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Hi all,
the movies thread was getting a little side-tracked and I thought it would be great to have a novels thread for any kind of good old fashioned READ we’ve enjoyed.

Owen just said (over in the movies thread)...

Cordwainer Smith Ros? Wow! He is the King of Sci Fi IMO.
His stuff was an amazing dscussion of faith, the future of mankind, what it means to be human and morality spread over a couple of novels, a plethora of short stories and a future that spans millenia.
The development and dangers of space travel, genetic manipulation and life extension are but a small part of his huge and amazing universe!
He Da Man!

When did he write it Owen? Is it ‘space opera’ or Cyberpunk in space? Does it deal with cyber-space, downloading minds into computers, etc?

Cordawiner Smith wrote through the 60’s- and died in that period too. He was way ahead of his time though.
His style is almost childlike but the concepts are much biger than that. He had a strong Christian faith but didn’t impose the beliefs onto his stories but instead asked questions about how the fatih would be given changes over millenia and through culture and technology.
I remember one story, set in a period where enhanced, but enslaved animals (intelligent but disposable) called “Underpeople” were believers but humans had lost all spirituality.
A human is being blessed in “The Name of the First Forgotten One, in the Name of the Second Forgotten One and in the name of the Third Forgotten One”.
Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The Planet Buyer
A Quest for Three Worlds
The Underpeople
Space lords
Rediscovery Of Mankind
Norstrillia

The short story “A Place called Sheyol” is one of the best Sci Fi short stories ever (IMO)

Cordwainer Smith is in a class of his own.  Fabulous stuff!
I didn’t know he was a Christian, though.
   
From the ‘About the Author’ in our copy of ‘Norstrillia’:
   

Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonum of Dr Paul Myron Anthont Linebarger (1913-1966).  A member of the Foreign Policy association and professor of asiatic Politics at John Hopkins University, Dr Linebarger ws one of America’s most competent specialists on the Far East and on psychological warfare.

 
You can read more about his highly unusual career in the usual places:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith
 
So he wasn’t a career author, and this background, IMO, gives his fiction a bigger perspective, a greater subtlety, and greater human intuition than other authors.  The exception to what I said about ideas and character in sci-fi.
 
‘About the Author’ also has a little to say about his spiritual perspective:
     

...a strange history of the future that was a mixture of Oriental and Occidental influence and literary techniques and of scientific and religious philosophy.  A High Church Episcopalian, Linebarger seems to have been striving - perhaps by coincidence - for a synthesis similar to that of Teilhard de Chardin.

 
So, from what I understand of that, he was a High Church Episcopalian, and his stories mixed scientific and religious philosophy.

Aaah, he was a High Churcher!
Therefore an even more wonderful bloke than previously guessed!

Oh man, sounds like another author to add to my list!

The above is all over my head hehe.  Animal enslavery, life extension, even forced space colonisation?!

I like more simpler action books as you would have guessed - reading another one by Matthew Reilly called The Five Greatest Warriors.  Riveting page-turner with almost non-stop action!

Matthew Reilly is like ‘reading’ a Die-Hard action sequence that doesn’t even stop for phone calls to the Mrs to ask ‘Why does this happen every Christmas?” It just keeps on going!

That’s why I like it!  But the recent series (of currently three) should stop already.  You can’t get more epic than the 3rd iteration (Five Greatest Warriors) that I’m reading!

Hi all, I received an email regarding Cordawiner Smith which I thought I’d pass on:

I have been looking at the novels thread on your mightychurch website, specifically at the discussion of Cordwainer Smith. I am Smith’s (Paul M. A. Linebarger’s) principal biographer. I see you are in Sydney, so it may interest you or members of your group to know that Paul Linebarger lived for several months in Canberra during each of two sabbaticals from his university teaching position in Washington DC, and regularly attended the oldest Anglican church in Canberra while he was there.

Best regards,
Alan Elms

There you go!

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling were both mentioned before, and I think they’re both great authors! Btw, Pattern Recognition is true sci-fi… apparently it occurs in a parallel universe where one street in London is named differently ;) Spook country is great too.

Sterling has some very interesting books. I haven’t read as many of them, but Heavy Weather and Holy Fire were good. Holy Fire would probably interest Dave because of its optimism at what future “organic” technology could do. I’d like to be optimistic too, but it is only fiction…

Hey Luke,
That email was cool. I knew that Linebarger spent a lot of time in Oz. In fact his books often refer to or are set in and about a planet called Old North Australia (Norstrillia).
If anyone read the man’s history you’d be kind of amazed. His Godfather was Dr Sun Yat Sen (I struggle with whether he’d have considered this a good thing or not in his older years). He wrote a premier intelligence manual, he wrote a pamphlet that allowed Chinese soldiers in the Nth Korean Army to surrender without losing faith.
He spoke many languages and his work in intelligence and diplomatic circles was pretty high level. His books reflect this sophistication in content (but less overtly in style).

Hi Danni,
See if you can borrow “Visionary in Residence” by Bruce Sterling. Apparently that is his university chair position, and so he used it for a collection of short stories.

When he and Rudy Rucker get together and write, anything goes. I don’t know how to describe Rudy Rucker. He’s like cyberpunk on acid, or Gibson’s nightmares in a right-brain trance. No, that doesn’t do it justice. It’s like Billy Connelly morphed into Bruce Sterling, and this conglomeration goes into a pub with a duck, and someone’s slipped something naughty into their shot glasses!

It’s truly freaky stuff. But also pretty darn amusing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy

Thing is, he’s a mathematician and computer programmer by day, and downright feaky author by night

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Rucker

I am reading two books:

“A purpose driven life” which is a 40 day reading exercise which helps to get Christians on track. Many will know this book written by Rick Warren (from a Californian Church)? It is great reading, and makes me try a bit harder.

The other book is “The Mind of God” which is about science mostly
here is a link which reviews the bookThe Mind of God

Many probably know of this book also. This scientist seems to allude to the fact that God is behind the making of the universe, in his own way, that is.

I finished The Five Greatest Warriors and am getting onto another action book, this time Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.  I heard it has some Freemasonry propaganda, but am just reading it for the action :)

If you want silly conspiracy theories, Dan Brown’s always a bit of fun.

And a good excuse for mate’s of mine to run apologetics DVD’s that, in dealing with Brown, get to explain the historical reliability of the gospel! So it’s all good. I know some evangelistic minded people that leave Dan Brown lying around at work so that it raises certain conversations…

But if you want action, this guy is like reading Die Hard, on steroids!

http://www.matthewreilly.com/scarecrow.html

Finished The Lost Symbol.  The first half was superb, but anyone could see that the last half ran out of steam.  And the last twenty pages were an advertisement for paganism (as opposed to freemasonry ironically).

I read Scarecrow many years back.  I still remember that crazy climactic scene where Schofield had to fly through 100+ enemy planes firing on him because his plane was running out of fuel!  Shows how fantastic the book was!

Over Christmas I read “Ultimatum” by Matthew Glass. It was a Global Warming thriller. The first half reads like an Episode of West Wing, and then climate change starts to get serious, so serious it demands action. It compels action. But negotiations with the Chinese are complicated…

The political analysis in this novel is tight, showing the frustration and complicated process of nations negotiating. But the end is amazing! Well worth wading through the first half, at least I thought so. I wonder what others thought?

Just bought ‘Snow Crash’ and ‘The Diamond Age’ (Neal Stephenson) for the hubby for Father’s day.  (I told him I am getting him ‘some science fiction’, to avoid one of those ‘I just bought that!’ moments.)

Cool! Snow Crash has some interesting concepts about the rise of the “Corporate state”... couriers drive around with bar codes all over their jackets identifying them as having “Passports” for various suburbs and city regions. A very funky and interesting book. Diamond Age is in a more distant future along the same lines, and has a few fairly challenging scenes but when viewed as a part of the overall work makes sense. One day I might get to re-read them and log on to a Sci-Fi forum to discuss the meaning of Diamond Age… quite a deep book!

Brian (the hubbie) really likes ‘Snow Crash’.  :)
   
Best present I’ve bought since I got him the first series of ‘Blake’s 7’ when it came out a few years back - but I just got it from the ABC shop and no doubt paid top dollar.

It’s also got some paranoid conspiracy theories around the use of ‘tongues’. Lots of fun!