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Main Area and Open Discussion => Living Room => Topic started by: app103 on December 14, 2011, 04:32 PM

Title: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: app103 on December 14, 2011, 04:32 PM

The 1973 BBC Radio broadcast of Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy is available on archive.org.

The Foundation Trilogy concists of:
1. Foundations
2. Foundation and Empire
3. Second Foundation

The Foundation Trilogy is an epic science fiction series written over a span of forty-four years by Isaac Asimov. It consists of seven volumes that are closely linked to each other, although they can be read separately. The series is highly acclaimed, winning the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966.

The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept devised by Asimov and his editor John W. Campbell. Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone for anything smaller than a planet or an empire. It works on the principle that the behavior of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy). The larger the mass, the more predictable is the future. Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises. To shorten the period of barbarism, he creates two Foundations, small, secluded havens of art, science, and other advanced knowledge, on opposite ends of the galaxy.

The focus of the trilogy is on the Foundation of the planet Terminus. The people living there are working on an all-encompassing Encyclopedia, and are unaware of Seldon's real intentions (for if they were, the variables would become too uncontrolled). The Encyclopedia serves to preserve knowledge of the physical sciences after the collapse. The Foundation's location is chosen so that it acts as the focal point for the next empire in another thousand years (rather than the projected thirty thousand).

Audio has 8 parts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Trilogy_%28BBC_Radio%29

http://www.archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: zridling on December 14, 2011, 05:06 PM

Wow, nice find!

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 15, 2011, 05:43 AM

Ah, thankyou @app103, how nice. I had not realised this classic had been put up on archive.org
Oh dear, another time bandit... :)
I felt sure I'd be able to put those Sony wireless headphones to good use.

I remember listening to this series on the Beeb in the '70s (I think it was). I read the trilogy later, but I think I preferred the Beeb's rendition. The books are a bit slow. I used to wonder if Asimov wasn't being paid by the word.
I remember now. The Beeb didn't do the 4th book in the trilogy (!) - Foundation's Edge.

Some moronic reviews on that website.

I had a quick search there for the Beeb's Earthsearch, but didn't turn anything up.
I also want the Beeb's HHGTTG now...(sigh). (Though I do have it on cassette tape.)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Deozaan on December 15, 2011, 01:47 PM

I read the first book of Foundation years ago in my early teens.

I thought it was okay but kind of boring and pointless because IIRC the solutions to all the crises were all the same:

Spoiler

Do nothing because it was predicted to happen this way!

I started on the second book but after not getting much Sci-Fi satisfaction from the first, I didn't get very far into it before moving on to other books I was enjoying at the time. e.g. the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on December 15, 2011, 03:30 PM

Read it in my youth. Put it right up there with such classics as Stand on Zanzibar and Babel-17 for masterful world-building. Years later I still think Foundation is very good even though I'm still not much of an Asimov fan. (No knock on his talent - I just don't care for his writing style.)

It was a very frustrating series for me when I first read it however. Because I kept wanting to see some of those cool math formulas they were using.

Hadda keep reminding myself it was a work of fiction... ;D

Addendum:

A couple of other good places for free audio scifi can be found here (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/category/podcast/) and here (http://escapepod.org/).

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MaxEvilTwin on December 20, 2011, 09:31 AM

I also want the Beeb's HHGTTG now...(sigh). (Though I do have it on cassette tape.)
-IainB (December 15, 2011, 05:43 AM)

http://www.sadena.com/BBC-Radio/H2G2_old/

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: JohnFredC on December 20, 2011, 04:03 PM

Put it right up there with such classics as Stand on Zanzibar
-40hz

Wow, a reference to Stand on Zanzibar! That's by John Brunner. What a book.. had a big impact on me. Prescient. Highly recommended.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 20, 2011, 05:42 PM

Ahh, bliss!
Been listening to the Foundation and HHGTTG audios... (thanks again!).

Though I dislike "talking books" in general (they usually feel "too slow" for impatient me), I have sometimes enjoyed listening to books being read out loud by people/actors with good vocal projection and clear English speaking voices (I find some accents annoying/distracting).
And I have often enjoyed listening to a lot of Beeb radio plays since age 7 or so, and the above two Beeb audios are definitely examples of well-produced radio plays.

And yes, I do like SF. "Like" is probably a gross understatement in my case. I used to be addicted to SF (and I probably still am). I have enjoyed reading science fiction since first reading HG Wells' "The Time Machine" at age 8 or so.
The time and your life's context when you read these things can be quite significant in your life.
I can't recall exactly, but I think I was about 10 when I first read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. They were an introduction to the new ideas/possibilities of what life might be like under tyranny - whether, communist, Fascist, or state control - and they made me very thoughtful on the subject. They also helped me to make more sense of the shortwave broadcasts that I would regularly listen to on our HMV valve radio - especially:

the world news broadcast by the Voice of America;
the world news broadcast by the Chinese, in English;
the world news broadcast by the BBC World Service;
the world news broadcast by the USSR, in English.

I had asked my mother why the news slant and the words and terms used to describe the same world events were often so different in each case, and she told me that the word I needed for this was "indoctrination", and explained that each of the broadcasters wanted the listener to see the world events through their particular belief system.

Today, I was hurtled back to those times quite by coincidence when I came across a link to this recent blog post (2011-12-21): The Connection Between George Orwell and Friedrich Hayek (http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/21/george-orwell-and-friedrich-hayek)
I found it a very interesting article, and it helped to put George Orwell's life into a fuller context that made a lot of sense - to me at any rate. I had previously just regarded him as an author, without wondering too much what his beliefs/ideologies were or where he had got his ideas from.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 21, 2011, 09:19 PM

I also want the Beeb's HHGTTG now...(sigh). (Though I do have it on cassette tape.)
-IainB (December 15, 2011, 05:43 AM)

http://www.sadena.com/BBC-Radio/H2G2_old/
-MaxEvilTwin (December 20, 2011, 09:31 AM)

@MaxEvilTwin: I thought I'd already said "thankyou" for this, but I can't see it in the thread.
Thanks again anyway!
I downloaded all those HHGTTG .mp3 files.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 28, 2011, 04:13 PM

I was reading this post: Video: How sci-fi fans put Firefly into the FIRE (http://hotair.com/archives/2011/12/28/video-how-sci-fi-fans-put-firefly-into-the-fire/)
I knew nothing of the Firefly TV series until I read this. Sounds like it could be intelligent SF.
What feedback do DCF SF fans have about the series? I shall get it on DVD from Amazon if you reckon it is worthwhile.

That FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) (http://thefire.org) organisation sounds like a pretty useful assembly of intelligent thinking too.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 04:25 PM

I read the first book of Foundation years ago in my early teens.

I thought it was okay but kind of boring and pointless because IIRC the solutions to all the crises were all the same:

Spoiler
Do nothing because it was predicted to happen this way!

I started on the second book but after not getting much Sci-Fi satisfaction from the first, I didn't get very far into it before moving on to other books I was enjoying at the time. e.g. the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.
-Deozaan (December 15, 2011, 01:47 PM)

I read a lot of Asimov. But I do have to admit by the time I got to the end of Foundation trilogy I was really tired of reading someone exclaim they had figured out where the foundation really was. It was like, yeah, alright already!! Tell me where the damn thing is and be done with it!! Arrrggghhh!!!

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 04:33 PM

Saw an interesting profile of Philip K. Dick on Science channel "prophets of science fiction" series. I remember liking the short story Adjustment Team much better than the Adjustment Bureau film.

For some reason I'm a sucker for time travel stories. H. G. Welles, Dick and some others. However I don't buy the concept that whenever you get in the machine, that's the "present" and you can go to "the past" to change something, then it ripples back. Whenever you are, obviously that's the "present" or you wouldn't be there. I think the rippling would get awfully tiresome awfully fast. :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 28, 2011, 05:54 PM

For some reason I'm a sucker for time travel stories. H. G. Welles, Dick and some others. However I don't buy the concept that whenever you get in the machine, that's the "present" and you can go to "the past" to change something, then it ripples back. Whenever you are, obviously that's the "present" or you wouldn't be there. I think the rippling would get awfully tiresome awfully fast. :)
-MilesAhead (December 28, 2011, 04:33 PM)

Yes, but that - whether the "rippling" occurs, or to what extent it occurs and who it affects - that is a goldmine of ideas and is what enables such great stories to be invented!
I think the wife in The Time Traveller's Wife would have found it "awfully tiresome" too!

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 06:34 PM

For some reason I'm a sucker for time travel stories. H. G. Welles, Dick and some others. However I don't buy the concept that whenever you get in the machine, that's the "present" and you can go to "the past" to change something, then it ripples back. Whenever you are, obviously that's the "present" or you wouldn't be there. I think the rippling would get awfully tiresome awfully fast. :)
-MilesAhead (December 28, 2011, 04:33 PM)
Yes, but that - whether the "rippling" occurs, or to what extent it occurs and who it affects - that is a goldmine of ideas and is what enables such great stories to be invented!
I think the wife in The Time Traveller's Wife would have found it "awfully tiresome" too!
-IainB (December 28, 2011, 05:54 PM)

It's convenient because people can get the idea of a domino effect. Don't knock over the first domino and none of the history happens. But it doesn't make sense because if you can do something differently, then so can everyone else. If you came from the "future" you might have some insight what the "big picture" is. Say you might be able to get away with buying some Cisco Systems before the internet boom. But I don't think moving the brief case closer to Hitler necessarily eliminates WW II. People who want to profit from the war can always find another Hitler.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: AndyM on December 28, 2011, 09:13 PM

... Firefly TV series .... What feedback do DCF SF fans have about the series?
-IainB (December 28, 2011, 04:13 PM)

It's excellent! As is the movie Serenity, which wraps up the series.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 28, 2011, 09:48 PM

But it doesn't make sense because if you can do something differently, then so can everyone else. If you came from the "future" you might have some insight what the "big picture" is. Say you might be able to get away with buying some Cisco Systems before the internet boom. But I don't think moving the brief case closer to Hitler necessarily eliminates WW II. People who want to profit from the war can always find another Hitler.
-MilesAhead (December 28, 2011, 06:34 PM)

I agree. Of course, it doesn't make sense. That's because it's science fiction, I guess. Fiction doesn't make sense when you engage your critical thinking and reason - because it's not fact or provable/repeatable. But it does feel kinda nice to me to disengage the critical/rational thinking faculties and just let one's imagination run loose in the fictional worlds these authors invented for our entertainment. Spark the imagination with "What if...?"
That's what I always loved about SF - the imagination and escapism. But I especially enjoyed the stories that actually sometimes switched your critical/rational thinking faculties back on by obliging you to think about the worlds they invented - a good example would probably be Orwell's 1984. It was think and learn, in my case, when I read that as a boy.

Mind you, despite writing fiction, some SF writers seem almost to have been able to predict the future in their stories - or at any rate, the technology of the future - to some extent. For example, I think it was the writer Arthur C. Clarke who suggested mobile phones in one of his stories. Who knows but that "Rendevous with RAMA" might even become another prediction, one day?
Probably far less fantastic than those fictions dreamed up by the IPCC and the East Anglia CRU science fiction writers, at any rate. ;)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on December 28, 2011, 10:04 PM

Mind you, despite writing fiction, some SF writers seem almost to have been able to predict the future in their stories - or at any rate, the technology of the future - to some extent.
-IainB (December 28, 2011, 09:48 PM)

Something that's really interesting (to me any way) is how every sci-fi author and futurist completely missed the single thing that most completely transformed our world in less than 30 years - the microprocessor.

I think it was the writer Arthur C. Clarke who suggested mobile phones in one of his stories.

Did you know that screen actress Hedy Lamarr co-holds a patent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency-hopping_spread-spectrum_invention) issued in 1942 for a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum invention that is part of the basis for wi-fi and cordless phones?

Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of musical instruments, including his music for Ballet Mécanique, originally written for Fernand Léger's 1924 abstract film. This score involved multiple player pianos playing simultaneously.

Lamarr took her idea to Antheil and together, Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, US Patent 2,292,387

was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. Although a presentation of the technique was soon made to the U.S. Navy, it met with opposition and was not adopted.[5]

The idea was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.
.
.
.
Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Pretty easy on the eyes too.

Not what most people think of when they think: 'geek' is she? ;)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on December 28, 2011, 10:24 PM

... Firefly TV series .... What feedback do DCF SF fans have about the series?
-IainB (December 28, 2011, 04:13 PM)

It's excellent! As is the movie Serenity, which wraps up the series.
-AndyM (December 28, 2011, 09:13 PM)

+1! An excellent series and a fun movie. Maybe a little light on hard science (like Outland) but it doesn't detract from the exploration of humanity's life in a distant solar system. Recommended.

Another good sci-fi/suspense movie I've recommeded before is an independent low-budget series called Pioneer One which is available for free viewing and download on the web. Check it out here (http://pioneerone.tv).

Quick plot summary - Caution: contains a spoiler!

Forget about rumors of Nazis on the moon. Did Russia succeed in launching a clandestine Mars mission back in the 70s? One which allowed them to establish a secret manned colony there?

YouTube has the first episode up if Vimeo or the torrents are a problem for you:

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: app103 on December 28, 2011, 11:12 PM

... Firefly TV series .... What feedback do DCF SF fans have about the series?
-IainB (December 28, 2011, 04:13 PM)

It's excellent! As is the movie Serenity, which wraps up the series.
-AndyM (December 28, 2011, 09:13 PM)

Oh, how I love me a good Space Western. :D

Of course how we supposedly got from here to that still confuses me. Strange mix of progress and regression, in which the regression is never fully explained to my satisfaction. I can only reconcile it if I think of it as an alternate time-line in which progress followed a different more steam punk path instead of what it actually did in reality. Or I just try not to think about it too much.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 29, 2011, 12:37 AM

2AndyM and @40hz: re Firefly and Serenity.
Thanks for the recommendations. I have just returned from a walk, which happened to take me via my local video rental store, and they had Serenity and two dual disk sets of Firefly - so I took them out for a week, all for the princely sum of $3.00.
@app103 seems to reckon it is a space western. Sounds like good fun - I always enjoy westerns too! The ones with Eastwood in are my favourites. Coincidentally, I was watching Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) with my daughter Lily, the other night. A great movie. She loved it.

Did you know that screen actress Hedy Lamarr co-holds a patent issued in 1942 for a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum invention that is part of the basis for wi-fi and cordless phones

Yes, I happen to recall something about that. (Nice software, baby!).

Now I see that I am going to have to watch Pioneer One as well. New to me. Thanks for the link. Oh dear. Happy SF overdose time, coming up!

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM

I agree. Of course, it doesn't make sense. That's because it's science fiction,

I don't think the lack of sense is due to fiction but the obsession in these stories with the start date the person initially gets in the time travel device as "the present." In other words, in The Time Machine if it's January 1 1900 when the traveler first embarks, then that's "the present" and he can go forward, backward but comes back, maybe a few days after he left. Maybe the number of nights slept away is added to the departure time so he doesn't return before he left. Whatever. My point is, whenever you are, it's the present. If you go 2000 years into the "future" or the "past" you have no more control of events than anyone else. You may have some foresight since you see how the scam usually plays out. But flipping a coin in the fountain doesn't ripple back. That's absurd. The present is always now. It's just relative to when you are. But enough of my harangue. :)

Speaking of sci/fi writers. I just watched another flick about Philip K. Dick. He was giving this speech in France at some Sci/Fi convention in the early 70's. The woman who accompanied him is giving an interview about it in the documentary. She talks about how she wanted to disappear because he was rambling this crazy stuff. But here's the funny part. He was talking about reality just being a computer program and if you get deja vu, it was because somebody changed a variable in the simulation. Everyone is wincing in discomfort at these ravings. But I'm thinking, he thought of The Matrix 20 years before the Wachowski Brothers. Maybe they even saw the speech and got the idea from him? :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: app103 on December 29, 2011, 02:17 AM

Speaking of sci/fi writers. I just watched another flick about Philip K. Dick. He was giving this speech in France at some Sci/Fi convention in the early 70's. The woman who accompanied him is giving an interview about it in the documentary. She talks about how she wanted to disappear because he was rambling this crazy stuff. But here's the funny part. He was talking about reality just being a computer program and if you get deja vu, it was because somebody changed a variable in the simulation. Everyone is wincing in discomfort at these ravings. But I'm thinking, he thought of The Matrix 20 years before the Wachowski Brothers. Maybe they even saw the speech and got the idea from him? :)
-MilesAhead (December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM)

It's just another angle on the "dollhouse god" concept, where reality is manipulated by some outside force or entity, as if it were nothing more than a child's toy to be played with.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on December 29, 2011, 03:18 AM

Maybe the number of nights slept away is added to the departure time so he doesn't return before he left. Whatever. My point is, whenever you are, it's the present. If you go 2000 years into the "future" or the "past" you have no more control of events than anyone else
-MilesAhead (December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM)

Absolutely. This kind of relativistic phenomenon is a characteristic of miracles.

A Muslim cleric, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi were discussing their individual experiences of miracles.

The Muslim cleric said, "Once I was riding a camel alone, in the middle of the Sahara desert, and suddenly a fierce sandstorm appeared from nowhere. I truly thought that my end had come as I lay next to my camel while we were being buried deeper and deeper under the sand, but I did not lose my faith in the almighty Allah, and I prayed and prayed and recited passages from the Koran. Suddenly, a miracle occurred, and it seemed as though for a hundred metres all around me, the storm had stopped, but I could see it still raging beyond that distance."

The Roman Catholic priest spoke up next, "My experience was very similar. One day when I was walking down a street in Belfast in Northern Ireland, during the time of the Troubles, I was walking past this pub when people ran out screaming 'It's a bomb!'. Well, I just stood still, put my hands together, and prayed, thinking to protect all the poor people who might get hurt if it was indeed a bomb. Sure enough, just then, a bomb went off inside the pub, and blew out the wall next to where I was standing, throwing bricks, nails and bits of glass in all directions. When the dust settled, I was still standing unharmed, in what seemed to be circle of safety all around me in a radius of about a hundred feet. Inside that circle, no-one had been harmed."

The Jewish rabbi said, "I too have had an experience similar to this. It was one Sabbath (a Saturday) when I was walking down the street to my synagogue in London. I like to walk along past the Mercedes showroom, to look at the cars. I would have loved to buy a new 350SL - it's my favourite car - but I could never afford it unless they sold it for half the price! As I approached the showroom, I saw a sign in the window that said 'Today only! One only! Special offer! Brand new 350SL demonstration model at half price!' I nearly cried! What could I do? It was a Saturday, and Jews are not allowed to handle money or engage in commercial transactions on the Sabbath, so I could not buy it even though I could have afforded it. So I put my hands together and prayed and prayed. Suddenly, in answer to my prayers, a miracle occurred - for 500 feet all around me, it was a Tuesday!"

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on December 29, 2011, 04:37 AM

I have also been listening to the Foundation series -- whiled away a long car journey with it, going to visit my son a couple of days ago -- and apart from some nasty contrasts between relatively quiet dialogue and some surprisingly loud electronic squeaks and whistles courtesy of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, found it an absolute delight.

My first sf was Asimov: my dad lent me his copy of "I Robot" in, oh, probably about 1970, and I became a sf enthusiast almost instantly. (I was 8 or 9, just the age when things get lodged the deepest.) The Foundation trilogy followed soon afterwards and, probably because I lacked the critical facilities that made older commentators criticise the lack of character depth and the various other things that Asimov's been accused of, over the years, I absolutely loved it. (It's also responsible for one of the aphorisms that I still think should be a motto for every leader everywhere: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.")

I must also declare here that I was a huge fan of the Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, loose ends and all, and can be inspired to quote chunks of it at people even now with only the tiniest incentive. (The radio series that started it all was still the definitive version, for me. The one that has the original name of the poet who was worse than the Vogons -- later changed, presumably because there was a real poet of that name, although I don't think I ever knew for sure.)

I can't listen to The Eagles' "Journey of the Sorcerer" without expecting to hear Peter Jones (The voice of the Book) to cut in at any moment...

So thanks for the pointers, App103 and MaxEvilTwin: you have made an old fart very happy. ;D

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on December 29, 2011, 05:02 AM

The reminiscences I've just had has brought back another memory. This is probably ultra-obscure, but it puzzled me for ages and I find myself wondering if anyone knows anything...

My dad had a book of sf short stories. I don't remember anything much about it now, but it might have been a Readers' Digest book.

One of the pieces in it claimed to be an extract from one of Keith Laumer's Imperium books, written in the early 1960s. (Keith Laumer might be best known for a series of books featuring that most pragmatic of diplomats, Retief. I urge anyone unfamiliar to seek them out -- pure, unbridled entertainment.) The extract was a description of a sequence made by moving sideways through a series of parallel universes that started out with a gardener hoeing around a plant, gradually changed into some sort of dreadful battle between a warrior and a huge and fearsome sentient vegetable and then gradually changed back into a gardener and some sort of sprout with some sort of minor deviation from the original scene -- maybe the gardener now had horns or tentacles or something, I don't really remember.

Anyway, while the book I originally read that piece in has long disappeared, I spent ages trying to find the book in which that sequence occurred. My memory said it was "Worlds Of The Imperium" but I tracked down a copy (with the aid of a library), read it and failed to find it.

So I've always wondered if my memory was faulty. Maybe it wasn't KL. Maybe it was, but not that book. Maybe KL wrote it specifically for inclusion in that collection but it was just based in the universe(s) of the Imperium rather than actually being an extract from the book.

I think the piece might have been called "Sideways [or maybe sidewise] In Time"

Anyone recognise any aspect of the above?

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: daddydave on December 29, 2011, 05:56 AM

This thread inspired me to think of a short story I have fond memories of that I read in high school: The Ifth of Oofth (http://johnesimpson.com/pdf/Ifth_of_oofth-waltertevis.pdf) (pdf link). It seems kind of silly now, and there is not much hard science there (not that I would care these days), but I LOVE the sense of impending doom at the end.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: app103 on December 29, 2011, 11:29 AM

This Foundations find has renewed my interest in something from my childhood, which archive.org also has.

When I was a child, I remember sitting with my grandmother listening to CBS's Radio Mystery Theater (http://www.archive.org/details/cbs_radio_mystery_theater).

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:09 PM

Speaking of sci/fi writers. I just watched another flick about Philip K. Dick. He was giving this speech in France at some Sci/Fi convention in the early 70's. The woman who accompanied him is giving an interview about it in the documentary. She talks about how she wanted to disappear because he was rambling this crazy stuff. But here's the funny part. He was talking about reality just being a computer program and if you get deja vu, it was because somebody changed a variable in the simulation. Everyone is wincing in discomfort at these ravings. But I'm thinking, he thought of The Matrix 20 years before the Wachowski Brothers. Maybe they even saw the speech and got the idea from him? :)
-MilesAhead (December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM)

It's just another angle on the "dollhouse god" concept, where reality is manipulated by some outside force or entity, as if it were nothing more than a child's toy to be played with.
-app103 (December 29, 2011, 02:17 AM)

Kind of like Glass Bead Game or Hercules and his antagonists being assisted and interfered with by the gods I suppose. But the computer simulation bit was pretty specific. Sure made me think of Matrix. :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:12 PM

An author I enjoyed that wasn't a big name was A. E. van Vogt. I was still in high school when I read The War Against the Rull and Slan. Good action stories. Maybe not that deep. But fun reading.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n:283155,p_27:A.%20E.%20Van%20Vogt&field-author=A.%20E.%20Van%20Vogt&page=1&tag=duckduckgo-d-20

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on December 30, 2011, 05:22 PM

An author I enjoyed that wasn't a big name was A. E. van Vogt.
-MilesAhead (December 30, 2011, 05:12 PM)

I remember picking up one of his books that had, under his name, "The Slan Man." Sure suggested he was at least a reasonably big name :)

I went through a phase where I'd have read pretty much anything by anyone John Campbell was prepared to put in Analog. Pretty sure Van Vogt fell in that category...

I was also a big fan of Harlan Ellison. Some great titles: things like "The Beast Who Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World" and "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream." (He wrote one of the best Star Treks ever, too.)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:52 PM

The best I read with a telepathic lead character was the Psion trilogy by Joan D. Vinge. That Cat character was the quintessential anti-hero. James Dean with a laser beam. :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on December 30, 2011, 06:34 PM

I was also a big fan of Harlan Ellison. Some great titles: things like "The Beast Who Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World" and "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream." (He wrote one of the best Star Treks ever, too.)
-oblivion (December 30, 2011, 05:22 PM)

Me too. A brilliant and infuriating author if ever there was one.

IMHO, his single most creative piece of work was the parable: "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Repent,_Harlequin!%22_Said_the_Ticktockman)

The story behind this dual Nebula and Hugo Award winner is almost as interesting as the story itself.

Also +1 on the StarTrek episode entitled The City on the Edge of Forever. It was arguably the finest moment in that show's long history, even though fans of The Trouble With Tribbles, Menagerie, The Balance of Terror, and Mirror, Mirror will disagree on that point.

I was a fan of his other little known 1973 TV series The Starlost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost). It's now available on DVD and worth a watch (even though Harlan Ellison disowned it in typical Harlan Ellison fashion before it even got released) if you can tolerate the terrible low-budget look and 70s-video quality it was shot in.

This was one of the earliest and more interesting treatments of the "Ark" spaceship concept. The movie Pandorum and several others can trace some of their roots back to this show.
:Thmbsup:

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on December 31, 2011, 05:09 AM

I was a fan of his other little known 1973 TV series The Starlost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlosthttp://).
-40hz (December 30, 2011, 06:34 PM)

Just a quickie, since I'm about to read the entry: the link should be The Starlost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on December 31, 2011, 05:19 AM

...and I have to say that the Wikipedia entry for The Starlost doesn't treat it particularly kindly -- although I can see the conceptual appeal!

Oh, and completely agreed on "...Ticktockman."

Mostly, Ellison infuriated me for writing less than I felt he should, and flirting with Hollywood and TV too much. Despite the latter, he still seems to slip under many people's radar...

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on December 31, 2011, 07:14 AM

I was a fan of his other little known 1973 TV series The Starlost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlosthttp://).
-40hz (December 30, 2011, 06:34 PM)

Just a quickie, since I'm about to read the entry: the link should be The Starlost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost)
-oblivion (December 31, 2011, 05:09 AM)

Thanks! Fixed now. :)

Mostly, Ellison infuriated me for writing less than I felt he should, and flirting with Hollywood and TV too much. Despite the latter, he still seems to slip under many people's radar...

It is a shame. But that's what happens when hardly anybody (or maybe nobody?) can work with you - even if you are a self-confessed genius. But in all fairness, Ellison is a very good sci-fi writer. Probably one of the best. So he gets away with it despite his shabby treatment of colleague and fan alike.

He lost fans (and much respect within the writer's community) over the nonsense surrounding The Last Dangerous Visions anthology's protracted release schedule. I know one author who got caught up with that and attempted to get things resolved with Ellison on his own. Needless to say it went nowhere other than him getting an unbelievably self-righteous and nasty response from Ellison that could be completely summarized using only two very short English words. The author is still pissed about it to this very day.

And 'the word' is out on him in TV-land and Hollywood. So he's not seeing his stuff making it onto screens anywhere near as much as Phillip K. Dick or some others have. (That may not be a bad thing however, when you consider what Hollywood & TV does to most sci-fi novels they adapt.)

Anyhoo...Harlan is unique and getting up there. I recall reading somewhere he turned 77 (?) this year. We'll all miss him when he's gone - despite the fact that most people who have met Harlan Ellison seem to want to shoot him shortly afterwards.
;D

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on January 05, 2012, 09:20 PM

Here's a list of my SF library (text) on disk:

AC Clarke - Reach for Tomorrow.txt
David Gerrold + Larry Niven - Flying Sorcerers.zip
Gary W Shockley - The Disambiguation of Captain Shroud.zip
Harry Harrison - Stainless Steel Rat 5 (TheSSR for President).zip
HHGTTG - complete.zip (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rIby-RfgLNOWFkNmIwNmQtNjU3MS00NjExLTg1OGEtNjg0ZTc2ZGE1MTFk)
Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background.zip
Iain Banks - Canal Dreams.zip
Iain Banks - Complicity.zip
Iain Banks - Consider Phlebas.zip
Iain Banks - Look To Windward.zip
Iain Banks - The player of games.zip
Iain Banks - The State of the Art.zip
Isaac Asimov - Two cm Demon.zip
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan (1).zip
Larry Niven - A Hole In Space (SSCol).zip
Larry Niven - Crashlander (1994).zip
Larry Niven - Heorot 1 - Legacy Of Heorot.zip
Larry Niven - Inferno (1976).zip
Larry Niven - The Return of William Proxmire.zip
Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers.zip
Larry Niven - Unfinished Story 1 and 2 v1.0.zip
Philip K Dick - A Maze Of Death - [txt].zip
Philip K Dick - A Scanner Darkly (1977).zip
Philip K Dick - Complete Stories 4 (SSCol).zip
Philip K Dick - Counter Clock World.zip
Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (txt).zip
Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.zip
Philip K Dick - Dr Bloodmoney (1965).zip
Philip K Dick - Flow My Tears The Policeman Said (1974).zip
Philip K Dick - Galactic Pot Healer.zip
Philip K Dick - How to Build a Universe.zip
Philip K Dick - Martian Time Slip.zip
Philip K Dick - Now Wait For Last Year.zip
Philip K Dick - Rautavaara's Case.zip
Philip K Dick - Second Variety (ebook).zip
Philip K Dick - Solar Lottery.zip
Philip K Dick - The 3 Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch.zip
Philip K Dick - The Book of Philip K Dick.zip
Philip K Dick - The Man In The High Castle.zip
Philip K Dick - The Penultimate Truth.zip
Philip K Dick - The Simulacra v1.0 (txt).zip
Philip K Dick - The Unteleported Man.zip
Philip K Dick - The World Jones Made.zip
Philip K Dick - The Zap Gun.zip
Philip K Dick - Ubik (1969).zip
Philip K Dick - VALIS.zip
Philip K Dick - Valisystem - A Work In Progress (1974).zip
Philip K Dick - We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.zip
Philip Kindred Dicktionary of PK Dick terminology.zip
Robert Heinlein -Tunnel In the Sky.zip

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on January 06, 2012, 03:03 AM

Here's a list of my SF library (text) on disk

Do you have a free source for the PKD ones by any chance? I found one site where I didn't need a special reader but I could only snag 11 titles.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on January 06, 2012, 06:49 AM

Well, I was variously given or obtained all those books from free sites in around 2005.
The first one in the list (a .TXT format file called "Reach for Tomorrow") was from the The Library of Congress Online Catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=1&DB=local&CMD=010a+98096307&CNT=10+records+per+page)
Not sure, but I think some of the others - e.g., the PK Dick ones - may have been from there too. They are variously in .RTF, .DOC., .PDF format.
I think quite a few also came from universities - e.g., Stanford U re PKD (http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~kma/pkdict.html)

Quite a few of the texts contain URLs to their sources.

I should be able to send you links to all those titles if you want to PM me for that info separately.
I provided a link to the HHTTG .zip file because that had been referred to in the discussion thread. The text files in that .ZIP file are .TEX format. I think it came from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Home Page (http://asylum.cid.com/hhgttg/hhgttg.html)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 24, 2012, 10:12 AM

Oblivion: I rememer reading the story way back when. But, when I checked out that title on Google, I only found this story by Murray Leinster on Wikipedia. Googling to avoid that story got me nothing either.

Sidewise in Time - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewise_in_Time)

Wash. Attorney: ‘I have physically traveled in time’
(http://www.infowars.com/wash-attorney-i-have-physically-traveled-in-time/)

Below is an excerpt from here (http://forum.walterfootball.com/showthread.php?20667-Time-Travel-Novikov-self-consistency-principle):

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

In other words, you can't change the past because you have already changed it.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 24, 2012, 10:21 AM

The 1973 BBC Radio broadcast of Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy is available on archive.org.

The Foundation Trilogy concists of:
1. Foundations
2. Foundation and Empire
3. Second Foundation

The Foundation Trilogy is an epic science fiction series written over a span of forty-four years by Isaac Asimov. It consists of seven volumes that are closely linked to each other, although they can be read separately. The series is highly acclaimed, winning the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966.

The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept devised by Asimov and his editor John W. Campbell. Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone for anything smaller than a planet or an empire. It works on the principle that the behavior of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy). The larger the mass, the more predictable is the future. Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises. To shorten the period of barbarism, he creates two Foundations, small, secluded havens of art, science, and other advanced knowledge, on opposite ends of the galaxy.

The focus of the trilogy is on the Foundation of the planet Terminus. The people living there are working on an all-encompassing Encyclopedia, and are unaware of Seldon's real intentions (for if they were, the variables would become too uncontrolled). The Encyclopedia serves to preserve knowledge of the physical sciences after the collapse. The Foundation's location is chosen so that it acts as the focal point for the next empire in another thousand years (rather than the projected thirty thousand).

Audio has 8 parts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Trilogy_%28BBC_Radio%29

http://www.archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy
-app103 (December 14, 2011, 04:32 PM)

I'm glad I checked for this. I was going to post about this

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 24, 2012, 01:14 PM

This Youtube video may belong in silly humor, but because it's a time travel video i'll put it here.

Quantum Lapse - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGAVxeVOvfI)

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 25, 2012, 09:25 AM

Here's a list of my SF library (text) on disk:
AC Clarke - Reach for Tomorrow.txt
David Gerrold + Larry Niven - Flying Sorcerers.zip
Gary W Shockley - The Disambiguation of Captain Shroud.zip
Harry Harrison - Stainless Steel Rat 5 (TheSSR for President).zip
HHGTTG - complete.zip (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rIby-RfgLNOWFkNmIwNmQtNjU3MS00NjExLTg1OGEtNjg0ZTc2ZGE1MTFk)
Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background.zip
Iain Banks - Canal Dreams.zip
Iain Banks - Complicity.zip
Iain Banks - Consider Phlebas.zip
Iain Banks - Look To Windward.zip
Iain Banks - The player of games.zip
Iain Banks - The State of the Art.zip
Isaac Asimov - Two cm Demon.zip
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan (1).zip
Larry Niven - A Hole In Space (SSCol).zip
Larry Niven - Crashlander (1994).zip
Larry Niven - Heorot 1 - Legacy Of Heorot.zip
Larry Niven - Inferno (1976).zip

-IainB (January 05, 2012, 09:20 PM)

IainB: I found 3 of these(and probably many more) at a large Russian site. Universities are not the only place you can get such things, but the site doen't seem to care about the legality of their sources. Do you want to know the address of the site(and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings) or do you have all that you want?

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on October 25, 2012, 07:14 PM

...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?
-Arizona Hot (October 25, 2012, 09:25 AM)

Yes please - the URL would do fine. Ta.
I am always interested in looking at websites offering books to download.If it looks like a dodgy site, then I won't usually access it beyond the initial exploration.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: app103 on October 27, 2012, 01:58 AM

...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?
-Arizona Hot (October 25, 2012, 09:25 AM)
Yes please - the URL would do fine. Ta.
I am always interested in looking at websites offering books to download.If it looks like a dodgy site, then I won't usually access it beyond the initial exploration.
-IainB (October 25, 2012, 07:14 PM)

Might not be wise to post that link publicly on the forum, lest we are perceived to endorse piracy.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on October 27, 2012, 05:32 AM

In case anyone is interested, I sent my browser off to the site that @Arizona Hot provided, but it was a decidedly "dodgy" site in Russia - Malwarebytes popped up and said it had:

Successfully blocked access to a potentially malicious website xxx
Type outgoing
Port 61804, Process firefox.exe

From experience of using it to clean nasty things off other peoples' laptops, I place some faith in MWB - it's very good. So I'll not be visiting that site.
WHOIS searches indicated that the server was in Romania, and the site is registered in the Russian Federation.

The experience is probably yet another recommendation for MWB. :Thmbsup:

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 27, 2012, 11:26 AM

I have Malwarebytes installed, but as a manual secondary anti-virus scanner. Does it automatically update when it is the primary anti-virus. My primary updates automatically, 5 or 10 times a day (often when I start surfing!) I update Malwarebytes manually about once a week.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on October 27, 2012, 05:05 PM

I only use MBAM Free for scanning. But I find from checking manually that often it updates the database at least a couple of times a day. I always check before doing a scan.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Tinman57 on October 27, 2012, 08:43 PM

...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?
-Arizona Hot (October 25, 2012, 09:25 AM)
Yes please - the URL would do fine. Ta.
I am always interested in looking at websites offering books to download.If it looks like a dodgy site, then I won't usually access it beyond the initial exploration.
-IainB (October 25, 2012, 07:14 PM)

Project Gutenberg offers over 40,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

We carry high quality ebooks: All our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers.

No fee or registration is required, but if you find Project Gutenberg useful, we kindly ask you to donate a small amount so we can buy and digitize more books. Other ways to help include digitizing more books, recording audio books, or reporting errors.

Over 100,000 free ebooks are available through our Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on October 28, 2012, 08:12 AM

I must be in the early stages of my dotage. I've been gradually reading/re-reading all the original Tom Swift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift) adventure stories and enjoying them quite a bit. Once they reach what's been dubbed the "second series" featuring Tom Swift Jr. (1954-1971) they escape (mostly) from their old "boy's adventure story" roots and actually become some decent examples of early sci-fi. They were surprisingly original for the era they came out in even if they weren't Jules Verne novels by any stretch. Innocent, patriotic, occasionally naive, and "strictly boys club" though they were, I find them a nice bit of no-brain fun reading.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

From a cultural perspective, these stories were significant in that it made it cool to be a "brain" and a "geek." I think they served as inspiration and a "green light" for a lot of the young readers (like me) who decided they really wanted to do something with science or technology when they grew up. Half of the early personal computer crowd, and a good number of people involved in the manned US space program (back when the US still had one :sick:) acknowledge being inspired at an early age by these little tales. Not a bad thing when you think about the real technology and innovations many of them were responsible for bringing into this world. Be interesting to see if the generation growing up on Harry Potter and "young fantasy" novels will be inspired to do the same. (If not I guess they can always become wizards. Or maybe hook up with a really cool werewolf, or hottie vampire, and go have adventures battling flesh-eating zombies or something...)

Find summaries and Gutenberg links for the first series here (http://tomswift.bobfinnan.com/ts1.htm).

The second series is still under copyright. But very inexpensive used copies can often be found at 2nd-hand bookshops, Goodwill outlets, book faires, or online. I recently picked up a set of six at a local library sale for $4.

Story list for the second series (33 titles) behind the spoiler below.

Story list 2nd series

Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (1954)
   Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (1954)
   Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship (1954)
   Tom Swift and His Giant Robot (1954)
   Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (1954)
   Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space (1955)
   Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (1956)
   Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire (1956)
   Tom Swift on the Phantom Satellite (1956)
   Tom Swift and Ultrasonic Cycloplane (1957)
   Tom Swift and His Deep Sea Hydrodome (1958)
   Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon (1958)
   Tom Swift and Space Solartron (1958)
   Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope (1959)
   Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector (1960)
   Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (1960)
   Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X (1961)
   Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung (1961)
   Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar (1962)
   Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober (1962)
   Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (1963)
   Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway (1963)
   Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker (1964)
   Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector (1964)
   Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere (1965)
   Tom Swift and His Sonic Boom Trap (1965)
   Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron (1966)
   Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet (1966)
   Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid (1967)
   Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (1968)
   Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule (1969)
   Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express (1970)
   Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts (1971)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: rjbull on October 28, 2012, 12:05 PM

I only use MBAM Free for scanning. But I find from checking manually that often it updates the database at least a couple of times a day.
-MilesAhead (October 27, 2012, 05:05 PM)

Do you have to run it as administrator before it will update? I don't, and the update button is always greyed out.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 29, 2012, 09:39 AM

I, myself, don't know. I upgraded mine to Pro even though I don't use it as my primary anti-virus. I've always been able to update, but that may be because I have always used an administrator-type account. I avoid drive-by viri by surfing sandboxed. That also enables me to easilly ditch scripts that won't let me leave a site. You've had experience with those I presume.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on October 29, 2012, 12:22 PM

I only use MBAM Free for scanning. But I find from checking manually that often it updates the database at least a couple of times a day.
-MilesAhead (October 27, 2012, 05:05 PM)
Do you have to run it as administrator before it will update? I don't, and the update button is always greyed out.
-rjbull (October 28, 2012, 12:05 PM)

My account is in Administrator group and I have UAC disabled. MBAM just comes up normally. The only thing not enabled is the real-time protection.

edit: btw, shouldn't we split this off to a security discussion thread? No SciFi spoken here lately. :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 29, 2012, 09:06 PM

MilesAhead: Go ahead. It's your choice, I don't know how to do that.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: MilesAhead on October 29, 2012, 10:58 PM

Cool. I'll just stick the link here for the jump:

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=32700.msg304911#msg304911

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on October 30, 2012, 07:33 AM

Cool. I'll just stick the link here for the jump:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=32700.msg304911#msg304911
-MilesAhead (October 29, 2012, 10:58 PM)

Prompted by the discussion (above) that led to @MilesAhead making the post - General av and anti-malware discussion (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=32700.0), I got off my backside and posted: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO - Mini-Review (as at 2012-10-30). (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=32702.msg304927#msg304927) - which I had been meaning to do for some time now.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: rjbull on October 30, 2012, 05:03 PM

shouldn't we split this off to a security discussion thread? No SciFi spoken here lately.
-MilesAhead (October 29, 2012, 12:22 PM)

You're right, and now done, I see :) Thanks to IainB for the review.

If it's any help, I just finished reading Monster Blood Tattoo 3: Factotum by D.M. Cornish (http://www.dmcornish.com/). It's great - a fantasy with strong steampunk SF and New Weird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Weird) (Wikipedia) overtones. Ships driven by engines of cultured muscle tissue, people getting organs implanted into them to dish out electric shocks, or going into battle throwing short-range chemical weapons at each other. And, the library service tells me that Mark Lawrence (http://www.princeofthorns.com/)'s King of Thorns is on its way; the first one, Prince of Thorns, makes you think it's going to be sword-and-sorcery. It isn't. It's definitely SF, very dark, with a very young and startlingly amoral viewpoint character. Also on its way, Pale by Chris Wooding (http://www.chriswooding.com/), so new it's not yet mentioned on his Web site. From the blurb, it looks more like horror/supernatural than SF, though.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Yes - "Fallen Angels"
Post by: IainB on March 25, 2013, 08:09 PM

Illegal to be an SF fan?

After downloading a Kindle version from Baen Books (https://www.baenebooks.com/) (price US$6.99), I have been enjoying reading a new (to me) book: Fallen Angels by Messrs. Larry Niven; Jerry Pournelle; Michael Flynn.
First published in 1992 and presumably written around 1990/1, the story is surprisingly and accurately prescient. It tells of a future time on Earth when a new Ice Age has occurred, and humankind lives in two environments: on the Earth, in a relatively Luddite and anti-science fashion; and in space, reliant on science and technology.
In space, there has been a collaborative and developmental peace. However, there has been war on the Earth and hostilities are still being maintained, and society is governed by Fascist states, and it is even illegal to read science fiction or to admit to being a fan of SF.

Here's an excerpt describing this (emphasis is the authors'):

'Tis a Proud and Lonely Thing to Be a Fan, they used to say, laughing. It had become a very lonely thing. The Establishment had always been hard on science fiction. The government-funded Arts Councils would pass out tax money to write obscure poetry for "little" magazines, but not to write speculative fiction. "Sci-fi isn't literature." That wasn't censorship.

Perversely, people went on buying science fiction without grants. Writers even got rich without government funding. They couldn't kill us that way!

Then the Luddites and the Greens had come to power. She had watched science fiction books slowly disappear from the library shelves, beginning with the children's departments. (That wasn't censorship either. Libraries couldn't buy every book, now could they? So they bought "realistic" children's books funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, books about death and divorce, and really important things like being overweight or fitting in with the right school crowd.)

Then came paper shortages, and paper allocations. The science fiction sections in the chain stores grew smaller. ("You can't expect us to stock books that aren't selling." And they can't sell if you don't stock them.)

Fantasy wasn't hurt so bad. Fantasy was about wizards and elves, and being kind to the Earth, and harmony with nature, all things the Greens loved. But science fiction was about science.

Science fiction wasn't exactly outlawed. There was still Freedom of Speech; still a Bill of Rights, even if it wasn't taught much in the schools-—even if most kids graduated unable to read well enough to understand it. But a person could get into a lot of unofficial trouble for reading SF or for associating with known fen. She could lose her job, say. Not through government persecution-—of course not-—but because of "reduction in work force" or "poor job performance" or "uncooperative attitude" or "politically incorrect" or a hundred other phrases. And if the neighbors shunned her, and tradesmen wouldn't deal with her, and stores wouldn't give her credit, who could blame them? Science fiction involved science; and science was a conspiracy to pollute the environment, "to bring back technology."

Damn right! she thought savagely. We do conspire to bring back technology. Some of us are crazy enough to think that there are alternatives to freezing in the dark. And some of us are even crazy enough to try to rescue marooned spacemen before they freeze, or disappear into protective custody.

Which could be dangerous. The government might declare you mentally ill, and help you.

She shuddered at that thought. She pushed and rolled Bob aside. She sat up and pulled the comforter up tight around herself. "Do you know what it was that attracted me to science fiction?"

He raised himself on one elbow, blinked at her change of subject, and looked quickly around the room, as if suspecting bugs. "No, what?"

"Not Fandom. I was reading the true quill long before I knew about Fandom and cons and such. No, it was the feeling of hope." "Hope?" "Even in the most depressing dystopia, there's still the notion that the future is something we build. It doesn't just happen. You can't predict the future, but you can invent it. Build it. That is a hopeful idea, even when the building collapses."

Bob was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Nobody's building the future anymore, 'We live in an Age of Limited Choices.' " He quoted the government line without cracking a smile. "Hell, you don't take choices off a list. You make choices and add them to the list. Speaking of which have you made your choice?"
_______________________________
Larry Niven; Jerry Pournelle; Michael Flynn (1992-12-07T05:00:00+00:00). Fallen Angels (Kindle Locations 285-305). Baen Publishing Enterprises. Kindle Edition.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Edvard on March 25, 2013, 09:57 PM

Mmmmm.... Sci-fi...

I remember some of my favorite sci-fi stories were to be found in old copies of Amazing, Galaxy, and Analog. The pulp era was a fertile field for the innovative, the plagiaristic, and the canonical alike. I found that old spirit briefly revived in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_of_the_Future) series, where young unpublished writers could send in stories for a chance at publication and future fame and notoriety. Lots of great ideas in those first few, every one could have been a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode and it would have gelled beautifully.

For some smart new science fiction podcast style, check Escape Pod:

Escape Pod is the premier science fiction podcast magazine. Every week we bring you short stories from some of today’s best science fiction stories, in convenient audio format for your computer or MP3 player.

We pay our authors, but we will always be 100% free. We are supported through listener donations and sponsorship, so if you like what you hear, please consider donating via our PayPal button!

Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org/)
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ] (http://escapepod.org/)

from Admit-one (http://www.admit-one.net)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on March 27, 2013, 12:04 PM

In regards to Oblivion interest in "I think the piece might have been called "Sideways [or maybe sidewise] In Time" ", I looked for such a story because I remember such a story. Unfortuantely, I didn't find anything like that. I did find this comic of the same name.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine Number 1265 Sideways in Time! (http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2012/11/number-1265-sideways-in-time.html)

Title: Jack Vance has died.
Post by: IainB on June 02, 2013, 10:02 PM

I just read that one of my favourite authors has died. Jack Vance (the science fiction writer, creator of the real Baron Bodissey, and his The Dying Earth Series being a major influence on Dungeons & Dragons) has died in California at the age of 96.
He apparently published his first story in 1945 and his last novel in 2008, and his autobiography in 2009.
That's a span of writing covering sixty-four years.
A quick google shows that there are a lot of tributes to him across the blogosphere from his fans.
This is another. R.I.P. JV. :Thmbsup:

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: panzer on June 03, 2013, 04:06 AM

I have just started to read his Tales of the Dying Earth last week ...

Requiescat in pace aeterna, Jack.

:(

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on June 03, 2013, 04:59 AM

This is another. R.I.P. JV. :Thmbsup:
-IainB (June 02, 2013, 10:02 PM)

Definitely one of the greats. :(

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: panzer on June 10, 2013, 04:37 AM

Iain Banks died:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on June 10, 2013, 05:16 AM

^^ I don't recall reading anything by Iain Banks. He didn't have a very long innings, did he?

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: wraith808 on June 10, 2013, 09:37 AM

Very long innings? Haven't heard that expression. But he was very influential in his writings.

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

He won several science fiction awards for his novels, and his total science fiction writings published as of his death was 26 novels.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on June 10, 2013, 09:45 AM

^^ I don't recall reading anything by Iain Banks. He didn't have a very long innings, did he?
-IainB (June 10, 2013, 05:16 AM)

30 years?

His first novel, The Wasp Factory, was odd, affecting and unsettling: I remember the disconcerting feeling, after I'd finished it, that I'd never really been made to feel sympathy with a complete psycho before.

His SF output, written as Iain M Banks, started with Consider Phlebas and introduced The Culture, a system that housed most of his later SF. (Actually, Walking On Glass was sort of sf too, but I might be the only person in the world who liked it -- it's often forgotten.)

Non-SF novels included The Crow Road (which was televised) and Complicity (which was filmed).

I haven't read all his books, by quite a stretch, but I haven't read anything of his that I didn't like, at least to some extent. He often didn't create characters that were easy to sympathise with, or even like, but you couldn't complain about the quality of his creations, which were almost always stunning.

Oh, and you might remember the fuss about Feersumm Enjinn.

I think he grew in importance with every book, and as The Wasp Factory was pretty important from the get-go, I think he was a major loss.

The notice in The Scotsman (http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/features/scottish-author-iain-banks-dies-aged-59-1-2960671) might remind you of some things you've forgotten about him.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: kyrathaba on June 10, 2013, 02:15 PM

I've read "Consider Phlebas", "The Player of Games" and "Use of Weapons". Good, action-packed scifi.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: urlwolf on June 10, 2013, 04:46 PM

Oh, Firefly and serenity...
How I long for the day netflix decides to do a relaunch, like they did for 'Arrested development'.
A pity the actors may be too old by now ;)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on June 10, 2013, 09:18 PM

Very long innings? Haven't heard that expression. ...
-wraith808 (June 10, 2013, 09:37 AM)

Sorry, it's an English cricketing metaphor/term. The period of time that you are a batsman "in" the crease and being bowled at is your "innings", and you are defending your wicket (from being hit by the ball) meanwhile.
To say that someone "didn't have a long innings" means that he didn't last long before being bowled "out", caught "out", or otherwise adjudged "out" by the umpire (e.g., LBW - leg before wicket).
It's complicated by the fact that, in any given innings, there would be two batsmen - one at each of the two wickets. The one who is currently not being bowled at is waiting his turn and just supports the other in taking any runs.

Iain Banks was apparently only 59 years old when he died - well below the typical "three score and ten" (Christian Biblical, Leviticus 12, and Psalms 90) - hence "He didn't have a very long innings, did he?" - i.e., a lifespan prematurely cut short.

Title: Re: Jack Vance has died.
Post by: rjbull on June 12, 2013, 02:55 PM

Jack Vance (the science fiction writer
-IainB (June 02, 2013, 10:02 PM)

I think there's a project to bring all his work back into print. I haven't read very many of his; last one I read was the entertaining Night Lamp.

[Edit at UK time 2013-06-12, 21:51:-] There is such a project: see the Jack Vance Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance) [/Edit]

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: rjbull on June 12, 2013, 03:00 PM

I don't recall reading anything by Iain Banks. He didn't have a very long innings, did he?
-IainB (June 10, 2013, 05:16 AM)
(Actually, Walking On Glass was sort of sf too, but I might be the only person in the world who liked it -- it's often forgotten.)
-oblivion (June 10, 2013, 09:45 AM)

I read a few of his, including Walking On Glass. He seemed to specialise in odd, unsettling novels, but in some cases, they stick in your mind. In the case of that one, the "matrioshka doll" creatures.

Oh, and you might remember the fuss about Feersumm Enjinn.
-oblivion (June 10, 2013, 09:45 AM)

No, but I remember having fun decoding Bascule the Teller's spelling :)

Against a Dark Background was a good one (IMHO). But, I remember reading a review which commented that he "gleefully" killed off his characters.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: rjbull on June 12, 2013, 03:03 PM

Sorry, it's an English cricketing metaphor/term.
-IainB (June 10, 2013, 09:18 PM)

I suggest you don't confuse non-cricketing nations further by explaining how to bowl a maiden over ;D

Iain Banks was apparently only 59 years old when he died - well below the typical "three score and ten"
-IainB (June 10, 2013, 09:18 PM)

There've been news bulletins about a Web site that reports life expectancy in different parts of Britain. They apparently used an average span of 75.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on June 13, 2013, 10:08 AM

...There've been news bulletins about a Web site that reports life expectancy in different parts of Britain. They apparently used an average span of 75.
-rjbull (June 12, 2013, 03:03 PM)

Yes, statistically, the likely lifespan has increased.
This is actuarily quite a sound tool: Assess your life expectancy (Flash).swf (http://www.box.com/s/nm4nq8807idmpskfrfmz)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: mahesh2k on June 13, 2013, 03:08 PM

There is one series called otherland on amazon kindle. It has some interesting future-based scifi plot.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Target on June 13, 2013, 05:13 PM

There is one series called otherland on amazon kindle. It has some interesting future-based scifi plot.
-mahesh2k (June 13, 2013, 03:08 PM)

If anyones interested, this series is by Tad Williams. A worthwhile read (one of my faves), albeit long (each book is 800+ pages)

Title: Science fiction book - "A for Andromeda".
Post by: IainB on June 11, 2014, 01:34 PM

As I mentioned here (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7977.msg356978#msg356978), my 12½ y/o daughter "...is studying the category of Science Fiction in her English class.".

She's just read A for Andromeda, and written a review about it. I had never read the book, though I well recall having seen a recording of the BBC's serialisation of the made-for-TV script (the book was written after the serialisation).

Here's the review. It's not too bad, doesn't give the plot away, and made me want to read the book.
______________________________________________

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
From Andromeda comes a message unlike any other. What is it? Who knows, but one thing’s for sure, you will enjoy reading this book.

Written by two fabulous authors Fred Hoyle and John Elliot in 1962, A for Andromeda is about a group of scientists at a new satellite base who pick up a mysterious code from another galaxy. Follow them and their gripping twelve chapter journey trying to solve the code in A for Andromeda.

The book begins with the young scientist Dr Fleming at a newly-built British satellite research base. A few days after its construction, a mysterious binary code is picked up by the base, coming from the distant Andromeda nebula. Over a few months, Dr Fleming deciphers the code. Surprisingly, it is a set of instructions to build a supercomputer unlike any other. Once built, the computer is examined by the British prime minister. The computer is started by the prime minister and the code from Andromeda is fed into it. Fleming and the other scientists wait for hours, but nothing seems to be happening until – to their relief – after ten hours, a string of messages asking several questions is printed out by the computer.

Answers to the questions are fed in to the computer, and, uplifted by the initial success of the computer, the scientists wait with bated breath for the next instructions. Soon the computer gathers an unprecedented level of knowledge about life on earth. Then it gives instructions on building a life form of its own specifications. Dr Dawnay, a friend of Fleming’s bosses, is ordered in to help with creating the life form in Fleming’s lab. A simple creature is made a few months later. Its insides and skin look like green gelatinous goo. The creature has one distinctive feature - a small orb at the top of its body that acts as its eye. The scientists, especially Dr Fleming, dislike the creature and name it Cyclops. Fleming grows slightly suspicious of the computer and tries to limit the amount of information fed into it, but his colleagues refuse to acknowledge his concerns and continue to think up new ways to utilise this marvellous computer. Fleming is extremely angry and frustrated. This quote is from when the scientists try to create Cyclops:

Pg.81:
The cell elongated into two lobes which stretched and broke apart, and then each lobe broke again into two new cells.
“It’s reproducing!” Dawnay leant back and watched the screen, “We’ve made life!”
Fleming was standing up watching the screen intently. “How are you going to stop it?”
“I’m not going to stop it. I want to see what it does.”
“It’s developing into quite a coherent structure.” Reinhart observed.
Fleming clenched his fists up on the table, “Kill it!”
“What?” Dawnay looked at him in mild surprise.
“Kill it while you can.”
“It’s perfectly well under control.”
“Is it? Look at the way it’s growing.” Fleming pointed at the rapidly doubling mass of cells on the screen. “Kill it.”
Fleming looked around at their anxious unyielding faces, and then back at the screen. He picked up the heavy container in which the tea had been brought and smashed it down on the viewing plate of the microscope. A clatter of metal and glass ran through the hushed room.
The viewing panel went dead.
____________________________

After creating Cyclops, the computer quickly progressed to growing a human. A strikingly beautiful woman rapidly develops from a baby born in the lab, modelled on the likeness of a co-worker who died a number of months ago, under suspicious circumstances. They name the woman Andromeda, and she is given schooling, and the scientists soon find that her mental capacity is larger than most humans, and she soon soaks up whatever she is taught, like a sponge. Realising that Andromeda is genius-level, certain people wish to use her advanced skills.

Soon, other nations find out about the computer and become fearful of this alien technology in the hands of the British government. Some nations decide that the only way to reassert their global dominance is by the use of scare tactics, but the British government decides to utilise Andromeda’s intelligence to demonstrate their power.

With Britain looking to become a world power once again and thus with an increasing reliance on the strange supercomputer, Fleming begins to suspect again that the computer is not all that it might seem to be. It may perhaps have other more cynical ideas for the human race.

Fleming sets out to destroy the very programme he helped to create, but the supercomputer is not going out without a fight.

A for Andromeda is a story about another intelligence, alien to ourselves, and about what could happen if we did make contact with such an intelligence from a distant part of the universe.

It also deals with themes such as mankind’s increasing reliance on technology, and his never-ending quest for dominance and power, and also the ideas of First Contact, and good versus evil.

A for Andromeda is one of the best science fiction books I have read in a while, and I warn you that this book will have you hooked until the bitter end. It uses some sophisticated language and some description which helps the story along. Overall the plot was excellent.

My only negative point would be how time does not seem to exist in this story, but that bit you will have to find out for yourself.

My overall rating of A for Andromeda is four and a half stars out of five.

The computer and genetic technology described could have been difficult to believe at the time when the book was written, but is more readily believable today as we have moved towards having aspects of that technology now anyway. The science in the story seems accurate (one of the authors, Fred Hoyle was a scientist), except it glosses over the impossibility of communicating with a galaxy some 200 lightyears distant.

I would recommend this engrossing book for all people of 13 and over.
______________________________________________

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on July 17, 2014, 06:33 PM

I have read 3 books in this series and would like to recommend it.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Amazon.com Origins (Spinward Fringe Book 0) eBook Randolph Lalonde Kindle Store (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Spinward-Fringe-Book-0-ebook/dp/B004EPYUXA)

Smashwords – Book Search randolph lalonde (https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=randolph+lalonde)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: oblivion on July 18, 2014, 04:20 AM

Not sure if this is more appropriate here or not, really, but the current Humble books bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/books) is a pretty decent collection of sci-fi. Or speculative fiction. Or whatever Harlan Ellison now calls the collection of (excellent) short stories that are also available as part of the bundle. (There's three tiers to this one: pay what you want gets a set of books, beat the average gets a few more, more than $12 gets everything.)

Mostly, people are familiar with the Humble Bundle outfit as a source of (usually decent) games. However, they've done a couple of ebook and comics bundles in the past and they're usually pretty good.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: 40hz on July 18, 2014, 07:54 AM

Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy) (http://www.amazon.com/Annihilation-Novel-Southern-Reach-Trilogy/dp/0374104093/ref=la_B000APJW4U_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405686473&sr=1-1) by Jeff VanderMeer.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

I'll say it up front - you will either love or hate this book. You'll either read the first 20 pages with a growing sense of frustration and toss it - or you'll read the first twenty pages with a growing sense of frustration and not put it down until it's finished.

I'm in the second group.

Jeff VanderMeer has a weird style and approach to telling a story that I find absolutely hypnotic. Without handing you much, he has the ability to conjure up the most amazing images and symbols in your mind's eye and invoke eerie moods in your subconscious. Like his earlier works City of Saints and Madmen, Finch, and the (sadly out-of-print) Shriek: An Afterword, Annihilation continues in the same tradition - but in a new storyline which doesn't take place in his brooding city named Ambergris. Pretty neat feat for someone using only the printed word.

So here's the deal:

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

Not for everyone. But, as the saying goes, "If you like this sort of book, this is a book you'll like."

Amazon's page has an extensive sampling of the first part of the book. Or you can read an excerpt of the first few pages here (http://www.npr.org/books/titles/270971103/annihilation?tab=excerpt#excerpt). I'd suggest you check them out first before buying it.

One review I saw that IMO nailed what this book is about can be found here (http://www.npr.org/2014/02/07/270967294/youll-get-lost-in-the-haunted-world-of-annihilation).

Recommended - but with caveat. :Thmbsup:

-------------------------------------------------------

Note: if anybody has a copy of Shriek: An Afterword (either paperback or hardcover) they'd be interested in selling, please PM me? I need a second copy for a project I'm working on. Thx. :)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on August 14, 2014, 10:45 AM

I would like to recommend these books on Wattpad. They are complete and I read all of both of them.

Don't Be a Hero A Superhero Novel - Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/story/8489776-don%27t-be-a-hero-a-superhero-novel)

Burn Code - Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/story/18222664-burn-code)

Title: "Origins (Spinward Fringe Book 0)" by Randolph Lalonde.
Post by: IainB on September 24, 2014, 07:22 PM

I have read 3 books in this series and would like to recommend it.
(see attachment in previous post (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=29291.msg359736#msg359736))
Amazon.com Origins (Spinward Fringe Book 0) eBook Randolph Lalonde Kindle Store (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Spinward-Fringe-Book-0-ebook/dp/B004EPYUXA)
Smashwords – Book Search randolph lalonde (https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=randolph+lalonde)
-Arizona Hot (July 17, 2014, 06:33 PM)

Mentioned the first (Book 0) in the Spinward Fringe series:

I rather enjoyed the Spinward Fringe (http://randolphlalonde.blogspot.ca/) book. Difficult to put down. Recommended! :Thmbsup:
Now want to read the rest in the series...
-IainB (September 22, 2014, 09:18 AM)

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.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on October 09, 2014, 01:52 PM

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

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 (http://hpmor.com/)

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.
------------------
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."

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: rjbull on October 09, 2014, 05:22 PM

^ looks like two of Sir Terry Pratchett's books are in similar vein:

The Science of Discworld (http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/index.php/books/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 (http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/index.php/books/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)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on July 31, 2015, 08:45 AM

Do you like Thai (stir) fry?

Title: New anthology Seat 14C tracks 22 passengers on a plane that jumps 20yrs forward
Post by: IainB on July 03, 2017, 12:12 AM

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" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_of_Pook%27s_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?"

(Made me smile, anyway.) ;D
===================================
Original posted comment:
Read post at: Read some seriously strange time travel stories from sci-fi’s modern masters (https://arstechnica.com/?p=1127567) (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.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on July 21, 2017, 07:49 PM

Not bad for free fiction(Believe me, I have read worse). I bet the authors had fun writing with no restraints. You may think any author always has restraints, but to the pros this was probably a liberating experience where they could write something outside the box for them. You may think these are trash, but I think you don't know what trash is until you have to write something and get someone else's opinion of it.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on September 10, 2017, 12:19 PM

...but I think you don't know what trash is until you have to write something and get someone else's opinion of it.
___________________________
-Arizona Hot (July 21, 2017, 07:49 PM)

Well, you could be right, of course, but my experience is quite different to the case that you give.
When I was preparing myself for GCE "O" Levels at secondary (high) school, and because most of my teachers didn't seem up to much (like many teachers, I suppose), I spent a lot of time in independent research aimed at gaining familiarity with doing/passing the exams - mostly by practicing - i.e., working through model answers to past exam papers/years.

However, that seemed to be good mostly for papers (exams) in fact-based and logical subjects like science (chemistry biology, physics), maths., and English grammar, where one could get by if one simply understood the facts, principles and related material, but it didn't help too much for papers where one had to basically write intelligible and concise explanations of something - e.g., (say) an essay in English, or the steps in a chemistry experiment.
Then I came across an excellent and most useful book - it was called "How to Pass Exams Easily", or something, and was written by a teacher who had also been an examiner and who had examined and marked many exam papers from students. I studied this book and re-read it a couple of times, practicing what it directed. Some of the main points that it made included (from memory):

that exams in several/most subjects required the student to have decent essay-writing skills.
the essay was thus the student's opportunity to use and communicate his/her knowledge in constructive, entertaining and intelligible fashion, which demonstrated competence to the intended audience (the examiner), and for which marks were correspondingly awarded.
examiners get sick and tired of ploughing through students' boring, rote-based repetitions of knowledge, and will tend to give higher marks for interesting, well-crafted essays that demonstrate competence.
thus, if you couldn't write a good essay, then you couldn't communicate your competence as well as if you could write good essays, and so you would gain fewer marks, and vice versa.

I thought this all through long and hard, and put it to empirical test by experimenting with my homework to my teachers.
We were occasionally required to write essays on stuff that we had dreamed up out of our heads - e.g., for English homework and economics - and I noted when and why this got a positive response from my teachers and when it didn't. Empirically, I found that the advice in the book seemed to hold good - i.e., it seemed to be generally true - but the real test would be in what I wrote as an anonymous student in a GCE exam paper to an examiner whom I did not know.

When I was doing my English GCE "O" Levels, they gave us two hour-long exams for Eng.Lang. - one for language/grammar, and one to write an essay - which latter had to be based on one of several subjects that they gave us at the start of the exam. The list they gave at my exam looked as dull as ditch-water. I spent a couple of minutes thinking and looking at it in disgust and then picked "Camping". Being a country boy and an active hill-tramper and ex-Boy Scout, I knew a lot about and was well-experienced in camping and hiking over the hills, but I recognised that a factual, descriptive essay, though easy for me to write, would probably be ho-hum for the examiner.

So I decided to write a fictional story. It was a diarised first-person account of a reporter attached to a rather depressing Himalayan expedition that was trekking up Mt.Everest hoping to recover the bodies of the missing members (nobody had returned) of an earlier expedition. The reporter was writing his diary recording events to date - the climb to the base camp location, the setting-up of the tents and his involvement in that, and his thoughts about the missing expedition members. He was writing this whilst he was sat safe in a tent in the base camp. He had been left there on his own whilst the expedition team proper (he was no mountaineer) went up to search the first leg of the dangerous route that the missing expedition members had been taking. The uncertain weather had held up well and remained good for the search.

My imagination, under pressure, suddenly popped the story, plot and all, into my head. It had a surprising twist at the end. My sole purpose - what I thought it would do - was to interest/entertain the anonymous examiner whom I imagined would be reading it. I wrote it all down, reviewed it, and finished with some time to spare. It seemed complete and sufficient as it stood at that point, so I tried not to worry about using surplus time to pad the thing out.

I won't describe the story any further here, but when I was at dinner that evening, my housemaster asked me what exams I had done that day and I told him that it had been the Eng.Lang. essay. He was an English teacher (not mine though) and, being interested, asked what I had written.
Well, you should have seen how his face fell as I told him!
"Oh dear. I don't think it was a very good idea to write that." he said, and more along those lines.
So, I left the dinner-table feeling a bit wretched, but told myself, what the heck, it was done now and irrecoverable, and just maybe my housemaster, being a teacher and a likeable idiot, was wrong. We would see, one way or the other.

I should stress here that I was my English Lang./Lit. teacher's bête noire and he had predicted in no uncertain terms that I would certainly fail the Eng.Lang. paper, and probably only scrape through Eng.Lit.
When the results came through a few weeks later, I had to smile. I only got a "1" for Eng.Lang."O" level (which included the essay paper and a grammar paper) - which is the best (top mark) a student can get. And I got a "3" for Eng.Lit. - a respectable pass.
I suspect that my Eng.Lang. essay (story) wasn't so much a good story as it was a welcome breath of fresh air for the examiner doing the marking - a slightly imaginative sparkle amongst the greater mass of hundreds of dreary essays that he/she had to plough through and mark.

The point I would make here is, not that I was a particularly brilliant student (I don't consider that I was), but that if a motivated child can do it (I wanted a high pass mark for the exam), just by following and practicing some good, tried-and-tested advice and by focusing always on the intended outcome - i.e., the intended audience's potential receipt of and welcome response to the written material - then so can any child/adult. Practice makes perfect. In the end, all one needs is a half-decent storyline to apply and practice with.

It's arguably a bit like painting by numbers. I reckon that Isaac Asimov (whose writing I have always enjoyed) did much the same with his SF, except I often wondered whether he padded out some of his writing unnecessarily, as though he were being paid by the word, or something. I don't know whether he did that in any of his textbooks though (I don't recall that I ever read any). Of course, the difference with Asimov was that he had such an amazing imagination for complex storylines - and I have read probably most/all of his SF output, and most of that at least twice. It was his story-telling that was practiced, and if you read them in order from oldest to latest, it was rather as though, with each successive story that he wrote, the better they seemed to get as he went along, over the years.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on September 10, 2017, 12:45 PM

Cross-posted from Re: Jerry Pournelle - R.I.P. (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44323.msg412588#msg412588)

Post below is from the Well-wishing site. Note the period of three days (starting 10 Sep 2017), open for a free Kindle copy of Vol. 1 of ‘There Will Be War’.
Well-Wishing (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/well-wishing/)
This page is for site visitors to post remembrances and thoughts at the time of Dr. Pournelle’s passing (8 Sep 2017). Your thoughts can be added using the form at the bottom of this page. Comments that are not related to words of encouragement or condolences will be removed.

Dr. Pournelle’s family appreciates those that have taken the time to send encouragement and well wishes.

(Note: the site is experiencing a very high visitor count, so things are a bit slow, and you may see errors. Site admins are working on the problem.)

For those that are interested in Dr. Pournelle’s books, please see the e-books page or the Amazon page at http://amzn.to/2xliy73 .

Vox Day has announced that as part of a memorial the first volume of ‘There Will Be War’ will be free on Kindle for three days (starting 10 Sep 2017). See here: http://amzn.to/2famw7N (http://amzn.to/2famw7N).
-IainB (September 09, 2017, 08:16 PM)

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: Arizona Hot on September 14, 2017, 11:46 AM

Then I came across an excellent and most useful book - it was called "How to Pass Exams Easily", or something, and was written by a teacher who had also been an examiner and who had examined and marked many exam papers from students. I studied this book and re-read it a couple of times, practicing what it directed. Some of the main points that it made included (from memory):
that exams in several/most subjects required the student to have decent essay-writing skills.
the essay was thus the student's opportunity to use and communicate his/her knowledge in constructive, entertaining and intelligible fashion, which demonstrated competence to the intended audience (the examiner), and for which marks were correspondingly awarded.
examiners get sick and tired of ploughing through students' boring, rote-based repetitions of knowledge, and will tend to give higher marks for interesting, well-crafted essays that demonstrate competence.
thus, if you couldn't write a good essay, then you couldn't communicate your competence as well as if you could write good essays, and so you would gain fewer marks, and vice versa.
-IainB (September 10, 2017, 12:19 PM)

I can't find this online. I need to know the author's name.

Title: Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!
Post by: IainB on September 14, 2017, 01:06 PM

I can't find this online. I need to know the author's name.
______________________________
-Arizona Hot (September 14, 2017, 11:46 AM)

No, I already searched quite a bit, but I couldn't find it online either. The thing is, I read it when I was preparing for GCE "O" levels (Oxford local) years ago, and I don't recall the author's name(s) or the year it was published/republished. The book itself might well have survived in my library (I rarely threw any book away) had it not been - a few years later - for "The Year Of The Great Fire", when I lost everything I owned in a fire which also totalled my - by then - not insignificant library of books. I never had the heart to rebuild it, and anyway, I didn't want to become too attached (or re-attached) to "things", after that fire.
Sorry about that.

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