[PLUG-TALK] 10 Science Fiction books of note

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Sun, Jan 01, 2017 at 05:59:58PM -0800, Michael wrote:
> 
> From a link sent by a friend,
> https://io9.gizmodo.com/5924625/10-science-fiction-novels-you-pretend-to-have-read-and-why-you-should-actually-read-them

For those who read SF for story value, or for wild
ideas, there are more inspiring books than these.
What I have read of the books on this list are
lit-rit-cher, the kind of stuff that pleases pre-
Foucault English professors.  If you aren't one of
those, there may be better ways to spend your time.

Being a snarky fellow, I did read Dahlgren in an
amusing way, a LONG time ago.  My friend Sam B. loved
Dahlgren, and bragged to everyone about it.  He also
bragged about his new answering machine, back when
those were new technology.  They used cassette tapes
for incoming message storage.  

So, his good friends took turns calling his answering
machine when he wasn't home, and reading sequential
90 second segments of Dahlgren.  We filled Sam's
incoming message tape about three times over a few
days, about 20 pages of the novel as I recall. 
After we heard enough of Sam's pleading, we stopped.
lit-rit-cher can be fun, perhaps not in the way the
authors intend.

Lately, I haven't had much time for science fiction. 
arxiv.org has way too much mind-bending physics and
astronomy, and recent molecular biology work makes
gamma-ray bursters seem tame.  The SF authors (and 
the press releasers, like SF but pays better) struggle
to match the new discoveries in the peer-reviewed
literature.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com