Sci-Fi Geeks Vs. Lit. Geeks
 

If it weren't for Cherry and Shawnee and Dana, I would feel like a lonely :alien: on a lonley :alien: planet (called Cellar Alpha Squad 7 starring Tek Jansen) because fully 2/3 of you are Sci-Fi (or should I say SyFy?) geekazoids who knew what a Triffid was before I had my first beer and I am into the Classics.

I think we should rumble.

First punch: If Sci-Fi is so great, why hasn't any Sci-Fi writer ever won a Nobel, huh?

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, is both a classic and sci-fi. Have you read it, Brianna? What did you think?

DARN YOU LESSING!
And to think - I read her Golden Notebook!!! I'd forgotten about her.

haven't read Frankenstein yet...Mel Brooks kind of ruined it for me.

The bias against science fiction in literary circles is often strong enough that if a book is good enough, people will try their damnednest to justify not calling it science fiction. Ironically (because the opposite is true in SF circles), the less fantasy is mixed into the science fiction, the more some will insist it's not SF.

Not that I mean to denigrate fantasy, that genre is also unfairly maligned. Probably since the Victorian era, fantasy has been considered a children's genre, even though the older a surviving classic is, the more likely it is to be fantasy.

So, Bri, you're saying that anybody who hasn't won the Nobel for literature isn't worth reading?

I'm looking for Steinbeck fanfic. (lord I hope that doesn't exist.)

Fraid I am a total sci-fi geek Bri. Attitudes towards sci-fi and fantasy are all tied up with concepts of 'High' and 'Low' culture.

There is a place for the classics, there is also a place for sci-fi. And the truth is we have no idea what will count as a classic in a century or two. In 200 years students may be pretending to read the Belgariad in order to look cultured.

I read anything and everything. Though...I tend not to want to read it if someone tags it as Literature. There are exceptions to that: Dickens, Heller, Hemmingway to name a few.

I find the dividing line between sci-fi / fantasy and everything else, rather an artificial and unsatisfying one. Some of the most beautiful, lyrical, complex and literary works I've read have been in the 'sci-fi' section of the bookshop. Some of the most unengaging, self-indulgent, vapid nonsense has been sold to me as literature.

Read what thrills you. Work out why it thrills you. Thats what I find fun.

Take it back.

I didn't know we we dividing sci-fi from classics. Now we have the task of defining both of them to prove that they are mutually exclusive. Wow. Good luck on this tedious, futile task. :D

Science Fiction requires more imagination.

Hemingway and Steinbeck wrote what they knew from what they experienced. Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clark wrote of worlds that didn't exist in anyone's wildest dreams. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and 2001 A Space Odyssey are every bit as visceral and real as The Fisherman and the Sea and The Great Gatsby.

Which pair of books would you imagine was more difficult to write? I'm not taking anything away from the literary giants. Except the presumption that their science fiction brethren don't belong in the same club.

Absolutely there is a lot of sci-fi/fantasy type literature which is beautifully written. Some of those that fall into the classics realm, I've read. Not because I'm a snob, but because literature as art (meaning in this case that it endures) fascinates me, and I took a lot of lit electives in college.

I've said before I am more into the "slice of life" type of books, looking at the human condition, a study of frailty and strength and emotion. There are plenty of these types of books that fall into the category of not so good, as well. Classics of any genre live on.

I think I should expand my horizons and try some books that have been mentioned previously.

Great writing is great writing.

eta: Beestie, truly those are all great books, but I take issue with the presumption that less imagination is used when doing what Hemingway (I'm assuming you meant The Old Man and the Sea?) and Fitzgerald did when capturing the seemingly simple; so complex.

But ... but ... I like both.

There is good and bad in both genres.

I would say that writing good SF is harder, because you must first know some good science, know where the cutting edge of science is up to, then stretch your imagination beyond that, being creative yet keeping it at least "possible" given what we know about science so far. And then be able to construct an interesting plot and believable characters, and then be able to write well.

And I know that if you want to look like a real geek you should call it SF not SciFi. Dunno why though. Geeks can be pretty snobby sometimes.

but what about classic SF?

and Arthur C. Clarke was nominated for a Nobel peace prize.

I just find the distinction so articifial. Like Cloud says, what about Classic SF? The Time Machine...literature or science fiction? It's a silly choice it makes no sense. Science Fiction is a genre. Literature is not a genre. Science Fiction exists within and without Literature as a category.

I was just amusing myself.

You all take everything soooo seriously.

it's a sign of...a sf (SF) geek.


:p

I didn't make you take up the assignment, baby. You coulda just brought a doctor's note.

I agree with what beestie wrote.

proof: Ender's Game imagines the 'nets' 20 years before they become the politics forum on the cellar.

I expect Demosthenes and Locke to register any time.....

I don't think the book Lessing won for is Science Fiction. :headshake

I'm reading this with my 9 year old girl right now, and she loves the idea of Demosthenes and Locke. She giggled with delight when the Wiggins father was quoting Demosthenes at the dinner table to his children.

OK, this is weird.. I've written two replies to this thread and neither one appeared. I was pretty sure I got distracted and left without clicking "post" on the first one. The second one?? Maybe I'm going crazy. (I'm also trying out Google Chrome FWIW.)

Anyway. Bri--why don't you make a recommendation from some people of "literature" I should read. Something relatively new I'm not likely to have heard of--not classics.

Ah, i've been made to feel like a snob when all I was trying to do was have a bit of fun. :rolleyes:

I like stupid mainstream stuff anyway - nothing relevatory. bit of a bore, I guess.

I don't know what you have and haven't read or heard of, but how about

The Kite Runner

and then A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini

Life of Pi?

Yann Martel

Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides

You betcha! I wanted to point that out, but . . . I didn't need any more nerd points.

We should change the name of The Cellar to A Confederacy of Dunces.

I took a SF literature course back in college. The prof had a difficult time coming up with a reading list because he figured anyone taking the class would have already read a lot of SF. So he was looking for obscure but good books. Most were really good reads, so I figured I'd list them here for anyone who might be interested. Off the top of my head, I can recall:

Canticle for Leibowitz by Miller. I liked it a lot.

Where Softly Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Wilhelm. I liked it a lot.

Childhood's End by Clarke. Good read.

The Forever War by Haldeman. Excellent.

The short story The Star Thrower by Eisley. Not a fun read, but the kind of thing you would expect to be given to read in college. Weighty.

There was another Clarke book in there. It think it was Rendezvous with Rama. Not one of his better novels, but worth reading.

I think the prof might have given us Neuromancer too, which was not obscure at that time. Neuromancer is an important book, because it predicts a lot, but I never liked it that much. It's had a lot of influence in pop culture though.

There were about 5-6 more, but I can't remember which ones they are. I've read so many on my own.

The Time Traveller's Wife (can't recall the author).

Some of Sheri S Tepper's work stands up with the best.

Glatt--those aren't obscure books!

To a college kid, many are.

I took social science fiction literature in college.

It was facinating! I liked Star Trek but maybe because that was the only thing on at the time.

I know I am not a sci fi geek though.

For a while I was involved in a local SF convention, and even chaired it one year. That makes me a pretty big SF nerd.

Emphasis added.
Ding Ding Ding, it's SF Nerd not geek,
/tuts
//pushes glasses up nose

(monster really should have taken a photo of the Huron Robotics Club that were seated near us at a restaurant on Saturday)

yup, I shoulda :lol: video even.

I was a member of a science fiction book club when I was a kid. I read Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama when I was in the 8th grade.

I heard they were going to make a movie about it but this is all I found(from IMDB).

we should change your face to a collection of punches!

BBC Radio 4 recently aired a serialised audio play of Rendezvous with Rama. I didn't get to listen to it so I can't say if it's any good. But it might be worth checking out on download?

To many college kids, the concept of "book" is obscure.

I'm not just being silly, I have encountered several 2nd or 3rd year students who were borrowing their first book from the university library. (You know what I mean, not their first book ever.) I had to explain to one that his student card IS his library card.

Don need no stinkin books... Wikipedia knows all.

btw, ieSpell wants to change Wikipedia to wiped... apropos. :lol2:

Because I think you're smart, and I usually agree with what you say, I am downloading these two ......the canticle one interests me, but it was not on audible.com ....

ETA: I very nearly ordered the WRONG forever war. apparently, Dexter Filkins also wrote a book by the same title...cock. it's about the taliban and iraq and shit i would hate.

Audrey Niffenegger

very excellent!

Okay, Brianna, ya wanna rumble? :boxers:

Lit geeks (if that is what you prefer) don't have the imagination or creativity to read good SF. (sneer). They prefer the mundane, the day-to-day, the comfort of real life!

It takes a special person to create and write whole worlds, history, culture as well as new scientific concepts, to weave those concepts into present place and character; and a special person to be able to read and visualize them. I also submit that science fiction and fantasy (whether or not you care to lump them together) are the classics of our time--or at least some of them. Written and filmed SF is woven into twentieth and twenty first century culture, irrevocably. Much of written science fiction is fine and though provoking, as much as mainstream literature. I think that movies, especially, have joined with this genre so marvelously, and I only anticipate more creativity in this area.

Okay, I'm kidding about the rumbling and sneering part, and would never make fun of literature geeks. Seriously--everyone is entitled to their own taste. Just read! :love2:

but don't listen because that doesn't count

;)

Great! I hope you like them. Forever War is more of a hard science fiction, action type novel, and a lot of fun. Sweet Birds is more of a painting characters and moods kind of a book with some neat ideas thrown in.

Another fairly obscure one that I would very strongly recommend is Earth Abides by Stewart. It's better than any of the ones I read in that college course. It's probably tied with Ender's Game and possibly Dune for my favorite book of all time.

I'll have to check out the Time Traveller's Wife.

Just to throw it out there: anyone who hasn't yet read Vernon Godlittle, probably oughtta.

The other side to this coin is that some people need all the bells and whistles to stimulate their mind: movies have to have loud booms and flashing lights, books have to have very clear motives, a beginning, middle, and end. Everything has to be flashy and decorated. To me, this ignores the mystery of the human mind that man has been trying to understand for centuries; it is this study of human nature that my weird brain thrives on.

Just playing devil's ad. I AM going to try to read one of the suggestions, and I certainly know how intelligent you folks are! :) Maybe I'll find a whole new world that I like.

Oh, and I AM weird. ;)

Shawnee, if you really do want to play with SF or fantasy and you want something interesting, engaging and also intellectually stimulating, read pretty much any Sheri S Tepper: Either the True Game series (particulaly the adventures of Mavin Manyshaped, though True Game stuff was very early Tepper) or Grass, Sideshow, or Raising the Stones. there are some very good ones. She writes intelligent, challenging stories, which usually have compelling themes (feminism, love and betrayal, human sacrifice and selfishness, imperialism and the dangers of religious zeal etc).

As an adolescent I went to Marion Zimmer Bradley for my feminist fiction, as a grownup I go for Tepper.

Thanks DanaC. I have to work Saturday morning, cutting into my Day of Sloth, so I think I'll hit the library on the way home. There's another book I have to read soon, so I'll also look for Tepper while I'm there.

Some books are very difficult to categorise. Vurt and Pollen (by Jeff Noon) are a case in point. I'm not sure whether they're sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism or just contemporary fiction. I know they are lyrical and beautiful with an edge liike a samurai blade. That's all I need to know.

If you haven't read E.M. Cioran "temptation to exist"......Better have a look. It's a french philosopher/poet that rips everything to shreds. The best part? His word usage. I really only care for what he says some days. Mostly, I like the words. He's more prose than philosophy.

I think you should read C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" series. The premise is that human refugees from a mutinied lost starship fall on a foreign planet. The aliens, who are tall humanoids, have a feudal system (similar to ancient Japan) and, while having human appearance, are 'wired' differently towards association groups requiring 'man-chi', which goes beyond 'love' or 'loyalty'.

After the humans anthropomorphise themselves into a war with the natives, a treaty is reached where the humans resettle to a big island/continent and only one human paidhi (ambassador) is allowed on the mainland in the emperors court. Bren is only the latest in a series of paidhi, but he is the one who will make history.

While there are similarities to James Clavell's 'Shogun', Cherryh really works in the concept of aliens whose mentality is not just shaped by societal differences, like those between fuedal Japan and England, but actually hard-wired.

Personally, I think anyone going into the diplomatic service should read these books.

I'd forgotten about Cherryh. Brilliant writer.

I'm making a list...

blecch. Can't stand anything that Cherryh wrote.

For my pic of grand, witty, and fun SF, try any of the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Anyone ever read The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson?

http://xkcd.com/483/
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