The only one I’ve read is Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine, but I guess that’s one you’ve already read. You could count Mieville’s Perdido Street Station, I guess. That’s very good.
I really should go back and read some more Le Guin (I’ve only read TLHoD and The Dispossessed) - and some Heinlein too, I guess.
In fact I haven’t! (I’m shockingly ill-read when it comes to the genuinely good stuff.) I look forward to checking it out!
Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers as one of the juveniles, but the publisher rejected it (I think due to violence) and it was published as one of the adult books.
I’ve liked most of them as well, with the exception of TSBTS. Granted I read them when I was fairly young, so I might have a different take on them now. The last one I read was Starship Troopers, which I read about six years ago. Enjoyed it, so maybe the later freaky stuff would hold up as well.
Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker and the rest of the ‘Seattle’ series even though they don’t always take place there. Those were great pulpy fun. Airship pirates, zombies, underground cities, mad scientists… I just started her newest book Maplecroft about Lizzie Borden after she killed what was not really her parents anymore hence taking axe to them.
On a whim from the library ( This is how I pick out a lot of stuff really ) I got the Buntline Special by Mike Resnick. More weird west than steampunk but in the same ballpark. Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Ned Buntline and Thomas Edison team up to fight an undead Johnny Ringo. The rest of the series is just as fun and features Geronimo and Teddy Roosevelt. I hope there are more to come.
The Ministry Of Peculiar Occurrences books by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris I like all that I have read so far.
For YA I really enjoyed the Leviathan series from Scott Westerfield and the kid even read those.
I also recently read The League of Seven by Alan Gratz which was juvenile pulpy lovecraftian fun.
That enough to get you started?
Much of his early work was aimed at kids/teens. I’d be cautious of giving it to a modern child, though; the gender and racial politics are spectacularly nasty in places.
I hope this doesn’t come across in totally an awful way, but I appreciated some of the points those freakier books were trying to make about the incest taboo. It struck me that he was trying to illustrate how that taboo was useful to prevent genetic problems with inbreeding, and that once those potential problems were ironed out through Science and Reason, then there would be no practical reason why the taboo should still exist. Of course, this totally ignores (or badly misrepresents) issues of power and authority and exploitation and all the other issues that make recreational sex with family members so off-putting to society, even when procreation is effectively prevented. Were he still alive today, I imagine he might put more emphasis into trying to represent his incestuous filial characters as somehow possessing full competence and agency for consent (even the underage ones) since I expect he thought it was only a logical progression of evolved reasonable thought. It’s not like he didn’t represent his young characters that way back then (after all, Lorelei Lee and Lapis Lazuli both attempt to seduce Lazarus while he initially resists, since they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it), but he didn’t do it convincingly. Part of the reason for that is that (in Time Enough For Love particularly) all his characters seem to speak with the exact same voice, so they all seem to blithely serve whatever point RAH is trying to make. Another reason is that RAH is the guy who, through his characters, claims that “Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers,” which is simultaneously self-serving (for geniuses) and self-congratulatory (for implying that one is a genius for thinking so).
Hee hee! Minor Kindle spending spree just started! Thanks!
And ebook edition of Always Coming Home comes out in the next month, at least in the UK.
To be fair to the movie I referenced above
like most Verhoeven movies, it’s intentionally bad satire. I think it’s right up there with Robocop, which is downright subversive.
Unlike Showgirls, which is just bad.
Except when you factor in that the Enterprise is the elite flagship for all of Starfleet. Even a lower bridge officer position there carries more esteem than being captain of a rank and file ship. It makes perfect sense that the second officer would hold onto that assignment- Especially if he’s gambling on it leading to his getting Picard’s job one day.
There’s also the point that “XO refusing command out of loyalty to his captain”, realistic or not, is a long-established cliché of the naval military fiction genre (Aubrey/Maturin, Hornblower, etc) that heavily influenced Star Trek.
I try to look at the glass being half-full and appreciate what we did get rather than the half-empty part of the glass where the studio screwed over JMS but knowing these facts make it difficult. I haven’t kept up with the latest B5 rumors. Has there been any progress on revisiting B5 as a movie or TV miniseries? The B5 universe is such a rich playground (like Roddenberry’s Star Trek) I’d love to see it return in some form, even a reboot given that the original actors (those still living) are getting a bit up in years. Maybe the suits at WB were actually working for the Shadows.
Greed, politics, racism, nationalism, First World vs Third World, etc., all make it impossible to utilize our resources for the benefit of humanity. Those who have the power, control access to the world’s resources. The most revolutionary technology in Star Trek was the replicator. Once every person had access to unlimited resources, Capitalism was left on the ash heap of history. Scarcity is what drives the global economy today but some ingenious people are working on the precursor to the replicator, the 3-D printer. Give them another 50 years and who knows where this path will lead them.
JMS owned the movie rights (But not the TV rights.) He announced in 2014 that if Warner Bros. didn’t step forward with a project in 2015, he’d do the movie in 2016 with funding already in place.
I haven’t seen anything more. But JMS’s series Sense8 is a success, with a second season being filmed. And he’s writing a TV series adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Red Mars” for Spike TV. So his plate seems pretty full.
the precursor to the replicator, the 3-D printer. Give them another 50 years and who knows where this path will lead them.
Don’t get your hopes up too high.
There’s some interesting things coming down the pipeline where they mix plastics with different properties - so a single object can have flexible and non-flexible bits for example. And you’ll have the ability to add existing wiring and metal components throughout the plastic.
But printing anything with a microchip from scratch won’t be happening. Even in 50 years, printing a computer mouse or keyboard will mean printing the plastic bits on one machine, metal bits on another (and probably not in the average home) in separate runs for copper and aluminum, the circuit board on another… And purchasing the keyboard processor already made. And hand-assembling the individual keys, then the whole keyboard.
I figure we’ll be at the electric tea kettle stage - metal and plastic, with no microelectronics. But even the heating element (copper coil in an aluminum casing) probably won’t be possible in the average home.
I’ve read about Verhoeven’s ideas of turning Troopers into a John Ford western. He should have just written his own fucking movie rather than crap “his vision” all over a beloved classic.
In my naval reading that’s not the way it works. You don’t move from executive officer to command of a capital ship, you learn command by skippering smaller ships and getting promoted to larger ships.
Care to cite the instance? I’ve read each series several times and don’t recall a 1st officer turning down command. Both Bush and Pullings were thrilled to get their own commands. And it was considered a compliment to the captain to promote his protege’s.
I love Starship Troopers. My kid loves it even more. She’ll fight people for not liking it.
Comes up in the Bolitho books, IIRC, and I think that I’ve seen it a few other places.
Absolutely loving the 2nd Doctor gifs.
Jamie and Zoe are two of may fave companions (even though much of their material is lost)
