The simpler life

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

First went the radio.
Then the catalogues
Then the CD player
Then the DVD player
Then the TV
Then the "stereo"
Then the text books and manuals
Then the CDs and DVDs
....

Soon I shall probably get rid of the hundreds of SF books I have
accumulated. Everything is heading for the computer and Net.

I imagine that in a few years all information handling appliances will
converge onto one universal device and my house will look like that of
an illiterate from the 1950s.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

I still like my Sci Fi in book form. I bought over 500 used Sci Fi
books this year. Most were 11 cents each.

Problem is, I will never read them again.
Plus there is very little SF these days that is worth buying. Much of
science and tech has outstripped the knowledge of would-be SF writers.
The only authors I will pay money for are Stross, Egan and Banks.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

I like the oldies. EE 'Doc' Smith, Heinlein, and others. Sure, the
so called 'science' is outdated, but that's why I enjoy reading them. I
recently finished John Cambell's "Black Star Passes" which was
copyrighted in 1953. It's fun to see what they thought they knew, or
understood. Like one old book where they were telling someone how many
'racks of tubes' they would have to use to talk to them by radio. From
one solar system, to another. ;-)

I recall another story that actually had a computer on board to
calculate orbits etc. It could do "thousands" of calculations per second!

I picked up a new "Black Star Passes" in paperback for $1.25, but it
is now on Project Gutenberg for free:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20707

I suspect all the best ideas have been mined out decades back.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Not bad for relay logic. ;-)




Not really, but space opera is out of favor these days.

Iain Banks "Culture" novels are quite good:
http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/

That's why I've been reading the classics.

I find it difficult to reread books, and I read all the classics decades
ago. At one point, for several years, I read almost a book a day.

Have you considered selling them on ABEBooks or Ebay?

I might do, but they weigh a LOT!
Shipping might be a problem

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

And when you buy a "book", you won't be able to read it in 5 years,
when the reader technology is obsolete. Books are approaching
pay-per-view.

For a work of fiction that's not a problem.
I hardly ever re-read those books, same as I hardly ever re-view movies.

 

[Charlie E.]

I have some books that I re-read every year or so.

Pride and Prejudice

A Damsel in Distress
(probably the best-written book in the English language)

The Circus of Dr Lao

The Lyoness Trilogy, maybe not so often.

The Aubrey/Maturin books, ditto.

John

I have a shelf of books that I re-read whenever I don't have something
new. It contains the Lord of the Rings (at least once a year) the
Harry Potter Series, the Miles Vorkosigan Series, and Clancy's John
Ryan novels. I don't buy a lot of books, esp. since the library
started inter-library loan that spans both Riverside and San
Bernardino Counties, but there are always some that I just have to
have.

Same with DVDs. I don't buy very many, but the ones that I do have I
often view multiple times. The entire Babylon 5 series, classic Sci
FI like Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet, Singing in the
Rain, Grease and Beauty and the Beast. If I don't re-watch it at
least every couple of years, I usually just get rid of it!

Charlie

 

[John Devereux]

Problem is, I will never read them again.
Plus there is very little SF these days that is worth buying. Much of
science and tech has outstripped the knowledge of would-be SF writers.
The only authors I will pay money for are Stross, Egan and Banks.

Vinge is good too.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Vinge is good too.

I haven't seen anything of his since Fire Upon The Deep and its followup.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold

Louis McMaster Bujold is one of my favourite comic authors, up there
with P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Prachett. She has now dropped back into
pot-boiler mode, which is a bit sad, but even her pot-boilers are
worth buying and reading, though one wouldn't boast about reading
them.

Elizabeth Moon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Moon

doesn't seem to have written anything at all recently, which is even
sadder.

Tom Sharpe?

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

I’m totally addicted to reading. I have to have something to read at
night or I tend to stay up thinking about other stuff. Biking around
Europe one summer I remember reading my toothpaste label, by
flashlight, when I ran out of other material (weird).

Know the feeling - first felt it in Japan where there's not even the
same alphabet.

I will add Charles Sheffield to the list of decent current sci fi
authors. Theodore Sturgeon is perhaps my all time favorite. (I read
the ink off the pages of my Heinlein books in college.)

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/quietwar.htm

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Theodore Sturgeon was good. At the time I liked James Blish better,
which doesn't say much good about my juvenile taste. Charles Sheffield
is no better than OK. I read his stuff happily enough, but it is a bit
crude and clunky. John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar"

I read a load of Blish, but the only one that IMO has stoof the test of
time is Black Easter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar

was one of the all-time greats, but he'd never written anything
anything like as good before he wrote it, and his attempts to
duplicate the magic afterwards didn't come close, though his

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Infinitive_of_Go

was pretty good, albeit in a very different style.

One of the best books I ever read was Catchworld, by Chris Boyce.
Never seen it around for decades.
ah...
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/221529.html

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

One harddisk can lose a lot.

RAID1 (or 5 if you fancy a load of HDDs, but 1TB is enough for now).
My next PC is going to have less than 200GB of SSD, and a NAS box.
Right now the PC I have been using for a couple of years requires less
than 100GB, excluding data. SSD will more than double its speed.

 

[John Devereux]

[...]

I’m totally addicted to reading. I have to have something to read at
night or I tend to stay up thinking about other stuff. Biking around
Europe one summer I remember reading my toothpaste label, by
flashlight, when I ran out of other material (weird).

I will add Charles Sheffield to the list of decent current sci fi
authors. Theodore Sturgeon is perhaps my all time favorite. (I read
the ink off the pages of my Heinlein books in college.)

Charles Sheffield is no longer current, alas.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield>

 

[John Devereux]

I haven't seen anything of his since Fire Upon The Deep and its followup.

But he should be on any list that includes Stross, Egan and Banks. The
four of them are the only SF authors whose work I would buy
automatically. He doesn't publish often, but what he does publish is
always good. And I suspect he probably inspired a lot of the work of the
other three.

 

[John Devereux]

But he should be on any list that includes Stross, Egan and Banks. The
four of them are the only SF authors whose work I would buy
automatically. He doesn't publish often, but what he does publish is
always good. And I suspect he probably inspired a lot of the work of the
other three.

Prompted by this discussion I looked him up on Wikipedia.

1) He has a new "zones of thought" book coming out Feb next year -
yipee!

2) He seems to write novels using emacs, some kind of text
processing/markup language and what must be the original unix Revision
Control System

http://www.norwescon.org/archives/norwescon33/images/Vinge_screenshot.png

Hehe, I find it funny that someone credited with writing some of the
most visionary SF around - particularly with respect to the future of
computation - uses tools from the 1970s. I gather Neal Stephenson,
another "cutting edge" writer, does it with a fountain pen.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Ian Banks aka Ian M. Banks does write for both sides of the aisle. His
"Transitions" was mainstream, but had definite science fiction
elements.

Wasp Factory was bizarre and fascinating

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Even that pompous ass Francois Mitterrand understood:

"A man loses touch with reality unless he is surrounded by his books."

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

If I may...
"A man loses touch with reality unless he is online."

 

[Nico Coesel]

First went the radio.
Then the catalogues
Then the CD player
Then the DVD player
Then the TV
Then the "stereo"
Then the text books and manuals
Then the CDs and DVDs
...

Soon I shall probably get rid of the hundreds of SF books I have
accumulated. Everything is heading for the computer and Net.

Try to remember the last time you looked into a datasheet book.

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

Try to remember the last time you looked into a datasheet book.

Some time last millennium...

 

[Charlie E.]

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

Yes, most was escapism, and a lot was full of errors, but it was for
entertainment.




In my case, i was determined to be able to read faster that my
school's new speed reading machines. It took almost six weeks, but I
beat them.

I third grade, I was tested for reading ability while they were giving
me visual training. I finally had enough errors at grade 12 they
could stop testing. I couldn't pronounce physicist... ;-)

The teacher had a reading contest. She called me a liar to my face
when I told here how many books I had read. I had really liked her up
to that point. After that, I just didn't tell her.

Charlie