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The Apolyton Science Fiction Book Club: April nominations

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  • The Apolyton Science Fiction Book Club: April nominations

    A few things before I get into my nomination...

    For starters, thanks to all those who participated in The Handmaid's Tale discussion! I kind of threw this all together, and then picked a book dealing with women in a mostly male forum, so I was uncertain how it would all turn out. But we did pretty good. Especial thanks to St. Leo, Che, and Obi-wan for their many contributions.

    The thread is still active and needs your participation! I'm gonna reply to something Che said when I'm done with this one, so you'll have no problem finding it: it'll be Front Page material again.

    March's book has been selected and it is Asimov's Foundation. Now stop groaning some of you: this book is a Giant in the history of science fiction (I'm going to see if I can make the argument that modern science fiction can be dated from the publication of Foundation, but lets save that for the thread, OK? ), and there will be plenty to discuss. Anyway, this will be a book that is easy to find in used book stores and the library, and, having done so already, it is a damn quick read. It was nominated by Clear Skies, btw.

    Now for the nominations. The nomination rules are as follows:

    1. You must have read the book you are nominating. *
    2. Please nominate only 1 book, as to allow others' selections to be listed.
    3. The books must be science fiction.

    It would also be appreciated if you could link to a good description (Amazon, sfsite.com, whatever) of the book.

    On the 15th (or so), I will post a thread listing the nominations with a multiple-choice poll which will allow you to select up to three (3) books. The poll will be timed to end at the end of the month, and the winner will be the book we read in April. If there is a tie, I make the decision as to which book to read.**

    My April Nomination is Excession, by Iain M. Banks. This book is awesome: it is deep in themes, the civilization that Banks created is complex, shiite, I could go on and on. Warning: This is a difficult, complex book: Banks is an author, one who demands far more from his readers than creative typists like Timothy Zahn or Robert Jordan.

    To quote Amazon: "It's not easy to disturb a mega-utopia as vast as the one Iain M. Banks has created in his popular Culture series, where life is devoted to fun and ultra-high-tech is de rigueur. But more than two millennia ago the appearance--and disappearance--of a star older than the universe caused quite a stir. Now the mystery is back, and the key to solving it lies in the mind of the person who witnessed the first disturbance 2,500 years ago. But she's dead, and getting her to cooperate may not be altogether easy"

    * For the reasoning behind this rule, read my arguments in this thread.

    **Yeah, I know: it sounds kind of arbitrary and capricious on my part. But the nature of the medium kind of dictates that it be this way: do I run yet another thread for a runoff? How long should that poll run for? Ugh. Sometimes you just have to cut through the BS and make a decision. But I can be wrong: if y'all wanna discuss this and come up with alternatives, this is the thread to do it in.
    Last edited by JohnT; February 6, 2003, 10:53.

  • #2
    I'm nominating Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed

    I couldn't find a very enticing-sounding description of it, but the main character is a physicist, the book is good anarchist propaganda (meaning not in the Ayn Rand type sense in that that it genuinely questions the book's philosophical precepts), and it won both the Hugo and the Nebula. Wutang!
    Last edited by Ramo; February 6, 2003, 12:12.
    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
    -Bokonon

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    • #3
      Ayn Rand constantly questioned her philosophy, she just phrased the questions so that her philosophy would come out in the best light possible.

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      • #4
        True.
        "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
        -Bokonon

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        • #5
          Good talent if you can develop it.

          Btw, thanks for the nom!

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          • #6
            oh, I need to find that thread

            BTW, I nominate Cosmonaut Keep

            Jon Miller
            Jon Miller-
            I AM.CANADIAN
            GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

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            • #7
              oh, and I thought you said that I could nominate books which I had not read

              Jon Miller
              Jon Miller-
              I AM.CANADIAN
              GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

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              • #8
                The Dispossesed is an excellent book!

                Haven't read Cosmonaut Keep yet, but I like the author, Ken MacLeod. (he's a fellow Trotskyist and someone I used to debate with in the usenet group alt.politics.socialism.trotsky). I've read three of his other books, The Cassini Division, The Stone Canal, and The Sky Road. Of the three, I like the last one the best. The Stone Canal is about a splinter colony from Earth that sets up a true libertarian society, but one that is heavily dependent on slave robot labor. The Cassini Division, is about a true communist society on Earth and the conflict it has with a conoly of "fast humans," humans who uploaded themselves into computers. In order to deal with the threat, Earth makes contact with the libertarian society from the first book, but things don't go to well. The Sky Road, is about how these things came about and a Green Revolution on Earth that wiped out a good chunk of humanity. There's a fourth book in the series (dealing with the fast humans) but I haven't read it yet.

                Last time I nominated three works, MacLeod's The Cassini Division, and Ali Covenestra's Joe. Instead of these two, I'd prefer to nominate the other book I nomiated last time, Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. It's a tale of the colonization of Mars, from scientific colony to an oppressed colony of Earth. It's pretty good on the science (mostly), and it's a brilliant critique of modern neo-colonialism.
                Last edited by chequita guevara; February 6, 2003, 19:20.
                Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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                • #9
                  I nominate Larry Niven's Ringworld.
                  Blog | Civ2 Scenario League | leo.petr at gmail.com

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                  • #10
                    Only one nomination? Hmm. That makes things more difficult.

                    I think I'll start with Theodore Sturgeon. Now, he mostly did short stories, so for a book... Venus Plus X might work.

                    Still, his best work was in the shorts. Maybe a relatively neglected modern writer.

                    Yeah, that'll do for this time. I'll nominate Aristoi, by Walter Jon Williams.

                    I may even have time to join the discussion this month

                    Wraith
                    "Life is more than a choice of which affectation to indulge in today."
                    -- Captain Yuan ("Aristoi")

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                    • #11
                      I dunno much about SF books, though I have started to really read them more than anything else. Liked Asimov's Foundation.

                      I nominate Ender's Shadow by Orsen S. Card-- for the heck of it.
                      "The Enrichment Center is required to inform you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake"
                      Former President, C3SPDGI

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Jon Miller
                        oh, and I thought you said that I could nominate books which I had not read

                        Jon Miller
                        In the March Voting thread, both you and GP asked this question. I replied, going into my reasons as to why I thought it important that the nominator actually have read the book they are nominating. Of course, the issue was left open to discussion: GP responded, saying "Keep it up. Good work, JT." which I took as agreement; and you didn't respond at all. So I figured the issue was properly discussed and settled with the 3 people who actually cared enough about the issue having debated it and finally "voting" 2 'for' and 1 'abstain'.

                        I also suggested in the very first thread that, if the issue is important enough to the group, you can research a new author (defined as having published his/her first novel within the past 5 years), and we can make your selection the automatic "winner." You didn't reply to that either, I might add.

                        Note that nothing prevents anybody from voting for books they haven't read yet. It's just in the nomination process that one must select a book that they think is capable of carrying on a conversation, and the only way to make an honest determination is to read the novel.

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                        • #13
                          Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
                          "Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown . . . reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency" - Walt Whitman

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                          • #14
                            Sweet. Got some good nominations going so far:

                            Ramo, The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin
                            jon miller, Cosmonaut Keep, Ken McLeod
                            Chegitz, Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
                            St Leo, Ringworld, Larry Niven
                            Wraith, Aristoi, Walter Jon Williams
                            Thud, Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
                            Clear Skies, Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
                            JohnT, Excession, Iain M. Banks

                            Other than mine, one particular novel stands out, as WJW is an author I have NEVER tackled. But we'll leave the hard core lobbying for the voting thread (coming Feb. 15th).

                            By the way, I should point out that we might want to make sure that the novel we are selecting is readily available. A number of classics are out of print, and even with used book stores, some books and authors are very prized and are hard to find (I'm thinking Harlan Ellison, here, and Sturgeon).
                            Last edited by JohnT; February 7, 2003, 14:09.

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                            • #15
                              Any chance of a collection of short stories? Martian Chronicles, or something.
                              Världsstad - Dom lokala genrenas vän
                              Mick102, 102,3 Umeå, Måndagar 20-21

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