This Immortal
Après une explosion atomique, la plupart des terriens survivants sont partis s'installer sur les planètes de la Confédération de Véga. L'espérance de vie de certains hommes a augmenté. Ainsi, personne ne connaît l'âge de Conrad Nomikos, le conservateur de la Terre, qui vit sur une île grecque miraculeusement préservée. Il a pour mission de guider Cort Myshtigo, un végan venu explorer la planète.
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- I read through your posts because I was wondering who you are, just heads up. Anyway, I actually don't know of too many books that deal with that scale, maybe Asimov's Foundation series, but I am guessing you read that already. I find it hard to compare the TBD problem to anything because I just thought it was utter tripe, on the level of Brandon Sanderson's / Roger Zelazny's books - a lot of content, very little substance (with the exception of "This Immortal" by Zelazny, which is supposedly the inspiration for Planescape: Torment, which I can wholeheartedly recommend to any teenager).
Of course, you might also enjoy Piknik na Obochine, Trudno Bit Bogom, and Neukratimaya Planeta, as people of your particular background tend to do ;^)
Though that last one didn't really age well as I grew up. Oh, and Chekov is amazing when compared to the other famous Russian authors imo.
Your turn for some recommendations, i.e. your top 3, since I am looking for stuff to read. Not necessarily in this genre.
- This Immortal is terrific. And Zelazany in general. Dune and Lord of Light (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light) are a few of the only SF books I re-read on a regular basis.
- I was thinking, "Atlas Shrugged, what the fuck?" but then I re-read the title of the article. As is [ironically with a sense that is lost upon them] common to admirers of Ayn Rand, the author feels compelled to "should" on their readers. I was warned.
I've read most everything on the list, though the dead horse of Animal Farm was first beaten for me in sixth grade...and that was long enough ago that Cold War MADness was a reality in the days when "PG" on a movie meant "tits" and Murray and Ramos could parody the US Army...if the list has talking animals, where is Watership Down?
But I digress...
A few years ago, I came back to science fiction and started reading the Hugo Award novels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winne...
What I found is that the list gives context to the novels...the line of telephones ringing are forgivable in 1985's Neuromancer in a way that they wouldn't be in a movie made today. The competence of the grunts in 1960's Starship Troopers is a reaction to the USMC in the Second World War and the experience of the US military during the shooting phase of the Korean War. 1998's Forever Peace shows how much computers changed the meanings of "combatant" and "battlefield" in the subsequent 40 years.
One of the other interesting themes of science fiction is the evolution of the post-apocalyptic world. The alien invasion of 1950's Day of the Triffids and the pandemic of 1949's Earth Abides [not a Hugo Novels] giving way to the nuclear wastelands of 1961's Canticle for Leibowitz's and 1966's This Immortal [when Zelzany's novel tied Herbert's Dune for the Hugo and rightly so].
By 1996's Diamond Age or 2010's Windup Girl the apocalypse is a slow moving tragedy of the commons brought on not by rash misunderstanding but by long term economic rationalizations...bringing us full circle, and you were warned.
- I recently have been reading Hugo Award Novels and recommend Roger Zelazny's This Immortal which is good enough to have shared the award with Dune in 1965. Lord of Light is also a great read and won a Hugo in 1968. Clifford Simak's Way Station, Phillip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, and Walter Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz are other great Hugo novels from the early 1960's that tend to be overshadowed by more famous authors from that period such as Heinlein (not that I wouldn't recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you haven't read it).
- depends on the subgenre :)
Superhuman: Slan by A.E. Van Vogt More Than Human by Theodore STurgeon Odd John by Olaf Stapledon
Post Apocalyptic: The Day of The Triffids by John Whyndham Earth Abides by George R. Stewart A Canticle for Lebowitz by...don't remember
Space Opera/Adventure: any of The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks The Reality Dysfunction series by ...don't remember Hyperion series by Dan Simmons To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
Dystopian: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin <---highly overlooked, predates 1984 and Brave New World
But the Absolute Best would be anything by: Stanislaw Lem (Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, Solaris) Alfred Bester (The STars my Destination, The Demolished Man) or Samuel R. Delany (Babel-17, Dhalgren, Trtion, Nova) oh and Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and This Immortal are both great.
Some of Philip K. Dick's stuff is great, but everyone recommends him. :)
almost forgot John Brunner, check out Steel Beach, The Sheep Look Up, and Stand on Zanzibar.
- Dune shared the 1965 Hugo for Best Novel with Roger Zelazny's This Immortal...which says something about how good Zelazny's work is despite its relative obscurity (compared with Dune).
