I am agreeing with you Eric. I know it's important to modern science fiction, read it years ago, but I forgot that I don't enjoy reading Gibson. I just remembered the cool ideas.
I don't enjoy Tek war either, but I would rather read the 3rd TekWar book. They might not be good, but they don't drag.
I very much enjoyed the Sprawl books but struggled when he recognized that he had called it wrong and stepped away with Difference Engine and Virtual Light.
For my own reading, I wrapped up my Donaldson reread of the Thomas Covenant books (amusingly, it looks like I had never actually finished them before - the last book in the series was completely new to me!) and then did a beta read for a book that a co-worker has put together, ripped through the new Sanderson Stormlight novella Dawnshard and am now delving into new Donaldson territory with The Seventh Decimate.
The introduction to the digital volume I have Gibson talks about how he got it wrong. I had to shake my head it's fiction and Gibson isn't a prophet. His "misses" don't hurt the story.
Yeah, it's not a sci-fi novelist’s job to guess correctly, it’s simply to explore possibilities and how humans would react to those possibilities.
Speaking of which, Neal Stephenson—whose cyberpunk writing I do greatly enjoy—often gets praised (I’m thinking primarily of people in the tech industry) for how many of his ideas in Snow Crash came to fruition. Of course, they often tend to take away the wrong message from the story, focusing solely on those ideas while ignoring the satire and context of the story.
Bumping this one back to the top. I just finished Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey. Well, by just, I mean a couple of weeks ago with lots of time spent after listlessly picking up and putting down other books and wondering if there's another SF series out there that will leave me as deeply satisfied. I don't think I've ever finished a series before that left me both sad to know that it's well and truly over with no intent by the author to ever return and at the same time satisfied that the story was finished in a way that I really don't have any need to want to go back.
In a way, I sort of feel bad for the authors - they still have a lot of years of writing left in them and it's got to be daunting to have that work as the yardstick to measure future works.
Star Trek: The autobiography of Mr. Spock - your opinion of this book will depend on how much you like the current Star Trek tv product (Discovery and Picard). I am not a fan so this book was not for me. If you read the earlier “autobiographies” of Kirk, Picard, and Janeway, they were all much better.
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Poor Dee Dee!
So I am currently re-reading William Gibson's neuromancer.
And have Bruce Campbell's Hail to the Chin up next (found that during our clean up)
I find Neuromancer to be a bit overrated. Maybe it's just because I don't care for Gibson's writing style.
I am agreeing with you Eric. I know it's important to modern science fiction, read it years ago, but I forgot that I don't enjoy reading Gibson. I just remembered the cool ideas.
I don't enjoy Tek war either, but I would rather read the 3rd TekWar book. They might not be good, but they don't drag.
I very much enjoyed the Sprawl books but struggled when he recognized that he had called it wrong and stepped away with Difference Engine and Virtual Light.
For my own reading, I wrapped up my Donaldson reread of the Thomas Covenant books (amusingly, it looks like I had never actually finished them before - the last book in the series was completely new to me!) and then did a beta read for a book that a co-worker has put together, ripped through the new Sanderson Stormlight novella Dawnshard and am now delving into new Donaldson territory with The Seventh Decimate.
The introduction to the digital volume I have Gibson talks about how he got it wrong. I had to shake my head it's fiction and Gibson isn't a prophet. His "misses" don't hurt the story.
"Futurists" are a prickly lot.
Yeah, it's not a sci-fi novelist’s job to guess correctly, it’s simply to explore possibilities and how humans would react to those possibilities.
Speaking of which, Neal Stephenson—whose cyberpunk writing I do greatly enjoy—often gets praised (I’m thinking primarily of people in the tech industry) for how many of his ideas in Snow Crash came to fruition. Of course, they often tend to take away the wrong message from the story, focusing solely on those ideas while ignoring the satire and context of the story.
Finished Neuromancer for the second time and read a book of poetry.
2021 so far.....
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)
The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)
Mexican White Boy by Matt De La Peña (2008)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
From 2020....
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895/2014)
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)
Bumping this one back to the top. I just finished Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey. Well, by just, I mean a couple of weeks ago with lots of time spent after listlessly picking up and putting down other books and wondering if there's another SF series out there that will leave me as deeply satisfied. I don't think I've ever finished a series before that left me both sad to know that it's well and truly over with no intent by the author to ever return and at the same time satisfied that the story was finished in a way that I really don't have any need to want to go back.
In a way, I sort of feel bad for the authors - they still have a lot of years of writing left in them and it's got to be daunting to have that work as the yardstick to measure future works.
edited to correct the book title.
Star Trek: The autobiography of Mr. Spock - your opinion of this book will depend on how much you like the current Star Trek tv product (Discovery and Picard). I am not a fan so this book was not for me. If you read the earlier “autobiographies” of Kirk, Picard, and Janeway, they were all much better.