Peter F. Hamilton, British author of space operatic doorstoppers (such as the excellent Pandora’s Star), did this with his Void trilogy of books; he alternated chapters between 30th Century SF, with all the usual Hamiltonian tropes (tech, sex, aliens, war, colonies), and a pseudo-17th C metropolitan society with telekinetic powers living within a black hole (essentially, stay with me here). And damn, did that drag. Hamilton does not write short books, and these badly needed editing.
6 Likes
Oh good. He has wandered a bit of late, yeah. I read the Baroque Cycle entire while pedaling down the west coast back in 2006, and just revisited it. Back then (pre-Kindle) it was excellent weight-to-entertainment ratio - it was a brick, yeah, but I only had to find a bookstore three times in two months; reading again last month I was a bit stunned by how cinematic, funny, and downright epic the whole thing was. Birth of modernity, with pirates. (Seriously, midway through The Confusion I just used Depp’s Jack Sparrow for Jack Shaftoe, it was hilarious.)
4 Likes
His first use of the science fiction frame story for a fantasy story was Fallen Dragon. There’s even a point in the book where the main character listening to the character telling the fantasy story compares it to the stories by Tolkien. It’s a better book than the Void Trilogy (which I gave up on after the first book), but far below Stephenson at his best.
3 Likes
I can’t be the only one who thought it was totally bizarre to throw in a literal, magical, seemingly ageless wizard as a minor supporting character in the middle of an otherwise-non-supernatural story about WWII intelligence agents and their technologically pioneering descendants.
4 Likes
Thanks, I haven’t read Fallen Dragon. I persist with Hamilton because I thought that Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained were excellent novels (some of my favourite SF, in fact), but his latter books do test your patience.
3 Likes
I enjoyed Pandora’s Star, and Judas Unchained to a lesser extent. Much like his Night’s Dawn trilogy, Hamilton is aces and building extravagantly detailed universes with interesting, albeit soap-opera-y, characters, and then smashing them to bits in riveting ways. Alas, wrapping up those door-stoppers is his weakness.
3 Likes
I don’t think it is super common…but yes Void sprung immediately to mind. Also in a very different way the Pern series. I doubt 0.1% of SF books have a fantasy novel in them, but it can’t be under a half dozen…
(does The Barsoom Project (Niven, Pornelle, and maybe others) count? Or any of the other early VR/AR novels? If so we may hit 100 or so…)
2 Likes
Hero of British Golden Age SF, Brian Aldiss, encapsulated a SF novel within his Helliconia fantasy series, set upon a planet within a dual-star system (and consequently centuries long seasons). In these we follow the progress of a civilisation over a thousand years or so, leaving it at around the equivalent of early 19th C Europe in Helliconia Winter.
(The SF element is life aboard an orbiting observation station sent from Earth; this degenerates in true Aldissian fashion as time progresses).
5 Likes
I suppose they don’t count if there isn’t a reasonably discrete embedded story. Sequences in Reamde aren’t sufficiently separate from the main plot. Dying Earth-subgenre stuff doesn’t count, I guess (RIP Gene Wolfe) – being basically fantasy with a sci-fi explanation. So no Pern either then, eh?
How about Stephen Baxter’s Flux? Those little neutron star people have rather fantasy-ish adventures.
1 Like
I’m probably a quarter way through Reamde and it feels like it’s about to change completely. Worth it to keep at it?
2 Likes
As you’ve probably figured out, it’s not his most high-brow, literary work (although sometimes he seems to imagine he’s Pynchon) – but I thought it was good fun. I’m surprised it isn’t a motion picture or Prime Video limited series yet. Many people have objected to a dues ex machina in the final set piece. And many people objected to the whole second half.
So don’t know what to tell you. Wouldn’t blame you for dropping it early into the second half, if you find yourself not digging it.
2 Likes
Tad Williams wrote a sci fi series called other world. Which was also a sci-fi novel with a fantasy novel inside.
5 Likes
It’s a better book than the Void Trilogy (which I gave up on after the first book)
I haven’t read Fallen Dragon. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s better than The Dreaming Void, but seeing as you haven’t read the other two, I don’t guess you can say that it’s better than the trilogy as a whole.
1 Like
To be clear, Fallen Dragon was merely decent IMHO. I wouldn’t want that to be taken as an endorsement of it. As with all fiction, YMMV, as in the case of one good friend of mine who considers it among Hamilton’s best work.
Obviously. And since you were quite able to discern that from what I did say, I don’t feel terribly bad if my comment on the Void Trilogy was less than perfectly textually rigorous.
2 Likes
Hey, play nice with the new kid in playing ground. 
4 Likes
Neal Stephenson hides a book inside another book? Isn’t that par for the course.
6 Likes
Also, he’s a horrible old Tory.
2 Likes
Huh.
Well, for my part, I find Neil Stephenson to be one of those authors who has great ideas, but whose characters are either one dimensional or such heavy-handed pastiches that I lose interest. Reading his essays made me even less interested, as he seems like in person he would be the most irritating Linux advocate.
Granted, I haven’t read some of his larger works, my last two books were REAMDE which was kind of interesting, and Seveneves, which I couldn’t finish because the plot was just too predictable in the middle. And it doesn’t help that I discovered Snow Crash long after the internet had become daily life, so his version of the USA and cyberspace just felt dated.
Awww it all goes a lot smoother if one can accept Stephenson on his own terms.
There’s probably (I imagine) even more on the cutting room floor in his case, and I do think his editors have an extremely hard job. Dickens–another author who (ok ok yes he was paid by the word in some cases) wrote thick books that allowed one to enter the world(s) of his characters… oh his poor editors.
Worldbuilding novels are by their very nature thick weighty things. Look no further than JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. Sheeesh I could scarcely get all the way to the end of The Hobbit and when I pushed myself to do it, I still wasn’t convinced I should wade through the whole series to see if anyone was going to cast the One Ring into Mount Doom.
Stephenson’s clever, he’s funny, critical, original. There are entire chapters of Snow Crash and Anathem that are applicable and quoted slyly by my family and friends. I read William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, always casting about for the truly “speculative” in spec fic. These authors run the kinds of thought experiments I would want to run myself, had I the time and brainspace to carry out long-running speculations about the future, whether for actual predictive content or the hilarity of taking a trend to its logical extreme.
4 Likes
Its too sad. I doubt I will ever touch it again, while I go back to Anathem every three or four years.
4 Likes
