Science Fiction!

[yesno]

In hard science fiction things are either kept as realistic as possible, or there's some kind of single central screwy idea, and the novel explores its consequences.

I liked Cryptonomicon, but everything after that left me cold. I couldn't finish any of the baroque cycle books and I thought Anathem was terrible, even though I did finish it. But Diamond Age and Snow Crash were tops.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Thanks for the correction, Sarah -- I think I actually liked the Necronomicon, though I don't think that's the kind of book you actually finish.  That was the Alistair Crowley one, right?

I found the weird math machismo in the book off-putting.  But I still have an unread copy of Snow Crash that I'll take a crack at one of these days.

Sidebar: I'm teaching a sci-fi class this semester at Rutgers and almost know what I'm doing!

[Sarah]

The Necronomicon is the brainchild of H. P. Lovecraft.  I don't think it actually exists.

Here are Aleister Crowley's writings, per the all-knowing Wikipedia:

    * The Book of the Law
    * Magick (Book 4)
    * The Book of Lies
    * The Vision and the Voice
    * 777 and other Qabalistic writings
    * The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
    * Magick Without Tears
    * Little Essays Toward Truth
    * The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (translation of original text)
    * The General Principles of Astrology (with Evangeline Adams, Hymenaeus Beta, and others)

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

OK, now I have no idea what it was that I read.  But it was weird and scary and I liked it!

[Bryan]

Uh-oh. I'm getting a bad feeling about this, Grote. Was the book you read bound in the skin of infants? Did it happen to open a portal to a netherworld of one sort or another? Did the pages bleed?

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I think maybe you're thinking of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues?  That sounds like the first infant-skin edition, from like 1978. 

[dave from knoxville]

I was going to suggest it might be Trout Fishing in America.

[yesno]

The metal kids in my high school totally had the real Necronomicon, as well as the Anarchist Cookbook which you can totally go to jail for having.

[Denim Gremlin]

The metal kids in my high school totally had the real Necronomicon, as well as the Anarchist Cookbook which you can totally go to jail for having.

did you go to Arkham High?

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

We used to sell the Anarchist Cookbook at the Montclair Book Center, and it was pretty prominently displayed, but that was pre-Oklahoma-City-bombing.

[Bryan]

I was just reminded of how much I love J.G. Ballard. He's not so much pure sci-fi these days, but I do think he's one of the best writers around, full stop. His recent stuff (Millennium People, Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes) is really, really good: lurid, apocalyptic detective stories.

His earlier stuff (The Crystal World, The Drowned World, Concrete Jungle and a bunch more I haven't read), which was definitely sci-fi, is pretty prescient - it's mostly environmental/survivalist horror kind of stuff. His whole oeuvre makes for uncomfortable reading these days, because he's probably right about everything, and that's bad news for us.

[Steve of Bloomington]

Check out some Greg Bear if you get a chance.  The famous one is 'Blood Music', where a scientist creates nano-sized life that ends up taking over almost all-life on Earth.  People turn into big blobs of dough on their way to completely dissolving.

Also there's a book 'Eon' where scientists find out the inside of an Asteroid is actually bigger than the outside.  Actually IIRC it was an infinitely long tunnel.  Trippy.

[dave from knoxville]

I was just reminded of how much I love J.G. Ballard. He's not so much pure sci-fi these days, but I do think he's one of the best writers around, full stop. His recent stuff (Millennium People, Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes) is really, really good: lurid, apocalyptic detective stories.

His earlier stuff (The Crystal World, The Drowned World, Concrete Jungle and a bunch more I haven't read), which was definitely sci-fi, is pretty prescient - it's mostly environmental/survivalist horror kind of stuff. His whole oeuvre makes for uncomfortable reading these days, because he's probably right about everything, and that's bad news for us.

I read Crash about 2 years ago, and I am still damaged.