Hey, I love(d) Asimov growing up (mostly 'cos I ended with all my dad and uncle’s Panther books), but I wouldn’t say he was a great writer, but I loved his ideas, plus he was easy to read.
(I seem to remember him slagging off George Orwell for his writing, though).
Read lots of Clarke as well, but no Heinlein at all until very recently, and only Starship Troopers at that.
Edit:
Heh, here’s what he wrote about 1984. Hilariously, he complains about Orwell’s female characters.
I haven’t read a lot of Heinlein but some of it is stupid fun but as pointed out earlier about Stranger In A Strange Land there are problems. Job A Comedy Of Justice I liked a lot as well as I Will Fear No Evil just for the sheer crazy of it.
I actually like Asimov’s non fiction stuff. I had a nice collection of his essays that was for a high school book report. Much more interesting than Foundation anyway.
Fuckin’ A.
Special effects by the Jim Henson Company…
Yeah, this does seem to come out of left field, plenty of people I know are Heinlein fans, and Star Trek fans at the same time, and few of us see any sort of contradiction. Heinlein was much more specific about his utopian ideals than Roddenberry, as he wasn’t writing for television he could worry much less about alienating his audience. Toward the end there, he seemed to revel in it.
I watched DS9 & B5 from the start, as they aired on TV. I remember the online fan chat rooms where the B5 fans would fight it out with DS9 fans over which series was better. I never could understand this either/or mindset as both were excellent Sci-Fi shows. I loved them both and looked forward to each new episode. I hated how PTEN screwed around with JMS on budget and airing issues. We got a Season 5 thanks to TNT but they didn’t support Crusade which JMS had planned out a fascinating multi-year story arc. In my alternate universe, some studio has ponied up the $$$ for JMS to revisit B5 to make a Hi-Def Blu-ray Creator’s Edition. I still have my regular B5 DVDs on the shelf next to the Star Trek DVDs where they coexist in peace and harmony.
Uh… maybe you need to go back and actually read some le Guin, who most certainly did write children’s lit.
Wells wrote into the 20th century as well.
Writers for adults also make contributions to people’s formative years, given that there is nothing stopping children from reading grown up fiction, too. Many do.
This puppy is looking a little sad, huh?
Who doesn’t? 
[quote=“RobertKarma, post:128, topic:79289”]
We got a Season 5 thanks to TNT but they didn’t support Crusade which JMS had planned out a fascinating multi-year story arc.[/quote]
Yup. I used to follow his Usenet posts, including describing the directives he kept receiving from the studio regarding Crusade. “This episode MUST start with the fist fight.” “We’d like to have one of the characters include a sexual explorer, so when they make contact with a new race, his or her job is to go and have sex with them.” And the whole silliness with the uniform change. (Someone in the head office was watching a copy of a copy of a copy of the tapes sent in for review, and they were so degraded that they couldn’t see much.)
In my alternate universe, some studio has ponied up the $$$ for JMS to revisit B5 to make a Hi-Def Blu-ray Creator’s Edition. I still have my regular B5 DVDs on the shelf next to the Star Trek DVDs where they coexist in peace and harmony.
The frustrating part is that the series was filmed in wide-screen because they knew widescreen televisions were on the horizon But whenever it finally aired in wide-screen, Warner inevitably cropped the top and bottom of the narrow version to make it wider - or worse.
They even messed up the DVDs. Wherever there’s a composite shot - live action combined with matte paintings, CGI animation, etc. - the quality is horrible.
And then once filming was shut down on B5 and Crusade, Babylonian Productions was required to hand all materials - including CGI models - to Warner Brothers. They were NOT allowed to keep their own copies.
When production on Legend of the Rangers, Warner said “What CGI models?” They had [lost everything](http://www.jmsnews.com/thread.aspx?id=_B5:LotR%20TLaDiS%20-%20Some%20Observations,%20Questions,%20etc.%20(SPOILERS).
And so in Legend of the Rangers you only see the Starfuries and other previous ships as distant shots, using CGI models scrounged from the cancelled video game.
The idea that having enough resources for everyone and having the ability to take care of everyone on the planet is somehow something that can only happen in the far off future is laughable! We have plenty now. We just decide to waste it all on endless wars so the Military-Industrial Complex can endlessly benefit. We give tons away to millionaires and billionaires whose coffers are already overflowing. We have made the decision for the world to be this way. It isn’t a Greek Tragedy construct where your destiny is predetermined, and there is nothing you can do about it. It is Shakespearean, where our flaws in character are what makes it happen. We can change it if we choose to do so.
Was Shatner available?
I certainly did. I distinctly remember my first exposure to Ursula Le Guin. I was at my sister’s house in the early 80s, going through some of her old sociology undergrad textbooks from a decade before, and among all these dry-looking tomes was one of the most eye-catching SF covers I’d ever seen:
I didn’t know why it was included in that pile until a couple years later (I think I was in 8th grade at the time), but I loved it.
My horror reading was also grossly inappropriate for the age I was when I read certain books (Stephen King’s 1970s oeuvre, Tom Tryon’s Harvest Home, The Exorcist, all before my twelfth birthday), but I honestly like the person I became as an indirect result of that precocity.
I think I managed to read The Hellbound Heart around 12 or 13, and I had much of King read by then, too. Twin Peaks was my favorite show. All of this explains why I’m such a well adjusted adult!
Also, how much of Heinlein is for children in the first place? Did he write much kids lit? Doesn’t seem like he did, but maybe I’m wrong… Especially that weird later phase of his career.
Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Starship Troopers, anything from that era were pretty much aimed at young readers.
Okay, cool. So yes… I guess I’m thinking of Stranger in a Strange Land, which has much stronger adult themes from what I recollect.
Yeah, he had a period wherein he was doing a fair number of “juveniles,” although I didn’t think Starship Troopers was necessarily one of them. The Star Beast certainly was, and Red Planet and several others I enjoyed.
Yeah and anything after that really. I Will Fear No Evil is kind of a favorite book for just the sheer bizzaroness of it. Job : A Comedy Of Justice is probably my favorite of his later work.
Also you all are making me want to go read all the stuff I missed out on like the LeGuin… But then I get into binges of things like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett too and move away from Sci-Fi. Now I am all liking steampunk mostly because I have always been a sucker for airships.
Weirdly (I guess) I’ve always liked the late Heinlein books. I still love Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond The Sunset… really, anything he wrote after Farnham’s Freehold, which is hard to like for many reasons.
I enjoy Steampunk, but I’ve read relatively little. Any solid recommendations?
