I don't read science fiction very much, so I'm unfamiliar with her work. Might be fun to look into, since I am supposedly like her. Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
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The inventor of space opera. His purple space war tales remain well-read generations later.
Unfortunately, [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=stripbooks:relevance-above&rank=relevance20041029rank&field-keywords=EE%252520%252522Doc%252522%252520Smith&search-ty pe=ss&bq=1&store-name=books/ref=xs_ap_l_xgl14/103-0386249-8279816]Amazon[/URL] gave me weight loss, football, and yodeling in my search. Must be out of print. Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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First try, I got William Gibson - never read anything of his.
Tried again, redoing a couple of questions in which all the choices I had were lousy ones and came up with Ursula K. LeGuin.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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There were a couple books still in print listed on Amazon, but most are out of print. There are plenty of online used booksellers out there and they can probably be bought at a reasonable price.
"Smith" is a common name - next time, add "Skylark" to your search query.
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Whereas my reaction was "@#$@#! I'm Arthur C. Clarke. Damn!"
He lives in Sri Lanka. Cinnamon Gardens. Fahim's met him, interviewed him 4 times for various magazines. He's offered to take me over there to meet the guy, and my response was "I wouldn't know what to say." Fahim immediately replied with "It doesn't matter. The guy's so stuck on himself that he talks for hours. And watches videos of himself being interviewed. And documentaries done on him, and so on. And so on. And so on."
That's the part of him I don't wanna be like.
The rich and famous part, sure! No problem!
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Quid - I'd always wondered if you had any dealings with Arthur C. I thought it was cool when I was a little kid watching "Mysterious World" and he'd give the intros standing on a beach in Sri Lanka. I was like "Whoa! Sri Lanka! That has to be the most exotic place I've ever heard of!"
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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By the way, his dive shop was destroyed by the tsunami. Yep, even the Great Arthur C. Clarke was affected.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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First time I was Frank Herbert, which I can see. If I were a writer I'd like to write books like Dune.
Went back and changed answers and got Greg Benford. The name sounds familar but I've never read anything by him.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote: This prolific author brings surprising depths to he-man adventure tales, and broke science fiction's prudery barrier.
I've never even heard of him. (Edit: Oh he wrote Riverworld stuff, I have heard of that, but never read any)
As far as William Gibson sndrake, some people view him as the father of modern cyberpunk. I've read a couple of his works and they're generally pretty good. I believe (I could be wrong) he may be the guy who first invented the concept of somone neurally linking into the internet, but before it was the internet.
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Yes, I'll post 3 times in a row, just for the heck of it.
It looks like most people have never heard of the authors they supposedly are. Is the test weird, or are we not real sci-fi geeks?
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Seems to be credited with the idea of Dyson spheres. His books "are bracingly depressing books in which inevitable tragedy is left to speak for itself."
Never heard of him....
Posts: 349 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Phillip Jose Farmer, whom I have heard of. And he's written much, much more than just the Riverworld books.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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John Brunner His best known works are dystopias -- vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid.
Posts: 4 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I came up with Gregory Benford, I'm cool with that, he can really write. Changed #2 from 'physics' to 'big etc' and got Heinlein.
Hal Clement's most famous novel was Mission of Gravity. I met him at a sci-fi con once and he was very nice, although he couldn't remember a great short story he had written. It was set on a Mercury-like world, very hot with near-vacuum pressure. Aliens that humans encountered there "saw" with their "nose" organs, because molecules emitted from objects travelled in essentially straight lines to the aliens' noses, therefore making their noses almost as accurate as vision, in some ways more accurate.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I cut that sentence to make it funnier, but internet forums are one of the book's main themes. I liked it a lot.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote: His [Stapledon's] books "are bracingly depressing books in which inevitable tragedy is left to speak for itself."
One reason I've always avoided him.
The only novel of Cordwainer Smith I have is Norstrilia, about a planet settled by Aussies. They develop a secret immortality formula, which they zealously guard from theft. I've read it several times and liked it. He's most known for his shorter work, which was weird and ahead of it's time:
quote: Robert Silverberg and many others have credited Smith with pointing the way to new areas for science fiction to explore. Many writers have tried to imitate his style, not an easy thing to copy well.
A few days ago I read a novella by Tiptree with a bizarre, unique ending, in The New Atlantis edited by Robert Silverberg with two other novellas by Gene Wolfe and Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin's title novella had a laughably obvious basic science mistake. Anyway, Tiptree is great, I would put her in my top 20 favorite authors. She had a unique style and was also decades ahead of her time.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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(The real Greg Benford once took this quiz, and it told him he was Arthur C. Clarke.) <- I love this!
