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newnumber6Finished: Sundiver, by David Brin
Started: Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon
No substantive spoilers beyond what you can get from the back of the book, just general thoughts, but still, they're behind the cut tag.
Sundiver wasn't bad. While the universe outline interested me, the particular story in this case didn't, all that much, but it was serviceable. My main problem with the story, and it's minor because it occurs all over the place in SF, is that the aliens didn't feel sufficiently alien. Oh, sure, they looked alien, had alien physiologies, and talked in weird ways (which got annoying at times, especially a race which talked in a conshtsant lishp). But if you replaced most of the aliens with humans with advanced technology and particular political points of view, it wouldn't make too much difference. Of course, for some points in the story they had to be aliens just because it was exploring the political climate between aliens and humans, but still, I never got a sense that I was dealing with an alien, rather than a human in a funny costume from another country.
Venus Plus X, which I've just started, is a story about a man from our time (or Sturgeon's time, anyway, it deals with gender politics and so far some of it seems to have a decidedly 50s feel), who finds himself suddenly in the far future, in a world where there's only one gender, an androgynous mix of male and female. It's interesting enough so far, but I haven't gotten too far into it.
I've enjoyed More than Human (one of the early 'mutant' stories in SF) and 'To Marry Medusa' (a good hive mind story) before, as well as a couple other stories by Sturgeon. He's most notable of course, IMHO, for formulating Sturgeon's Law. The story goes, someone asked him about science fiction, and wasn't it true that 90% of it was crap. His response? "Of course, 90% of EVERYTHING is crap.". Thus was born, Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
Started: Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon
No substantive spoilers beyond what you can get from the back of the book, just general thoughts, but still, they're behind the cut tag.
Sundiver wasn't bad. While the universe outline interested me, the particular story in this case didn't, all that much, but it was serviceable. My main problem with the story, and it's minor because it occurs all over the place in SF, is that the aliens didn't feel sufficiently alien. Oh, sure, they looked alien, had alien physiologies, and talked in weird ways (which got annoying at times, especially a race which talked in a conshtsant lishp). But if you replaced most of the aliens with humans with advanced technology and particular political points of view, it wouldn't make too much difference. Of course, for some points in the story they had to be aliens just because it was exploring the political climate between aliens and humans, but still, I never got a sense that I was dealing with an alien, rather than a human in a funny costume from another country.
Venus Plus X, which I've just started, is a story about a man from our time (or Sturgeon's time, anyway, it deals with gender politics and so far some of it seems to have a decidedly 50s feel), who finds himself suddenly in the far future, in a world where there's only one gender, an androgynous mix of male and female. It's interesting enough so far, but I haven't gotten too far into it.
I've enjoyed More than Human (one of the early 'mutant' stories in SF) and 'To Marry Medusa' (a good hive mind story) before, as well as a couple other stories by Sturgeon. He's most notable of course, IMHO, for formulating Sturgeon's Law. The story goes, someone asked him about science fiction, and wasn't it true that 90% of it was crap. His response? "Of course, 90% of EVERYTHING is crap.". Thus was born, Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
