I scored this:
quote:
You are:Arthur C. Clarke
Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.
Remember - it's only for fun!
Ayn Rand
This charismatic cult leader used science fiction as one of her recruiting tools for new converts.
Samuel R. Delany
Few have had such broad commercial success with aggressively experimental prose techniques.
E.E. "Doc" Smith
The inventor of space opera. His purple space war tales remain well-read generations later.
Of course, I've NO idea who this guy is, but if I too can be well read generations later, I'll be doing just fine!
(I gave this test to my husband, and he was:
Jerry Pournelle: This old-fashioned writer may be the most unapologetic capitalist in the field. He has also been influential in many other areas, from space policy to the home computer industry.)
[This message has been edited by SiliGurl (edited January 09, 2003).]
JOHN!
Maybe you and I should look at each other's work, SiliGurl.
I see CofE as Clarke, what with his penchant for research. I'm curious about who Harold is since I loved Rand's Atlas Shrugged, although I don't subscribe to all of her views.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited January 09, 2003).]
...
Who the hell is Olaf Stapledon?
Chris
Surely your local libraries have copies of their books. I'm sorely tempted to give you all the assignment to go out and find something by EE Smith, Cordwainer Smith, and Olaf Stapledon, read them, and report back here.
In case you are wondering what the old-time SF fans are groaning, it sounds something like, "How can you even begin to try to write science fiction without at least knowing who the originals were?"
Think how you'd feel if some aspiring SF writer asked you who Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov were?
I came out as Frank Herbert...I think there's something wrong with the test.
quote:
John Brunner
His best known works are dystopias -- vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid.
I'll check the local library, Kathleen.
Shawn
And welcome back, Siligurl! Sorely missed!
As for categories of SF - here is an interesting run down of subgenres.
Isaac Asimov
One of the most prolific writers in history, on any imaginable subject. Cared little for art but created lasting and memorable tales.
i like this test.
TTFN & lol
Cosmi
[This message has been edited by Marianne (edited January 11, 2003).]
I'm not getting it . . . .
off to the library for me.
(And gasp - who is Le Guin? Eeeck. Sigh.)
Did anyone come out as Michael Moorcock?
[This message has been edited by HopeSprings (edited January 12, 2003).]
I'm also happy to report I do know who all those other authors are!
Dave
If you want a fun Doc Smith book (if you can find it) read _The Galaxy Primes_ It's a great bit of over the top space opera he wrote. I just happened to run across a copy a few months back in a used book store. It was originally written in 1965 but the copy I have is from the early 70s.
Dave
[This message has been edited by Ergoface (edited January 18, 2003).]
Alas, off to the library for me...I'm only familiar with Cordwainer Bird, one of Harlan Ellison's aliases...HE undoubtedly knew who Smith was...
Gregory Benford
A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.
and when I asked my husband who this is, he said that he has read the guy (aeon I think), but doesn't see any connection. 
************
Ursula K. LeGuin
Perhaps the most admired writing talent in the science fiction field.
************
Not bad, not bad...
I kind o' like that test.
-Nate
Chris
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited February 03, 2003).]
No, they made a movie of that.
Okay, for starters, this was pre-"dirty old man" Heinlein, so there is no idoicy about having male and female grunts sharing bunks while on duty. In fact, there is no sex at all (there is a date, though).
And second, even Heinlein at his dirtiest was still a great writer. And Starship Troopers was probably his greatest book.
Read anything by Heinlein. If it is better than that movie (and it will be), and Heinlein's Starship Troopers is better than anything else he wrote, then the book is logically going to be superior.
quote:
You're asking why Heinlein's Starship Troopers was better than the movie? Arrgh!
As someone who hasn't read the book, yes -- or any of Heinlein, for that matter. All I know is I detested the movie and was worried about being compared to it. 
So I went back and changed two more answers. Gregory Benford again.
This really freaked me out for a while. Then I decided to give in and make peace with it: I must really be Gregory Benford.
STARSHIP TROOPERS, the book, is a very thoughtful exploration of what war would be like with alien lifeforms, and as such, it has much more depth than the movie could ever begin to have.
Not everyone who has read the book agrees with the politics Heinlein presents in it, but he argues for them well (and they are not the politics presented in the movie).
It's definitely a book worth reading, even if you think you wouldn't like a war story. It's not what you might expect--it's much better.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 03, 2003).]
I know the feeling.
I do find it strange, that even with saying that I am the opposite sex, I get Gregory Benford, and not a female writer.
Granted, I just went through and changed answers one by one, and everytime I keep coming up with Gregory Benford. -- strange. Is the computer reading my inner thoughts or what here?
I'm telling you the glass is WAY to big!
[This message has been edited by Enders Star (edited February 04, 2003).]
-- What happened to Marion Zimmer Bradley? Elizabeth Moon? Anne Mc Caffrey? ... and I'm sure there are others out there.
The nice thing about this test is that I am definately getting a good reading list for the next month.
quote:
Not everyone who has read the book agrees with the politics Heinlein presents in it, but he argues for them well (and they are not the politics presented in the movie).
I almost didn't read Starship Troopers, even after read several of Heinlein's other novels, because I thought the movie was so God awful.
As far as the politics, I'm not even sure Heinlein believes them, because if you read Stranger in a Strange Land (an excellent, excellent book) he kinda gives the exact opposite viewpoint.
JOHN!
SiliGurl, I discovered Doc Smith about 16 years ago, and for a while had all of the books in his major series. Then my pop gave some to a used book store, and I haven't been able to find them since. Rumor has it his lensemen were the seed for George Lucas's jedi knights and the force.
By the way, I swear I haven't forgotten about you. I just owe you lots and lots and lots of letters. Sorry, hon. Hope life is good, I'll be in touch soon.
JP
i also recommend "Stranger in a Strange Land" (the uncut version if you can get it). less military, but (still?) an exellent book.
TTFN & lol
Cosmi
PS: can you really ask such a question to scifi fans? that's like "is the sky really blue?" lol.
[This message has been edited by Cosmi (edited February 23, 2003).]
you get the idea. i quit.
TTFN & lol
Cosmi
Robert A. Heinlein
Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.
All you who promoted Heinlein's Starship Troopers were right. It was super. I was so afraid it'd be all war and giant bugs, but it sure wasn't. Actually, it seemed more like a treatise on a lot of common sense.
(Also read Ice Station by Matt Reilly. Not SF, but if you want, as the Chicago Tribune said in its jacket blurb, "Some of the wildest and most sustained battles in an action thriller," this is it.)
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited March 14, 2003).]
EDIT: Wow, my account still exists! And wow, after looking at some other profiles, it seems I have been here quite a long time! So hey, I am back, for now.
[This message has been edited by Goober (edited March 18, 2003).]
[This message has been edited by Goober (edited March 18, 2003).]
Kidding: H. G. Wells.
[This message has been edited by ccwbass (edited January 22, 2004).]
This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration. Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.
***
You know I have heard of this guy but cannot place where... Maybe I have read too many books I am sure there is a film based on one of his books... Time for some research
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(phi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
Or:
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
Strange stuff, I'll tell you.
The primary answer I got was William Gibson. With the two slightly altered answers I got John Brunner. While I am familiar with the first, I don't know the second - but the description made him sound similar to Gibson in choice of topic.
Weird.
My husband, while not a writer (a software engineer who reads tons), did it, and also got Gibson, though his combination of answers was different from mine. I do think that would be a fairly accurate assessment.
For fun we tried answering all with the first choice, and got David Brin - Bestselling producer of impossible-to-put-down epic adventures in a far-flung future. That comes up every time we put in those answers, so the quiz does not seem completely random. It was fun!
A Heinlein I like that is not so heavy-handed style-wise is "Friday" - maybe you would like that one too Kolona!
As for Le Guin, "A Wizard of Earthsea" was a required book in my 7th grade reading class - I read the trilogy (have the fourth now) back then and loved it (though The Tombs of Atuan was my least favorite).
This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration. Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.
Who the heck?
quote:
Frank HerbertHis style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time.
That made my day.
Stanislav Lem wrote the novel SOLARIS. It's a great novel. I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say anything about it.
I was Kurt Vonnegut - "For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction."
which strikes me as funny as I don't classify myself as an SF writer, and yet I feel inexplicably drawn to both reading SF and returning to this BB.
Very flattered, but I noticed no one has been compared to an unknown-nobody writer. We can't all be comparable to the greats . But that is a depressing thought so I will say no more about that...
quote:
Who the hell is Olaf Stapledon?.
<couging, wheezing, and feeling incredibly old for only being 26.>
Uh... Try Sirius, which I believe was most recently released paired with another of his non-grand-space-civilization-rising-and-falling-and-rising-again books named Odd John. Though I have never read OJ, Sirius is a great read. According to reviews I have read on Amazon- atleast as I recall, many people liked Odd John better than Sirius. At any rate it is on my to-read list once I get back to the states.
PE Sharp
Hmmm, went to his website and I still don't know who he is. And his picture scared me!
He's won at least one Hugo (STARTIDE RISING), and he wrote the story that that became the book POSTMAN that Kevin Costner mangled into a movie (the story "Postman" was very good, the book was okay--haven't seen the movie).
He's worth looking into if you like science fiction.
I have STARTIDE RISING in a box in my closet. Maybe I'll put it on my desk and get around to reading it over the next few months.
I told him the day he got the Hugo for STARTIDE RISING that he introduced too many characters (it seemed like there were about 16 characters, one introduced in each of the first 16 chapters), and that it made it so that I was halfway through the book before I knew enough about any of the characters to really care for them.
When he wrote the sequel, UPLIFT WAR, it looked to me as if he'd listened to me, because he spent more time with each character before he introduced a new character, and UPLIFT WAR is better for it.
<shrug>
I have said this before on another thread
, but here goes, I too disliked The Postman. My reason for not liking it, was the whole Wizard of Oz-like theme, that to my memory tied the book up. I kinda liked the first half though, so I guess the short story may be good. I wouldn't know, I never knew it was one.
PE_Sharp
If you can throw a rock star in a movie and make it work, I think it is pretty cool. Tom Petty did a good job in Postman. I'm not a huge Tom Petty fan, but I have some of his albums in my collection as well.
In my opinion, The Postman is a good movie, I can't say anything to back up the book, I have never read it. I decided to leave well enough alone.
I don't remember any Wizard-the-Oz-like theme in THE POSTMAN. To what exactly are you refering?
If I had to state in words my problem with this novel -- and I'm not sure I can do that -- it would be this: It didn't strike me as true-to-life. That is to say, I'm not sure that's how people would actually act in a post-apocalyptic setting.
[This message has been edited by Jerome Vall (edited January 31, 2004).]
I usually try to be vague in my comments of books. But since you have already read it you can ignore to following
***(almost)Spoiler warning
The element of which I speak that both Postman and OZ share is the wizard behind the curtains theme. Think last computer.
Anyway it has been a while since I have read the Postman, and honestly I can see forgetting it. Still I bought The Postman on VHS for like a dollar and liked it well enough to be happily to add it to my collection, I probably would not still have the book if I had not borrowed it from the library at school.
PE_Sharp
Not nearly as good as "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", though.
PE Sharp
I was just doing some research on rainforests, went to google and typed in lungfish and David Brin turned up on page one!
I'd never heard of the guy till that's who that site told me I was. Now I'm scared he might be stalking me! Maybe if I read one of his books he'll leave me alone.
quote:
James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon)In the 1970s she was perhaps the most memorable, and one of the most popular, short story writers. Her real life was as fantastic as her fiction.
I'm John Brunner. Guess I'll be picking up one of his books at the library next week.
quote:
Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs)
A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.
quote:
Stanislav Lem
This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration. Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.
quote:Don't be disappointed. Stanislav Lem was actually quite famous at one time, though never terribly widely read in this country, and Hal Clement was one of the big names of Hard SF. His Mission of Gravity lost out to Mark Clifton and Frank Riley's They'd Rather be Right, for the 1955 Hugo Award. An oddity here: They'd Rather be Right has pretty much disappeared, whereas Mission of Gravity maintains its status as a classic.
I wish I would have gotten someone I had at least read or heard of.
I got Hal Clement too. Even though I tried answering several different questions several different ways, he kept coming up.
William Gibson
The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.
I'll try to look into some of his works and see if that's true.
-BHJr-
I'm on a board with SF writers who've never read Gibson.
Have some pity, Jules. Maybe they do more fantasy! Or are very young and just stretching their wings. OSC does have quite a range - there might be people who love Alvin Maker, who've never read Ender... uh, if I blaspheme, I apologize
One of the great things about starting to write, and finding BBs like this, is the discovery of new ideas and new authors to try. There is stuff I'd never read until I decided to try to write and realized how much I'd been missing by reading one author (all their stuff) and then another (all their stuff), etc.
Secondly, I feel vindicated! I hadn't read all the posts on this thread, but I discovered on that wetwill posted in January of last year. He is no fan of Heinlein.
quote:
Heinlein seems to be a pretty popular SF writer, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. A couple of his books were okay (like Starship Troopers) but mostly they pretty much sucked. Stranger In A Strange Land comes to mind as an example of extreme suckiness. Especially in the man's later years, when he just became a lecherous old man who wrote about nothing but sex without even pretending to try for an actual storyline. The only reason I would ever recommend Heinlein to anybody is as an example of how to write a really horrible book.
Now I won't go quite as far as willy. I've read some of Heinlein's other works and very much enjoyed his style. I really liked ...And He Built a Crooked House. (A short). But I completely share willy's opinion of Stranger in a Strange Land. I just finished reading the restored version for the first time. I kept reading and reading because everyone says how great it is. I kept waiting for the great stuff--and waiting and waiting and waiting. I would have tossed it long before the end if it hadn't been for everyone's glowing praise of it. I reached the last page and went: "HUH???"
Oh well. Ostracize me if you must.
Even OSC garners fans he's not exactly proud to call his own. Imagine how it would be if he were dead and the vast majority of his fans were communist lesbian Ashtoreth worshippers? Yikes!
But I would have rather come up as Ray Bradbury (his prose is to writing what Michelangelo is to painting), and I don't notice him coming up on these posts. Another great author I would like to someday be compared with is Sherri Tepper. The way I write is very similar to the way she writes, although she is a bit too much of a femi-nazi for my taste, and sometimes her environmentalism is overdone. But her style is gorgeous, and I really enjoy most of her work.
Then there is always Anne McCaffrey. Pern will always be one of my favorite worlds.
And why isn't dear Uncle Card listed? If I can ever express inner turmoil half as well as he does, I'll die happy.
I guess I must be more well-read than I thought: I am only twenty-four but most of the authors mentioned on this thread I've known and loved for many years.
My favorite new discovery by the way is Kage Baker. If you haven't read her, please do so poste haste. If you want a stand-alone novel, I recommend the short but sweet Empress of Mars. But her really interesting stuff is about the Company. For that start with Garden of Iden, and go from there.
That's my soap box for the morning.