hey, look, i'm in Forbes.

An article I put together a few months ago (the one about the best sci-fi books) has been making the rounds again on StumbleUpon, and it looks like Forbes just picked it up :D

http://www.forbes.co...fi-novels-ever/

thats awesome, i wonder why the Forbes writer thanks Cliff something or other and not you for putting it together?

  On 12/8/2011 at 10:59 PM, Awepittance said:

thats awesome, i wonder why the Forbes writer thanks Cliff something or other and not you for putting it together?

Second paragraph ;)

  Quote

And because the internet is a wonderful place, John Forsythe at Blamcast collated the upvotes on Reddit and ranked them to produce a crowdsourced list of the best sci-fi novel ever. You can check out the full list here.

not only that, but cliff pickover (a brilliant mathematician who's a big name in fractals) turned them onto the link.

  On 12/8/2011 at 11:00 PM, chaosmachine said:

  On 12/8/2011 at 10:59 PM, Awepittance said:

thats awesome, i wonder why the Forbes writer thanks Cliff something or other and not you for putting it together?

 

Second paragraph ;)

 

  Quote

And because the internet is a wonderful place, John Forsythe at Blamcast collated the upvotes on Reddit and ranked them to produce a crowdsourced list of the best sci-fi novel ever. You can check out the full list here.

nice!

high five chaos that's fucking awesome.

of all of the people on here I always think of you as one of the more intelligent and "most- likely- to- succeed" types

checken' out cliff pickover now..

I remember reading this article and I ended up just shutting the window because I found the number of books I wanted to read that instant was overwhelming. I did just read Neuromancer recently and I think it was because of you saying it was your favourite.

  On 12/9/2011 at 12:24 AM, Coalbucket PI said:

I remember reading this article and I ended up just shutting the window because I found the number of books I wanted to read that instant was overwhelming. I did just read Neuromancer recently and I think it was because of you saying it was your favourite.

cool :) what did you think of it?

Very nice. The few of those that I've read were all excellent, and this reminds me that I need to continue reading the Foundation series. Mote in God's Eye is one of my all time faves, and Niven/Pournelle's followup novel The Gripping Hand is also really good.

I've consulted this list prior to every library trip i've made since i first read the article.

Charge them!! did they pay the rights to you???

You're so cool, chaosmachine. Congrats on being recognized for it :)

This is all well and good, but when are you going to start playing minecraft on the watmm server?

This is legitimately awesome.

awesome stuff. what would be your recommendation for someone who hasn't really read much sci-fi?

I bet Teve Torbes was like this

upon reading the article

  On 12/10/2011 at 2:21 AM, jhonny said:

awesome stuff. what would be your recommendation for someone who hasn't really read much sci-fi?

if i had to pick three off the top of my head

kim stanley robinson - red mars (the first volume of a trilogy about the colonisation of mars. often cited as the most realistic portrayal of it ever written)

neal stephenson - snow crash ('cryptonomicon' is a better book but not really scifi, and 'anathem' is my favourite book of his but it's fucking dense)

daniel keyes - flowers for algernon (devastatingly sad)

brilliant kaini, thanks! fingers crossed for a Kindle for xmas

Is Anathem really sci-fi? I found it pretty easy going after the first couple of chapters.

I've read most of that list - how's the Gene Wolfe book? or the Alastair Reynolds? The Greg Egan? I really like hard SF if it's well written, but so much of it is just uuuuuuungh,

  On 12/10/2011 at 2:47 AM, chenGOD said:

Is Anathem really sci-fi? I found it pretty easy going after the first couple of chapters.

it gets more sci-fi towards the end, i guess.

  On 12/10/2011 at 3:14 AM, chaosmachine said:

  On 12/10/2011 at 2:47 AM, chenGOD said:

Is Anathem really sci-fi? I found it pretty easy going after the first couple of chapters.

 

it gets more sci-fi towards the end, i guess.

How is Anathem not SF? It's speculative fiction that posits a fairly complete social structure, and involves scientists discussing science, and it ends

I think it probably fits the Hard SF definition, even. David Brin's Earth is called Hard SF, it was nominated for the Hugo and Locus, and despite glossing over some speculative technology (and getting a few things right), its plot is sillier than Avatar and twice as implausible.

edit: I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just interested in how you define "science fiction."

Larry Niven's "Ringworld" is hard SF. I guess I'm a little fussy about it - I think most of the stuff that gets classified as SF should really just be fantasy.

Anathem is more like discussion on how societies interact with knowledge. It just happens to be set in space partially. I guess there are some SF elements to it. Reading it I never got the impression that it was a science fiction novel, it was more a sort of philosophical fiction. It's a damn good book though.

'tis a fair enough point. Anathem certainly wasn't a straight genre exercise (which one of its many lovable elements).

I haven't read much good straight sf in years. Feels like an itch I need to scratch-- but my god is the state of actual prose in this genre miserable. I also have a low tolerance for fantasy being called science fiction, which limits me to the aforementioned tin-eared hard stuff.

Looking forward to filing in some gaps with good stuff via the OP though!

Sounds like we're much in the same boat baph. Especially with the level of the prose.