Cool books

[drwex]

Just wanted to point to today's blog entry by Neil Gaiman in which he, in his very understated way, recommends one of my all-time favorite books, Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. I think there are about 10 people on the planet who liked this book, one of whom I friended on LJ(*) just because he used the phrase "Dirac Angestun".

It's a cool book about a (human) terrorist inserted onto an alien planet in a one-man effort to disrupt the aliens' war-making capability. The book is both eerily prescient and amusingly dated (in that way so much SF of past decades becomes).

I'm disappointed that Neil let the film option expire because, frankly, I think this film needs to be made. I hold out tenuous hope for the upcoming V for Vendetta movie because the message of that movie is extremely important. Likewise, a Wasp movie would have the potential to be absolutely rocking and unnerving to the current national zeitgeist. I hope someone picks this one up, but I doubt it.

(*) Am I the only one who consistently typos it as "liverjournal"? My fingers just want to put that extra 'r' in there.

Comments

[drwex]

Heh, I love the notion of a "desperate sleep." Very poetic. No apologies necessary.

As for V, I have no hope that it'll say anything to the 51%. What I'm hoping is that it'll help the 49% realize just how much worse it can get and that they (we) damned well ought to do something. I don't hope for it to be a blockbuster. What I hope for is an honest retelling of a disturbing tale dressed up in enough Hollywood to slip past the first of peoples' mental barriers. I see no reason why anyone except rich white oil men should be sleeping easy in this country.

If sci-fi is good for anything, it's good for telling us things about ourselves we wouldn't listen to otherwise.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

I suppose that is a good point, to get past barriers. Sort of like that little cartoon movie, Ferngully. It was cute, it had music, great family fun. It was also the biggest piece of hate the loggers, love the environment propaganda ever!

I think the next president should be a science fiction writer. I know it's a generalization, but it seems that of all the genres, here is a group that really *thinks* about the future, deeply, without rose-colored glasses. And they see where humans are really headed with their over-consumption and greed and a dishonest government based on lies and the "Gold Rule". (He who has the gold...rules..."

Too bad all the really, really good ones have already left us.

Couldn't you just see Asimov in office?

[drwex]

Gods no. Isaac was a pompous ass. A well-learned pompous ass, but still.

I also think you haven't read enough SF in the last 20 years if you think all the good writers are gone. Just off the top of my head: Stephenson, Sterling, Gibson, Walter Jon Williams, Pat Murphy, Pat Cadigan, LMB, Jeter, Powers, Blaylock, Connie Willis. All of them well-published and all pretty near the top of their games still. Happy to loan you reading material...

I wouldn't mind if the US had an "Author Laureate" (sp?) as well as a Poet Laureate, though. I'd settle for an actual artist being in charge of the NEA.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't you rather a smart pompous ass instead of a stupid pompous ass?

And I'm not meaning to degrade the modern talent, I'm just saying it seems like the older group, that golden age group, were just *so good* and so far ahead of their time. They were also extremely outspoken and many of them were vocal about their worries about our society, especially things like space travel and nuclear power.

Maybe the newer authors are too, though, and I just am ignorant of it because you read the *histories* of the writers from 40 years ago whereas the writers nowadays you'd have to be reading news. I don't do news.