Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

No spoilers discussion for Endymion

I'm at 28% and enjoying it very much. The transition between books is virtually seamless. They have the exact same tone & pacing, so it's very easy to just keep rolling along.

Yes, a great continuation even if new place, new people

I just started and am on ch. 2. My libby hold got returned while I was finishing other things so I just have a paper library copy - that they also want back - so I'll try to read it quickly, but this week is really busy...

That schrodinger's cat prison described in ch. 1 is pretty twisted. Dan Simmons' imagination is so awe-inspiring, it's a shame he's a jackass.

Kalin wrote: "That schrodinger's cat prison described in ch. 1 is pretty twisted. Dan Simmons' imagination is so awe-inspiring, it's a shame he's a jackass."

Is he? I have to check, maybe in Wiki for I haven't heard anything about him

just in case others don't know why Kalin called Simmons a jackass, here is the story https://file770.com/dan-simmons-criti...

why did you show us this?!! I want to live in peaceful ignorance lol. gd DS what a poor choice

Rebecca wrote: "why did you show us this?!! I want to live in peaceful ignorance lol. gd DS what a poor choice"

I like the idea that a creation, like an SF novel can be separated from its creator, who can be far from a nice person. However, it doesn't always work for me

Oleksandr wrote: "I like the idea that a creation, like an SF novel can be separated from its creator,..."

I can generally do that, but not always. It depends on how much comes out in the writing. With Simmons, I've read so many of his books before I saw this, so it's not interrupting anything. With his classics behind him, I probably won't read many more of his books though. Another one is Orson Scott Card. I've read many of his books as well, mostly before I was aware of his comments. Perhaps some of his leanings come out in the Alvin Maker series in allegory form, but I'm in the middle of it, so I'll finish it. Plus I have some of his later space opera stuff, so I'll read those to get them off my shelf.

It’s a tricky issue. Like others who’ve commented, I’m not exactly consistent. It seems to depend on the specifics of the writer’s particular ugliness and the nature of their writing. With respect to Simmons I started out with The Terror, which I liked a lot, then read several others that weren’t as good. Somewhere along there I became aware of the “jackass” stuff referred to above. Then I finally read Hyperion with this group last year, and for all its spectacular aspects it left me a little cold, and uninterested in reading more. I wish I could say more about why, because we are here to discuss books and it’s a little embarrassing to be so inarticulate about my response. Introspection tells me that a sense of disgust at the author is certainly there, but if I loved the book I might get around that. If it were more fun, or seemed to deal with issues that stuck a chord, I might have loved it. For me that didn’t happen. In the end I guess it’s a matter of individual taste.

With respect to Card, as far I know I’ve never read anything by him, though I might have read some early work back in the late 70s/early 80s. I’ve been put off by descriptions of the content of the Ender’s Game as much as by his views, I think.

Stephen--Ender’s Game has been one of my top books for years, one that I reread on occasion. You might give it a try. I do not necessarily recommend ANY other books by Mr. Card. But this one is really good.

I am going to try The Terror. So thanks for the recommendation.

Thanks Kate. I have to say I don’t think I’m going to try Ender’s Game any time soon, in spite of your strong recommendation and others. It just sounds like it wouldn’t be my thing at all.

No prob Stephen. We all like what we like. Nothing wrong with that!

A fun fact, the first Ender's book was published by then-new publisher, Tor, it was their first SF novel.

that is a fun fact!

I’ve read Ender a few times, even my wife, who does not read SF, liked it. I finished that series (Speaker for the Dead was great!) & the Bean series. The first three Alvin Maker books are on the H/N list, & I picked up the whole series before Card went public with his opinions…or maybe I was just oblivious. I’ve read the first two & they read a bit like Farmer in the Sky with a lot of early North American lore & mysticism thrown in. It doesn’t seem to me that he’s expressing religious views within that framework though, but I’m not good at picking up those subtexts. I’ve already read his best, and I have no issue reading the books I have, I just won’t buy more. My situation with Simmons is similar. I feel I’ve read his best already, now that I’m finishing Hyperion, but I have a few others on my shelf. I may or may not read those and I just won’t buy more.

Having brought up the topic of Simmons' nastiness, I'm interested in where this conversation went. :)

Though I do think there's a qualitative difference between Simmons and Card -- on the one hand you have an old crank who seems as grating and obnoxious as his self-insert Martin Silenus; on the other hand you have someone who actively campaigned against equality and freedom because of religious bigotry, a great evil. I'm okay appreciating the art of one, not the other. Though I understand that their major works both predate their turn "to the dark side."

I'm almost 25% into the book and enjoying it, though not as much as the first two, but a "just" good Dan Simmons space opera still soars above most of the field.

Kalin wrote: "Though I do think there's a qualitative difference between Simmons and Card"

Agreed. Simmons in his comment sounds mostly as and old (and therefore self-anointed wise and experienced) man grumbling about 'youth these days', a theme known at least since ancient Egypt. I am not even sure that he denies global warming as a man-made problem, just that media prefers celebrities to scientists. His belittling is definitely wrong

Reviews of his novel Flashback suggest it’s overtly political in a hard-right way I know I would find disagreeable. I don’t have much time for right wing cranks these days, and that’s how I think of Simmons, rightly or wrongly. Admittedly I’m not a student of his politics, I’ve just picked up these impressions.

Yikes.... Yikes!

Stephen wrote: "Reviews of his novel Flashback suggest it’s overtly political in a hard-right way I know I would find disagreeable. I don’t have much time for right wing cranks these days, and that’..."

Clearly, Simmons isn't alone. The last eight divisive years have seen many conservatives get more extreme, more cranky & more vocal. Not only do I live in an extreme red state, I have close friends & family who have turned that way & I really can't stomach it. I've gotten so I can't take political rhetoric from either side. I think I have a copy of Flashback, and if that's the case, it's going in the bin.

Knowledge begets sorrow. I planned to read more by the author but now I'm less inclined to do it

We still have Ilium and Olympos on the H/N list.

Kalin wrote: "We still have Ilium and Olympos on the H/N list."

Oh, right... but it seems from file 770 comments he was ok back then

Kalin wrote: "We still have Ilium and Olympos on the H/N list."

I forgot about that duology. Ilium is the one on the list. I'd have to like it before I dove into Olympos.

His first book, Song of Kali, won the WFA. It's fairly short and super creepy, if you like horror. But if you really want creepy, his horror masterpiece is Carrion Comfort, which won the Stoker, Derleth & Locus Horror awards. Those two are definitely worth reading. The Terror is really good; it drags a bit in the middle, but finishes well. I think those are the other essentials, everything else can be skipped.

Another I read was Children of the Night, which is a vampire story with an interesting premise, but (view spoiler)[ it had a cliche "there's an explosion & everybody dies" ending that completely wrecked it. (hide spoiler)]

Thanks for the mini-reviews of all of Simmons' books, all of you. My plan now is to go to the Simmons page and pick the highest rated standalone-since I doubt I will ever get through the Hyperion saga

If you have Kindle Unlimited, Carrion Comfort is currently on it ("free").

I'm about 2/3rds through, finishing this before starting on any July reads.

All the time spent on Mare Infinitus is really making me want to replay Subnautica.

a piece in this book @ch.20, it doesn't directly affects the plot, so I guess I'll post it here:
Sol saw that love was a real and equal force in the universe … as real as electromagnetism or weak nuclear force. As real as gravity, and governed by many of the same laws. The inverse square law, for instance, often works as surely for love as it does for gravitational attraction.

Can it be an allusion or maybe unconscious borrowing from Universe, later the fiest part of Orphans of the Sky?
“They were incurable romantics, rather than rationalists, as we are, and the truths which they handed down to us, though strictly true, were frequently clothed in allegorical language. For example, have you come to the Law of Gravitation?”
“I read about it.”
“Did you understand it? No, I can see that you didn’t.”
“Well,” said Hugh defensively, “it didn’t seem to mean anything. It just sounded silly, if you will pardon me, sir.”
“That illustrates my point. You were thinking of it in literal terms, like the laws governing electrical devices found elsewhere in this same book. ‘Two bodies attract each other directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of their distance.’ It sounds like a rule for simple physical facts, does it not? Yet it is nothing of the sort; it was the poetical way the old ones had of expressing the rule of propinquity which governs the emotion of love. The bodies referred to are human bodies, mass is their capacity for love. Young people have a greater capacity for love than the elderly; when they are thrown together, they fall in love, yet when they are separated they soon get over it. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ It’s as simple as that. But you were seeking some deep meaning for it.”

Started this one late. Only 200 pages in but better late than never I guess.

Following everyone’s discussion it always surprises me that people don’t like Scott Card books. I liked the whole Ender and Shadow series. I think Card does human relationships really well and I always found that his books made me feel something. I know a lot of the bad rep comes from the fact that Ender‘s Game was a juvenile book and the follow ups aren’t. He alienated a lot of his audience who couldn’t hook into the sequels. Having read the series as an adult I obviously didn’t have that problem.

It’s a shame OSC is a bit of a twat, but then a lot of writers are. It kinda goes with the territory.

Andrew wrote: "Following everyone’s discussion it always surprises me that people don’t like Scott Card books. I liked the whole Ender..."

I enjoyed Ender's Game and Xenocide, I think they are in Top-100 SF of the 20th century. At the same time, after learning about his active homophobic position, I don't rush to read his further works, for he is talented, but there are other talented SFF authors

Not to go off on a tangent here but Ender's Game, which I haven't read, just sounds to me like a really ugly story. And I'll leave it at that. i know many people love the book.

Andrew wrote: "Following everyone’s discussion it always surprises me that people don’t like Scott Card books. I liked the whole Ender..."

As I mentioned, I read a bunch of the Ender/Bean books long before I knew his views. I knew he was LDS but not how extreme he was. He does write well, but like Feist, he kept adding onto the series to the point where it jumped the shark (got ridiculous, for anyone who doesn't know that reference). Some authors can avoid that, as in the Vorkosigan saga, but some just milk it too much.

Ditto for Simmons, apart from Hyperion & Ilium, I read his best long before I became aware of his views. After our discussion here, I did clear my shelf of any Simmons books I haven't read. The only one I kept was Ilium, since it is an H/N nominee.

Stephen wrote: "Not to go off on a tangent here but Ender's Game, which I haven't read, just sounds to me like a really ugly story. ."

One of the underlying themes of the series is how the dehumanising propaganda of war demonises the enemy to enable atrocities to be committed against the enemy. Other themes are equally provocative. I can understand the criticism of the series but many of the themes are pretty important in context of the world we live in, and in my opinion, well done.

But, each to their own...