Recombination

[ewx]

Recombination was fun. It's been a while since I'd been to a con.

One of the things it made clear was that I've not been fully keeping up with really good SF and fantasy for some time now. Rather than attempt to remember all things that were mentioned over the weekend, would anyone care to recommend the highlights of the last decade of SF/F writing that they think I might have missed?

(Extruded fantasy product need not be mentioned l-)

Comments

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

Charlie Stross is worth a look, he has a reasonable amount of free material on the internets to try.

Peter F Hamilton has written some good-ish stuff, although the books are twice as long as they should be.

I'm just trying out Diana Wynne Jones myself, although so far all I know is that she produces some variety of kids fantasy product.

[emperor]

I borred a Stross book from rmc28, and enjoyed it. If you've not read any Tim Powers, then you should - he builds his stories around historical events and people (usually), and his books are very readable (and not too long! :)

[sweh.livejournal.com]

My first reading of Tim Powers was "The Anubis Gates", which I read in 1988 or 1989. It was enough to turn me off him. Maybe I should try again almost 20 years later...

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

Ooh, maybe I should look at Tim Powers :)

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Oh ghods yes, Charlie Stross is hysterical. I'm more a fantasy reader than sci-fi but Stross has me turning pages like billy-o :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've encountered Stross. Hamilton I tried one of his novels many years ago and wasn't particularly wowed, so I never really felt motivated to try Night's Dawn.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

I liked Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder from Hamilton. Then he grew into super-length books which can be good, but require patience and aren't too good for commuter reading (too little happens in the time allocated for reading).

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

It's very very long.

I mostly like it, apart from the ending.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Don't. You slug through four thousand pages of torture porn only to get to the sort of non-ending that makes you want to track the author down and set them on fire. Hamilton has been the biggest disappointment of anything I've read in the last couple of years, including the Fanthorpe.

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

If you've got a while, and strong arms, I highly recommend Dan Simmons's Hyperion and Endymion series.

I second mstevens's recommendation of Peter F Hamilton, though I disagree that they're too long.

Both build extremely rich universes in which to play out their stories. (As, of course has Ian M. Banks with the Culture, though he's done it over more books.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm up to date on Simmons, I read Hyperion/Endymion years ago and more recently Illium/Olympos.

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I knew I was a little late to that party.

(Still not read Illium/Olympos...)

[satan-pingu.livejournal.com]

Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun (among others) looks interesting.
I guess you know about China Miéville and Alistair Reynolds already.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

!!

Do explain..?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Mm, as a general point I was hoping for specific and detailed recommendations, rather than a bunch of author names...

[satan-pingu.livejournal.com]

That would have been a waste of effort if you already knew of the author/book, hence my question.
I'll give you synopses if you want, but titles:
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Liz Williams, Darkland (general consensus is that if you like Iain M Banks, you'll like her)
Ian McDonald, River of Gods...

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

Ooh, definitely Perdido Street Station.

[lnr]

I told him that when I first read it, but my copy has since moved out making it harder to borrow :-)

[satan-pingu.livejournal.com]

I can't speak authoritatively about it's content, but it's almost certainly going to be the next book I read---it sits on my shelf tormenting me.

The synopsis from amazon reads:
"Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise - a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy's body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss's pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean's goons. Now there's only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous."

Although experience has shown that comments along the lines of "ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous" are in flagrant breach of the trade descriptions act.

[satan-pingu.livejournal.com]

Ian McDonald and Liz Williams too?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't expect there's anything you haven't heard of, but see http://semichrome.net/~jack/social/books.txt. At the bottom is books I liked in the last ten years :)

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Colin Greenland's "Plenty" books (starting with "Take Back Plenty") are interesting. Not sure I _like_ them but, for some reason, I did buy the sequels so it can't have been that bad ;-)

[emperor]

His non-SF novel "Finding Helen" is worth reading, but a little bleak.

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

It's stretching the definition of SF to its limits, and probably beyond, but I found The Roaches Have No King (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1852427469) unusual and very readable.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

I'm going to sound like a stuck record, but go and read Vellum and Ink by Hal Duncan, since I remember you liking the odder end of Moorcock I think you'll really enjoy them.

You can get a taste of what he's like by reading some of the stuff on his blog, I suggest you start here (http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2006/04/nowhere-town-contents.html).

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Richard Morgan. Start with "Altered Carbon". My brother felt it was a bit too violent.

James Alan Gardner. "Expendable" sets the stage, and i didn't think it was especially good, but "Vigilant" is fantastic, and if you read "Expendable", you'll probably like "Ascending".

Steven Brust has been around for a while, but he's still writing and he's still good.

Peter da Silva insists that William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" is SF; i disagree, but it's still an excellent book.

I hope to god you've read Pratchett's "Night Watch" because that fucking book makes me cry every time i read it. "Going Postal" is also very good, with his best ending to date.

I hope i don't have to mention Neil Gaiman.

If you feel like reading a Web comic, A Miracle of Science (http://project-apollo.net/mos/) finished last year and is a fun, good read.