's a scientist, of course he's a bore!

>> No.4573417

We need more info here OP. Do you like other kinds of books? What kind?

>> No.4573439

>>4573417

OK! Yes, I like other kinds of books! I love Virginia Woolf, Dickens, Faulkner, Aeschylus, Homer, Tolstoy, Borges, many others. I also like reading poetry, essays, and history. The last thing I read was Nana, by Zola, which I liked the style of, but I wasn't too into the story, ultimately. But I want to read more Zola. And before that I read 1Q84 by Murakami, which I hated, and that was very disappointing because I loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Before that I read Huysmans' Against Nature which was great. I'd be happy to go into more detail if you like.

>> No.4573521

this thread has gone pretty well, but I'll give it one unnatural bump.

>> No.4576260

Since this thread still lives, I thought I'd bump it up and see what Sunday has to say. Any thoughts /lit/?

>> No.4576375

OP. First, I want you to go get Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life and Other Stories

This book is as good as Burning Chrome for sci-fi short stories.

Then you should check out Silently and Very Fast, The Quantum Thief, The Stars My Destination, The City and the City, and Hyperion (if you can handle that you have to read 2 books to be satisfied)

>> No.4576382

>>4576375
Then I second someone else saying Embassytown might be up your alley. Also, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis if you like that 50s-60s feel.

>> No.4576384

>>4576375

OK, I'll check 'em out! Thanks!

>> No.4576385

>>4573347
Jesus the road is such a shit book. Basically airport fiction

>> No.4576388

>>4576382

(listmaking intensifies)

>> No.4576411

http://literaturepdf2.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/yevgeny-zamyatin-we.pdf

I'll just leave this here.

>> No.4576434

>>4576411
Yah, We is good too. Also that reminded me that Roadside Picnic is pretty dope.

>> No.4576446

>>4573261
>tfw that's the picture futureguy used to post on /r9k/ with
>sudden rush of excitement followed by disappoint

It's been 5 years, but why would you do this to me OP.

>> No.4576477

>>4576446

Oh god, /r9k/? I didn't meant to associate with that shithole, I just like the picture.

>> No.4576521

>>4573395
Read Wells' other big works, Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, Island of Dr Moreau, then start moving onto the Golden Age scifi.

>> No.4576529

>>4576477
>implying it was a shithole 5 years ago

You're just making the wound bigger.

>> No.4576532
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4576532

>> No.4576552

>>4576529

Sorry anon.

>>4576532

I can't say I enjoyed "Reason", which is the only Asimov story I can remember reading. Foundation looks like it might be abstractly interesting but actually boring. Maybe I'll read it after I finish Gibbon.

>> No.4576558

>>4576521
Don't do this unless you have trouble sleeping and want to rehash stories that are so prominent in modern culture so as to appear obvious.

>> No.4577393

You can try Stanislaw Lem(start with The Star Diaries or the fun romp The Futurological Congress) and Ted Chiang's short stories. They make full use of the unique set ups science fiction allows.

I've also heard good things about(but not read) Samuel Delany's Dhalgren and Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber, Ballard's The Drowned World and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series.
Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds might be worth checking out too.

>> No.4577407

>>4573439
If you like modern chinese history maybe you would like Lao She. He wrote a satirical novel called Cat Country in the 1930s. It involves a Chinese Astronaut landing on Mars and encountering a cat civilization. Its really just a satire of nationalist China though.
Another more sci fi/dystopian novel is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. But you need to know some Russian history for that