Awesome SCI FI book

[GreyGeek]

Its title is "WWW:WAKE"
by Robjert J Sawyer.
It makes "The Adolescence of P-1" look like a highschool term paper.

Another by the same author is
"Calculating .... God".

I am presently readying
"Flashforward"
by the same author. Saying it is like the ABC series of the same name is like saying that Madonna is like the real Madonna.

My list of all time favorite Sci-Fi authors is now:
Robert J Sawyer
Arthur C Clark,
Stanislaw Lem
Issac Asimov
and anyone else...

[aqeeliz]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

I have 'FlashForward' on my toRead list for a long time, but haven't found it at local bookstore yet. Will check out the other books too.

I know about other authors, but I haven't read Stainslaw Lem, how is he?

Oh, and thanks for the recommendation.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

Lem is ... "unique".

He is of the Asimov school. In many ways gifted and far sighted, but in others less so. His most famous work is "Solaris", about a planet with a sentient ocean, which is more like a loose gelatin, which can harden or thin as needed, than like water. His writings deal a lot with veiled expressions of a police state. "Notes found in a bath tube" is classic. Layers and layers of bureaucrats of the State working in a building, paranoid about "spies", plotting and sub-plotting against each other. A rookie called in for a special mission is shuffled from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, each not knowing what the mission is and suspicious of the others. He has a whole series of stories about two AI robots who are "Construction Engineers" and build all sorts of things for rules of various planets. They actually behave like to human competitors, jealous of each others accomplishments. Another, "The Futurilogical Congress", is about a futurologist who attends a convention convening in a hotel in Costa Rico, at the height of a revolution. It is, without a doubt, his most humorous work.

Unlike Clark and his communication satellite or Asimov and his famous red led calculator, Lem makes not prediction of any scientific or technological achievements. While he extends many scientific concepts (time travel, subluminal space flights, cryogenics, etc...) to plausible futures, his characters in those futures still use computers with paper printouts. A "personal computer" is the size of large trunk and uses foot peddles and a steering wheel to control, much like that IBM hoax picture of a "computer of the future". But, his wit, prose, style, plot imagination and humor more than make up for those relics of the past which his plots sometimes cling to.

Sawyer, on the other hand, is more technically sound than Clark, more imaginative in his scientific extensions than any sci-fi author that I have read, more thorough in his plot development, more descriptive of the character and the environment.

[kyonides]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

Another, "The Futurilogical Congress", is about a futurologist who attends a convention convening in a hotel in Costa Rico, at the height of a revolution. It is, without a doubt, his most humorous work.

It's Costa Rica and I guess it should be kind of humorous since Costa Rica is not even close to end up immersed in any revolution of any kind.

A "personal computer" is the size of large trunk and uses foot peddles and a steering wheel to control, much like that IBM hoax picture of a "computer of the future".

Perhaps he was a Test Drive or Need for Speed videogames fan hehehe

[GreyGeek]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

.....
It's Costa Rica and I guess it should be kind of humorous since Costa Rica is not even close to end up immersed in any revolution of any kind....

I thought it was "Rica" too, buy my spell checker was flagging it as mispelled, but it accepted "Rico". At 70 I no longer remember the spelling of many common words. If it wasn't for my spell checker I'd appear illiterate.

I just finished Flashforward. It was marvelous to the end. I had become so disillusioned about sci-fi that I stopped reading them for a while, and when I did start back up I had a habit of reading the last chapter first. It it contained a "poof, and a miracle happened" type of ending I put it back on the shelf.

WWW:Wake's last chapter wasn't a miracle ending. Neither was Flashforward. ABC's televised series is mere ad fodder. Compared to what Sawyer wrote even Madonna is a better rendition of Mary than the TV series is of Flashforward.

I'm off to read "Mindscan", then "Hominids", "Humans" and "Hybrids". 8)

[lcorken]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

Really enjoyed WWW:WAKE. Will start WWW:Watch after I finish Humans. "The Neanderthal Parallax"

Hominids, Humans is a bit of a challenge to my open-mindedness, but very entertaining and informative.

Coincidentally my wife and I were walking around the neighborhood and as we walked past some Elk droppings and foot prints she asked "Why don't people ride elk like we do horses?" Who knows? was my reply. That night I read a paragraph in "Humans" that explained it.

"You can't domesticate the North American megafauna... They won't take riders no matter how hard you try to break them." Reindeer excepted. Go Santa!

Of course the book is a Novel so this may or may not be accurate. But it seems true to me.

Sci-Fi Ken.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Awesome SCI FI book

This has been a very interesting thread, I'm looking forward to more posts.

woodsmoke