Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 845457 times)

Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #475 on: May 17, 2008, 04:16:43 AM
Currently reading a book I picked up in Ocean City last year (for $1.79); it's Women of Wonder, a 1974 anthology of "science fiction stories by women about women" edited by Pamela Sargent....

Okay... if you notice things like timestamps, you'll see how long it took me to slog through this collection.  I will say it was worth every penny I paid for it, but that's because a) it was purchased with $9-worth of other books and a $10.00 off coupon, and b) my dad actually paid (Maryland taxes - tell me again why it's called the 'Free State'?).  But, I persevered because you all deserve fair warning, and ... I really didn't have time for much reading.  Plenty of time for the iPod and super-quiet no-gas push mower, though.

Anyway... my grouchy, grumpy, partially inebriated review:

Judith Merril: That Only a Mother - 1948:  This is a classic, and I understand that (and why)... but holy cow, what a morass of dated attitudes and mannerisms.  It has an underlying creepiness and horror that stems from the atomic bombing of Japan being so fresh in everyone's mind, and the correspondence format of most of the story reads like my grandfather's wartime documents.  Good for authenticity, but in a way it is like reading alternate history... or rather like a history that just didn't happen that way.

Katherine MacLean: Contagion - 1950: As far as dated gender roles are concerned, this one really takes the cake.  Humans colonize the galaxy, and every ship and colony is populated with straight, W.A.S.P. married couples.  The story itself wasn't that bad... and I guess they did let the women save the day... but it took an obvious twist ending, tried to wring extra drama out of the crew's reaction to their fate, and sort of neutered itself by implying that all of the work and worry the crew went through solving their mystery was moot from the start.    Meh.

Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Wind People - 1958:  I figured the eight year jump and the big name author would equal a good story.  I figured wrong.  The prose was overwrought and melodramatic; the scenario was a stretch even by the standards of internal logic, giving us a weird combination of self-inflicted misogyny and uncomfortable assumptions (by the time they get explained, it's hard to care any more); and the ending left me wondering what all the fuss and bother had been about.  You don't get to see the aliens, and all of the conflict is basically internal to one character (though it projects on everyone and everything else), and I *think* everyone dies at the end - well, the humans, anyway - so there's no net "there" there.  It's not that she doesn't tell the story, it's just that by the time you wrestle it out of all of the angsty poetry of the text, it feels like something of a betrayal that you had to work so hard.

Anne McCaffrey: The Ship Who Sang - 1961:  This was easily my favorite story of the bunch; not saying much, I know, but it's a really cool idea, and I love the description of Helva and of the world she lives in.  It felt a bit crushed into the short story format, and I'd rather not go into the uncomfortable comparisons with the set-up "brawny guy" being utterly taken care of in every way by the "brainy woman who can do everything"... mostly because in real life, I'm not that brawny, but my wife actually seems able to do everything Helva does except achieve spaceflight.  ;)

Sonya Dorman: When I Was Miss Dow - 1966: This one was interesting, but felt under-developed.  The sexual politics were a little more interesting, if only because we were provided with the POV of a shape-shifter, whose species was necessarily genderless.  It would have been a better exploration if it hadn't spent so much time luxuriating in the fact that the main character was in the form of a hot babe, and banging her nerdy old boss.  Hooray for him; hooray for the over-stimulated shape-shifting alien; poor us.

Kit Reed: The Food Farm - 1966: I consider myself to be a somewhat bright individual, but this one left me scratching my head.  Obviously, the theme is body image, and ... well, a guy who REALLY digs fat chicks.  Sorry.  There was no way to look at this one that didn't boil down to that.  The whole tale revolves around an obese woman whose family forces her into a weight loss center.  She resists their choice of body style in vain, only to learn that her heart's desire, a crooner (I pictured Tom Jones) with an obsession for Big Women, thinks she's too thin.  So she and another inmate take over and turn the "fat farm" into a weight GAIN center in order to provide Tommy with fat women.  It was pretty gross.

Kate Wilhelm: Baby, You Were Great - 1967:  Alright, this was a little better; it explored the predatory nature of exploitive entertainment and emotional telepathy.  The theme is certainly still relevant today, even if the caricature of the evil producer is a bit simplistic and the idea of empathy has been done to death since the Year of Flower Power.  And as you might guess from the title, the attempts to capture hip, rat-pack slang will have you checking your wardrobe for polyester.

Carol Emshwiller: Sex and/or Mr. Morrison - 1967:  Gah!  More fat fetish squick fic.  Blech! 

Ursula K. Le Guin: Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - 1971:  A story from her Hainish universe; I think I had actually seen this one before.  I'm not terribly familiar with all of her work, but I have read much more interesting stories by her in other collections, and this wasn't nearly as elegant or well-constructed as her other stuff.  I won't blame the characters for being unlikeable, since that was clearly explained in the beginning (the crew was selected for mental instability); I just wish the denouement hadn't felt so tacked on in a burst of time-dilated exposition.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: False Dawn - 1972: As post-apocalyptic dystopian adventures go, this one felt extremely thin and fragmentary to me.  You don't get to see the beginning... you never really do, do you? ... and it ends in an unlikely place after an unnecessary event.  I suppose the intervening 36 years have explored this thematic territory more completely, so I'll have to imagine that the setting and the near-rape would have been somewhat revolutionary when originally published.

Joanna Russ: Noboby's Home - 1972: This one was a set piece about non-traditional family units and instantaneous teleportation.  I guess it fits with the time-frame... the free love era and all.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much story to tell, and it was still hard to keep track of what was supposed to be going on.

Vonda N. McIntyre: Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - 1973:  Except for the ending, which I either didn't get or didn't connect with, I thought this was pretty good.  It was an interesting world, and I would have like to find out more about it.  The magic was nothing new, but I liked the way it unfolded.

At the beginning of the collection, there is a lxiv page dissertation by the editor on Women in Science Fiction.  If you want to read it, I'll gladly swap this book for one that you didn't enjoy.  See, I bought it out of a sense of that man-guilt; I have that Robert Silverburg collection on our shelves, and I wanted to make some kind of amends for enjoying those stories so thoroughly, even though they severely lack any pretense to include female authors.   But if you want to prove something about the quality of feminine or feminist fiction, "Women of Wonder" is NOT the case you want to build.

Meanwhile, I have just checked out Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water on the strength of my affection for Tideline.  And, hey, I think she might be a woman!  ;)

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Reply #476 on: May 17, 2008, 02:09:20 PM
Meanwhile, I have just checked out Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water on the strength of my affection for Tideline.  And, hey, I think she might be a woman!  ;)

Why'd you pick Whiskey and Water?  At a guess, you'd have liked the Jenny chronicles or Carnival better.  Don't you prefer SF to fantasy?  I like almost everything Bear writes and the faerie stuff is my least favorite.  Too much talking about what people are wearing.  It's like a damn fashion show.

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Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #477 on: May 18, 2008, 04:52:27 AM
Meanwhile, I have just checked out Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water on the strength of my affection for Tideline.  And, hey, I think she might be a woman!  ;)

Why'd you pick Whiskey and Water?  At a guess, you'd have liked the Jenny chronicles or Carnival better.  Don't you prefer SF to fantasy?  I like almost everything Bear writes and the faerie stuff is my least favorite.  Too much talking about what people are wearing.  It's like a damn fashion show.

Short answer: it was what the library had that day.  They have all the Warhammer/Trek/Sith crap you could ever possible belch out of your Novel-o-Bot 2000 automated novel writer, but slim pickin's on actual books.  :P   (Apologies to any who enjoy wallowing in that stuff...)

I like the set up with the different Devil's battling in the first chapter... and there seems to be a lot of backstory I'm missing; either she forshadows a great deal, or I'm in the middle of a series...?  Ah... thanks, Amazon - it is.  (I need to research my impulsive library shopping a little better.)

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Reply #478 on: May 18, 2008, 03:07:35 PM
Meanwhile, I have just checked out Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water on the strength of my affection for Tideline.  And, hey, I think she might be a woman!  ;)

Why'd you pick Whiskey and Water?  At a guess, you'd have liked the Jenny chronicles or Carnival better.  Don't you prefer SF to fantasy?  I like almost everything Bear writes and the faerie stuff is my least favorite.  Too much talking about what people are wearing.  It's like a damn fashion show.

Short answer: it was what the library had that day.  They have all the Warhammer/Trek/Sith crap you could ever possible belch out of your Novel-o-Bot 2000 automated novel writer, but slim pickin's on actual books.  :P   (Apologies to any who enjoy wallowing in that stuff...)

I like the set up with the different Devil's battling in the first chapter... and there seems to be a lot of backstory I'm missing; either she forshadows a great deal, or I'm in the middle of a series...?  Ah... thanks, Amazon - it is.  (I need to research my impulsive library shopping a little better.)

Yah, Blood & Iron is first of that series, but I liked Whiskey & Water better than Blood & Iron for the most part, minus the addition of angsty teenagers which I thought was mostly a loss.   And yes, agreed, the different hells is one of the best things about the series, and one of the most interesting to me.  Still, if you come out of there unconvinced, I promise Bear doesn't always write about what everyone's wearing, and do give Carnival or the Jenny books (Hammered is the first one) a try.  My personal favorite is the New Amsterdam stories, but I cannot unconditionally recommend that because it hits my squids so so hard, and that often skews my objectivity.   

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Reply #479 on: May 20, 2008, 09:26:30 AM
I'm not reading anything at the moment. I am listening though! Ever since I discovered audiobooks last year, I'm hooked. Downloaded as many books and stories as I can find and now I'm just listening. I love to listen when a writer tells me his/her story in his/her own voice, because you get the story exactly the way the writer meant them to be. Better than a movie, because I still get to make my own mental pictures when I 'read' the story and it's way longer than a movie.

The stories I'm listening to right now:
Singularity by Bill De Smedt
A Man and his Unicorn by Anthony Matthews
EscapePod all episodes!

I have just ordered a copy of The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, after I heard Steve talking about it on EscapePod, so I may be reading again soon!

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Reply #480 on: May 20, 2008, 05:50:05 PM
I'm about 150 pages into Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which I'm really enjoying.  I'm also reading short story collections by Jennifer Pelland and Matt Wallace

Finally, I just listened to Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald on the way to work yesterday.  Holy CRAP, that was amazing.  The really bizarre thing is I'd read that story before when it came out in Fragile Things, but I just don't remember a lot of the cool stuff I got out of listening to it.  Before I thought it was a good little story.  Now, it's really blowing my mind.  The Sherlock Holmes tie-in, the old ones and the world-building Gaiman used, flipping the characters in the story the way he did.  That was really something special. 


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Reply #481 on: May 21, 2008, 08:30:47 AM
Haen't been reading as much lately.  In my continuing Discworld quest I have finished Maskerade, Feet of Clay, Hogfather, and Jingo.



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Reply #482 on: May 22, 2008, 03:34:39 AM
Has anyone read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee? I've got it, and it currently resides on my TBR list (though at a very low priority). It's quite a chunk o' book, so it's difficult to find the motivation to move it up the chain. I'm curious if anyone else here has read it and what their thoughts on it are.



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Reply #483 on: May 22, 2008, 03:45:29 AM
Has anyone read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee? I've got it, and it currently resides on my TBR list (though at a very low priority). It's quite a chunk o' book, so it's difficult to find the motivation to move it up the chain. I'm curious if anyone else here has read it and what their thoughts on it are.

I read it and loved it, but it's been a while.  It's pretty harsh in places, as I recall, and it's definitely not what I would qualify as light summer reading.  I wouldn't naturally assume there was a lot of overlap between the SF crowd and the non-dominant culture history crowd, but everyone here has interests outside of SF, so failed revolutions might be yours. 

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Reply #484 on: May 22, 2008, 04:03:35 AM
I read it and loved it, but it's been a while.  It's pretty harsh in places, as I recall, and it's definitely not what I would qualify as light summer reading.
Ah cool, Ana! Thanks for the recommendation. I'm gonna have to move it up a few slots since I've reshuffled it to the bottom so many times.

Quote
I wouldn't naturally assume there was a lot of overlap between the SF crowd and the non-dominant culture history crowd, but everyone here has interests outside of SF, so failed revolutions might be yours. 
Lol! Yeah, I almost started a separate thread, but wasn't sure it was really threadworthy, so I posted it here. This seems to be an extremely well-read group as a whole, but I wasn't expecting a direct response so soon! Thanks again!



Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #485 on: May 23, 2008, 02:50:18 AM
I read it and loved it, but it's been a while.  It's pretty harsh in places, as I recall, and it's definitely not what I would qualify as light summer reading.
Ah cool, Ana! Thanks for the recommendation. I'm gonna have to move it up a few slots since I've reshuffled it to the bottom so many times.

Quote
I wouldn't naturally assume there was a lot of overlap between the SF crowd and the non-dominant culture history crowd, but everyone here has interests outside of SF, so failed revolutions might be yours. 
Lol! Yeah, I almost started a separate thread, but wasn't sure it was really threadworthy, so I posted it here. This seems to be an extremely well-read group as a whole, but I wasn't expecting a direct response so soon! Thanks again!

I don't know if this makes me well-read, but I know it's a pretty kick-ass Indigo Girls cover of a Buffy Saint-Marie song: live (on their 1200 Curfews double-album) and the studio version:)

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Reply #486 on: May 31, 2008, 04:02:17 PM
Just finished Wrinkle in Time. Fun read, rather anti-industrialization, and a bit preachy. I know it's one of the great classics, and was written in the '60s but it really didn't move me. I suppose that's because it's from the grand-father of SF generation and I've had the benefit of seeing some of the newer, flashier stuff. ('Damn whipper-snapper!')

Before that were:
Omnivore's Dilemma. A very enlightening book with some interesting ideas, but I don't totally agree with some of the conclusions he draws and I think his presentation of a (very) few facts are skewed. Nothing that would overrule the value of the book, and a good read for anyone who eats food, but it is a book with political intentions.

Childhood's End. Great book. Really enjoyed the premise and style, and I was moved by just how oppressively 'alone' the character was at the end of the book. I felt some strongly paralleled concepts between Wrinkle in Time (which came 10 years later) and this.

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Reply #487 on: May 31, 2008, 04:18:40 PM
Omnivore's Dilemma. A very enlightening book with some interesting ideas, but I don't totally agree with some of the conclusions he draws and I think his presentation of a (very) few facts are skewed. Nothing that would overrule the value of the book, and a good read for anyone who eats food, but it is a book with political intentions.

I'm not going to comment on the book's factual accuracy, largely due to my complete ignorance of all things agricultural.  But I'd like to say that Michael Pollan's writing is about as fine as contemporary nonfiction writing gets.  He was able to keep me reading in bed before turning out the light, and usually only novels are capable of doing that.

It did me feel a bit uncultured for thinking that all mushrooms basically tasted the same, though.

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Reply #488 on: June 01, 2008, 12:49:44 AM
not sure if this is where it goes but I picked up a book by Larry Niven today called A world out of time and I was just wondering if anyone had heard of it?
thanks

That was the first Niven I read as a kid.  I adored it, and still have fond memories of it.  I fear re-reading it though, since it might not live up to my time-tinted view of it.  I'll be curious to hear your impression.

I was kind meh about the story it was not terrible but just was not amazing either IMO

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Reply #489 on: June 12, 2008, 09:22:06 PM
"The Secret Books of Paradys I & II" by Tanith Lee

Any good?  I have those from a library sale but haven't started them yet.  The only Lee I've read was Electric Forest which I did like.

Meh.  Vivid world but I've moved on from that style.  I'm mature enough now to understand the themes... but the endings of each story didn't really captivate me.  But if you like turn-of-the-century Parisian-style fantasy, you'll like it.

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Reply #490 on: June 12, 2008, 09:23:15 PM
"The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  1300 pages.

Was less impressed with the Reichenbach Falls story ("The Final Solution") than I thought I would be.

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Reply #491 on: June 13, 2008, 12:07:26 AM
Co-worker yesterday foisted a couple of "Christian SF" novels on me: The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension and its sequel (dont' remember the title as I left it at the office), by Terry James.

I'm not optimistic since the cover blurb indicates that Tim LaHaye (author of the "Left Behind" series) has a high opinion of it. And the last "Christian SF" I read was the duo This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti.  It sucked.


[edit]
Just went to Amazon to look it up; the other book is The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles).  Even though the first book doesn't say "The Second Coming Chronicles" anywhere on the front or back covers.  Whatever.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2008, 12:17:59 AM by stePH »

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Reply #492 on: June 13, 2008, 12:21:44 AM
Co-worker yesterday foisted a couple of "Christian SF" novels on me: The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension and its sequel (dont' remember the title as I left it at the office), by Terry James.

I'm not optimistic since the cover blurb indicates that Tim LaHaye (author of the "Left Behind" series) has a high opinion of it. And the last "Christian SF" I read was the duo This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti.  It sucked.


[edit]
Just went to Amazon to look it up; the other book is The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles).  Even though the first book doesn't say "The Second Coming Chronicles" anywhere on the front or back covers.  Whatever.
"It sucked" is painting a story with a pretty broad stroke.  What sucked about it?

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Reply #493 on: June 13, 2008, 01:01:54 AM
... the last "Christian SF" I read was the duo This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti.  It sucked.
"It sucked" is painting a story with a pretty broad stroke.  What sucked about it?

Too long ago to remember.  It must have been twenty years ago that I read Peretti's books.   Most of what I remember is battle between angels and demons, and the demons were invading and possessing humans under the guise of "New Age" "spirit guides", and of course there was the one Christian character who saw through it all and was trying desperately to get everybody else to understand that the "New Age" movement was a Satanic plot to damn all of humanity.  Overall, a pretty uninspired plot.

[edit]
To clarify, as I remember it the angels and demons walked among us here on Earth, invisible to all but each other.  The demons were working on corrupting the humans, and the angels were hunting out the demons.
[/edit]

This newest book (by Terry James) has Roswell-style alien silhouettes on the cover, and from the back cover copy appears to deal with UFO sightings and such.  I suppose the "aliens" are really demons in disguise.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2008, 04:34:14 AM by stePH »

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Reply #494 on: June 13, 2008, 03:40:24 PM
Co-worker yesterday foisted a couple of "Christian SF" novels on me: The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension and its sequel (dont' remember the title as I left it at the office), by Terry James.

I'm not optimistic since the cover blurb indicates that Tim LaHaye (author of the "Left Behind" series) has a high opinion of it. And the last "Christian SF" I read was the duo This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti.  It sucked.


[edit]
Just went to Amazon to look it up; the other book is The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles).  Even though the first book doesn't say "The Second Coming Chronicles" anywhere on the front or back covers.  Whatever.
"It sucked" is painting a story with a pretty broad stroke.  What sucked about it?

It's also been a long time since I read it (probably around the same time stePH did), but I remember the characters were not very compelling and the writing style was...dull.  The angel vs. demon battle at the end (what I remember of it) was kind of cool but it took a loooooooooooong time to get there.  Looking back at it now, as a Christian, I'm also annoyed by some of the "spiritual warfare" concepts.  Like when the police chief doesn't agree with you, it's not because he's trying to uphold the law, or because he's misguidedly trying to do the right thing, it's because there's a demon on his shoulder whispering to him what he should be saying. 

Almost 10 years ago, I read another Peretti book called "The Oath," which was his attempt at horror (I think).  The concept was that people who lived in this particular area, who were sinful, were marked with black splotches on their chest, then attacked by some kind of demonic dragon.  There were two main characters in the story, a man looking for the thing that had killed his brother and a police woman.  SPOILERS, if you want to keep reading.  After the man lusted after the woman, and she made it clear she was willing, the woman soon was marked and destroyed by evil.  The man, after defeating the demon dragon, realizes he should really get back together with his ex-wife, and goes home.  That seriously annoyed me.  Another, more annoying point that perhaps annoyed me more was the introduction of a character named "Jules Cryor."  I thought, oh, we're going to get a Christ figure (or an anti-Christ figure).  That should be interesting.  Nope, he died a couple pages later, and he acted like a whiny bastard.  You'd think a guy like Peretti writing "Christian" fiction would know that introducing a character with the initials JC should be significant.


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Reply #495 on: June 13, 2008, 04:02:14 PM
After the man lusted after the woman, and she made it clear she was willing, the woman soon was marked and destroyed by evil.  The man, after defeating the demon dragon, realizes he should really get back together with his ex-wife, and goes home.
Do I smell a double standard?

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Reply #496 on: June 13, 2008, 04:35:00 PM
After the man lusted after the woman, and she made it clear she was willing, the woman soon was marked and destroyed by evil.  The man, after defeating the demon dragon, realizes he should really get back together with his ex-wife, and goes home.
Do I smell a double standard?

I can't remember if the dude got marked, too.  He may have and then repented (or something).  But he certainly survived and realized he never should've divorced his wife.  Too bad the sinful woman didn't get a chance to repent. 

Peretti kind of set the stage for the Left, Behind books IMO, although until The Oath I never found his quite as offensive (that could be the years, though).  But I remember my dad being a bit annoyed when people at church would talk about the books from the pulpit, as if the words inside were written in red.  I also remember people jokingly refer to them as I Peretti and II Peretti.  (I don't blame any of that latter bit on Peretti.  I've heard he's a nice guy -- I just don't like his fiction.  It's not his fault people thought his fiction was so...inspired.)


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Reply #497 on: June 13, 2008, 04:55:28 PM
Co-worker yesterday foisted a couple of "Christian SF" novels on me: The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension and its sequel (dont' remember the title as I left it at the office), by Terry James.

I'm not optimistic since the cover blurb indicates that Tim LaHaye (author of the "Left Behind" series) has a high opinion of it. And the last "Christian SF" I read was the duo This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti.  It sucked.


[edit]
Just went to Amazon to look it up; the other book is The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles).  Even though the first book doesn't say "The Second Coming Chronicles" anywhere on the front or back covers.  Whatever.
"It sucked" is painting a story with a pretty broad stroke.  What sucked about it?

It's also been a long time since I read it (probably around the same time stePH did), but I remember the characters were not very compelling and the writing style was...dull.  The angel vs. demon battle at the end (what I remember of it) was kind of cool but it took a loooooooooooong time to get there.  Looking back at it now, as a Christian, I'm also annoyed by some of the "spiritual warfare" concepts.  Like when the police chief doesn't agree with you, it's not because he's trying to uphold the law, or because he's misguidedly trying to do the right thing, it's because there's a demon on his shoulder whispering to him what he should be saying. 

Almost 10 years ago, I read another Peretti book called "The Oath," which was his attempt at horror (I think).  The concept was that people who lived in this particular area, who were sinful, were marked with black splotches on their chest, then attacked by some kind of demonic dragon.  There were two main characters in the story, a man looking for the thing that had killed his brother and a police woman.  SPOILERS, if you want to keep reading.  After the man lusted after the woman, and she made it clear she was willing, the woman soon was marked and destroyed by evil.  The man, after defeating the demon dragon, realizes he should really get back together with his ex-wife, and goes home.  That seriously annoyed me.  Another, more annoying point that perhaps annoyed me more was the introduction of a character named "Jules Cryor."  I thought, oh, we're going to get a Christ figure (or an anti-Christ figure).  That should be interesting.  Nope, he died a couple pages later, and he acted like a whiny bastard.  You'd think a guy like Peretti writing "Christian" fiction would know that introducing a character with the initials JC should be significant.

I take all this as further verification that I have been right not to read "Christian scifi" books, unless you count C.S. Lewis.  (I know...we've had this conversation before.)

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DKT

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Reply #498 on: June 13, 2008, 05:23:27 PM
Swamp, if you haven't also read Madeleine L'Engle, I'd highly recommend checking out some of her stuff.  Wrinkle in Time and Many Waters are two I can personally vouch for that are SF/F.  I also read her "mainstream" novel Certain Women, which was kind of about David and all his wives and was also excellent.  I can't recommend that one enough, actually. 

Alright, sorry.  I'm getting way off topic here.  I'll move to the link Swamp posted if anyone wants to continue the discussion :)


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Reply #499 on: June 22, 2008, 11:35:12 PM
Finished Terry James' The Rapture Dialogues.  Crap.  Won't bother with the sequel; I'm returning both to my co-worker tomorrow.  Poorly written, and the characters and story are not at all compelling.  I think the only way you can actually think this toss is any good, is if you believe in the "spiritual warfare" concept espoused within it (and Peretti's books).

I'd really like to clear my palate by reading some Richard Dawkins ;D but instead I've picked up and resumed reading The Most of P.G. Wodehouse.  Today I've finished the last "Mr. Mulliner" story and am into the third "Ukridge" story.  Looking forward of course to the "Jeeves" stories deeper into the book (I'm just reading the collection front-to-back) as I've listened to some in audio form, but none of the five stories in this volume are ones I've heard before.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2008, 11:36:58 PM by stePH »

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