“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

by

From Matt Yglesias, more evidence that, despite my best efforts, I am aging:

I also wonder how novel all this hooking up is really supposed to be. Don’t Mike and Stacy hook up in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a film from before my time? Also missing is the broader socioeconomic context.

Nevermind the “broader socioeconomic context.” Fast Times at Ridgemont High was “before your time”? Before your time?!!?

And now you’re going to tell us that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meant nothing to you. Nothing!

(Collapses in tears.)

I hope you’re happy, Gen-Y.

Incidentally, I second Ygelsias’s recommendation of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Of course, the Neuromancer quasi–trilogy is far superior, but that’s probably before y’all’s time as well. Sheesh.*

*In fairness, Ygelsias (who clearly has read quite a bit of Gibson) nails the main problem with Gibson’s writing.

33 thoughts on ““Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.””

  2. Most science fiction and fantasy written after 1960 is pretty uninteresting to me.
    Which, personally, seems utterly bizarre, both because there’s so much more stuff published today than there was back then (although of course Sturgeon’s Law still holds) and because the quality of the writing itself has improved so dramatically. I picked up a copy of Lest Darkness Fall a while back and couldn’t get more than a few pages into it. The ideas were great, but the writing was at about a sixth-grade level.

  3. In fairness, there’s a big difference between Fast Times and Ferris Bueller because of the respective ages at which most kids were allowed to see them. I could see Ferris pretty close to when it came out, but nowhere nearly that for the former.

  4. Worth noting that, after Mike & Stacy hook up, she gets pregnant, and he bails on paying for, or even driving her to get, an abortion. Although I’ve never read Crowe’s book, I’ve always hated the way the movie had Mike and Ratner just sort of forget the whole thing ever happened. (“Remember when you got my #1 crush pregnant, then left her in the clutch?” “Yeah, wasn’t that great!”) Frankly, Ratner and Brad should have both beaten Mike within an inch of his life.

  5. What interesting happened in SF after 1960:
    Gateway and its successors
    Moving Mars by Greg Bear. Ditto The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars by same.
    Most especially…Darwin’s Radio, also by Bear.
    Anything at all by Neal Stephenson.
    Anything at all by Gibson.
    Nearly everything by Larry Niven.
    Everything by Gregory Benford.
    Anything written by Pournelle, when partnered with Niven.
    Peter Hamilton’s stuff was quite intriguing, but it’s too recent to say whether it’s got lasting greatness.
    Practically everything by Charles Sheffield
    I could go on, but I haven’t the time. You just have to look around a bit. It helps to have a decent used bookstore nearby.

  6. Anything written by Pournelle, when partnered with Niven.
    Er, Oath of Fealty? Footfall? Fallen Angels?
    No accounting for taste…

  7. Not a huge SF reader, but Neuromancer simply must be among the best SF books ever, given that it’s among the best books ever, period. What it lacks in poetry, it more than makes up for in speed and vision.

  8. “No accounting for taste…”
    He meant the Mote in God’s Eye. Or, if not, he should have.
    The exluded list also includes Dune, Ender’s Game, everything by Gene Wolfe, second Foundation, and Douglas Adams.
    And for fantasy. . basically everything. The Fellowship was only published in 54.
    Dave’s tastes are way more elite than mine.

  9. Josh, there are exceptions. I can’t even remember Oath of Fealty. I did like Footfall, even though it was sort of recycled Lucifer’s Hammer with someone else throwing the rocks. Fallen Angels, though, didn’t impress me at all. Let’s say that three-quarters of what Niven wrote up to and including Ringworld Throne is worthy of checking out.
    Dream Park wasn’t that great, either. But Protector was great. As were his short story collections.

  10. The Mote was great; The Gripping Hand was, I thought, awful.
    I love Adams, but I feel that plugging for my Creator involves a certain appearance of conflict of interest that I’d just as soon avoid.

  11. but I feel that plugging for my Creator involves a certain appearance of conflict of interest that I’d just as soon avoid.
    That’s the thanks I get?

  12. Oh, hey, cry me a river Von. “To Sir With Love” and “Billy Jack” are my generation’s equivalents, and you probably missed their theatrical release, right?
    ps – Niven was a god. Pournelle ruined him for good. Except for the wonderful “Flying Sorcerers”, written by Niven and David Gerrold. Everything else, including Mote, Lucifer’s, Footfall, Falling Angels, Oath of Feality all suffer from Pournelle’s heavyhanded morality. Niven’s post-early-seventies stuff all seems disorganized and tired. We need more puppeteers, tanjit censored bleep!
    pps – Neuromancer is the best thing out of Sci-Fi since the fifties, IMHO. What a book.

  13. But Protector was great. As were his short story collections.
    The short stories were great, as long as you didn’t think about them too much. For me, they’re the ultimate proof of the idea that the Golden Age of science fiction is 12.
    What gets me about Niven is that for all of his preening about the importance of getting the science right… he doesn’t. Virtually all of his early shorts have some basic scientific error of one sort or another, and what he knows about biology could fit on a postage stamp.
    Oh, and let me say that everyone here should go out and buy everything Iain M. Banks has ever written. (His non-sf stuff, published as Iain Banks, is excellent too, but it’s… decidedly darker.)

  15. Oh, hey, cry me a river Von. “To Sir With Love” and “Billy Jack” are my generation’s equivalents, and you probably missed their theatrical release, right?
    Umm, yes. Before my time, as they were.

  16. Well, Larry Niven I’ll grant you. And I read The Fellowship of the Ring back in, what, 1960? But Tolkien ruined practically all subsequent fantasy. Most were just pale re-hashes.

  18. Just finished (yeah, I know I’m late) Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. Fascinating book. As for the overall quality of science fiction, I agree that Sturgeon’s law holds up really well. And Gibson’s later work doesn’t hold a candle to his Neuromancer-era stuff.

  21. The Neuromancer trilogy is good, but as I said in comments over at MY’s, the bridge trilogy’s first book, “Virtual Light”, is really my favorite… I think mainly because I enjoy the character of Rydell to no end.

  23. This is where I shouldn’t mention that I first met Bill Gibson in 1976, that he used to occasionally come down from Vancouver to my monthly party after I moved to Seattle in late 1977, and that he’s an old friend from long before he sold a word of fiction, right?
    Okay, I won’t. Won’t mention working on a whole bunch of Zelazny books, reprints (Lord of Light, etc.) and new (Amber, short story collection) when I was was at Avon in the mid-Eighties, either.
    That would be name-dropping, and evial.

  24. Evial?
    I liked Zelazny; mostly he was good, but he had his great moments. The Amber series had a few of those, even though it had some mediocre bits as well. This Immortal is my favorite.
    I like everything I’ve read of Gibson quite a lot, which is to say all of it save his latest. As far as writing styles goes, I’ve got to say Stephenson’s more my cup of tea, though.
    Donaldson just makes me tired. It’s Lord Foul this, and White Gold Wielder that. SOoooo depressing. And I have this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side because of it.
    Wait. OOC for a moment. One of the many things that don’t work about the Illearth books is that any sane warrior would have decapitated Thomas Covenant just to take him out of his own misery. And his subsequent books…all I can say is “lugubrious”. If you’ve read them, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Everything Marvin said would have been said lugubriously, if Donaldson had written it.

  25. “It’s odd to find myself once again mostly in agreement with Slartibartfast. If I could bottle the feeling and sell it, it’d certainly be outlawed within days.”
    So, okay, two things we’re in agreement on: torture is bad, and so is Stephen Donaldson. Of course, IMO reading Stephen Donaldson is a form of torture… and so is being hit with his books.

  26. Oh, and I’d like to plug Tad Williams’ excellent Dragonbone Chair trilogy. It’s better than practically anything written since LOTR and The Once and Future King.

  27. I recommend a triple trilogy by Robin Hobb, which is stunningly good (well, so far: I’m five books into it and Hobb hasn’t failed me yet).
    The first trilogy consists of Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest. The second trilogy goes off and deals with different people in the same world: Ship of Magic and The Mad Ship are the only two I’ve read so far. Plus there’s a third trilogy, which if it meets the standards of the first two, is really something to look forward to.

  29. “I’d like to plug Tad Williams’ excellent Dragonbone Chair trilogy. ”
    Ach! Tad Williams! Otherland was brutally bad. I may try out the Dragonbone books but I’m on a 2 year Tad Williams hiatus.
    I thought the Covenant books were excellent, though the weakest of Donaldson’s series. Then again, I thought the Dune books got better as they went on, so apparently I like stories where nothing actually happens outside of anyone’s head.

  31. But did Samuel Clemens write Huckleberry Finn?
    I’ve read the Assassin trilogy and liked it; the Liveship books I’ve read two of and it’s hard to see where it’s all going.
    Finally, I think that the Covenant books were Donaldson’s best work, which may very well identify me as sidereal’s complex conjugate.

  32. My complement, sir. My complement.
    I enjoyed Mordant’s Need thoroughly, the Gap series almost as much (though Stephen’s affection for rape as a plot device began to wear thin at this point), and found the Chronicles satisfying but a little raw. Good for the vocabulary, though.

Comments are closed.