Science Fiction Reader

World Enough, and Time (1980) by James Kahn In a...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:55:57 -0600

World Enough, and Time (1980)

by James Kahn

In a post-apocalyptic world 200 years from now, humans are a dying species. When Joshua’s wife is kidnapped by a gryphon and a vampire, he and his comrades—a centaur and an android—set out to rescue her across a surreal landscape filled with seemingly mythological creatures. But the explanation for the existence of these beasts is based in science, and informed by nightmare. And the odyssey isn’t over until they confront the evil cabal whose goal is nothing less than the extinction of the human race. - from Amazon.com description

syfycity: Dune Books in The Simpsons S24E20.

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:42:07 -0600

syfycity:

Dune Books in The Simpsons S24E20.

“The Word of Unbinding” (1964) [collected in The...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:44:58 -0600

“The Word of Unbinding” (1964) [collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters]
“The Rule of Names” (1964) [collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters]
A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
The Farthest Shore (1972)
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)
The Other Wind (2001)
Tales From Earthsea (2001)

Reading Chronology

Set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the story relates the education of a young magenamed Ged under the tutelage of his aunt (a village witch), as an apprentice to a wizard, at a school of wizardry, and finally through a quest of self-discovery. The tale of Ged’s growth and development continues in four subsequent novels, which are set a few years later and towards the end of his long life.

-from the wikipedia entry on A Wizard or Earthsea

One of Gurney Halleck's Tone Poems for Sad Times

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:00:34 -0600

jennaddenda:

“I remember salt smoke

from a beach fire

And shadows under the pines

Solid, clean… fixed -

Seagulls perched at the tip of land,

White upon green…

And a wind comes through

the pines

To sway the shadows;

The seagulls spread their

wings,

Lift

And fill the sky with

screeches.

And I hear the wind

Blowing across our beach,

And the surf,

And I see that our fire

Has scorched the seaweed.”

-Frank Herbert, Dune

Poetry in Dune suggested by clusterpod

House

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:12:52 -0600

House:

aoizumi:

A poem by Neil Gaiman

"3. Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone, That the others have come and gone—a momentary..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:00:24 -0600

“3.

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.

Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

For the first time in the winter of 1959.”

- Excerpt from “My God, It’s Full of Stars” by Tracy K. Smith

Found in the book Life on Mars: Poems suggested by warbcasefiles

Astrophobos

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:00:30 -0600

By H. P. Lovecraft

In the midnight heavens burning
      Thro’ ethereal deeps afar,
Once I watch’d with restless yearning
      An alluring, aureate star;
Ev’ry eye aloft returning,
      Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.

Mystic waves of beauty blended
      With the gorgeous golden rays;
Phantasies of bliss descended
      In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;
And in lyre-born chords extended
      Harmonies of Lydian lays.

There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
      Where the free and blessed dwell,
And each moment bears a treasure
      Freighted with a lotus-spell,
And there floats a liquid measure
      From the lute of Israfel.

There (I told myself) were shining
      Worlds of happiness unknown,
Peace and Innocence entwining
      By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;
Men of light, their thoughts refining
      Purer, fairer, than our own.

Thus I mus’d, when o’er the vision
      Crept a red delirious change;
Hope dissolving to derision,
      Beauty to distortion strange;
Hymnic chords in weird collision,
      Spectral sights in endless range.

Crimson burn’d the star of sadness
      As behind the beams I peer’d;
All was woe that seem’d but gladness
      Ere my gaze with truth was sear’d;
Cacodaemons, mir’d with madness,
      Thro’ the fever’d flick’ring leer’d.

Now I know the fiendish fable
      That the golden glitter bore;
Now I shun the spangled sable
      That I watch’d and lov’d before;
But the horror, set and stable,
      Haunts my soul for evermore.

Suggested by cvoorhees

"Eight, sir; seven, sir; Six, sir; five, sir; Four, sir; three, sir; Two, sir; one! Tenser, said the..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:00:45 -0600

“Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun”

- From The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

suggested by trenchcoatsheep

Sorry I have not posted for awhile. I have mostly been reading poetry, noen of which has been...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:59:39 -0600

Sorry I have not posted for awhile. I have mostly been reading poetry, noen of which has been science fiction. Do you have a favorite SF themed poem?

Rebloggable by request...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:08:33 -0700

neil-gaiman:

Mr. Gaiman, I was wondering something. Have you ever talked on the topic of enjoying (or at least trying to enjoy) the work of an author or artist who you dislike/hate, or just disagree with in many respects in real life? For instance, I love Ender’s Game, and I have a copy of Card’s guide to writing fantasy and sci-fi, but I find the man’s politics to be completely hateful and revolting, to say the least.

dungeonmaster11

I’ve talked about it a few times. For example,

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/06/in-wee-small-hours-of-morning.html

I said

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place. I love the work of many creators who self-avowedly believe or believed things that I consider to be “fairly wretched”, not to mention wrong-headed, lunatic, irresponsible or simply wrong. Worse yet: there are artists, actors, songwriters, authors, whose work I love, like or admire and who, biographers or historians tell us, actually did things that were utterly reprehensible. And worse even than that, there are all those things by Anonymous, who could have been or thought or done, well, anything, and we’ll never know…

Ezra Pound was a fascist, an antisemite on a level that makes the Aryan Nation seem wishy washy, a traitor (or at best, a collaborator), and I’m very glad I got to read his poetry, and appreciate it and learn from it. I could list dozens more without breaking a sweat. Most, probably all, human beings get to do awful things and believe things that other human beings think they should be burned for believing, and they get to do and believe wonderful things too, and artists, writers, musicians, creators, actors, are nothing if not human beings.

The art isn’t the artist, the poem isn’t the poet; trust the tale, not the teller.

(The sad flip-side is I’ve met people — writers and artists — over the years who I liked immediately, with whom I found myself agreeing on everything to do with art and aesthetics so closely that we might have shared the same head, people whose world-views were pretty much mine, whom I’d talk with far into the night and whom I parted from excited that I’d met them, looking forward to nothing more than reading their writing or looking at their art… and then I would find what they had done, and, at least as far as my taste was concerned, the books would be uninteresting, the drawings ugly or clumsy. And in an odd way, that hurts more than liking the work of someone who behaved badly, or thought in a way that I consider offensive or wrong.)

And someone just wrote and asked if that meant that I thought that you shouldn’t ever stop reading someone whose opinions or actions you find noxious. No, I don’t think that at all: I think you should do whatever you think is right.

Mathematical Fiction databae

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:00:35 -0700

Mathematical Fiction databae:

Alex Kasman’s database of mathematical fiction by topic.

Reality Conditions: Short Mathematical Fiction (2005) by Alex...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:00:46 -0700

Reality Conditions: Short Mathematical Fiction (2005)

by Alex Kasman

Where can you hear an old man in a nursing home tell of how he disproved Goldbach’s Conjecture as part of an undergraduate research project, get inside the mind of James Clerk Maxwell as he discovers electro-magnetic waves, witness the 19th century’s greatest mathematician finally get the credit she was denied by sexism and murder? In “Reality Conditions,” a collection of short stories spanning a variety of genres, you can share in these and other fictional mathematical experiences. Each story is a mathematical journey designed to entertain, educate and tantalize. There is something here for everyone: humor, drama, the little details to the big picture, science fiction to true histories. Through these stories, those with little mathematical background will encounter some of the most interesting parts of the field of mathematics for the first time. Even professional mathematicians will be captivated by ideas that take us to the limits of knowledge, addressing the questions of how mathematics is related to the human mind and how it is related to reality. The book is perfect for leisure reading. Join one of the leading experts in the area of mathematical fiction as he takes us on a whirlwind tour of mathematics, both real and imaginary.

-from Amazon.com’s description

*I found the idea of math-fi an interesting niche.

classictrek: Front and Back Cover, World Without End, 1979

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 10:32:31 -0700

classictrek:

Front and Back Cover, World Without End, 1979

To Take You Into the Weekend, Me Singing "Redshirt" With Jonathan Coulton and His Band

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:29:00 -0700

whateveradjunct:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjAmgI1vhC8&w=640&h=360]
And I’m on key at least 60% of the time!

If you just want to see the part where I fall on my ass, fast forward to 4:15 and wait a couple of seconds. This was during the JoCo Cruise Crazy 3…

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John Scalzi jumping around and singing.

"The boppers had long since discarded the ugly, human-chauvinist priorities of Asimov: To protect..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:12:33 -0700

“The boppers had long since discarded the ugly, human-chauvinist priorities of Asimov: To protect humans, To obey humans, To protect robots… in that order. These days any protection or obedience the humans got from boppers was strictly on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

- from Software by Rudy Rucker

Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker Software (1982) Wetware...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:37:00 -0700

Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker

Software (1982)
Wetware (1988)
Freeware (1997)
Realware (2000)

Cobb Anderson created the “boppers,” sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers—and eventually every human—into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren’t too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his “software.” It seems like a good idea to Cobb. - from Amazon.com’s description of Software

*The link above is to the free creative commons ebook, distributed by Rucker himself. You can also find an omnibus that collects all 4 books in the mundy world.

Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy (2011) by Simon Morden Samuil...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:33:57 -0700

Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy (2011) by Simon Morden

Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor.

He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone - the last city in England. He’s lived this long because he’s a man of rules and logic.

For example, getting involved = a bad idea.

But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he’s saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.

And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.

Now, the equation of Petrovitch’s life is looking increasingly complex.

Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.

But Petrovitch has a plan - he always has a plan - he’s just not sure it’s a good one.

- from Amazon.com description for Equations of Life

Morden (The Lost Art) offers up an engrossing, if occasionally goofy, adventure that meshes theoretical physics and exciting action sequences.

- Publisher’s Weekly as quoted on Amazon.com

*Philip K. Dick Award 2012 - Won

Metrophage (1973) Free ebook from manybooks.net

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:00:32 -0700

Metrophage (1973)

Free ebook from manybooks.net

Do you have a goodreads account?

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:45:26 -0700

Do you have a goodreads account?

whateveradjunct: The Human Division, Episode One: The B-Team...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:41:00 -0700

whateveradjunct:

The Human Division, Episode One: The B-Team is Live!

And so we begin. “The B-Team,” the double-length debut episode of The Human Division, my latest…

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Scalzi’s new episodic ebook starts, and he has a tumblr no one told me about.