Caves of Steel
I started reading an actual book on Thrusday, something that I haven't done in many months. Despite my love of technology, I have to admit that ink on paper is still my favorite delivery medium for fiction.
posted by Mark at
09:43
10 Comments:
Why was Asimov so much better than so many subsequent SF writers? What was his *deal*?
This is actually the first lot of Asimov books that I've read. Your post last week prompted me to finnally get them off my wish list. Hmmm.... so I hold you responsible for me being up to 1:30 this morning reading!
I am enjoying his books and am impressed with the way that they have aged. I'm not really a big fan of serious sci-fi though and can only really compare it to a few Ian M. Banks books that I've read. The sci-fi that I read tends to be of the Robert Rankin / Terry Pratchet / Douglas Adams variety.
Yes, he seems to transcend genres for many readers. As for me, I'm a bit of a sci-fi slut, appreciating authors of the types you mentioned (and wishing to some day become Granny Weatherwax), "hard" sci-fi, and also contemporary fantasy that beings to edge out of sci-fi entirely (Such as Ray Bradbury), magic realism (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and even some sword-and-sorcery stuff (Chicks in Chain Mail!). I guess I would collect it all under Harlan Ellison's rubric of "Speculative Fiction", which does cover more than "sci-fi".
Thanks for the tip. I think I'll have a look at some of Ray Bradbury & Harlen Edison's books (despite the alegations that he's a technophobe).
I'm not really sure which genres the science fiction I like falls into but I guess it would help me find similar authors. I'm going to have to spend some time with Google.
I have found Amazon's referral capabilites to be extremely helpful, unless you're talking about saving money, in which case it's been extremely unhelpful.
If you place books by authors you already know you like on your wish list, you will begin to develop a really great "suggested for you" page or whatever it is called.
It's a good thing they offer used books, otherwise I'd be bankrupt at this point.
PS: Harlan Ellison is generally just sort of cranky about...well, everything. Not specifically technology.
I remember reading one book of his about 14 years ago. The introduction had a passage in which he exhorted the reader to read aloud to a romantic partner a paragraph about the image resolution capability of some particular interplanetary probe. If the partner didn't say something like, "Wow! That's amazing!" then the reader was instructed to leave them immediately.
(At least, I'm pretty sure it was Ellison.)
I have bought some of Amazons book recomendations based on my previous purchase history and was quite impressed.
Their recomendations aren't all that helpfull on the electronics side though. I bought a mouse from them once and now all it recomends is other mice. I think it should be recomending accessories that would go with the mouse instead of similar products in their electronics section.
Huh...I have exactly the same complaint about non-book items. I already *have* a suction sealer, thank you very much!
It should be recomending things like suction sealer bag refils (which they probably don't sell come to think of it). I can't think of what else they sell that might be similar but I'm sure they could come up with something from their "People who bought this item also bought..." data.
Oh, it does try to sell me the refill bags. But it also tries to sell me other sealers.
And random kitchen objects that are way off the mark. I guess I could be considered an anomalous purchaser for the item, as I am not interested in creating my own frappucino, slushees, or sausages.
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