CONTENTS
1.General Statement:
2. Book list
3. Book Reviews of newer books added.
4. Movies:
BOOKS:
1. By Hard Sci-Fi, I mean that most of ideas in the books are science-based, and though the ideas may be far-fetched, they are possible. We may not like all of these ideas. Author David Brin reminds us that they can then be used as a precaution, - to try to prevent the outcomes predicted. Prediction is not the purpose of Science Fiction, as there are far too many choices we can make that lead to far too many different future paths. Prevention could be one of the purposes (think 1984, Brave New World here) Good Science fiction provides real choices in seemingly real universes, that could be applied to the present day.
It does NOT mean FANTASY! Most bookstores do not even separate the two genres, (Bloomsbury books in Ashland, Oregon is an exception), and it is dismaying that many people know so little about science, and that so few can tell the difference between the two genres.
Ideas that are NOT Hard SF include - telepathy (as currently thought of), most time-travel, alternative history, Special Powers (with no explanation for their existence), sword and sorcery, aery-faerie new age (except reasonable psychological human improvement ideas) anything Woo-woo. "Military" SF, where the only purpose is to present battles, warriors, and good-evil situations.
It is necessary to distinguish the "cutting edge" from the "lunatic fringe"!
Science Fiction can explore many topics of importance to us in a more unlimited way than can other types of fiction. In fiction about the past, we already know the ending! Good Science Fiction artfully combines treatment of world-building, great characters, mystery, politics and philosophy, travel, new ideas, of course, and moral dilemmas not currently at issue (such as sentient being rights, use of nanotech, mind-tweeking, terraforming, bio-engineering), and more. Fiction, as opposed to reading a factual article, allows discussions and dialog between characters to explore ideas more deeply, and from different points of view (I have just learned that this is called dialogism!). While there are many classic older novels, I have chosen to limit myself here to discussing the later ones. Later novels, such as the ones I have chosen on my list, are, on the whole, (in my opinion) better written than most of the older novels, and address current technology and more modern political and cultural views.
There are some Facebook groups worth looking into. They are "Mars Science Fiction", "Science fiction Debates", "The Mars Society" "Kim Stanley Robinson", David Brin's blog - "Contrary Brin" and others. Gregory Benford and Robert J. Sawyer have regular Facebook posts. Andy weir posts regularly on the Mars Society Facebook site, and I loved the film "The Martian" , starring Matt Damon, which opened October 2, 2015. I have seen it, in both 2D and 3D. I loved the film and recommend the 3D version for the space scenes especially. I have the DVD now in 2D.
2. HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITE HARD SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF RECENT TIMES:. These date from at least the late 1980's to the present. (I figure that you know about the older authors.) Note, not every book by an author is recommended, as some authors write in other genres. The authors are in alphabetical order, and the number refers to the number of books from them on my list (and ** = favorites):
I hope that in the future more authors from ethnically diverse sources will emerge for me. More black and Asian authors, and even more women.
1. John Barnes - 3 (*Directive 51 series, but not the last sequel.) (*Mother of Storms) (Orbital Resonance - youth )
2. Stephen Baxter - 3 *(Flood),(* Ark). Many others I liked a lot, but not on my top listi
3. Greg Bear - 3 (*Moving Mars, Darwin's Radio) - I admit to not liking all of his works.
4. Greg Benford - 3 (*The Martian Race,- The Sunborn, - &/w/Brin - (*Heart of the Comet).
(COSM). Facebook friend!
5. David Brin - 2 (*Existence) . Some of his other works. (Blog called "Contrary Brin" worth reading)
Facebook friend!.
6. Greg Egan - 2 (Diaspora), (Distress). Am reading a new one, will let you know.
7. Robert L. Forward - 2 (series) (*Rocheworld series, first two books -coolest aliens!) (Dragon's Egg).
8. Kathleen Goonan -1 (Crescent City Rhapsody)
9. M. J. Locke - 1 (** Up against it) Fabulous first novel for SF doubters! Give this to your friends. Great on politics, a woman's leadership, teenage struggles, big corporations. and,
is one of the few great treatises on the emergence, not creation, of an AI, attempts to talk to it,
and deal with it, etc..
10. Kim Stanley Robinson -4+ ( **Mars series) (**2312) (50 below series, merged into Green Earth), (Aurora). Will read and comment soon on his new book (New York, 2140). Chat group on Facebook.
The Mars trilogy is an epic series! (Memory of Whiteness , maybe out of print). Antarctica.
11. Robert J. Sawyer - 3 (*Calculating God) (ww.Watch, Wonder - all 3 in the series) .
12. John Scalzi - 2 (The Android's Dream) (Agent to the Stars).
13. Carl Schroeder - 2 (*Lady of Mazes. I hear that there is a sequel...).
14. Neil Stephenson - 2 (*Snow Crash), (Diamond Age) (* Seveneves- A wild ride!)
15. Charles Stross - 1 (Accelerando) Stross has a Facebook site, but is mostly on Twitter. I am not.
16. Connie Willis -2 (*To Say Nothing of the Dog), and (Bellwether) - humor. Reasonable time travel explanation or better than most .
17. Andy Weir -1 (**The Martian- Film starring Matt Damon, out Oct 2nd, 2015).
18. Moon, Elizabeth - (The Speed of Dark) . Nebula winner, 2002. autism, pharms.
19. Anderson, Poul-3- (The Stars are also fire), (Harvest of Stars), (Fleet of Stars), (Starfarer)
I also highly recommend the novellas and short stories by Ted Chiang. The movie, the Arrival, is based on one of them, as a film, is reviewed below. Also the novella, "life Cycle of Software objects" is brilliant, about AI!
Others include : (They have a book or so on my list, but I don't like everything they write, or none of their books are at the top of my list.) Not in any particular order: Arthur C. Clarke (Rama series, older novels), Michael Flynn (Firestar series, and Eiffelheim), Geoffrey Landis, (Mars Crossing), Orson Scott Card (Not all of the Ender series, mostly Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide, and Children of the Mind), Jack McDevitt (Moonfall, 1997), and McDevitt novels are all real page-turners. M.M. Buchner (Watermind), Ian Banks (Matter), (The Hydrogen Sonata), Howard Hendrix (Lightpaths, especially, for its philosophical musings), Ben Bova (Mars series), Alistair Reynolds (Absolution Gap), David Niven (Destiny's Road), Bruce Sterling (Holy Fire), Kay Kenyon (Maximum Ice), Robert Charles O. Wilson (Julian Comstock), James Hogan (Code of the Lifemaker, book one)), , Margaret Atwood, (Year of the Flood. the series ), Charles Pellegrino (Dust), Suzanne Collins, (The Hunger Games)
July 2018 - I like a new-ish book called Saturn Run, by John Sanford and Ctein (2015). An idea of how extra terrestrials might operate in our solar system seems to be a good one. They leave a trading station in orbit around Saturn, run only by AI, with strict rules on trading policy. Of course we try to violate some of them to get at the knowledge of the technology, ....
REVIEWS:
3. AURORA, by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2015 : Review:
Sorry if this is being a spoiler for some, but it has just come out. I am dismayed by something. With all of the advanced technology available aboard the ship, replicators, the Ship AI, etc, why could they not create a vaccine or a genetic modification to defeat the prion? It seems inconsistent with their other abilities.
I liked the book for the characters - especially Ship, and for KSR's detailed descriptions of the biomes and the difficulties in maintaining them. I liked a lot of the focus on the AI, Ship (why wasn't it 's name capitalized?). I feel that Ship was really the main character in the book. I am in general fascinated by the AI question and I like that KSR addressed the difficulties an AI would have with interpreting human ways of thinking. The AI ruminating about metaphors and analogies, and other such problems was fun.
After some thought and time. I decided that I did like the book, as a cautionary tale about the problems of inhabiting other planets, He argues in the book that either planets have life on them or not. If they do, there are probably bad pathogens that will kill us, and if not, it will take too long to terraform. In his other books, like 2312, he shows us how to establish biomes in asteroids, and having many of them nearby would offer a safety net in the event of a failure of one of them. I would like to think that we could solve either or all of these problems. I do understand the idea expressed by some that KSR wants us to appreciate and help protect this beautiful world that we currently have. l will say, however, I would not want this book to discourage us from trying to go!!
We had an asteroid come very close to earth in 2016!
David Brin is a great blogger as well as an SF writer. He holds intelligent conversations on science, ethics, politics and other relevant issues. He argues that science fiction has an aim of teaching us to do better than our parents did. That we must learn from our mistakes. It is OK to look forward to the future!
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FILMS:
4. Then there are the FILMS about science fiction, or fantasy:
I have a few favorites. (This is dated Nov 22, 2014).
"2001 Space Odyssey" is still my all time favorite. It is my all-time favorite film, period! Not just because it is good SF, but because it is ART. Kubrick used themes and music together to create a huge story. The music was like in Opera, - leitmotifs fitting perfectly with the big ideas Kubrick was depicting.
I saw the film 8 times in the summer of 1968 when it first came out, and it holds up well today!
I am adding on October 2, 2015, my review of the Martian:
The movie "The Martian". - So good! I saw it twice, in 2D, then in 3D, and 3D is best, especially in the out in space scenes. It followed the book pretty well (which I read twice). It had science and heart, and had a powerful upbeat message about world cooperation and unity. It also reminded us that EVERY single solitary life is worth saving! Leave no one behind! When large numbers of people are murdered, as we have just witnessed, it is hard to grasp that each person was an individual soul and consciousness.
The acting was superb, Matt Damon got a nomination for it, both golden Globe and Oscar, and other characters were as good as I pictured them from the book. i had a little trouble, as I always do, of hearing all of the dialog, but the book helped me to know what was going on. I was worried that the music would be obnoxious, like it was in "Interstellar", but it was fine. (I was expecting the Disco music from the book!)
Go see it, and hopefully be inspired, as I am, by the possibilities of exploring Mars and our universe.
Fund it out of the military budget!
On the other hand, "Interstellar", while containing some good SF and good cinematography, has some flaws, both in the science and in production elements. Such as the annoying and loud music! (further note, it was later nominated for awards for best music score! ugh!) (Meanwhile, the dialog was too low and hard to understand).
I don't like reviews, such as that of Roger Moore, on Nov. 7, 2014, comparing this film to "2001".
It is not even close!
I liked the "tesserac " scene near the end for the beautiful visual depiction of possible timelines which would collapse into our Universe after choices are made. Going through a WORMhole is scientifically possible, with the idea of time dilation accurately depicted, but I can only buy going somewhat CLOSE to a BLACK hole, but not in or through it!. The Beings might use the proximity of a Black Hole to play with time, due to the gravity, so I could live with the idea that the place where Cooper landed for the final scenes was NEAR the black hole. (Oh, am I being a spoiler here?). So, the film Interstellar doesn't always distinguish the possible from the fantasy in important places where the viewer can be confused about which is which. (Black hole vs wormhole, etc.).
In "2001", by the way, Kubrick does not specify the nature of the object, the monolith, that the astronaut passed through, but it was likely a wormhole. (Admittedly, it was also metaphorical for the human journey and for evolution). In Moore's review, when he compares Interstellar's ship going through a black hole to what Kubrick did, he again mixes up a black hole with a wormhole. Sad that this movie reviewer is like most USA citizens, - poorly educated in science!
Some of the metaphysical stuff about the connection between the father and the daughter is far from science, but movies must tug at the heartstrings eh? So some license can be given if the main parts of the movie lie in the realm of the possible, which is what I call HARD science fiction. Interstellar is borderline.
There are other SF movies that I like, and that are largely science-based: These are (and I am sure I have missed some..):
2001, a Space Odyssey, my all-time favorite film! Avatar (Note, 03/23/15, author David Brin has an interesting critique on his Facebook site. He has an excellent SF novel "Existence" 2012, that is on my list), , Gravity, (Note that there is controversy over how this film handled orbital mechanics. Some felt that it dumbed down some of the science,) Contact (minus the daddy-lookalike aliens), Gattica, Blade Runner, Fifth Element, Her (except for the mumbly dialog), Contagion, Close Encounters of a third Kind (with the iconic 5 tones), AI, Ellysium, Short Circuit, Total recall, Waterworld, Apollo 13, The Matrix, The Right Stuff, Cocoon (tho the mystical ideas are borderline), Alien, The Hunger Games, ET, and certain older films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, Star Trek the Next Generation, (both TV and movies).
All of these have a few fantasy moments, but they are not key to the movie's plot or outcome.
Some films I have not seen that have been recommended by Astronomy magazine are Sunshine, and Moon.
NOT: (Those listed below may be entertaining films but are more Fantasy than science fiction):
Unfortunately, the sequel to 2001, 2010, contained too many woo-woo fantasy moments, where the Keir Dullea character reappears and does some strange miracles. Too bad, as this film had an interesting idea of making Jupiter into a second star.
Other films NOT science-based (mostly) are: The Black Hole, Core, Event Horizon, Lost in Space, Independence Day, MIB, Starship Troupers, Divergent (Social set-up too unbelievable), Armageddon, Solaris, Minority Report (time travel, in general, is a risky concept, and few stories justify its use with the science. A book that does a good job with that is Connie Willis's book "To say Nothing of the Dog") , Star Wars (iconic, fun film series, but largely fantasy!), Planet of the Apes , and many, many more. Superheroes are, on the whole, fantasy figures. Batman is an exception, as he uses devices, but doesn't have extra personal Powers. The same with Wonder Woman, and Dick Tracy.
If it has in it a zombie or werewolf, or vampire....probably no! (Tho Frankenstein might be considered SF).
And don't get me started on the SyFy channel.....
There is indeed a place for fantasy in our lives. Archetypes, role models and examples of heroic behavior, and the just plain fun of mythology are a big part of our culture, and of the imaginations of children. I just want us, as citizens in a democracy, to know the difference between science and fantasy. It would affect how we vote on such things as climate change .
What I wrote to John Darling after I saw the film: Ex Machina
Diane Newell Meyer -Yeh, john, I finally saw the film, and I am pissed! Besides having trouble with the dialog, as usual, (and the music did become obnoxious as it swelled behind the talking), the ending, to my mind, pandered to the lowest denominator. The reference to God should have tipped me off,--- and Evolution. Having her kill him off is meant to tell us that "AI is bad", (he didn't ask HER if SHE was a good person, of course).
i doubt that such an ending would have occurred in "reality", with the connection she had with the young man. She would take him to make sure that she survived,, if nothing else..
John Darling--u raise a good point. he didn't ask her is she were a good person. of course, being AI she would have said yes. then he should have said, could u define good person? she would have said duh. So, I think that AI is inevitable, and we must train these CHILDREN in morals and ethics as we would any child.
The movie The Arrival gets mixed reviews from me. As I posted in Facebook on Nov. 24, 2016
"After my Thanksgiving potluck, a friend suggested that we go see the movie Arrival. As a big science fiction nerd, I decided to go. I am of several different minds about the film. The best thing is the new ground it charted and showed to the average filmgoer for some ideas being explored in science fiction. I thought I had read the book but now I must go get it. Ideas about the language, about concepts of time.
The start the film Arrival was so slow it made 2001 look like an action thriller on steroids. Then the language part was exceptional, except that some real woo-woo notions regarding the principle character were introduced. I had, as usual, trouble with the sound and talking, and some dialog, and had trouble therefore entirely getting what was going on toward the end. I was able to grasp 2001 and its concepts, as a lot was conveyed thru music. While the music here was mostly supportive, I found it intruding sometimes, with a lot of swelling octave chords. I generally don't like the switching from cold to warm lighting to show a concept. The concepts that all the nations would not cooperate and would declare war is really old hat is really annoying. The actiing was on the whole, good, even from the aliens! I like the actor who played the Chinese President. He seemed so fatherly.
More later...in time....