Brilliant philosophical meaningful SF/sci-fi/Alt. History or... (I guess) Fantasy
 

I need some. I usually consider myself well read in these genres, having been through the classics and most of the contemporary heavy hitters, but I've been reading non fiction lately. Mostly political, philosophical, and science books and articles, and I can't find a new fiction book that's stimulating for the life of me. Anyone have any well kept secrets?

No point in recommending Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Gene Wolfe, Gaiman or Dan Simmons. I'm a fan. Need something new

Clive Barker is some of the only fantasy I read. It is well crafted fiction with substance, realistic dialogue, and everyone once in while moments of Garcia-Marquez brilliance in symbolism as well as deep philosophical insights like in an Alexandre Dumas novel. Try Weaveworld or Imajica, dense stuff but a good read. Elaborate characters.. I also have been enjoying some Arturo Perez-Reverte, great stuff, a bit trashy sometimes but well-written.

Pitchfork and gay magazines.

not new (by any means), but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, is my all time fave.

although it may sound silly to you, most of the novels based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe are VERY well done. I sincerely recommend any of the Gaunt's Ghosts series, or books about Inquistor Eisenhorn that are written by Dan Abnett.

geekery? sure, but if you're reading sci-fi, you may as well put both feet in the pool.

ps: buy them used. I shop at Half Price Books, here in Texas.

oh...philosophical? maybe not 40k, but the recommendation stands.

So I see you've read Clive Barker before..

HOUSE OF LEAVES - Mark Danielewski

(I recommend it to anyone who likes to have their mind blown)

Greg Bear has some of the greatest hard cyberpunk sci-fi around
I recommend Blood Music, Moving Mars

I always suggest Rudy Rucker. He has a series of books which rule. Hardware, software, wetware.

I <3 you.

SCIENCE-FACT!

Maybe a bit obvious but for alt. history maybe P.K. Dick's Man in the High Castle?

If you want philosophical why not cut the middleman and read some philosophy?

the book that blew my mind more than the whole dune saga or any cyberpunk books or anything i have read before or since was nietzsche's "beyond good and evil". the earlier stuff can be a bit adolescent, later on i think he goes bananas (though will to power was never a finished book).

read the walter kaufmann translation. it's great, has good notes, etc.

oh and unlike other philosophy books this one is neither dry as fuck nor incomprehensibly abstruse-- actually it's got plenty of laughs.

actually, come to think of it--- if you like shit with superheroes and magic animals and shit like that (i don't), then you could read the zarathustra!

That I just re-read, when Amazon had a PKD blow out and priced a shitload of his books for 1.99 on Kindle. It has to be my favorite PkD book, though admittedly I haven't read them all.

I respect your recommendation, but like so many other great books, this one was ruined for me by a traditional liberal arts education. There's something about reading a book in a sterile classroom, and listening to a bunch of dillweeds wax philosophical over it to impress a bored teacher, that executes interest and thought like with the efficiency of a lethal injection.

I recreationally read speculative fiction because academia never goes anywhere near it, and because reading the right SF novel can sometimes rekindle an interest in books like this.

Honestly, it's SF more than any other genre that makes me independently investigate scientific and philosophical theories on my own time. I applaud your persistence and taste, though.

Pff... Just read the DeathGate Cycle by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss. Don't get all fancy pants Dexter Palmer on me; just stick with good old fashioned dumbass 90s fantasy, and have some fun!!!

:)

If you're going with the classics, you may as well read the Dragonlance trilogy.

ha ha, i hear what you're saying! grad school (in the humanities) got me off reading for a few years-- i couldn't look at a book without wanting to vomit. as a result i watched a lot of movies.

i was lucky to read nietzsche in an independent study so i wasn't encumbered by assholes-- "class" was usually talk and cigarettes in a bench. the thing is i got hooked since then and kept reading afterwards.

what i love about nietzsche is that he *truly* blows your mind. why? because even in the most far-fetched scifi story, in the end it all boils down to preserving the same ideology that everybody else repeats-- who is good, who is the villain, bla bla-- predictable. everybody evaluates the world the same way in our era.

but that little fucker goes to the core of things-- he makes you take a look at your values and proceeds to give them a thorough skewering. it doesn't matter if you agree with his morality or not, in the end-- the thing is that he makes you question the very core of your assumptions about the way you judge the word, and in that sense he is truly fucking mindblowing.

oh, the manchester united game started. anyway, your loss, i'm afraid, and i hope you can recover your health soon-- school can fuck you up in so many ways. don't let the bastards grind you down, etc.

--

i assume you've already read dune so i won't bother recommending it.

I like you.

I have a lot to say in response to this, but not a lot of time. I just want to ask one thing, regarding your understandable cynicism about SF:

Have you ever read Gene Wolfe? Specifically the "Book of the New Sun" (which is actually four books, plus a "coda" fifth volume, all of which lead into a second four part, distantly linked sequel (Book of the Long Sun) which itself leads to a three part finale, (Book of the Short Sun) ?

If you haven't, it's imperative that you do so immediately. I did a minor in philosophy for my undergrad, and I think New Sun should be required reading for any philosophy program. It's the greatest work of speculative fiction I've ever encountered.

(Ps, The only philosophy that I enjoyed in the presence of the dullards in my program, was religious philosophy. I loved it, and that plays a role in my interest in SF. More later, hopefully)

If you're into the more theological side of SF, have you read Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man? Some of his books also fall into the alt history genre, like Dancers at the End of Time. Another good one in the alt history SF is Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt.

I've never read this author, but I've seen his name in a lot of SF lists, especially in the "most underrated" and "most prolific" ones.

I tracked down his section at the library and it was just packed. I had no idea where to begin.

I'm glad you brought him up. Would you mind recommending a few of his hooks, and telling me a bit more about them? Particularly anything in the "steam punk" category.

As you say, he's written tons. The hardest thing about recommending anything is that most of his novels are just episodes of far bigger stories. His most interesting concept is that of of the 'eternal champion' (a person with multiple identities who exists in multiple universes) but it's an idea that stretches across most of his books (some SF, some Fantasy, some 'historical') so it's hard to really pinpoint a single key novel to get the idea in full. If I were to start though, you can't go wrong with The Eternal Champion novel, and then decide from there if you want to persevere with the rest of it.



Note that's the novel, not one of the omnibus editions using the same name which will include the original novel (depending on the volume you get) but also other stories in the series.

You could literally spend a lifetime navigating your way through the various combinations of his multiverse books (which total around 60 novels or about 15 omnibus editions) and still never settle on a final 'definitive' sequence. There's even debate as to whether the omnibus volumes are in the 'right' order, not helped by the fact there's more than one series of them, from different publishers that put the novels in different order.

Here's some indication of just how daunting it all is:
http://www.multiverse.org/wiki/index...mpion_(series)

Moorcock touches on steam punk a lot but I can't think of a single book where it plays a major role. It's more just another part of his overall 'multiverse' thing.

I've always meant to read his books since you recommended long ago, but never got around to it. Spatial-inventory is at a premium for me these days, maybe I need a Kindle.

That said, I find it funny that he lives so close (in Bastrop, I believe).

Yeah, I can definitely see you liking Moorcock's fantasy stuff. His Elric books, for sure. But you're right: he's a one man justification for kindles.

I'm dealing with an impending current change, and am shy about buying new electronic devices.

I'll make a point of getting something at the used book store soon.

i'm not at all cynical about the genre-- on the contrary, it's one of the few places where anglosaxon writers allow themselves the gift of imagination. i much rather read science fiction than shit like, eh, david eggers or that fucker who killed himself, what was he called, another mcsweeney fucker.

nah, i take that back. was just spewing hate.

but yeah-- fuck and blast bland navel-gazing middle-class-goggled first-world-problems "realism"

anyway, i'll check out the dude you say because i haven't read him. in fact, i'm planning a trip to the bookstore this week thanks to this thread.

also, cheeto recommended rudy rucker-- i'd second that. and did you know he's a descendent of hegel? chuckle-worthy but true.

anyway when you have time please write back etc. since some things your post hints at appear to be interesting (though i really don't care about religion, except as a subgenre of fantastic fiction)

anyway, back to work, ufffff....

Yeah, ol' cheebo knows his sci-fi. Like that time he insisted there were 9 years in a decade.....science FICTION!

lolol

Hey, why don't you fuck yourselves with those 40k books while you're at it!!!

C'mon mumur, let's cuddle.

Of course; hand-made with love, by the score.

One of the most philosophically meaningful sci-fi novels I ever read is the Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

It is a mindfuck.

After 200 pages I was like, "what is happening here? This book is telling 40 separate stories, then after about 500 pages, I was like "Oh man, This is getting more and more complex, and I do not know how it will all tie together," and then by the end I was thinking, "Jesus fuck these two guys have rewritten my brain's software.

I have never been the same.

mmmmm soft brainz....

Ok, I really don't want to sound prickish, but come on... Of course I've read Illuminatus. It's a great suggestion, but I guess I would rank it (along with "the Man in the High Castle," "the Difference Engine," and pretty much everything by Jules Verne and Wells) among the books that people should simply take for granted that long-time SF fans have read.

It's a great book, absolutely. If there's a Hitchhiker's guide for alt-history fans it's Illuminatus.

The Difference Engine would have been better off remaining a tree. What a giant bore.

Stanisław Lem. His Master's Voice, etc.

did not know obscurity was a factor here.

You'd be surprised how many scfi fans I run into have not read any RAW

Don't worry, Rob, I haven't read it; nor do I intend to. You see, I've blackballed every book in this thread (except for murmur's, which I intend to snuggle up to), in the name of pretentious cuntestry.

RAW is for wrestling, and my cock. And by my cock, I mean Moorecock, which I also intend to read, because, let's face it, demonraill666 is NEVER a prick.

Good day to you, sir.

you posted a picture without explanation. with tiny fucking letters.

after you cried, i looked at the tiny fucking letters & saw "jonathan lethem" on the cover.

i've read his essays and he's a boring navel-gazing fuck. i also tried reading a couple of his novels and couldn't make it past page 3. fuck him. fuck you too!


haaaa haaaaa haaaaaaa

but seriously, i don't like lethem. don't take that personally.

To be fair too the guy who cried that book he posted a picture of if the collection of Philip K Dick's philosophical ramblings, that's merely edited by Jonathan Lethem. I've not read it, but apparently it's worth a read if you're a pkd fan.

oh... i might take a look...



you're from georgia! who knows what to expect?


i hear loving dick in georgia is hard if you're a man. though i understand mississippi is worse. fuck the whole south, really. except for new orleans and maybe (maybe) the research triangle.

in any case, i just read up some stuff on this and it looks like it was his private journal. i do have a bit of a problem looking into a person's private journal because, eh, it's fucking private, ha ha, but hm, okay.

btw, have you ever read borges?

Borges was Argentinian! And yes he wrote poetry but he is most famous for his short stories which are pretty fucking amazing mind-altering stuff. Definitely not a hippie so don't go looking for that. I'd start with his book "Ficciones" and go from there-- his essays are also incredible.

Anyway, GO GET IT NOW. You won't be disappointed I fucking swear.

it's borges similar to calvino?

more the other way around but yes they are similarin the sense that their fictional worlds are often constructed from philosophical ideas--the OULIPO i think really followed after borges. borges was born in 1899 and his really good writing started around 1935 so he's a couple of decades ahead of calvino at least.

borges is perhaps less famous outside of latin america for 2 reasons: 1) he was politically conservative and that kept him from winning a nobel prize, 2) he never wrote a novel, in part because he was of teh conviction that one didn't need so many words to tell a story, in part i suppose because he was blind and that would make the revision process quite hard.

anyway, he was fucking brilliant, and has had many imitators-- i'm not saying that calvino was one of them by the way (calvino was great on his own merit), but i'd say calvino learned a more than a few things from borges-- he wrote about him in his posthumous "memos for the next millenium."