Bart’s Comments (group member since Mar 11, 2013)

Bart’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

Gary wrote: "My favorites are Dangerous Visions, Thieves' World, and Legends. I couple others that I liked are:
The Flashing Swords Series of five books. Four or five sw..."
The Flashing Swords series were great. For ages, they were hard to find in second-hand bookstores but I slowly captured them all. Now with Amazon-- perhaps not as hard, but also not nearly as much fun as browsing stacks of used books

C.E. wrote: "Zelazny! Yes, he's a WORLDS builder. Amber in particular..."
Zelazny was the first name to come to my mind. Also Frank Herbert. Tolkien... not so much. Robert E Howard is also getting overlooked. No love for Hyperboria?

Mostly watching DVDs, but also spending time with "Fringe Florida" by Lynn Waddell (2/3 finished) and began "Spy vs Spy: The Complete Case Book" by Antonio Prohias.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
War of the Worlds (1953)
Them (1954)
Godzilla
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Terminator (1984)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Thing From Another World (1951)
Donovan's Brain
Television SciFi:
Twilight Zone
Babylon Five
Night Gallery & Thriller (may not be scifi, but are great)
Star Trek: TNG and DS9
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Outer Limits
Incredible Hulk (Bill Bixby)
Battlestar Galactica

One I read 4 years ago was the short novella" Under the Black Ensign" by L Ron Hubbard. Not sure it fits as SF/F.

I read this one about 20 years ago. I was working in Yosemite NP and a co-worker gave me several Heinlein titles (we didn't have tv in the High Sierras). I devoured the book, and it has long stood out as my favorite Heinlein. Yes, all the stuff about basic/officer training did seem a bit much, but I thought it did a fine job as to how the military "brainwashes" recruits to think of themselves as a unit, not as an individual. Then, the battles with the bugs really opened my imagination. The movie: it was mindless entertainment.

Sad. I've read many of his books. A genuine titan in the Science Fiction field who is too often overlooked by today's younger generation.

I enjoyed the book on the whole. I'm 48 and was never a gamer, other than the occasional video arcade game, but still had enough pop culture awareness to know a bit about many of the references made in the book. I even remember the part about the cereal box whistle from when I was a teen. One thing, I will add is that my younger co-workers (30s) enjoyed the book more than I, since they were much more familiar with many of the first home gaming systems and several other pop-culture references in the book. Point is: I think the appeal of the book is somewhat limited to those who came of age in the 1980s/1990s. My only real drawback is that I felt the book could have easily been 75, or so, pages shorter, to make it a faster paced read.

I have a few Ace doubles. I picked one up about two months ago: The Space Barbarians, Mack Reynolds/ The Eyes of Bolsk, Robert Lory. Eyes is pretty awful, but haven't read the Reynolds story, yet.

Omnibus of Science Fiction, 1952 ed. Groff Conklin

The Tor Double Novels series are also great. I bought many of these as they were being released.

Science Fiction: Classic Stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction compiled by Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg

These are the ones that immediately come to mind.

The first fantasy was an Ace paperback of Conan.

The first SciFi I can recall was H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau.