Booklist for BotM Poll for May 2010

[Richard]

The poll for May 2010 is up for the HardSF BotM at Yahoo groups.

For your research, the books are:
䷑ The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
䷥ The Crucible of Time by John Brunner
䷆ The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
䷹ Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D. by Terry Sunbord
䷈ Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
䷦ The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke
䷡ Nova by Samuel R. Delany

Vote soon, and vote often!

[Richard]

Moderator Username says "I just want to add that I don't think Nova is hard SF... but let the
democratic system pick the book. I'll fire up the polling core ;-)" (note the clever reference to The Prefect), but moderator Richard says "Yeah, but Delany has won four Nebulas and two Hugos and really should be revisited. Take a look at his Wikipedia page — he's like Zelazny in some ways, but more of a hardcore intellectual."

Also note that John Scalzi is a Goodreads author, which is pretty cool.

[Larry]

Hmmm I've read two on that list,Forever War which was excellent and recently finished Sands of Mars. I don't have either of the other books so no chance of me reading them.

[Username, SF Techgod]

I don't discuss the quality of Samuel Delany, and Nova is excellent, but as a moderator I think I shold steer the group towards staying on topic, lest we star reading about unicorns ;-)
(I mean the kind of unicorns that are not explained by genetic engineering)

[Richard]

Generally, I agree. But if we're gonna try to stick to strict hardsf, what on earth were we doing reading Consider Phlebas? :-)

(OK, nevermind that -- I just finished it and I'm feeling snarky about it, but that'll go in the appropriate discussion topic later.)

[Liz]

My vote is for The Android's Dream. It looks like an interesting story. (And also because it makes me think of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which kicks ass.)

And I'm with Richard on his opinion of Consider Phlebas!!

[Larry]

Surely Consider Phlebas is hard SF,-its space opera, and pretty enjoyable too.

[Richard]

The "enjoyable" part is open to debate.

It certainly is a space opera, but I certainly wouldn't characterize it as Hard SF. The Wikipedia introduction helps:

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. ... The complementary term soft science fiction (formed by analogy to "hard science fiction") first appeared in the late 1970s as a way of describing science fiction in which science is not featured, or violates the scientific understanding at the time of writing.

The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences. Neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy—instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. The categorization "hard SF" represents a position on a scale from "softer" to "harder", not a binary classification.

Banks made no attempt whatsoever with respect to technical or scientific plausibility. The "memory foam" devices were essentially magic, but that was just the most egregious example.

Space Opera, though? Certain. Wikipedia:

Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.

Banks was definitely melodramatic and playing on a grand scale.

(Any other discussion specifically about the book should probably relocate to its thread.)

[Larry]

Labels, meh!