That first one sounds pretty gay.

:-D

@zeppelined: It's totally gay!

@annalee: Well, not TOTALLY gay. After all, Elli Quinn is in it.

Lois McMaster Bujold is my all time favorite sci-fi writer. Maybe favorite writer. Full Stop.

You owe it to yourself to read the Vorkosigan series (Athos is set in the same continuity).

No, I mean it. Go out and buy it right now.

Well, I'm not sold based on that book's synopsis, so you'll have to impress me more in order to do that.
(goes back to his Houdini bio)

I have a copy of the Whitling but have not read more than a couple dozen pgs, as it didn't grab me off the bat and I was reading a couple of other books at the time. My wife-mate read it however and she was not impressed! We both dig the good (former) professor's writings like the SciFi Gospel, so I'm not sure why she didn't groove with it. This was one of his early works from like 77 (when the magic of disco was in full bloom!).

That cover for Ethan of Athos is oddly hilarious to me... it now adorns my desktop, but I will probably skip reading the book. :) I read one of the Vork saga books and didn't quite get into it, after reading a lot of hype about them.

@Plague: Thanks for the vague!

@Pham_Nuwen: BOOOOOO! Anyone who uses "hype" as an excuse should be SHOT.

/a paintball gun will suffice

reading the title of this post in my rss reader, i wanted so desparately to be able to put money on Stallman having Vinge somewhere on the list: I would have parlayed the bet with "Isn't 'FIre on the Deep'".

@JennaW:

What me being vague 'bout? I was referring to Seth's comment.
I guess I should start using this cernfounded arrow pointy thingy...

@Plague: Yep, probably should.
;)

Having read all three of these novels and having been particularly disappointed by The Witling, (After all of Mr. Vinge's other fine efforts.) I must say that recommendations from Richard Stallman will have to stick to software in order for me to take him seriously.

@JENNAW
"@Pham_Nuwen: BOOOOOO! Anyone who uses "hype" as an excuse should be SHOT.

/a paintball gun will suffice"

WTF? Confused... care to elaborate?

@Plague:

I've never connected to characters as deeply as the characters in her books.

Oh, sorry sci-fi, errm:

Spaceships, clones (lots of clones), eugenics, interstellar war, and mercenaries!

Oh and I though Athos was one of her weakest books.

Start with Cordelia's Honor, or The Warrior's Apprentice.

@zerofritz:

That would have been my guess too.

@Pham_Nuwen: For example: "It didn't live up to the hype" is an overused and meaningless excuse.

Sure, people recommend things, sometimes to the point of religious zealotry, but that means nothing about the work itself.

A person either likes a work or doesn't. People avoid things altogether and say, "I got turned off by the hype" when "It didn't sound like my kind of thing" is probably more true to reality. OR even more true is that they didn't want to be doing what everyone else was doing.

Referring to the "the hype" and how one was immune to it reads as an attempt to be above the masses.

Ergo, BOOO hype excuse! *loads paintball gun*

@JENNAW

Thanks for the... elaboration.

Hate to say this, but you are grasping at straws that don't exist.

To quote me: "I read one of the Vork saga books and didn't quite get into it, after reading a lot of hype about them."

To elaborate me: Bujold's Vork saga is typically well reviewed and liked by most critical and fan accounts (aka "Hype"). Being a fan of elaborate space operas, it made sense for me to want to give it a read. I did that. Didn't like it enough to read more of them. End of story.

Er... "Pham_Nuwen loads stinky diaper into bazooka and lets one rip"

;)

Ethan of Athos was my first Bujold book. I wanted to start with something that wouldn't require I continue reading a ton of related works.

I then proceeded to read the rest of Bujold's library at a fever pace.

Athos actually makes a pretty good starting point; though it does increase the distance between you and your first encounter with Miles, which is tragic.

Fanboying aside, it's interesting to note that Athos is one of her first books that got published. If I recall correctly, she wrote Shards of Honor, Warrior's Apprentice and Ethan of Athos before any of them got picked up. She clearly had a pretty good idea of the timeline of Miles' life even back then. Cetaganda, which takes place at the same time as Athos and refers to it, was written many years later.

@Pham_Nuwen: *nonchalantly holds up shield deflect stinky diaper*

Okay, my explanation wasn't clear about all the reasons why hype = bad = paintball, so let me take a second stab at this.

What you describe is not hype. Hype implies exaggerated claims; your use of hype suggests that you read one book, didn't like it very much, and have now dismissed the entire series not only as of no interest to you (absolutely fair) but overrated (UNfair).

Using the word "hype" is always pejorative unless one prefixes it with the words "totally lived up to the" or similar.

So Lois McMaster Bujold is really good? Some of her plots sound amazingly cheesy, which is why I steered clear of her. Which is the best book to read first?

But Jack Vance is a hell of a writer. Habven't been so excited since I discovered Samuel Delany.

@Ghost @ghost: Read "Shards of Honor", which is collected along with its immediate follower, "Barrayar", in "Cordelia's Honor".

Young Miles, which collects "Warror's Apprentice", the short story "Mountains of Mourning" and "The Vor Game" is after that.

@ghost: Yes, Lois is really good. Multiple Hugos and Nebulas good. Her plots are not cheesy; her characters breathe; her biological science is so possible, it's scary.

If you don't get into Shards, try Warrior's Apprentice before you give up. The tone is somewhat different as the Cordelia books are about the parents of the series' overall main character Miles and some readers don't mesh as well with the Cordelia books until AFTER they've gotten to know her via the Miles books (the flip of this is also true; some start with Warriors but don't get into the series until they've read Shards).

thanks. ordered shards.

@JENNAW: "Pham_Nuwen sidesteps into wayback machine to replace 'hype' with 'glowing reviews'. Order is restored to the universe." There. Problem fixed.

EPILOGUE. If I didn't find Bujold/Vork saga to be of ANY interest to me, I never would have finished the one book which I did read all the way through. For example, I did not finish the Whitling, despite the fact that it is written by one of my favorite authors, simply because it did not hold my interest enough at the time I tried to read it. It's a good thing the Whitling was not my first Vernor Vinge book, as I may never have read his later masterworks. Unfair? Guilty as charged, but such is human nature. Prepare the paintball firing squad for execution.

"Pham_Nuwen requests a last cigarette and the blindfold to be removed. Long live the Queng Ho."

@Pham_Nuwen: *blinks* Huh? Wha? What hype discussion?!

Not unfair! We choose what we read based on our own taste. There are lots of great writers out there I don't get into and once tried will not try again due to not liking first try. There are too many books to keep trying things by people whose style doesn't mesh with one's own taste.

Oops, that's Qeng Ho, my bad...

@JENNAW: Yes, but you have pointed out a fundamental human flaw here. One that I am guilty of subscribing to (among many others, I'm afraid). Heavens to Murgatroid{!], I wouldn't be the same person if I had never read Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep. :)

So... kids, the lesson to be learned here is: judge the work at hand, but give the creator another chance? That works.

"Pham_Nuwen dusts off the dried paint and walks off into the sunset, whistling a melancholy melody."

@Pham_Nuwen: Agreed. Good policiy.

And that was a pretty broad statement -- I have to really dislike something to be turned off the writer for good; other writers I liked well enough that another recommendation might lead me to another of their books even if I hadn't pursued their work based on my own first impression.

I think Vinge's "A Deepness In The Sky" is his best book, followed by "Across Realtime" (a two-parter). Imaginatively, "A Fire Upon The Deep" is great, introducing some thought-provoking ideas, but it's not quite as good on the whole as the others.

Vinge has become my all-time favorite Scifiguy (easily over Card, Wolfe, Simmons, etc), but I haven't read The Witling, yet. Similarly to CSX, I give full points to "Across Realtime" for shear insight, depth of his imagination (especially the second, Marooned in Realtime), but I'd put "A Fire Upon the Deep" over "A Deepness In the Sky".

I always had an affinity for A Fire Upon the Deep, simply because that was the first one I read, but Deepness in the Sky is just as great. I think Vinge has a great writing style that ballances subtlety with epic scope very nicely.

Overall though, my all-time favorite is Simmons' [four book] Hyperion Cantos, followed closely by Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas. They are both beautifully written rollercoaster rides.

RMS loans books to you. I think that earns you some major geek points. (Whether or not "major geek points" is good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader)

Jack Vance's Languages of Pao uses the idea that language shapes our thought process. This idea is also very Chompsky:
[www.chomsky.info]
I have to agree to some extent. Cognitive therapy works--if we change what we do, we can change how we think and feel. Language use is part of that. If you don't believe me try not swearing out lound for a week.

Neal Stephenson uses this idea, sort of, in Snow Crash.

Here's a question, what book did Vinge write where there were little dog-like animals and a young boy? Fire Upon the Deep? If that's the one, did the sequel resolve the black evil fungus stuff? It seemed a little light to me.

intelligent packs etc. was A Fire Upon the Deep. A Deepness in the Sky was set in the same universe, but much earlier. Rainbow's End, another great book, is sometimes described as being in the same universe, but is near future. Maybe next something pre-historic?

Vance is pretty old and no longer writing very actively if at all, but a lot of his earlier work is enjoyable, and his style unique, if occasionally imitated with some success. I particularly enjoyed the Lyonesse trilogy.

@Jeff-Minor:

Yup, A Fire Upon the Deep. I think the book wrapped itself up, with the blight being destroyed by, something?

Seth, I remember is ended cold, with this data-eating plague-thing's future in question. It seemed odd to me that there was a quick sequel, since the story seemed left wideo open. Maybe Vinge didn't like the idea of working more with kids and animals. I thought of the book as a YA novel.

Ethan encounters his first female -- with some truly unexpected results.

I haven't read this one, but if this means he eventually finds her attractive and ends up having sex with her then no, not totally unexpected, no. Kind of an obvious switcheroo actually. Now if he stays totally gay from beginning to end, that would be unexpected.

The Vance sounds interesting. Delany's excellent Babel-17 also centered around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though as I understand it S-W is about as excepted in linguistic circles as Morphic Resonance is in biological ones. It's great as a SF concept though.

@rhorsman: Since Ethan's sex life isn't want to book is about then I expect the results will be unexpected to you as they will have to do with the actual plot ;) Is sex and specifically Ethan's sex life addressed in the book? Yes. Is that what the book is about? No.

@Jeff-Minor:

I'll have to revisit it.

I've had Deepness sitting on a shelf for years too. Started it once, and got distracted.

@Jeff-Minor: uh, not really Chomsky. As you will notice upon actually reading the interview you link to, Chomsky thinks that basic language structure is hereditary and universal. Apart from generational grammarians (that's Chomsky's lunatic school of linguistics), nobody really thinks so, because on many levels, this just doesn't scan.
The fun thing about linguistic relativity, also known as the S-W Hypoth. is that it is, ideally, all about structure (i.e. Grammar), it directly contradicts Chomsky's theory.

@rhorsman: here's a nice essay on Babel-17 and S-W: [shigekuni.blogspot.com]

Plus, no, linguistic relativity is accepted in many parts of linguistics, and it becomes more accepted with every year that passes. The basic problem is that there are several formulations of said theory and some of them are accepted and some not. It depends. Some strands of Cognitive Linguistics ignore it willfully (Langacker does that a lot), then there are the Chomsky-ites like Jackendoff or Pinkerr the idiot, who can't accept it but beyond that, there's a lot of room and acceptance.