There's a sub-genre of recent novels that have the look-and-feel of science fiction, but which aren't actually science-fictional.

Cryptonomicon is probably the type specimen here: it hit every SF button I have, and yet it's SF mostly only by courtesy: the 'data haven' idea is a little bit sf'nal, the crypto is fun, but mostly it's some sort of ( Read more... )

Over at LibraryThing I've been involved in a long-running discussion of Why That Stuff You Read Sucks. I'm recycling a point I made over there:

By this point in the thread, I think we all understand that people read for different reasons. What I'm still not getting is why this is a problem.

Because it's also true that people write for different ( Read more... )

A question is posed on LT:

So, Bob, how wrong am I to tag Buffy (of the vampire slaying fame) as science-fiction? Also would love your opinion on the sf vs. sci-fi vs. s/f whatever tagging--perhaps you can point me to the discussion, I did some half-hearted wading in the Science fiction group, too ineffectual, didn't come across THE debate, I don't ( Read more... )

I've been accumulating books since I was a teenager.
 (The clerk at Lescron once asked me - "So...do you read all these books you buy?")
Now that I'm finally getting my library accurately cataloged, now is a good time to unload some dupes.

I ran across a first printing of Neuromancer at the SCPL Sale , bought it for a quarter.  Sold it a month or ( Read more... )

Well, it's a trivial observation, but it's gratifying to see such substantive evidence for it:

'Science fiction' and 'religion' meet some of the same needs.

LibraryThing's unsuggester points this out:  the "opposite" books for SF titles tend to be religious - and vice versa.  That is, the people who read the one genre ignore the other.  (This was ( Read more... )