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You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
IainB:
I have read 3 books in this series and would like to recommend it.
(see attachment in previous post)
Amazon.com Origins (Spinward Fringe Book 0) eBook Randolph Lalonde Kindle Store
Smashwords – Book Search randolph lalonde
-Arizona Hot (July 17, 2014, 06:33 PM)
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Mentioned the first (Book 0) in the Spinward Fringe series:
I rather enjoyed the Spinward Fringe book. Difficult to put down. Recommended! :Thmbsup:
Now want to read the rest in the series...
-IainB (September 22, 2014, 09:18 AM)
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I'd like to add to this a (my) brief review of that book:
"Origins (Spinward Fringe Book 0)" by Randolph Lalonde. :Thmbsup:
As a veteran SF addict, I am often highly critical of new SF works, but I consider this book to be, overall, a good and enjoyable SF read.
I obtained it for FREE in the Kindle version, and it was evidently intended as a sample of more to come - i.e., in the rest of the series.
I purchased a Kindle really just to try it out - a "suck-it-and-see" exercise. I was skeptical as to whether it could be an adequate or full replacement for all aspects of conventional books.
However, in the case of the "Origins" story, if I had not had a Kindle, then I suspect that I would probably never have bothered reading the story (even if it were available) in hardcopy. This is arguably a new dimension that Amazon Kindle has introduced to the book-readers in the publishing market, and is likely to lead to encouraging results for new authors like Randolph Lalonde, and more business for Amazon - so a :up: for Kindle books there.
To my surprise, I found the Origins book to be hard to put down, due to it's having a good plot, good progressive development of the characters in the story (though sometimes a bit abrupt with the odd leap here and there, but that kept things moving), and lots of action, a love interest (just right, not too much), etc. - all "ticks in the box". The book is based in a future time, but is plausible - including, for example, the new future's science and technology invented by the author.
I read the Afterword by the author, where he summarises some of the trials and tribulations that he encountered in producing this book and developing it into a viable series. Very interesting, and I wish him the best of luck. I think he probably has a winner.
As a result of reading this first book I intend to follow it up with the next in the series.
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Arizona Hot:
This e-book may be considered fantasy by the people here, but I think they will like it and it is very scientific. You can read it online or download various versions of it, including a PDF version.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Sample texts:
This is the living-room of the house occupied by the eminent Professor Michael Verres-Evans, and his wife, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres, and their adopted son, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.
There is a letter lying on the living-room table, and an unstamped envelope of yellowish parchment, addressed to Mr. H. Potter in emerald-green ink.
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Harry took a deep breath. "Mum, your parents didn't have magic, did they?"
"No," Petunia said, looking puzzled.
"Then no one in your family knew about magic when Lily got her letter. How did they get convinced?"
"Ah..." Petunia said. "They didn't just send a letter. They sent a professor from Hogwarts. He -" Petunia's eyes flicked to Michael. "He showed us some magic."
"Then you don't have to fight over this," Harry said firmly. Hoping against hope that this time, just this once, they would listen to him. "If it's true, we can just get a Hogwarts professor here and see the magic for ourselves, and Dad will admit that it's true. And if not, then Mum will admit that it's false. That's what the experimental method is for, so that we don't have to resolve things just by arguing."
--------------------
Harry was breathing in short gasps. His voice came out choked. "You can't DO that!"
"It's only a Transfiguration," said Professor McGonagall. "An Animagus transformation, to be exact."
"You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualise a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?"
--------------------
"Well," Professor McGonagall sighed, after Harry's parents had composed themselves and returned. "Well. I think, under the circumstances, that I should avoid taking you to purchase your study materials until a day or two before school begins."
"What? Why? The other children already know magic, don't they? I have to start catching up right away!"
"Rest assured, Mr. Potter," replied Professor McGonagall, "Hogwarts is quite capable of teaching the basics. And I suspect, Mr. Potter, that if I leave you alone for two months with your schoolbooks, even without a wand, I will return to this house only to find a crater billowing purple smoke, a depopulated city surrounding it and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of England."
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rjbull:
^ looks like two of Sir Terry Pratchett's books are in similar vein:
* The Science of Discworld
When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the Internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on.
* The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
The acclaimed Science of Discworld centred around an original Pratchett story about the Wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fiction narrative about Big Science. In The Science of Discworld II our authors join forces again to see just what happens when the wizards meddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity on Earth. London is replaced by a dozy Neanderthal village. The Renaissance is given a push. The role of fat women in art is developed. And one very famous playwright gets born and writes The Play. Weaving together a fast-paced Discworld novelette with cutting-edge scientific commentary on the evolution and development of the human mind, culture, language, art, and science, this is a book in which 'the hard science is as gripping as the fiction'. (The Times)
Arizona Hot:
Do you like Thai (stir) fry?
IainB:
EDIT 2017-07-05:
My abject apologies to DC forum readers. Please don't blame me if you don't like the stories in the anthology. I posted the comment below in good faith because I thought the article was a great idea and the origin story seemed like quite a good starter, but this was before my having actually read any of the various (22) stories that were linked to.
So I then started reading them. I rapidly found myself swimming in what seemed to be a sea of politically correct speculation, centered around confirmation bias, self-approbation and an orgy of virtue-signalling mutual masturbation amongst a cohort of authors apparently living in an echo-chamber.
I presume, but cannot be certain, that this may well have been due to the contextual directions for bias/"slant" that the authors had been given for writing the stories - unless, maybe, they had all been subjected to some kind of sudden mind-meld of groupthink and so preferred it that way (a lot of fringe publishing and journalism seems to be full of that sort of thing).
After reading the first 4 stories, I thought the rest couldn't possibly be as disappointingly banal, unimaginative and mediocre examples of SF as that first 4, but, sadlement, I was wrong. Nevertheless, I optimistically ploughed doggedly on, only to give up in disgust just after the halfway point at the 12th, as I decided I probably really did have better things to spend my valuable cognitive surplus on than those so-called "stories". So, I sat down with my nearly 7 y/o son and we took it in turns to read some of "Puck of Pook's Hill" by Rudyard Kipling (pub. 1906) - my son has always liked the stories in that book. For those that don't know it, POPH (free on Kindle) is a children's book containing an engrossing set of linked stories - with some useful/relevant B&W illustrations - that are a unique and superbly written exercise in archaeological imagination that, "...in fragments, delivers a look at the history of England, climaxing with the signing of Magna Carta." - the whole cleverly delivered via a combination of beautifully written historical and contemporary fantasy. Now that's good, speculative fiction, and it connects with historical reality whilst involving time-travel and inter-dimensional travel in the present and the past, towards an uncertain future (which is now "the present").
As for the so-called "SF" anthology below, I thought that one of the comments to the OP at arstechnica.com put it well and understated it quite politely:
Mustachioed Copy Cat Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
JUL 3, 2017 3:59 AM
"Is this future progressively devoured by organic chainsaws, or is this just an excuse to explore displacement and social/technological speculation?"
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(Made me smile, anyway.) ;D
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Original posted comment:
Read post at: Read some seriously strange time travel stories from sci-fi’s modern masters (and enter the competition too, if you're a writer)
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
New anthology Seat 14C tracks 22 passengers on a plane that jumps 20 years into the future.
ANNALEE NEWITZ - 7/3/2017, 3:00 AM
Art for Mike Resnick's story in Seat 14C. David Demaret
Art for Gregory Benford's story in Seat 14C. Sebastian Hue
Art for Sheila Finch's story in Seat 14C. Stephan Martiniere
Art for Hannu Rajaniemi's story in Seat 14C. Alexei Vella
Art for Karl Schroeder's story in Seat 14C. Leon Tukker
Cover art for Seat 14C. Saiful Haque
A flight from Tokyo to San Francisco jumps through time and lands 20 years in the future. That's the short version of a writing prompt taken up by 22 of today's most exciting science fiction writers, each of whom contributed stories about the flight's temporally dislocated passengers to an anthology called Seat 14C. Now you can read the book for free online, and I guarantee you'll be engrossed.
You'll find original stories by Hugh Howey, Nancy Kress, Chen Qiufan, Bruce Sterling, Charles Yu, Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Madeline Ashby, Gregory Benford, Daniel Wilson, Eileen Gunn, and more. Each author interpreted the prompt in his or her own way, resulting in a fascinating selection of very different kinds of stories. Twenty-two incredible artists illustrated the stories, and we have a selection of their work in the gallery above. Some of these tales are about weird new technologies, some are about social changes, and others are about the tragedy of being marooned in an unknown future.
Here's the backstory for Seat 14C
This anthology is first project of the Science Fiction Advisory Council XPRIZE (full disclosure: I'm on the council, but I did not work on this project). That means this anthology is also a contest—so you can submit your own story about the flight. The author of the best story gets a $10,000 prize package, including a trip for two to Tokyo.
Here's the full prompt for the stories:
At 4:58 am on June 28, 2017, passengers on board ANA Flight 008 on route from Tokyo to San Francisco are cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet, approximately 1,500 nautical miles off the West Coast of the United States when the following apparently unremarkable incidents occur:
26A, earbuds in, mouth open, leaning against the window, shifts in her sleep;
4C, halfway through the first episode of "Westworld," is slightly confused; and
19B coughs–almost a non-cough, as if simply pretending to cough.
ANA Flight 008 then passes through a temporary wrinkle in the local region of space-time, experienced inside the cabin as a barely perceptible bout of turbulence. Beverage service continues, uninterrupted. The in-flight movie glitches, then resumes. As the Boeing 777 descends through the clouds for its approach into SFO, only a few of the passengers suspect they have arrived at the wrong destination. Which is incorrect, sort of. They have arrived at San Francisco International Airport... on June 28, 2037. The wrinkle has transported them 20 years into the future.
Spend the weekend reading these tales of reluctant (and a few not-so-reluctant) time travelers. And if you get inspired, write your own and enter the contest!
Listing image by Saiful Haque
ANNALEE NEWITZ
Annalee Newitz is the Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. She is the author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and her first novel, Autonomous, comes out in September 2017.
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