Ah, sorry Roney, clearly you're a man who likes Space Opera and I seem to have acquired your displeasure here. All apologies.
No, I couldn't be displeased by someone expressing their own opinion. In my ideal world we'd all be happy with the state of SF but I can totally understand why you might not be happy with what is effectively modern British pulp. I just thought I'd stick in my own POV in case other forum readers got the wrong impression from some of your... well... generalizations.
I've been told I've read all the wrong Banks novels, but I think I can say I've read a good sample: Consider Phlebas, Excession, Feersum Endjinn, Against A Dark Background, The Algebraist and The State Of The Art.
No, not wrong. They're fairly representative. I like 'em, but they're definitely not the SF-est of SF.
In writing this post I realise I am really tarring a lot of people with the same brush... *All* these writers I dislike are British, and you're right, I am completely missing the modern American contingent. I hate to become a grouchy old man in my twenties, so much like I decided about the short stories (more on that in a minute) I'm clearly going to have to go and invest some effort in modern, international SF writers. Any suggestions? I'm obviously going to have to go to Amazon, as opposed to bookshops for my SF fix... Otherwise I'll just walk out with another Masterwork (Leibowitz was brilliant by the way).
I've been reading a lot of the Golllancz Masterworks as well for exactly the same reasons. Some I like, some I don't, but they're definitely more ambitious than a lot of the space opera that (I admit) I have a lot of time for, but can come across as a bit lazy.
I don't know which American authors to recommend because I have the same difficulty in knowing which books to buy. I can't pick them up in the bookshops and try a few sample paragraphs to get an idea of how they're written, and with the cost of importing (even with Sterling strong) I tend not to buy US books on impulse. All I know is that "the field" is wider than what I see in the shops.
Sturgeon's law has always applied, but it's getting a lot easier to just tune out.
Can't argue with that. One of the things I like about Escape Pod is that it's not bound by immediately contemporary SF because it's happy to "reprint" good SF that works in audio form. I've yet to hear a story that I could turn off... I always want to hear it to the end.
Nonetheless, I will buy it again next month, because I need to catch up with the modern field in order to argue with you guys without appearing a complete moron...
Hey, we're all writing from a position of ignorance. There are more words out there than anyone can read and we can only comment on what we've read.
I'm having to guess a bit here from what you've expressed (and my own limited knowledge of SF), but these are my recommendations, for what they're worth:
- Greg Egan Quarantine: Bit of an old one this -- I read it years ago -- but it sticks in my mind as great idea fiction that gets in, says what it wants to say and goes no further.
- Paul McAuley: I'm kind of recommending this for the negative reason that I didn't like the one book of his that I read, and if our tastes are so diammetrically different you might like it. He seemed more interested in the science than the characters.
- Charles Stross: Accelerando: A definite ideas man but he still tends to write his novels around how the setting affects the characters. Accelerando is more of a themed short story collection where he takes the idea of software constructs being more important than flesh-and-blood humans and explores it in different ways.
Make of that what you will. And please don't fight shy of posting just because I came on a bit strong with the disagreement: I'm really interested to hear what you have to say.