All the Myriad Ways

[calzephyr]

I was surprised to find that we had this volume of short stories by Larry Niven on our bookshelf; I believe zandperl had recommended either it or Larry Niven to me. About half the stories appealed to me. I really enjoy short science fiction stories because it's too easy for science fiction to be overly padded and a genius idea is usually lost. I just didn't care for Niven's style half of the time, and the most of the time I was wondering if the technological and scientific concepts he wrote about were still applicable. This was probably my first time reading hard science fiction as well.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I probably did recommend that collection. It's one of his oldest collections, and has his best Hard SF short stories all in one place. Most of them have been republished since but in different anthologies with other of his shorts.

Niven always has an excellent grasp of physics even when discussing impossible situations (teleportation disks may never be possible, but he knows that conservation of momentum would be key to their use). His characters and story development are generally very good, both when he writes solo and with collaborators. I'd recommend either "The Integral Trees" or "Destiny's Road" to you for novels of his in which the SF is the setting of the novel, and then the novel cares about how the people within the setting react. It's a classic approach to SF that I really enjoy.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Another "beginner" SF novel I'd recommend is "Nightfall" by Asimov and Silverberg. I'll think a bit more and see if I can't come up with some "epic fantasy" equivalents in SF for you too.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I think the last "epic fantasy" SF series I tried to read was by Margaret Weiss. Ugh...it was like a SF Twilight for me - where she heavily referenced Star Wars, Daleks and the Magnificent Seven. I think it was the most badly written thing I'd ever read at the time (1998) but after reading the first book I had to follow through. Man, 12 years later and I'm still crabby about it!

The radio version of Nightfall frequently comes up on the X-Minus one queue, but no matter how carefully I listen to it, there's one point near the end where I just can't understand what's going on - when the fanatics are destroying everything. I really do need to read it!

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Oh duh, I think I mixed up your fantasy tastes with those of ayashi. You read more YA and less epic, right? The "Uglies" series might be good, though it's light on the SF.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's me! YA all the way, woah, yeah!! It's so intense.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I really liked the stories at the beginning - the ones after the two unfinished story didn't really engage me all that much except for Becalmed in Hell. I'm sure we must have other books by him...there are just so many paperbacks. Most of them should be for the garbage bin judging just by the cover art :-D I find that some science fiction, and I was feeling it with the other half of this book, is too carefully crafted and I thought Niven just wasn't stretching himself much as an author. To me his style is actually pretty pedantic but I'll have to read more :-)