When I was a kid I tried reading SF and SF fantasy (as in Moorcock, Pratchett)..I do recall Asimov and A.Clarkes stuff when it did sound cool and technical... Anyone remember HG Wells's invention, Cavorite, that was a gravity-proof shield? That's a long time a-coming...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I like science fiction. Just picked up a copy of A Wrinkle In Time. Thoroughly enjoying it, kiddish though it is.
Well, H.G. Wells was the Da Vinci of writers. He created a lot of stuff in his books that were far, far, ahead of his time. And then theres the fact that he not only made Sci Fi, but made it popular. I mean, War of the Worlds has remained a bestseller for a century, and likely will remain that way for a few more centuries. I mean, imagine what future film renditions of it will be like. The only person who was anywhere near as talented as him is T.S Elliot, and for 16 simple words: "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper".
Wow, E A Poe said that as well? T S Eliot would have been pissed if knew that when writing The Hollow Men. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Why is that guy pissing green goo?! I would understand if it was Bush's grave or Capone's, but Asimov's?
Foundation, Ringworld, Stranger in a Strange Land, Martian Chronicles, Dune, Midworld... and I'm only naming books from my own era, nothing less than 30 years old. How many great books do you want from a community that has been marginalized, looked down upon by the literary establishment, ignored in the press, and only recently embraced by the masses--but only on film and TV??? Novelists do not make the best critics. People who can create great art do not necessarily recognize someone else's great art when they see it. And writers can be as temperamental as any other artists, which means they can be catty. Mainstream writers tend to look down on scifi because it doesn't follow the same developmental pattern as their own work and they think that it is, therefore, "wrong." It's true that in much SF the characters play a subordinate role to the civilization they live in. Mainstream authors use their characters as metaphors for their civilization. SF authors use their hypothetical civilizations as metaphors for us. "Hard" SF authors create a complex alien ecosystem, complex technology, or a complex galactic civilization, in order to engage us in speculation as to how that creation would function and interact with humanity. The ecosystem, technology or civilization is a character. We care about it! Mainstream authors can only write feelings about people. Even dogs, our dearest and best-understood companions for fifteen thousand years, partners in civilization, veritable "honorary humans," have been key characters in only a couple of "great" novels. Mainstream novelists write about gods, angels, ghosts and demons, all fictitious beings. Yet they look down their noses at SF authors who write about aliens, intelligent computers, genetically engineered people, and cyborgs, beings which could conceivably be true. Colombian Gabriel García Márquez is the most famous writer in the literary genre known as "magic realism," and even won a Nobel Prize for one of his novels. The essence of magic realism is to change one thing about the real world and then see how the characters would have adapted to this parallel universe. Does this sound an awful lot like the best SF? Actually by our definitions most of it would come closer to fantasy because the magic realists are not big on science. Jorge Luís Borges was one of the earliest magic realists and the SF community, with considerable justification, considers him one of their own. There is not a huge gap between Borges and Ray Bradbury. You seem to read a lot of "pulp" SF from the 1940s and 1950s, or perhaps just watch B-movies. Why? The dystopian SF of the 1950s and 1960s drew heavily on the motifs of communist countries to paint their ugly portraits of the future. The unisex garments of Mao's China made great models.
Any type of literature is worth reading if you like what you read. If you can't stand something then don't read it, read something that you like better. We are all different and should be able to pick what we like to enjoy life. Today however reading isn't the priority but making money is. Very sad world we liven, very sad.
Yes I did know that...as I also know that schizophrenia is largely a genetic ilness and so has little to do with the chart. As I have already explained re. Randis use of the charts of Serial Killers. Such as the famous Cornflake Killer.
I remember reading a bloke called Michael Moorcock...he was on telly last night looking exactly the same as always has done. Thats Science Fantasy though...I was never that interested in the Jack Vance school of Sci-fi but I di have a penchant for HP. Lovecraft and Moorcock..more of a teenage fad than anything. Erm..what I wanted to say...sry to be brief here..is that scientists seem to have a geekish interest in the fantastical. Its a stereotype maybe but lets face its...how many rock bands have originated from Science Unis and how many from Art School? They get geekishly excited by complete crap such as Star Wars and Dr. Who and Star Trek....when are these guys gonna grow up! And I'm sorry but you simply cannot compare these weirdo's to the likes of Shakespeare, Blake and Dante...all of whose works were suffused with spirituality and astrology and not cardboard monsters carrying plungers whist screaming 'EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!.
As opposed to say: the weirdos who get geekishly excited when reading stuff filled with crap like spirituality and astrology instead of something that may lead them into science and an understanding of how the universe works? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
