[thechat] LotR

Bob Davis bobd at members.evolt.org
Mon Jun 4 17:39:26 CDT 2001


On Monday, June 4, 2001, at 06:19 PM, l a u r a *^* l y n c h wrote:

> At 05:28 PM 6/4/01, you wrote:
>> Can anyone suggest any current authors who are real science fiction 
>> writers
>> (not fantasy)?
>
> Give Mike Resnick a try -- I'm not a huge fan, but my BF is (I'm not 
> *not* a fan, just not very familiar with his work). Also Joe Haldeman, 
> though his books tend to be modern wars (mostly Vietnam) cloaked in 
> interplanetary garb. Good reads, though.
>

Never read him.

> Famous sci-fi/fantasy I can't make it through:
>
> The Lensman Chronicals
> I, Robot

I should read I, Robot. I've heard about it.

> Anything by Burroughs (though I want to read them badly, since I'm a 
> huge Heinlein fan and he seems to have been a big Burroughs fan)

W.S. Burroughs? Naked Lunch Burroughs?
Heinlein is very cool. Lots of fun.

> The fairly recent critically acclaimed /Cryptonomicon/ by Neal 
> Stephenson, whose other work I have enjoyed - got about halfway through 
> this one and decided I was disliking it enough not to bother
>

You bailed just as it's getting interesting. Really - you have to get 
through the first 500 or so pages, and the next 400 some odd just fly 
past.  It's really good.

Pretty much all of Stephenson's stuff is really good. Snow Crash (gotta 
love a book who's main character is named Hiro Protagonist) is a 
cyberpunk classic and The Diamond Age is a fascinating look at tribalism 
in postmodernist society.  It's all worth reading.

Gotta throw in for Gibson too.  I just re-read the "Sprawl Series" 
(Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and loved it again. 
Burning Chrome (which has Johnny Mnemonic in it) is a great collection 
of short stories, and the others (forgetting names - Virtual Light and 
All Tomorrow's Parties are the last of them though) are great.


> I did muck my way through LotR as a teenager, because I was a Fantasy 
> genre reader and knew that all good Fantasy genre readers loved it. 
> Frankly, I thought it was horribly written and a bore to read. 
> Interesting story, though, so I'm sure we'll see the movies (BF agrees 
> with my assessment of the series).

I've read the Hobbit and LoTR so many times I can't remember. I have 
destroyed a couple copies of the books through over use.

I loved it.

bob
--
bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org




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