Giovanni requests fiction recommendations!

[applez]

gioogle, I dissuaded you from the Harry Turtledove avenue, so I owe you some contemporary alternatives:

All you on my Friend List, please add to the list

In the area of alt history/counterfactual history...1. "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson

Comments

[coalescent]

In the area of alt history/counterfactual history...

-- The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings

In the area of near our-future, and the slightly bizarre...

-- Counting Heads by David Marusek

In the area of near-Earth colonization...

-- Nothing apart from the Mars books coming to mind. But the Mars books are ace.

In the area of grand journeys through the stars in an echo of 'Golden Age Sci-Fi'...

-- I'd go with Learning the World by Macleod rather than Cosmonaut Keep.
-- Alastair Reynolds probably fits here, but I've not read enough to say for sure

In trying to get into the alien mind...

-- By all accounts, Blindsight by Peter Watts. But I haven't read it yet.

[nwhyte]

If you like Ken MacLeod's work, and you are interested in the near our-future and the slightly bizarre and are intrigued by Cory Doctorow, I would have to also recommend their friend Charles Stross (autopope).

[nwhyte]

Good call. Alas, I still need to read his work!

[celestialweasel]

In what way is Cryptonomicon alt.history, other than the sense that any novel is about that-which-is-not-so, so is alt.history? I don't think the fact that Stephenson likes to make up fictional names for the odd thing, mainly companies, counts.

[applez]

Well, if you want to get into a classification argument...

I think it suffices that it tracks technological development through a historical setting, and is not particularly factual.

[celestialweasel]

You young people are all confusing me :-) I don't understand what makes the Ings novel (which I thought was reasonably good, although somewhat arch) alt.history. Is alt.history different to alternate history in some way?

I am not sure that the Ings even qualifies for alternative history in the same way the Cryptonomicon does.

[coalescent]

Oh, right. No, it's not strictly alternative history, but it's certainly secret history, and I suspect it will appeal to those who like Cryptonomicon. I also broadly agree with this review:Although Ings has previously written straightforward SF, The Weight of Numbers is largely naturalistic, taking place in the here and now featuring no fantastical technological advances. It is SFnal in the same sense that M. John Harrison's 1992 novel The Course of the Heart (which it strongly resembles in its bleak beauty) is a fantasy. Harrison's novel is a brutal, uncompromising screed against the central tenet that informs many of the genre's major works-that any one of us can be the main character in a vast epic quest, and that one day we will be swept off into a great adventure. Ings's novel is similarly an attack on science fiction's core assumption-that the world is reducible to a finite and understandable problem, which can then be solved by the application of reason, logic, and science.
And with this oneAnd so it goes on, this rolling story

[celestialweasel]

Suggestions...
alt.history - how about The Years of Mice and Walt. No, sorry, wrong book. The Years of Rice and Salt (actually I thought this the only good Robinson apart from 2 of 3 of the Orange Country Trilogy buy YMMV).

weird near future - Sewer Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff. Obviously Snow Crash and Virtual Light - Idoru - All Tomorrow's parties by Gibson. I have to say that I reread Idoru recently and it improved on 2nd reading, I had viewed it it as filler between the first 2 but actually transcends that.

Also, of course, if he had never read Illuminatus by Wilson and Shea and Shockwave Rider by Brunner, although not written recently I would recommend them both over much written more recently :-)

[applez]

Good suggestion on "Years of Rice and Salt" by KSR ... I should have remembered that one myself.

Giovanni - that book by Robinson suggests a far deadlier Black Plague that strikes Europe, so the subsequent development of civilisation rests on the shoulders of the various Islamic Caliphates, the Mongols, and the Chinese. Poses some very interesting alternatives to the discovery of the New World, the advancement of science, and the advent of political liberalism.

---

As for the Gibson, I was going to introduce that slowly to Giovanni - who says he's mostly read 40s-50s sci-fi.

Thank you!!!

[gioogle]

Hello all!

Many thanks for these wonderful suggestions!

I will start working on this list, and it will keep me busy for quite a while, a soon as I have finished Van Vogt's "Slan" (very, very nice sci-fi - written in 1940).

I am very ashamed to admit I am not familiar with almost all the authors/books listed ( I have read mostly "Golden Age" science fiction, with some very cautious, well planned, and generally satisfying occasional forays into other eras), but this is a gap in my sci-fi knowledge I am going to fill soon - I only hope to manage to find these books in English as some Italian translators can butcher even the greatest masterpieces... but that's why e-bay and amazon exist... :-)))

Re: Thank you!!!

[applez]

No worries Giovanni - I have plenty of holes in my reading experience ... thankfully the premise of the Internet holds true - collective information produces superior quality.:-)

Re: Thank you!!!

[gioogle]

Or massive disinformation.....
;-)

It always depends on the people who are part of the community...
:-))))

Re: Thank you!!!

[applez]

Well, with Wikipedia rating as many or fewer errors than Encyclopedia Britannica...