Procrastination Hardcore

[sub_divided]

havenstone via apintrix:
Bold what you've read, italicize what you didn't finish reading, asterisk favorites and strike The Hated.

(First list is The SF Book Club's list of the 50 most influential sci fi and fantasy books of the last 50 years. The second set is havenstone's fantasy-only list, following complaints that the first list is biased toward sci fi.)


SCI FI AND FANTASY

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert*
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (update 7/2008)
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. (update 7/2008)
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (update 7/2008)
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein*
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

FANTASY-ONLY (subtracting the books that appear above)

George MacDonald, Phantastes, 1858
William Morris, The Well at the World’s End, 1896
E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, 1922
H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, 1928
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, 1946
Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian, 1950
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, 1950
T.H. White, The Once & Future King, 1958
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, 1962
Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron, 1965
Alan Garner, Elidor, 1965
Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn, 1968 (I've seen the movie, though)
Fritz Leiber, Ill Met in Lankhmar, 1970
Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber, 1970 (update 7/2008)
Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising, 1973
William Goldman, The Princess Bride, 1973*
Patricia McKillip, The Riddle-Master of Hed, 1976
Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong, 1976
Piers Anthony, A Spell for Chameleon, 1977
Walter Wangerin, The Book of the Dun Cow, 1978
David Eddings, The Belgariad, 1982
Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood, 1984
Margarert Weis & Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, 1984
Orson Scott Card, Seventh Son, 1987
Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint, 1987 (update 7/2008)
Mercedes Lackey, The Last Herald-Mage, 1990
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana, 1990
Tad Williams, Stone of Farewell, 1990
Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World, 1990
Stephen King, The Waste Lands, 1991
Neil Gaiman, The Season of Mists, 1991
C.S. Friedman, Black Sun Rising, 1991
Tim Powers, Last Call, 1992 (update 7/2008)
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, 1995*
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996
Sean Stewart, Mockingbird, 1998
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station, 2000
Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, 2004*


Sci fi: I start way more books than I finish. I tend not to read the more thoughtful books -- what can I say, I'm a thoughtless person.
Fantasy: I've read fewer of these but my rate of completion is higher for the titles I have read.
Specific Commentary:

The Foundation Trilogy
Never read past the first chapter of this. It throws backstory at you and I thought the world was too orderly. I should try again, though.

Dune
Dune is absolutely, unbelievably fantastic. Dune Messiah is okay. Children of Dune is readable. God-Emperor had a few highlights but was mostly terrible and the later books are just awful. Dune has amazing world-building but it's the kind that works best as decoration; I think the real strength of the first book is the characters and the coolness (not depth) of the setting. It's startlingly original, but when Herbert tries to go deeper he runs into trouble because his grasp of human psychology is not very good. He's also a writer with a limited number of preoccupations, something that's painfully obvious if you read any of the books he wrote before Dune.

Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers
Oh man, I love Starship Troopers even though it is basically about how life would be better if we only lived in a fascist military society. I don't agree with it, but I love it. Similarly Stranger in a Strange Land, though only the first half.

Ursula LeGuin
I don't know, I've never really liked Ursula LeGuinn. When I was younger I felt like I was missing something, and the last time I tried to read something of hers I felt like I was being talked down to. If she's not writing for kids and she's not writing for adults, who is she writing for?

Neuromancer
Eh. This started better than it ended. I dunno, maybe it's the Tolkien effect, but I expected the book to go further beyond surface appearances -- cyberpunk cliches -- than it did. (Yes, I realize they weren't cliches when the book was written.)

The Mists of Avalon
I may only have liked the first two chapters of this book. It just got messier and messier, with the characters doing stupider and stupider things, and constantly misunderstanding one another and belittling each other and never, ever compromising on anything. Reading this, I felt an awful sense of INESCAPABLE DOOM and by the time I'd finished I felt totally oppressed and hated everything. I still can't believe I finished the book. I wouldn't be able to today.

Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 amazed me because it was the first book I'd read about intellectual impoverishment, and later I kept coming back to it for what it has to say about America. On the other hand, I've never really been a fan of Bradbury's other works.

Okay, I don't really feel like doing the rest of these :p.

Before I get back to work, some linkblogging!

The Plot of Reiko Shimizu's Manga "Moonchild" As Described by a Criminal Defense Attorney
via telophase (actually, she linked to his essay on shonen ai).

wtf27
THOSE PROMPTS ARE GREAT. Too bad most of the submission are for series I don't follow -_-.


Casino Royale and what it means to be blonde
petronia's. I left her a pretty long comment that I guess I'll repost here though it's kind of obvious and not nearly as smart as her commentary, and parts of it are probably (probably?!) just projected obsessions ahaha.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

In the new Bond movie, Vesper makes a point of Bond's Oxford credentials but says he wears them with "such disdain" -- he's got the outer appearance of an elite but he doesn't come by it naturally. It's significant that he and Vesper have this conversation at all. In the earlier Bonds, Bond has these polished manners but there's no attempt to explain them. The audience is left to make the aristocracy connection -- not hard, when Bond has the British accent Americans automatically associate with high society (funny how none of the earlier Bonds had actual upper-crust accents). But the thing is, the ambiguity left room to fantasize.

I'm talking about male fantasies, obviously.

"Every woman wants him and every man wants to be him." Wanting to be Bond is a lot harder when the perils are clearly outlined -- it's what you said about Brosnan's shadow-self showing on the surface with Craig -- and also, a lot harder when you know for certain you don't have the background for it. (What's really ironic is that Craig doesn't have the background, either.)

Hm, what else. Casino Royale is so much more female-friendly than the other Bond films. The presence of a strong female character isn't the real reason, because there have been strong female characters in other Bond films. It's Craig's Bond not being so infallible, and having a bad side that's visible on screen where Vesper (and the audience) can see it -- and reach it. Before it didn't matter if the girl was a rocket scientist, she wasn't ever going be on equal footing with James Bond, emotionally speaking.

The only "equal" Bond girl -- who is not a villain -- in previous Bond films was Michelle Yeoh in Tommorrow Never Dies, and Bond treated her like a guy or (at least) put her in a separate, non-sexual category. This movie proves that you can have equality and chemistry. Some people complained about Solange (the "typical Bond girl") but I appreciated that she was there, for the contrast -- and for the fact that she is not really taken in my him. She plays along because she wants to.

I had trouble with names in this movie. Well, I have trouble with names in every movie but this one actually punishes you for not catching them. The ONE name I absolutely remembered was Mr. White's. That's because after the movie shifts from black and white to color he's the first white man you see on screen.

What I really liked in CR (besides Craig's stony-eyed stare) was the head-on collision of past of present. Terrorism and free-running and cell phones are all the rage right now, but that poker game, with every stock player an ethnic caricature? Soooo sixties. I also thought it was charming that Le Chiffre's attempt to manipulate the stock market involved actually blowing up Skyline's new plane. And - not just any plane! The newest, shiniest, BIGGEST plane in the world. That sort of faith, that corporate stock is directly connected to an easily measurable reality, is pretty much nonexistent today. (Heck, Enron proved that the market is not connected to reality at all.)

Blah blah blah. I liked the movie, it was smart. (How much of the dialog was taken directly from the book, I wonder? It's probably pretty telling of the atmosphere in Hollywood right now that the smart, faithful adaptation was made today, when ten years ago all we had were super-spy macho fantasies with lots of high-tech explosions.)