Random bullets of science fiction
By Amanda on March 20th, 2008
- RIP, Arthur C. Clarke. I know I’ve blogged about it before, but,
dear Reader, if you haven’t read his story "The Nine Billion Names of
God," you absolutely must.
- I’m in the process of working my way through Cory Doctorow‘s entire
oeuvre, mostly in podcast form. A hat tip to the friend who first
recommended "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" — it’s my favorite so far.
- Another friend sent me "Wikihistory" by Desmond Warzel, which has been making the
rounds of the blogs. What if time travel were like Wikipedia? I’m still snickering.
- Somewhere I
remember learning that the Library of Congress Classification doesn’t have any classes starting with W, X, or Y because those letters have been set
aside in case they ever need to add new subjects. Someday, I want to
write a speculative fiction piece that starts off with a librarian in
the not-too-far future cataloging something and assigning it a call
number in the W’s.
- Thing #508 that I like about life outside the English-professor
track: I can admit to reading and enjoying genre fiction without immediately having to add that I’m only reading it because I’m
doing Serious Research on it.
- As I appear to be getting into a science-fiction kick, and I’m still rather new to the genre, I’m still looking for recommendations. Anything you think I shouldn’t miss? Comment away!
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WikiHistory is wonderful (particularly tickled at the last reference). Granted, I know a game which somewhat works like that…
I know — I thought of that story when I heard your presentation!
Have you read The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas? It’s a mix of Victorian gothic with science fiction. The book is filled to the brim with imaginative ideas — and its protagonist is a PhD student in English literature. The Canongate paperback comes with a wonderful gothic cover and black-rimmed pages, I just had to take it when I saw it in the bookshop. I only just read it, and was really sorry to finish it. It’s the kind of book that sticks with you for a while.
No, I haven’t, but it sounds terrific — I’ll have to check it out. Thank you!
I’d suggest taking a look at the past winners of the Tiptree award and many of the authors that the Think Galactic book group in Chicago have selected for their reading lists (see http://thinkgalactic.org/) all tend to be pretty interesting and intelligent science fiction.
(and yes, it’s been 15+ years, glad you are well!)
Shannon