Kersplebedeb's comments (member since Apr 11, 2008)

Kersplebedeb's comments from the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club group.

i just finished reading (and reviewing) the 2009 sorties of both of these anthologies - has anyone else here checked them out yet? i'd love to hear what other people thought of these stories...

There are a number of annual anthologies of SF short stories, my favorites being Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science-Fiction and Elizabeth Cramer and David Hartwell's Year's Best SF (yes i know confusingly similar titles).

These two books are something i savour every summer; i have just finished them and posted by review of both on my blog earlier this week: http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-histories.html

I just finished reading an ok book about SF in Weimar Germany, and the political uses to which it was put. A fascinating subject, and the book (Fantasy and Politics: Visions of the Future in the Weimar Republic by Peter S. Fischer) does go through a few dozen books briefly. However i found it marred by Fischer's desire to constantly denigrate the nazi and conservative SF writers, i.e. they were unbalances, their writing sucked, their ideas (and not only their political ones) were obviously ludicrous.

Obviously, the subject matter requires a political analysis of the books, and certainly going into the author's politics makes sense, but i hate that kind of lazy liberal bias where you have to put down everything about everyone you disagree with, using psychological explanations as a crutch.

BUT that said... given the subject-matter, i'd still recommend it to people in this group.

thanks Nick!

Hope i'm posting this question to the right place - but have we decided on any books for February other than The Road?
About to place my once-every-so-often Amazon order, and need to know if there's anything i should be getting...

i'd go with A Canticle for Leibowitz, followed closely by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. All three are absolutely beautiful books, Butler's of course being harrowing to boot.

in terms of SF, hands down i'd say Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville.

in terms of non-fiction books, On War by Clausewitz was pretty good and Yezid Sayigh's Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 was great, but both titles were hard going and took me months to finish, which really tempered the "fun factor".

in terms of technical works, Richard Hendel's On Book Design was fantastic.

Mention of Perdido Street Station as a possible theme read this month got me interested, so i picked it up in a used bookstore in Toronto. It's an incredible read so far, promising to get five stars if the author keeps it up...

i read Storm Front, last month's group read, largely because i couldn't resist it in a toronto used bookstore after seeing it discussed here. i felt it was very light fare, but not unenjoyable.

i also finished dozois' 25th Years Best Science Fiction, which never disappoints.

Quick question: when is this supposed to be decided by? While December is more than a month away, it would be great to have ample time to get a copy of whatever it is we'll be reading.

i agree Brave New World is a must-mention.

i think i read a good short story from the 1930s in the Extreme SF anthology with an artificial womb plot, i'll check when i get back home next week.

Historically/herstorically, probably worth mentioning the real fear that some people had circa 1980s when in vitro fertilization was still relatively new that the tech might be used to get rid of women. i have a book on my shelf called Gynocide i have never read but wehich i believe has that as a theme.

The more i think about it, the more procreation seems to be one of those standard things that get fiddled with in SF to indicate the difference between the SF reality and the reality we're all in stuck in. Perhaps not as common as spaceflight or aliens, but more common than psionics or time travel. Though not necessarily central to plots.

It would perhaps help us narrow down our suggestions if Jessica could give more information about how she is going to tackle this topic.

i had forgotten Motherlines, but i think it's probably an essential text to deal with. i have a brief text by the author on my site at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/book...

i'd also strongly recommend taking a look at Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, which is probably the best example of reproduction being used as a the central piece in a dystopian SF novel.

And again, Octavia Butler deals with reproduction in several of her works.

i believe i have some anthology of SF short stories with precisely that theme ("Not of Woman Born" is what it think it's called).

Octavia Butler went back to reproduction at least a couple of times in her books. There is her short story Bloodchild, and reproduction (or post-apocalyptic human being's inability to reproduce without alien intervention) is a central element in her entire Lilith's Brood series.

There was a superb short story in Dozois' anthology from last year, about sentient space ships and how they reproduce with the help of rodent-like beings (one would assume that's the guys).

In the realm of television and movies, as i'm sure you're aware, there's a glut of this stuff. The Alien movies come to mind, as does that one with the naked woman trying to get laid in it from beginning to end (Species?). i think women getting pregnant while abducted by aliens was a central element in the X-Files. Ditto for the new Battlestar Galactica, where one of the whole points of the cylons is to trick human males into getting them preggers. & a theme that had also reappeared in Star Trek's various series, including an episode in the last (and chronologically first) of the series, in which the very masculine first mate (no pun intended) has sex without knowing it with an alien, and becomes pregnant.

If you'd like me to look into it a bit more (i.e. to give you the actual names of the books/stories) let me know.

i've read both Yiddish Policeman's Union and Years of Rice and Salt, and they're both great books - and i write this as someone who feels he does not like alternate history in general.

That said, for a one-month read, Chabon's book might be more realistic, as Years of Rice and Salt spans centuries (or is it millenia?) and contains self-conscious attempts to touch on everything from dialectical materialism to spiritual concepts and scientific revolution. Chabon's book is ambitious, but its more managable...

Then again, i'd be up to rereading either one and discussing, work allowing...

Just started on the Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction (ed. Mike Ashley).

Of the first three stories i really liked Anomalies - (Gregory Benford) and ...And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon (Paul Di Filippo) but was let down by the obvious ending in Crucifixion Variations (Lawrence Person). Person started out with a good idea and very good writing style but let it fizzle into mediocrity.

i really liked his Scouts Honor which was in Years Best SF 10 and also Dozois' Years Best Science Fiction #22. i didn't particularly like his short story about pirates (or is it about a virtual reality computer game?) in this years from Hartwell and Cramer.

i've read a few of his books, and find him hit-or-miss. i almost cried with what he did to A Canticle for Leibowitz.

i'm a big PKD fan, and i loved Blade Runner, but i had never read the book

now i have, and i think it was great - one of the best Dick books (which i find can be hit or miss). Perhaps not the best, but one of them.

PKD is one of my favourite authors.
& yet he is hit-or-miss, some of his stuff was cranked out simply to get a paycheck, others are works of brilliance.

i had staye away from Androids until now because i liked Blade Runner and thought liking the movie would ruin the book - i was wrong, they couldn't be more different. (i'm only 100 pages into Androids, so some of my assumptions may be wrong)

My favourite books of Dick's are Valis and The Divine Invasion (the third in the trilogy, the The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, i think only retains its SFishness when read in combination with the others). That said, they are very different from Androids.

While reading Androids i was reminded of Martian Timeslip, definitely in my top five Dick list, many times. Almost as if he's exploring the same themes again, but inverting his assumptions - Mars in timeslip in many ways resembles Earth in androids, Perky Pat/Can-D in timeslip is a negative kind of technology mirrored in the empathy box and the Penfield machine; being "schizoid"/"schizophrenic" in Androids makes one less than human, in Timeslip our two protagonists are each "schizoid"/"schizophrenic" which enables them to travel through time and become in many ways more than human.

So definitely, if you liked Androids, i recommend Martian Timeslip - though maybe take a break between the two :)

As for other Dick works, i find the full length stories (which are very short, almost novellas) always more gratifying than his short stories. (And in general, i prefer short stories when it comes to SF.)

Other than the Valis series, amongst my favourites, many of which have some similarities to Androids: Scanner Darkly, Three Stigmata, and The Clans of Alphane Moon.

Dick regularly includes technologies, aliens, and phenomena in his books which have no basis in science, and which he does not bother even pretending to explain, and the social or political or economic implications of which he can either put under a microscope or ignore, depending on the needs of the story. He uses these sci-fi elements, masterfully IMO, as plot devices and ways of exploring various metaphysical and/or ontological questions.

From my reading of Androids so far - and apologetically i admit i'm just up to chapter four - this book seems focussed tightly on the ontological, the question being "what makes us human" The Penfield machine, by showing that emotions can be programmed even in humans, to me implicitly challenges what most readers would expect as the line separating androids from humans. Enter this focus on empathy, and Mercerism, which comes with its own caboodle of ontological questions.

& at the same time the machine allows a great exchange between the protagonist and his wife Iran, in which we simultaneously get a critique of the kind of inauthentic happiness the Penfield machine produces, an ode to depression, and another example for Dick to show wives as being gloom neurotic characters who just bring a guy down. (It must be mentioned that amongst his failings, the man was a misogynist, and female characters like this populate most of his book-length stories.)

As for the critique of, or at least critical look at, inauthentic happiness, this is another thread weaving through many of Dick's stories. The Penfield Machine and the Mercer Mind Meld both remind Can-D & Perky Pat, for instance, from his book Martian Time Slip.

i'm a bit behind as i am in a work crunch all july, but have indeed started - it is a pleasure