That bothers me, but at least some of the time, he really nails it. He's mostly in steampunk fantasy, and also sometimes goes for the gross-out. Off on a very different tangent, China Miéville is worth reading as well. Wright goes even further than they do, dealing somewhat matter-of-factly with characters that have enough power to make and wreck entire planets. He's way out there on the extremes of SF, out well past Clarke's indistinguishable-from-magic territory. Wright also seems quite good, although I've read only his Phoenix series so far. I didn't like the sequel, The Ghost Brigades, as much as the first, but thought it was still worth reading.Īlso in the very-far-future oeuvre, John C. He and cstross remind me a bit of each other, which is why I'm mentioning him next. John Scalzi (who, curiously, also has an account here) hit one absolutely out of the park with Old Man's War. But, if you can slog through those first fifty buzzword-intensive pages, it really opens up and gets good. The first chapter or two are genuinely painful to read if you were in tech during the dotcom boom, because they're just festooned with lingo from the era, much of it misused. That's one of the best parts of SF, and he's wonderful at playing with the form. He's a little hard to describe, because he goes off in fairly unusual directions. Iron Sunrise was also fantastic, kinda-sorta-vaguely 007 in space. I've never read a cstross I haven't thoroughly enjoyed, but Glasshouse was particularly interesting. I'll tell you, if all I remember is the gross-out bits from a piece of science fiction, then somebody sure missed the point, and I don't think it was me.Ĭharles Stross (who even has an account here, cstross) is MUCH more interesting. I just never found the reason why you would read him the stories were rather insipid and didn't have much payoff. The books are workmanlike, but not terribly memorable, except for the serious gross-out bits. but I kept looking and looking for why they rave, and never found it. You know, I've read a lot of Banks, because people just rave about the man. Posted by thatwhichfalls at 2:27 AM on March 24, 2008 Great ending (albeit one I saw coming a mile off), but annoyingly reliant on a finale reminiscent of Alastair Reyolds. I picked up a copy of "Matter" a couple of weeks ago - it seemed to me that the weirdo that wrote "The Wasp Factory" is still trying to get his odd ideas about fairness and how retribution is a poor long-term strategy into print. He makes more money from the non SF stuff in Europe anyway, but the SF books seem to appeal to many people over here, while the hardly hidden left-wing agenda scarcely registers. You aren't likely to see his non-SF works in the US any time soon - way too overtly political. The Culture novels are about an admittedly communist society "The Business" is about the long lived co-operative organized business of the title "The Bridge" is about the failure of Yuppiedom on the personal scale (and also mirrored part of my life in a frightening way). The fact that Ken Macleod made a critical suggestion about how it should be structured should make a lot of sense to anyone who has read both the novel and Macleod's novels.Īs for why Banks has such a hard time getting published in the US - he is an very much a socialist writer. "The Use of Weapons" is without a doubt the best British SF novel of the last 20 years - I am willing to fight anyone who contradicts this.
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