So, after a bit of an opening in my free time and many used book stores in the area, I figured it was time I started into some of the classics I've been missing out on.
Suggestions? So far I've been picking up everything with the name Heinlen in it but I need some good areas to look into.
Anything with the name Asimov :p
Yes, I was once compelled to read 'I, Robot' for a class in high school, so naturally I didn't read a damn thing. I've always meant to actually go back and correct this mistake of my youth.
I've used this list with pleasant results: Sci-Fi Lists (http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html).
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on September 21, 2009, 09:29:53 PM
Anything with the name Asimov :p
I absolutely agree. It was Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series that hooked me on 'adult' sci-fi when I was a youngster.
I do protest! The Robot novels (Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn) were far better IMO.
But for me, it was always the short stories that really grabbed my interest. Try looking over some of the Multivac ones, like The Last Question, and The Machine that Won the War. (They're both available online, IIRC)
Well, part of the appeal here is that I'm in an area with a long history of people who read science fiction combined with a bunch of used book stores, so I was going to rummage those for books. Though Proeliator's list looks handy.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Sci-Fi and humour all rolled into one!
Now that was a series I actually did read during high school. Unlike the others, it wasn't required reading.
dune, and only the first book (this is important)
Oh, and Hyperion by Dan Simmons and its sequel, Fall of Hyperion, are very good reads. (The sequel duology, Endymion and rise of Endymion are readable, but not as good in my opinion)
Also well worth reading are the Orson Scott card works, most famously Ender's game and it's long succession of sequels.
If you're nerdy enough that being caught dead with a Star Wars book won't cause you to die of shame, the Thrawn trilogy, (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command) are very good.
I recommend the works of Niven and Vinge to start...
Vinge:
A Fire Upon the Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
Rainbows End
Niven:
Ringworld
The Ringworld Engineers
The Ringworld Throne
Ringworld's Children
Once done there, you can delve into their other works.
Also pick up, Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon... it is old though. Also try, Heaven's Reach by David Brin and perhaps even... The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter.
I could have more but... I am tired...
What about Arthur C. Clarke? 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Ooh! Ooh! Philip K Dick! Especially his "Human Is?" reader. Lots of lovely short stories in there. Still need to steal Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep off my brother. I also have Dr. Bloodmoney by the same author, and it was... er... creepy.
I'm going to run out of this thread screaming SM Stirling's name because while there's not exactly classics there, there was a brilliant trio of post-Terminator 2 novels that came out before - and upstage grandly - anything the post-Terminator 2 movies did.
AAAAAAAAAAAAA... no, wait. *ahem*
William Gibson. NEUROMANCER.
...AAAAAAAAAAA! *flees thread*
Burning Chrome, by Gibson.
Other than that... a lot of stuff that's already been mentioned; further suggestions include some oddball stuff - one of the authors I'll buy a book unread is Parke Godwin, but he's not really what you'd call science fiction.
The Big Three is a good starting place (Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov) but on from there... if you're into space opera and don't mind seriously dated tech, E E "Doc" Smith is a good one, with the Skylark series and the Lensmen series.
As Azlan says, I could go on...
I haven't read the entire Ringworld cycle, but where Niven is concerned, I'd put a strong word in for 'A Gift From Earth', and of the short stories, 'The Soft Weapon', 'Not Long Before The End' and its sequel, 'What Good Is A Glass Dagger?', though the latter two are more along the lines of SF/Fantasy than hard SF.
I second the Vernor Vinge recommendations as well, though I'd also add 'True Names' to the list. It's a short story, but well worth digging up. I believe the most recent impression is the collection "True Names And Other Dangers". A bit like Neuromancer, but a couple of years earlier.
Now, on to more obscure things.
Iain M Banks:
'Against a Dark Background' and also 'Feersum Endjinn'. The former is about a quest to find the last Lazy Gun, with a protagonist eerily similar to Keaton. The latter is about Earth thousands of years in the future, set in a gigantic castle which most of the USA has been rebuilt into, apparently 'because it was cool'. The capital city is built into a lantern suspended from the ceiling of the castle chapel.
Clifford Simak:
'Ring Around The Sun' - Numerous impossible inventions suddenly appear out of nowhere, bankrupting existing industries.
'All Flesh Is Grass' - Purple flowers and dialless telephones appear out of nowhere, panicking the world. They are actually part of an alien information-processing system.
'Catface' ('Mastodonia' in the US) - someone discovers a portal back to the Cretaceous period and attempts to commercialise it. Later they discover the alien who created it.
'Enchanted Pilgrimage' - a bizarre novel where the inhabitants of three alternate universes meet on some weird mission. Choice quotes include "I did not know dragons came with wheels" (one of the characters on seeing a trailbike)
Eric Frank Russell:
'Wasp' - Described by Terry Pratchett as 'I can't imagine a funnier terrorist handbook'.
'With A Strange Device' - this is a bit more of a cold war thriller, but has strong SF connections (What if the Enemy invented...)
'Next of Kin' is also worth reading, if only for the entertainingly bizarre alien language, which contains such phrases as "Mayor Snorkum shall lay the cake."
Murray Leinster: 'The Wailing Asteroid' - a signal is sent from the asteroid belt, and a plastics entrepreneur builds his own ship to investigate it. It would make a pretty good film.
Also, 'The Greks Bring Gifts', in which an alien race attempts the economic conquest of Earth.
Bob Shaw: 'Night Watch' - a spy is sent to the planet M.Luther to steal hyperspace coordinates to a new colony. The secret police 'accidentally' ruin his eyes and he invents a device which allows him to see through the eyes of other people nearby.
'Orbitsville' is also interesting, but IMHO the sequels don't live up to it.
Alfred Bester:
'The Stars My Destination', or 'Tiger, Tiger' (different title). This is an absolute classic, and hasn't aged. I re-read this while returning from AC08 and had quite forgotten how good it is. The premise is that everyone can teleport psychically (known as 'Jaunting', which has resulted in a weird society where vehicles are considered a status symbol.
Harry Harrison:
'The Stainless Steel Rat' - Anyone who has played 'Thief' should love this.
'Captive Universe' - An Aztec tribe lives in a small valley. The priests carry out rituals to ensure the sun rises each day (and when this is interrupted on one occasion, the sun doesn't rise. Yes, you do find out why.)
Brian Aldiss:
'Non-Stop' aka 'Starship' - this is about a generation ship where things have gone horribly wrong.
'Barefoot in the head' - I haven't read this, but it comes highly acclaimed. A middle-east conflict has turned nasty and Europe has been bombarded with a long-lived LSD derivative, causing the whole continent and the UK to freak out.
James P Hogan:
'Inherit the Stars' - a dead man is found on the moon, millions of years before humanity set foot on it. This is the first part of a quadrilogy, which continues with 'The Gentle Giants of Ganymede' and its more action-oriented but still interesting sequels, 'The Giant's Star' and 'Entoverse'.
'The Genesis Machine' - Two scientists devise a means of creating gravity fields and all hell is let loose.
Keith Laumer:
'A Trace of Memory' - about an alien technology which allows memories to be saved and reloaded.
'The Great Time Machine Hoax' - Has some slight silliness, but rather interesting. The protagonist inherits an ancient experimental supercomputer which appears to be able to warp reality.
Edward Mackin:
'The Key to Chaos' - This is a short story in 'New Writings In SF #1'. It is part of a longer series about Hek Belov, a computer engineer who struggles to make a living in a world where computers are self-repairing. In this story, he teams up with a conman who has created what appears to be a dream recorder.
Highlights include: "Whatever was inside those spheres just went down some kind of cross-dimensional drain." and "I wish I could have shown you his [dream]. Part of it involved him smashing up the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer while it rained gold pieces. He made me erase it."
Jack Vance:
'The Blue World' - about an ocean world and its inhabitants. Turns out they're descended from a penal colony.
'The Gift of Gab' - a short story about researchers investigating alien fish. I enjoyed it immensely.
'Planet of Adventure' - Shit title, but an entertaining series. He had problems naming things, which is why the race in the second book is called 'The Wankh'. Comprises the following books: 'City of the Chasch', 'Servants of the Wankh', 'The Dirdir' and 'The Pnume'.
Kenneth Bulmer:
'To Outrun Doomsday' - Someone crashlands on a world where a god named Pe'Ichen will create anything you desire that does not contain animal matter. Unfortunately the inhabitants have recently lost the ability to conceive children.
C.M. Kornbluth (short stories):
'Two Dooms' - about an alternate history where the Nazis won WW2, but handled really well. Gripping and not for the faint-hearted.
'The Cosmic Charge Account' - an amusing story about the prickly author of a self-improvement book and his publisher. One of their readers has taken the book to heart and is creating a 'plague zone' where everyone is content and happy, despite their world inside the zone falling apart.
'The Mindworm' - this actually is about a soul-devouring, mind-reading monster.
'The Marching Morons' - Filmed as 'Idiocracy', without credit AFAIK. The brighter people haven't had enough children and have been outbred by the stupid, resulting in a total mess centuries down the line.
'Advent on Channel 12' - Ben Graffis' iconic cartoon character, Poopy Panda (stolen from the Winnie-The-Pooh illustrations) is accidentally deified.
...these stories can be found in 'His Share of Glory' the collected short stories of C. M. Kornbluth.
A.E. Van Vogt:
'Slan' - About the persecution of a hidden super-race, not unlike 'Cubi in DMFA, really.
'Voyage of the Space Beagle' - a linked-together collection of shorts, 'The Black Destroyer' is probably one of the best.
'Away and Beyond' - a collection of awesome stories, including one about someone who is able to 'save and reload the game', as it were. 'Film Library' is also kind of cool, though rather dated now.
Piers Anthony:
'Macroscope' - a bizarre and trippy novel about a technology which allows the users to tune into any race in the galaxy, and therefore steal their technology. Unfortunately the signal is also jammed with a video which destroys the minds of anyone who is insufficiently mature as a race.
That will have to do for now. I'm sure I can come up with more...
...
What's scary is just how many of those names and books I've read...
*leans back in*
HG Wells, War Of The Worlds!
*scamper*
Enders game
Orson scot card
I can't say weither onr not the rest of the series is worth since I only read the first novel
Let's see here.
- I second the recommendation of Vernor Vinge.
- As to Arthur C. Clarke, you'll either like 2001 and the Rama series or you won't, but Childhood's End is definitely worth reading.
- Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are sometimes not considered in the SF genre, but they are. I highly recommend BNW, but 1984 is in some ways a lesser book
- The best Philip K. Dick I've read is Ubik. I highly recommend it.
- R.U.R. and War with the Newts by Karel Čapek are very good.
- Franz Kafka is good, and plays with many of the same themes, though he may not be SF. Likewise Lovecraft.
And a list of the best SF short shorts:
- http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com/flight.html
- http://www.rdrop.com/~wyvern/data/houseplants.html
- http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html (and the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE))
Peter F Hamilton
Night's Dawn trilogy, probably not not hard SF (stretching "probably" to it's physical limits), but very good fun nonetheless.
Arthur C Clarke
Baal Hadad beat me to the punch with 2001, but I'm reading the sequel 2010 at the moment, quite good so far.
Quote from: Janus Whitefurr on September 22, 2009, 03:10:56 AM
AAAAAAAAAAAAA... no, wait. *ahem*
William Gibson. NEUROMANCER.
...AAAAAAAAAAA! *flees thread*
I did start to read that, but to my shame I couldn't get into it. I have read Burning Chrome and The Difference Engine, however, both of them very interesting looks at how our world might have ended up/have been different.
Quote from: TheJimTimMan on September 22, 2009, 09:16:50 AM
Peter F Hamilton
Night's Dawn trilogy, probably not not hard SF (stretching "probably" to it's physical limits), but very good fun nonetheless.
True, but on the other hand he seems to have a better grasp of spaceflight than I do. But yes, a very good series.
QuoteI did start to read that, but to my shame I couldn't get into it. I have read Burning Chrome and The Difference Engine, however, both of them very interesting looks at how our world might have ended up/have been different.
Oh. Not exactly a classic or particularly hard SF, but 'Perdido Street Station' by China Mieville is an interesting and occasionally amusing read. They also have the mechanical computing engines a'la
Difference Engine so they are good to read back-to-back.
I'll allow myself to recommend Stanislaw Lem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem)'s works... he wrote in many different styles, so you probably should review the list and choose. Me, being a person who prefers a bit "lighter" works, would recommend The Star Diaries and The Cyberiad for start..
//h
PS. Also, (with a bit of nostalgia on my part), check out Lewis Padgett's (Henry Kuttner's) Gallegher short stories, if you'd stumble upon them by accident. Collected in any of "Robots Have No Tails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_Have_No_Tails)" or "The Proud Robot".
Quote from: hapless on September 22, 2009, 10:35:01 AM
I'll allow myself to recommend Stanislaw Lem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem)'s works... he wrote in many different styles, so you probably should review the list and choose. Me, being a person who prefers a bit "lighter" works, would recommend The Star Diaries and The Cyberiad for start..
Those who know 'Paranoia' should probably read "Memoirs found in a bathtub".
David Weber's Honor Harrington series is very good, if you like military SF.
The Baen Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library/)
A good place to look at various authors, some of whom have been mentioned here. You can download a selection of their works at no cost, and decide if it's something you like.
If you're looking for SF classics and all around great science fiction, a good place to start is the list of Hugo Award winners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel). The award recognizes both SF and fantasy literature, but the winners tend to be disproportionately skewed towards SF (and hard SF at that). Ditto for the Nebulas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel), with which there's a fair bit of crossover.
A couple of writers not yet mentioned here...
Neal Stephenson penned some of the seminal works of postcyberpunk literature with
Snow Crash and
The Diamond Age, both of which are fantastic reads.
Robert J. Sawyer may be a bit recent to be considered "classic" SF, but his works stand among the best of the current trend towards near-future hard SF. I like the deeper philosophical edge he adds to his novels. The Neanderthal Parallax (
Hominids and its sequels) is excellent. My favourite among his standalones is probably
Mindscan. (He's really nice, too. I met him at Worldcon last month.)
Quote from: thegayhare on September 22, 2009, 08:10:50 AM
Enders game
Orson scot card
I can't say weither onr not the rest of the series is worth since I only read the first novel
Speaker for the Dead is arguably better than
Ender's Game. The series goes downhill from there, though.
Quote from: Azlan on September 21, 2009, 11:56:14 PM
I recommend the works of Niven and Vinge to start...
Niven:
Ringworld
The Ringworld Engineers
The Ringworld Throne
Ringworld's Children
Once done there, you can delve into their other works.
dont forget nivens short stories!
also - a gift from earth, the patchwork girl, and especially lucifers hammer are all very worth the read too
Quote from: Tezkat on September 22, 2009, 11:31:13 AM
Speaker for the Dead is arguably better than Ender's Game. The series goes downhill from there, though.
For what it's worth, I felt the Hive & The Hegemon series to be going back to the original roots, with some success. Perhaps not as good as Speaker for the Dead, but closer to it than Children of the Mind...
I still want the hours of my life Xenocide took up back.
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead were brilliant. However, the first "trilogy" sank into unreadability in Xenocide, made all the worse because he tried to save it and failed with Children of the Mind. I found Ender's Shadow an interesting retelling of the first novel, but parts of Shadow of the Hegemon bordered on inane. I gave up on the series after that. Damnit, Card... learn to quit while you're ahead! :dface
I don't know if you'd be interested in a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, but Piers Anthony wrote a series called The Apprentice Adept. It begins with the book "Split Infinity" and spans 7 books. An excellent series, if I do say so myself.
One that I am currently sticking my nose in is the first book in the Demontech series, "Onslaught" by David Sherman. It too is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, plus a little real-world stuff tossed in too.
And if you can still find it, the novelization of Doom is a pretty awesome set of books.
Really? I liked Children of the Mind. I didn't think it was good as the first two, but I thought it was very readable myself. (Xenocide, on the other hand. Blegh.)
And I admit, the Bean stuff had me annoyed a bit. "Here's the guy whose actually SMARTER than the guy whose supposed to be smarter than everyone." Didn't work to well. Still, the most recent one, Ender's Shadow, I liked, a lot.
Oh, I didn't say Children of the Mind was unreadable. It merely failed to save the series from the horrible mistake that was Xenocide. Card is a good writer, especially when playing to his strengths, but he really should stop trying to write grander military/political SF. Because he's bad at it.
Since we're including the slightly obscure on this list as well, here's one more contribution:
Dragon's Egg, by Robert L Forward, describes life evolving on the surface of a neutron star. Although not the greatest novel of all time, it's wonderfully imaginative hard SF written by an actual rocket scientist. The book holds a special place in my heart as the very first novel I purchased with my own money ($0.25 at a school book sale :3).
Quote from: superluser on September 22, 2009, 08:16:35 AM
- http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html (and the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE))
I have read this multiple times since I found the internet, and no matter how many times I see it I still love it to death. "Ohmigod. Singing meat."
Quote"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone."
My gods that is insane. And yet, hilariously brilliant.
What's all this against
Xenocide ? It was a good book to me... (oddly enough,
Speaker for the Dead was the one book in the series I
didn't read, my school library didn't have it. I read
Ender's Game,
Xenocide, and
Children of the Mind, and I liked them all...)
Quote from: Tezkat on September 22, 2009, 02:52:15 PM
but he really should stop trying to write grander military/political SF. Because he's bad at it.
...Wasn't that all that
Ender's Game was, though? :confused
Nope.
Enders Game was on par with, well, with Lord of the Flies. It's just a story about a kid in a game.
Everything else is what you read into it. And that is where it shines.
Another short story I really like, (blanking on the author's name for the moment) is "I have no mouth and I must scream". It's creepy.
Harlan Ellison.
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on September 22, 2009, 06:21:52 PM
Another short story I really like, (blanking on the author's name for the moment) is "I have no mouth and I must scream". It's creepy.
Harlan Ellison.
(sniped by the box. *sets him on fire*)
Quote from: llearch n'n'daCorna on September 22, 2009, 06:06:36 PM
Nope.
Enders Game was on par with, well, with Lord of the Flies. It's just a story about a kid in a game.
Everything else is what you read into it. And that is where it shines.
that's a fairly odd way to look at literature, especially since Lord of the Flies was a fairly blunt allegory
I'm a fairly odd person. *shrug*
Yea you are boxy.
Anyways, I got a bunch of books today. Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land, Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, Asimov's Foundation, and Card's Ender's Game. I also found a copy of Pratchett's Going Postal in the adjacent fantasy section. All for about $20. Not a bad haul going through two used book store. Though I was most disappointed I could not find Ring World or Dune. Though I hear there is a huge one not far away, I may have to plan a trip to Knoxville :3
another pair of intersting scifi books to look for are the Jesus incident and the Lazerous effect by author Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom
They are intersting novels involving AI
I didn't realises it but I came in the middle of the series as there is a book before the others called destination void
Theres a bunch that hasn't been mentioned that I absolutely love.
C.J. Cherryh is one of my absolute favorite authors. Most of what I've read from her is less technology based, and more based on alien culture and how human culture would clash.
favorites from her are:
Cuckoo's Egg: A lone human raised as an alien, and the results. One of my all time favorites, I really wish she would write a sequel.
The Pride Of Chanur: Space faring lions take in a human that has escaped from some other aliens. Better than it sounds. All the related sequels are excellent as well.
Foreigner: the start of an absolutely MASSIVE series. I had to force myself through the introductory chapter, but thats mainly because I'm not that into technical bits. After the introduction, the actual story is awesome. There's some 9 other books out, with a tenth awaiting publication. Still working my way through them, but I haven't come across a bad one yet.
Another favorite author is Dean Ing, though his books have become rather difficult to find. Most of his books work within a timeframe much nearer our own, so no spaceships or FTL travel. He's an aerospace engineer, and as such he writes alot about flight, and futuristic planes and such.
Favorites from Dean Ing:
the Quantrill trilogy: Systemic Shock, Single Combat, and Wild Country: Nuclear war, assasins, conspiracies, sex, violence, and a massive mutated boar.
The Ransom Of Black Stealth One: Conspiracies and planes!
The Big Lifters: now that i think about it, Dean Ing seems to have quite a thing for conspiracies. And violence.
I know theres more that I'm forgetting. I'll have to go peruse my parents small library of SF.
I don't think anyone has mentioned Anne McCaffrey yet...
Quote from: LionHeart on September 23, 2009, 05:50:48 AM
I don't think anyone has mentioned Anne McCaffrey yet...
... And with good reason... ;-]
Quote from: llearch n'n'daCorna on September 23, 2009, 06:09:34 AM
Quote from: LionHeart on September 23, 2009, 05:50:48 AM
I don't think anyone has mentioned Anne McCaffrey yet...
... And with good reason... ;-]
i kinda winced when someone mentioned piers anthony
were going for classics here, NYT bestseller does not a classic make
Quote from: Brunhidden on September 23, 2009, 10:45:30 AM
i kinda winced when someone mentioned piers anthony
were going for classics here, NYT bestseller does not a classic make
How about a Hugo nomination?
Wow, poked my nose in here to see what you guys are talking about, and feel a little out of my league... I need to read more. And I'm already considered voracious about it! Anyhow, I haven't read any of the Ender series in a while, I have the second Ender's Shadow book, I don't think Card is so much not good at writing "Grander Military/Political SF" as he just happens to have a very American Conservative viewpoint that more than likely is what is being felt and leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. But, I could be wrong.
Anyone into sci-fi fiction should read:
The Gap Series: Stephen Donaldson
I effing hate sci-fi novels (I find them jargoned, pretentious and unimaginative, filled with stock characters being dull) but I'm re-reading The Gap Series now and, oh lawks, it's just fantabulous.
Actually, anything that Donaldson writes tends to be quite good, but a lot of his stuff tends towards what's more classically fantasy than sci-fi.
Thomas Covenant is my anti-hero. The Gap Series is pure sci-fi though. And god, the characters and ideas are like immolation.
i hated the thomas covenant books, and by extension, you
But you keep coming back for the blowjobs. You slut.
Quote from: Jer-oh-me on September 23, 2009, 05:23:10 PM
Wow, poked my nose in here to see what you guys are talking about, and feel a little out of my league... I need to read more. And I'm already considered voracious about it!
Literary lovers of the science-fiction variety tend to be both huge readers of the genre (redundancy?) and huge snobs about what they consider classics - for most people, these tend to be the -early- writers. I read a -lot-, missed out on a lot of the classics like Heinlein and Asimov (I had some Bradbury around, I swear), and this thread still makes me shake my head at some of the things being bandied about. Just wait until they start criticising each other's choices in literature!
Also, slightly more recent than all that, Tad Williams' quartet "Otherland"
we should start a "real literature" thread and see how snobby it could possibly get
I'm pretty sure that that would breach the rules on trolling and personal attacks.
You're welcome to try, of course, but don't blame me if some random mod comes and locks the thread. ;-]
As an English teacher I have no valid opinion whatsoever on literature or anything.
Quote from: bill on September 23, 2009, 05:48:50 PM
we should start a "real literature" thread and see how snobby it could possibly get
This sounds like a supremely BAD idea to me.
I've found that any thread about literature on any internet forum degenerates into people yelling about fantasy novels
Go Go Eragon he's our man if he can't do it GREAT!
Quote from: rabid_fox on September 23, 2009, 05:55:29 PM
Go Go Eragon he's our man if he can't do it GREAT!
But is it art?
I can't remember clit about that book except the awful
In it's defense, Eragon isn't as bad as the Baldur's gate novelization by Phillip Athans.
What it is, Eragon, is pedestrian and it's neither very good nor terribly bad. And certainly didn't deserve a movie, though it got the movie it deserved, if that makes any sense.
Quote from: bill on September 23, 2009, 05:48:50 PMwe should start a "real literature" thread and see how snobby it could possibly get
Yeah, you don't want that. I've got some strong opinions on James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon that would probably raise the bar for snobbery pretty quickly.
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on September 23, 2009, 06:11:08 PMIn it's defense, Eragon isn't as bad as the Baldur's gate novelization by Phillip Athans.
That is frightening.
it also proves that as a society anyone discussing dickens is surrounded by five people who think the name is hilarious
this needs to be studied, perhaps we can create a pesticide to help
Darn it, today I discussed Dickens in a room with four people.
In fairness, three of them were teenagers?
Oh well.
The jury is still out.