Modern Good Reads discussion

Which is your favorite setting to read about? Do you like space craft settings? Which are your favorite planets and why?

A couple of my favorites would be Jacqueline Carey's Terre D'Ange and Anne McCaffrey's Pern. The former for the society's motto: "Love as Thou Wilt" as well as the existence of some magic and real angels. She's got slavery in there, too, though, and I think if I lived in Terre D'Ange I might have to join some sort of activist organization to abolish that, though. Pern I love for the dragons and firelizards. If I didn't get to bond with at least one of those, no thanks. I'd do without the rain of thread, too.

I enjoy the science, but far too many space-crafty sci-fi reads like a gear-head's wet dream. I much prefer reading about the ubiquitous science/tech that underpins societies. How does that science/tech change the way people [intelligent beings] live? Do they become more tolerant or less, more connected or less, more human or less? It's the cultural and personal aspects of societies that fascinates me and the science/tech simply creates different hoops for characters to jump through.

p.s. Sorry hit the post button too soon. Favourite planet would have to be Arrakis [Dune].

Sophia wrote: "A couple of my favorites would be Jacqueline Carey's Terre D'Ange and Anne McCaffrey's Pern. The former for the society's motto: "Love as Thou Wilt" as well as the existence of some magic and real ..."

I'm with you, Sophia, I want to bond with a dragon on Pern!

A.C are you a William Gibson fan? I think you'd love him. I'd also love any recommendations of 'social science fiction' that you have in this thread; I really prefer stories about human connection as well. I like aliens and fantastic worlds, but I do find that the shiny crap and the hot tech can really interfere with the human story.

I like my sci fi dark, and I have to admit...I'm not sure I want to visit some of Phillip Dick's worlds. I wouldn't mind travelling with Halo Jones The Ballad of Halo Jones or the Doctor for a bit, though.

Michelle wrote: "A.C are you a William Gibson fan? I think you'd love him. I'd also love any recommendations of 'social science fiction' that you have in this thread; I really prefer stories about human connection ..."

Oh god yes! Necromancer is still one of my favourite books. :) If you enjoy dark sci-fi I'd strongly recommend Hugh Howey's Shift. It's a pre-and-post-quel to Wool, and while I enjoyed Wool a great deal, I found Shift much more satisfying - richer, deeper, more thoughtful, and the prose can be downright beautiful at times. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books are pretty dark as well but I could not relate to the characters at times. It's almost too big, too all-encompassing. I'll keep thinking. :)

OOOOOH! I like beautiful prose. Kim Stanley Robinson sounds familiar...

Update! With Ender's Game and other works coming to the big screen, which worlds would you love to see immortalized on the silver screen?

Definitely space ship-y stuff. It's what I write. (I also am writing a fantasy but don't tell anyone) I do not write "gear head" stuff because it tends to get a bit dry (as A.C. mentioned)but futuristic is hopeful to me. It makes me think we have a future.

@ Michelle. One of the best social science fiction books ever written is Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's old now but in its day it won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. And it's definitely about people. :D

Re worlds. I don't know. I truly hated every movie version of Dune I have ever seen so I'm not sure I'd want to see any of my favourite worlds brought to the silver screen. Then again, HBO are doing an incredible job with A Song of Fire and Ice so perhaps I shouldn't speak too soon.

One of my favourite sci-fi worlds is Otherland, by Tad Williams, and it is being turned into a huge online game. HBO could do some amazing things with it too. :)

AC I couldn't even get through the first version. It was horribly cast and just awful. So was John Carter but I think that was more the adaptation than the cinematography. And I think it was also badly cast.

P.I. wrote: "AC I couldn't even get through the first version. It was horribly cast and just awful. So was John Carter but I think that was more the adaptation than the cinematography. And I think it was also b..."

For me, the problem is always that the Director rarely 'sees' the same things that I see when reading the book. The movie becomes one person's interpretation and I usually prefer my own. :D

A.C. That "Seeing" is precisely why I revere Stephen King. Brian De Palma recreated the first Carrie film to exactly what I pictured (and I think most people)with the only exception casting Sissy Spacek (who was as usual magnificent)because she was thin and Carrie was described by King as chubby. To me, King is the king because few authors (even my faves)manage to make all readers see pretty much the same images, which King does. But that's my opinion, lol!

I prefer space ships because everyone's literally in the same boat. You can shrink the world down to turn the pressure up on the characters. Outside the ship is where their hope resides.

I do agree that it should not be all about the "gears," though. I try to write that way. Just present a clear enough picture of the ship to let the reader know the rules. Then let the characters have their way with each other.

As far as being a reader, I think it's important to give us a nice sense of atmosphere. I don't like it when the world around the characters is 'dead'. One of the reasons I love Farscape is that Moya is a character and has needs and wants of her own.

Do you guys like a 'living' setting, or do you find it distracting from the characters?

I like a setting of a galaxy co-inhabited by humans and aliens alike, with earth resorting to massively tall buildings to compensate for its overpopulation. That galaxy has to perforce include space travel. Also my biggie favorite is military or paramilitary.