The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

That's not part of the group read. I'm reading The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony.

Alexander wrote: "That's not part of the group read. I'm reading The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony."

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my favorite Heinlein books. Heinlein's description of Lunar politics is quite interesting - The lunar culture, the mores and customs of the loonies, their ad hoc legal system.

I currently am reading two science fiction books: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, our group read. I will finish them both in a day or two and then will start To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is on my to-read list, I keep saying I have to bump it up, but alas, my ereader just broke and it's an epub. I'll have to wait.

I'm interested particularly in reading it because, ahem I didn't really like Stranger In A Strange Land. I know, I know... how could I not? My dad thought the same thing. I liked the first half quite a bit, then, I don't know, the last half just didn't do it for me.

Currently I'm reading Idoru by Gibson.

I was doing a little research yesterday, for some ideas for potential future reads, and I came across The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, sounds mighty interesting.

Other than Frankenstein I've been reading the odd short story here and there, lately I picked up C.L. Moore's Black God's Kiss.

I read a few pages or chapters of Stranger in a Strange Land a couple of years ago and I found it extremely boring. The concept started off as very interesting but it did not sustain my interest. I remember being put off by some aspect but I don't remember what that aspect was.

The Grapes of Wrath wase part of my Literature curriculum. Back in college, I was quite an idealist (still am) and realism didn't go down well with me. So, at the time, I absolutely hated the book. It was slow and very tragic. I would have never read that book had it not been mandatory to. As of today, after, well, growing up, I would still not pick it up to read but the reason being that it is not part of my preferred genre.

Afshaan wrote: "I read a few pages or chapters of Stranger in a Strange Land a couple of years ago and I found it extremely boring. The concept started off as very interesting but it did not sustain my interest. I..."

I read Stranger in a Strange Land many years ago and thought it was terrific. I reread it recently and thought it was good, but not as terrific as my first read. I've read quite a few of Heinlein's books and have enjoyed most of them. The books themselves are all quite different from one another. Heinlein's storytelling is good.

I'm about to start The Grapes of Wrath because I enjoy and admire Steinbeck's skill and artistry of writing. My wanting to read it is unrelated to its genre. But wouldn't it be great if Steinbeck had written science fiction?

I think then I'll give Stranger another try. I'll be more patient this time. With regard to Steinbeck, I think I have a mental block after my college experience. And considering he's a realist, even his sci-fi would be tragic. I prefer happy or neutral endings!

Afshaan wrote: "I think then I'll give Stranger another try. I'll be more patient this time. With regard to Steinbeck, I think I have a mental block after my college experience. And considering he's a realist, even his sci-fi would be tragic. I prefer happy or neutral endings! "

Stranger in a Strange Land is a bit of a departure for Heinlein, I think. Many of his books are space operas with a military bent. Stranger is a satire on commercial religion. While Valentine Michael Smith is the title character, the stranger, his protector and mentor Jubal Harshaw is the main character through much of the book.

I had not realized that about Steinbeck. I think you may be correct. Virtually all of his fiction that I have read so far is tragic. Even the lighter fare, e.g. Tortilla Flat, deals with death and unfortunate circumstances. Nevertheless, I can't put him down.

Last book I read was I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. The last story was on the boring side but the rest were good. Went into the book thinking it was going to be like the movie with Will Smith not inter-connecting short stories. My favorite of the short stories was Robbie and Reason.

Right now I’m reading Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. Post-apocalyptic story but I’m only a chapter in good so far.

Catching up on classics in science fiction.

I finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Now I'm reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to be followed by To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Plus, I'm listening to a nonfiction audiobook Our Divided Political Heart by E.J. Dionne. Waiting in the wings I have a first-read of Black Hull by Joe Turkot, from right here in The Evolution of Science Fiction group. Probably by the time I finish these it'll be time to do our Jules Verne September group read.

So, that's three non-sci-fi reads. Just tryna do my part for this thread.

Just picked up For the Witch of the Mist by Richard Tierney for a group read in another group. It's a R.E.Howard pastiche of Bran Mak Morn. So far i am enjoying it. Nothing on the original though.

Buck wrote: "I finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Now I'm reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to be followed by To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Plus, I'm listening to a nonfiction audiobook Ou..."

I'd love to read The Grapes Of Wrath. I watched the movie for the first time recently and found the ending to be quite disappointing. I concluded that the power of the book came from the writing at the end, and that that didn't come across as strongly in the film.



I am halfway through The Aeneid by Virgil. It is the Roman version of The Iliad/Odyssey. Have read The Odyssey but not The Iliad. It is interesting to be reading stories about the fantastic monsters and Gods of antiquity alongside the literature of modern science fiction.

Currently I am also reading Journey to The Interior of the Earth. I got a bit confused and thought that was going to be our group read for September. I'm halfway through and I quite enjoy it so I will finish it before taking up the group read. I'm surprised to be enjoying it because I just finished Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and found that book to be a bit boring - too much detail.

Theresa wrote: "I'd love to read The Grapes Of Wrath. I watched the movie for the first time recently and found the ending to be quite disappointing. I concluded that the power of the book came from the writing at the end, and that that didn't come across as strongly in the film."

The movie follows the book fairly well, though much compressed, except for the ending. The ending is different. I think the director felt that the ending of the movie needed to leave the audience on somewhat of a positive note. While the dialogue in the final scene of the movie is taken from the book, the sequence near the end of the movie is rearanged and the final scenes of the novel are omitted completely from the movie.

Henry Fonda's little speech, as Tom Joad, "Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there" was the climax and most memorable part of the movie for me. In the novel it happened differently and it was just one more instance of the tragedy of the Okies and the breaking up of Ma Joad's family. I saw the movie years ago. I read the novel a couple of weeks ago and then watched the movie again the following day. As always, even though the movie is good, it falls short of the novel.

Steinbeck was a great writer and this is one of his masterpieces. Disregard the movie. Read it.

Buck wrote: "Theresa wrote: "I'd love to read The Grapes Of Wrath. I watched the movie for the first time recently and found the ending to be quite disappointing. I concluded that the power of the book came fro..."

I will!

The movie ending did seem odd to me. Now I know why.

I am hearing an audiobook of Dracula by Bram Stoker and reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, which is the September group read of another goodreads group.

After finishing one or the other of these, I shall read (or hear) our September group read of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

I have also checked out of the library The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, still another September group read, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck.

This should get me through most of this month.

Theresa wrote: "I am halfway through The Aeneid by Virgil. It is the Roman version of The Iliad/Odyssey. Have read The Odyssey but not The Iliad. "

That's pretty ambitious stuff. I vaguely remember doing something with those in high school, but I'm sure it was excerpts and not the whole thing. It is long lost in the dense fog of distant memory. I have so many things to read before I can even think about getting to such ancient lit. I have James Joyce's Ulysses coming up soon after the list I posted above. I think it alludes to the Odyssey.

I just started Gridlinked. I grabbed it at a used book store and I don't know too much about it. But the story includes addiction to technology, loss of humanity and a crazy killer android so I'm thinking it has to be good.

@Buck: The Sun Also Rises has one of the most memorable lines for me: The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs. It will make more sense when you get there.

Currently 200 pages deep in A Game of Thrones. I like it, but it is one damnably long book.

Buck wrote: "I finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Now I'm reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to be followed by To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Plus, I'm listening to a nonfiction audiobook Ou..."

"The Moon is Down" was very good. You should try Steibeck's Authurian (sp?) legends, too. He did a good job with them.

I read "To Kill A Mockingbird" last year with a group. It floored me. I first read it when I was Jem's age. Now I'm Atticus' age with grown kids. Totally different POV on my part. It was even better.

I'm on the 3d of John Jakes' Bicentennial series, another re-read. I first read it when it came out. Loved it & the mini series then. It's better now, too.

I just finished a Mrs Polifax by Dorothy Gilman (great lit, ya know, lol) and was going to read another A Good Thief's Guide to ... somewhere, but now I find I've gotten sucked into Hugh Howey. There was some hype about him and his stuff looked interesting, but I hate to spend an Audible credit on an unknown, so I managed to find one of his books cheap on Whispersync ... and now I find I am totally locked into the Molly Fyde stories and will have to finish the series. And here I was headed for The Whipping Star for my next SFF. AH!!!

David wrote: "@Buck: The Sun Also Rises has one of the most memorable lines for me: The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs. It will make more sense when you get there.

Currently 200 pages deep in..."

Yep, I saw that line. The Sun Also Rises is not on Hemingway's A list IMO.

I finished Ulysses by James Joyce. Whew!
I just started Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
I will start hearing an audiobook of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P Feynman tomorrow when I go out for my early morning foray.
I have Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman waiting in the wings, after which my next science fiction will probably be H. G. Wells for our October group read.

Jim wrote: ""The Moon is Down" was very good. You should try Steibeck's Authurian (sp?) legends, too. He did a good job with them."

The Moon is Down is good, but not his best. I've read a good bit of Steinbeck lately. He's one of my favorites. Haven't gotten to The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights yet (I guess that's the one you mean) but I expect I will eventually.

I finished reading Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman and I'm in the middle of hearing the audiobook of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. I just started reading The Aspern Papers, a novella by Henry James.

I checked out of the library this morning A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.

My loving wife gave me as a gift the Lonesome Dove tetralogy by Larry McMurtry, which includes Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove, and Streets of Laredo. That's more westerns than I've ever read before, and they're long books, so I expect to stretch it out a bit and read other things in between. It may take me till the end of the year to read all four.

I read War of the Worlds a year ago, so I will read something else by H.G Wells for our group read this month. So - I begin with science fiction and end with science fiction

Let me know what you think of The Aspern Papers? I recently picked up a Henry James book and it's one of the stories in it, along with The Turn Of The Screw.

Dan wrote: "Let me know what you think of The Aspern Papers? I recently picked up a Henry James book and it's one of the stories in it, along with The Turn Of The Screw."

The Aspern Papers is the October group read of The Novella Club. You could check out the discussion there. James' formal verbosity in this book is not my cup of tea, but being a novella, it's not oppressive. It's the only Henry James I've read, so I don't know if this is typical of his style. I suspect it is. If you like Henry James, The Aspern Papers is a good story. I gave it a three star rating.

Did you hear that BuzzFeed has banned negative book reviews?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opi...

Since last posting in this topic, nearly two months ago The best non-science fiction books I read include:

The Body by Stephen King
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Dry White Season by Andre P. Brink

I also read science fiction:
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Plot to Save Socrates by our fellow group member Paul Levinson

I recommend them all!

I am reading THE BODY SNATCHERS. by Jack Finney. I love the film (invasion of the body snatchers) from the 50's and I'm really enjoying the book.

For the last while I've been reading Stephen King's The Stand.

Knight of the Reading Table wrote: "For the last while I've been reading Stephen King's The Stand."

enjoy your journey...King at his best

So far its been a great read, its my first time reading King and think ill read more of him in the future

The origin of species

I found it interesting some here didn't like Stranger In A Strange Land. When I read it as a kid in the 70's, I loved it. But re-reading it a few years ago there was a lot I didn't like about it. It's definitely a major classic in the genre for its time, but I think it did not age well.

I just started The Sirens Of Titan and will probably be reading The World Of Null-A for my meetup discussion group this month. I just finished Interworld by Isidore Haiblum (skip this one) and When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (if you haven't read it, you should).

I'm about half way through Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier at the moment. Also recently finished First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells, Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl and A Trip To Venus by C. S. Lewis.

I also just started reading Assassin's Apprentice.

I'm reading The Green Trap by Ben Bova. I picked it up at our bookswappers club thinking it was sci-fi, in fact it's a science based thriller and i'm not enjoying it v much but I feel obliged to finish it!

I am now halfway through Battlefield Earth, was worried it was going to be terrible but is surprisingly readable.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Jo wrote: "I am now halfway through Battlefield Earth, was worried it was going to be terrible but is surprisingly readable."

i thought it was a very enjoyable read.

Ive just finished Hyperion and will start the sequel once i finish Wool

I've nominated Hyperion for the 1980s so i'm hoping it will win and I will finally read it!

I'm midway through The Invincible by Stanisław Lem, it's really good so far.

The Name Of The Wind for a meetup group discussion. A lot of people in the group didn't care for it because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. I did have some issues with it myself, though the writing flows nicely. One member mentioned, like Lord Of The Rings, it was written as one very long novel and had to be separated into three to publish it. I felt the same way about the first book in Lord of the Rings, nothing happened, so I'm hoping this works as a whole, even if it doesn't work novel by novel.

I'm also reading Noon: 22nd Century, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a fix up novel built from related short stories, which means it's a bit uneven, but it has its moments.

I always felt like the second book of The Two Towers was the one that didn't go places. The Fellowship of the Ring had a lot going on. I didn't like The Name of the Wind, the first book, as much as the second. It was the structure that ruined it for me, though. Spoilers abounded due to the way it was told. For some reason that didn't bother me as much or was handled better in the second book, though.

David wrote: "The Name Of The Wind for a meetup group discussion. A lot of people in the group didn't care for it because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. I did have some issues with it myself, though t..."

Not being a great fan of fantasy, I took The Name of the Wind off my pending read list. I really don't want to commit to a trilogy of fantasy (or any other genre, for that matter) if the first book isn't compelling. I've done that recently a couple of times and would rather I hadn't.

I've started reading the Strugatsky brothers's Noon sequence while I wait for my copy of The Inverted World to arrive. It should be here any day. I wanted something short since I have another group read I'm participating in this month. I'm reading the second installment, a 100 page novella called Escape Attempt. I'm liking it better than the collection that makes up the first part, Noon 22nd Century. That book was the set-up for the technology available for faster than light space travel in the 22nd century. It involves biotechnology. The space ships are essentially alive and have digestive systems to fuel them. Pretty cool concept for them to come up with 50 years ago.

I just finished The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, classic science fiction. Just borrowed from the library and am about to start Way Station by Clifford D. Simak. I'm also hearing the audiobook of the fifth Harry Potter book.

Bester and Simak certainly were important in the evolution of science fiction.

I've just finished Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It's taken me several months to read which is no way representative of the book. It had some clever ideas although it did seem a bit dated in places.

I'm onto the Chronicles of Amber now and have just started volume 3 Sign of the Unicorn. Really enjoying this series so far.

I took a break from sci-fi and readThe Green Child the only novel of the anarchist Herbert Read. It's one of the oddest books I have read in some time. If it wasn't classified as fantasy I would nominate it this month for 1930's as there's plenty to discuss.

I don't know if any of you is a Neil Gaiman fan, but here's an interesting interview with him mostly about age appropriate reading. I never restricted our kids' reading, either. If it was on our shelves, they could read it, although I usually had read the book myself & would discuss it with them, especially if it had iffy ideas in it.

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-...

Jim wrote: "I don't know if any of you is a Neil Gaiman fan, but here's an interesting interview with him mostly about age appropriate reading. I never restricted our kids' reading, either. ..."

Thanks Jim. I didn't realise Neil Gaiman wrote childrens books as well. I think I have only read American Gods by him and that was a long time ago.

I must admit I don't remember reading any controversial books when I was a child, or at least none that I can still remember. I wondered what was considered controversial and found this:

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-...

I've only read two and only know one more - although they are not all from my teenage years!