[conspire] OT: Science Fiction, places to start

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Edward Cherlin (echerlin at gmail.com):

> Thinking about the Stross I have read, I can't come up with one for an
> introduction.

Yudhvir being a very clueful Linux user, he'll find _Halting State_ both
hilarious and occasionally exhilarating, I'd expect.

But I'm betting that you're expressing opinions on such matters without
actual knowledge.

> I don't suppose that's where Lem got a similar idea for his robotic
> Poland-of-the-mind.

Improbable.  Lem detested Western SF authors, particularly Golden Age
ones.

> This is not the least offensive Heinlein in my circles. TMIAHM has
> some of the most vicious and elitist fantasy politics and revolution I
> have ever read. 

Funny, I would have expected you to have gotten atop that ideological
soapbox about _Starship Troopers_ if anything.  Perhaps your timing is
off, and this is a delayed effect.

(If you're getting the impression I'm not impressed by the gratuitously
injected advocacy crap, you'd be right.)

> OK, Ayn Rand is worse....

Rand as an SF author: now _there_ is a dark fantasy.  Maybe Norman
Spinrad will write it (maybe writing as Philip Jose Farmer, in turn
writing as Kilgore Trout).

> And a truly deviant AI.

WTF does that even _mean_, Edward?  

Wait, don't answer that.  I'm suspecting some sort of personal
show'n'tell, and it'd be better if you took that elsewhere.


> Cardboard cutout characters, in sharp contrast with some of his
> renderings of working craftsmen and professionals.

Funny you should claim that, since young Hazel Meade, in particular, is
one of the very few believable, fully realised female characters
Heinlein ever wrote.

Anyhow, you're entitled to your opinion.  You could even get off your
ass and send Yudhvir your own damned list of (what you assert to be)
extremely worthwhile and entertaining SF novels, once you get through
making bizarre and semi-random comments about mine.

> I would have recommended Tunnel in the Sky....

A creaky 1955 juvenile?  Better you than me.

... or for intermediate lengths....

Which were not under discussion.