Have you already read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
How about any Terry Pratchett? My first Pratchett book was Wee Free
Men. He's pretty good. His whole Discworld setting is used as an analog
to sort of satirize our real, non disc shaped world.
Oh and there was a collaboration between Pratchett and another author
called The Long Earth, and that's excellent.
On 7/24/2020 10:11 PM, Mark Radabaugh wrote:
So y’all were supposed to find me some other good SciFi books. There
is a lot of SciFi out there but the vast majority of it reads like the
narration of a first person shooter. Boring.
Martha Wells “All Systems Red” is amusing.
Mark
On Jul 24, 2020, at 6:27 PM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com
<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote:
The movie is shit, but apparently it wasn't even supposed to be a
Starship Troopers movie. The original title was "Bug Hunt on Outpost
9". Someone at the Heinlein estate thought it had too much
similarity to Starship Troopers and there was a legal dispute. The
studio agreed to pay licensing to use Starship Troopers IP. The
director had apparently never even heard of the book and was annoyed
at having to rework the movie into the "Starship Troopers" framework.
On 7/24/2020 5:59 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Why are people talking about Starship Troopers lately? I’d never
heard of it. I asked my son what it was about and he said bugs. Bad
bugs? Yes. Good movie? Stupid movie.
Was it satire? There’s a fine line between satire and stupid.
*From:* AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Mark Radabaugh
*Sent:* Friday, July 24, 2020 4:15 PM
*To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] bored
Heinlein hasn’t aged as well as I would have expected. Some great
ideas but the sex bits appealed a lot more to a teenage male than
they do some 40 years later.
Asimov has held up very well - as good today as it was when it was
written.
For newer SciFi:
I absolutely love Dan Simmons “Hyperion Cantos”. A bit slow to
start but a fantastic work. Don’t start it if you have other
things you need to do.
The “Imperial Radch” series by Ann Leckie is also one of my very
favorites. A bit hard to wrap your head around at first but once
you figure it out it’s excellent.
If you want something that’s just a plain fun easy read - “Old Man’s
War” by John Scalzi is a concept straight out of Heinlein’s style,
with a slightly different twist on the sexuality.
Mark
On Jul 24, 2020, at 4:53 PM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com
<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I liked Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
The idea that citizenship is not a birthright but something you
earn through service to society was interesting food for
thought. It's not something we could do realistically, but it
was interesting to think about. On the other hand, the idea
that every soldier takes care of his own logistics is pretty
dumb though. Heinlein must have found it objectionable to have
more people in the rear echelon than you have actual fighters,
but frankly modern wars are won by logistics. Having more
soldiers is irrelevant if they don't have food, ammo, clothing,
and fully working equipment; and expecting every Gomer Pile to
take part in every aspect of that would be dumb.
Puppet Masters wasn't bad either. It spawned the whole body
snatching subgenre in sci fi.
On 7/24/2020 4:14 PM,ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com>wrote:
I get Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair confused. Didn’t
really like either of them. Been a while since I read any
Bradbury or Heinlein.
*From:*Ken Hohhof
*Sent:*Friday, July 24, 2020 2:01 PM
*To:*'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group'
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] bored
I talked to an old college friend the other day, he had just
read and was recommending “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair
Lewis.
*From:*AF<af-boun...@af.afmug.com>
<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>*On Behalf Of*Adam Moffett
*Sent:*Friday, July 24, 2020 2:54 PM
*To:*af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com>
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] bored
Books are better.
I found the 1911 edition of the/Boy Scouts
Handbook/enlightening. The views expressed by the author(s)
are a glimpse into a different time. It also discusses
survival and outdoor skills in broad terms. If you tried to
build a bow or a log cabin from the instructions in that
book you'd have to do a lot of your own figuring to fill in
the blanks, but maybe that's the whole point, and maybe
that's the piece we're missing from society today. Like
maybe the journey of figuring out the precise techniques to
carve the notches into the logs is a better experience than
emulating a you-tuber who shows you every single step.
My other recent recreational book was the/National Audubon
Society Field Guide to North American Trees/. I lived 40
years on this earth only ever learning a handful of major
tree types (Oak, Maple, etc). I'm embarrassed to say I was
calling every needle leafed tree a "pine" for most of those
years. I finally decided to educate myself on the topic.
On 7/24/2020 3:29 PM,ch...@wbmfg.com
<mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com>wrote:
I am not much of a sports fan... I thought. But with no
sports on I am really missing them. I would at times
catch part of a game to pass the time. That option is
gone for the moment and there nothing but crap on to
watch... Need a good book I guess.
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