From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Apr 21 2003 - 16:22:54 MDT
--- Artillo5@cs.com wrote:
>
> And of course, EVERYONE should read "Snowcrash" by Neil Stephenson!!!
> :D
>
> For hardcore scifi, I like a lot of Greg Bear, Heinlein, Orson Scott
> Card, Frank Herbert, Philip Jose Farmer, and Larry Niven.
Haven't read "Snowcrash", its hard to find around here. Have read
"Cryptonomicon", though, which is a highly extropic novel (it even
features analogs of extropians that Neal calls "Eutropians"). Cryonics
bracelets run rampant through the novel. Read it several times.
I endorse the list above, adding Asimov, H Beam Piper (very hard to
find, but essential if you like Heinlein), Jerry Pournelle (who often
collaborates with Niven), and lately have been enjoying S.M. Stirling.
His "Island" trilogy was a fantastic alternate reality/time travel
series, and his current release, "The Peshawar Lancers" is a very
engrossing look at an alternate reality where an asteroid strike hit
earth in the 1870's, leaving the remnants of the British Empire to pick
up the pieces, centered in India. The story is set in the year 2025,
when most technology has revived to the point of about 1910, with a few
exceptions like massive building sized mechanical
'difference engines' and DNA research. Horse cavalry, Stirling engine
propelled zeppelins, and specially bred female russian seeresses are
featured...
Culturally, the "Angrezi Raj", as this Second Empire is called, is just
transitting from a Victorian sensibility, crossed with the Indian caste
system, and attempting to overlay a whiggish sense of equal rights and
opportunities.
Beyond this, I have read a lot of L.E. Modesitt, Steve Barnes and John
Barnes, as well as various novels of The Culture.
Fiction is an essential complement to non-fiction. While non-fiction
conveys information about what is, it does little to convey ideas about
what could, should, or might be. As such, it is essentially imagination
limiting in nature.
Of course, it is possible to go too far in the other direction. For
example, I have been extremely annoyed to find that current day doctors
still use primitive sutures in abdominal surgery. My mother nearly died
and is going on over 3 months in the hospital specifically because of
this stagnated technology. Between lots of SF reading, SF television,
and most of my non-local socialization going on over this list, I was
under an impression that we had developed something better by this
point in time.
"You mean they actually ALLOW people to engage in elective abdominal
surgery with only catgut holding them together!?!?!?!?!"
If anyone is aware of any new technologies in this area, I'd love to
hear about them.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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