Author Topic: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do! (Read 89,047 times)

daddydave · « **Reply #25 on:** December 29, 2011, 11:56 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 (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.

app103 · « **Reply #26 on:** December 29, 2011, 05:29 PM »

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.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #27 on:** December 30, 2011, 11:09 PM »

Quote from: app103 on December 29, 2011, 08:17 AM

Quote from: MilesAhead on December 29, 2011, 06:55 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?

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.

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.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #28 on:** December 30, 2011, 11:12 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

oblivion · « **Reply #29 on:** December 30, 2011, 11:22 PM »

Quote from: MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 11:12 PM

An author I enjoyed that wasn't a big name was A. E. van Vogt.

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.)

MilesAhead · « **Reply #30 on:** December 30, 2011, 11:52 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.

40hz · « **Reply #31 on:** December 31, 2011, 12:34 AM »

Quote from: oblivion on December 30, 2011, 11:22 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.)

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.

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. 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.

oblivion · « **Reply #32 on:** December 31, 2011, 11:09 AM »

Quote from: 40hz on December 31, 2011, 12:34 AM

I was a fan of his other little known 1973 TV series The Starlost.

Just a quickie, since I'm about to read the entry: the link should be The Starlost

oblivion · « **Reply #33 on:** December 31, 2011, 11:19 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...

40hz · « **Reply #34 on:** December 31, 2011, 01:14 PM »

Quote from: oblivion on December 31, 2011, 11:09 AM

Quote from: 40hz on December 31, 2011, 12:34 AM
I was a fan of his other little known 1973 TV series The Starlost.

Just a quickie, since I'm about to read the entry: the link should be The Starlost

Thanks! Fixed now.

Quote

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.

IainB · « **Reply #35 on:** January 06, 2012, 03:20 AM »

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

Quote

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
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

MilesAhead · « **Reply #36 on:** January 06, 2012, 09:03 AM »

Quote

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.

IainB · « **Reply #37 on:** January 06, 2012, 12:49 PM »

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
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

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

Arizona Hot · « **Reply #38 on:** October 24, 2012, 03:12 PM »

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

Wash. Attorney: ‘I have physically traveled in time’

Below is an excerpt from here:

[attach=#]

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

Arizona Hot · « **Reply #39 on:** October 24, 2012, 03:21 PM »

Quote from: app103 on December 14, 2011, 10:32 PM

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

Quote
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

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

Arizona Hot · « **Reply #40 on:** October 24, 2012, 06:14 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

[attachthumb=#]

Arizona Hot · « **Reply #41 on:** October 25, 2012, 02:25 PM »

Quote from: IainB on January 06, 2012, 03:20 AM

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

IainB · « **Reply #42 on:** October 26, 2012, 12:14 AM »

Quote from: Arizona Hot on October 25, 2012, 02:25 PM

...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?

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.

app103 · « **Reply #43 on:** October 27, 2012, 06:58 AM »

Quote from: IainB on October 26, 2012, 12:14 AM

Quote from: Arizona Hot on October 25, 2012, 02:25 PM
...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?
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.

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

IainB · « **Reply #44 on:** October 27, 2012, 10:32 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:

Quote

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.

Arizona Hot · « **Reply #45 on:** October 27, 2012, 04:26 PM »

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.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #46 on:** October 27, 2012, 10:05 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.

Tinman57 · « **Reply #47 on:** October 28, 2012, 01:43 AM »

Quote from: IainB on October 26, 2012, 12:14 AM

Quote from: Arizona Hot on October 25, 2012, 02:25 PM
...Do you want to know the address of the site (and the moral ambiguities of and viral dangers of it's offerings)...?
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.

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

40hz · « **Reply #48 on:** October 28, 2012, 01:12 PM »

I must be in the early stages of my dotage. I've been gradually reading/re-reading all the original 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.

[attach]

rjbull · « **Reply #49 on:** October 28, 2012, 05:05 PM »

Quote from: MilesAhead on October 27, 2012, 10:05 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.

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