October: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
October's book is Foundation by Isaac Asimov, meaning the collection of 5 short stories first published in 1951. It is the first published entry in the Foundation series.
Please discuss last month's book, Mars, Ho! below if you haven't done so already. You can also suggest books for January 2019. I can include titles that were already suggested, such as in the comments on the poll. We may be able to increase the maximum number of poll options to accommodate more books.
Previously: SoylentNews Book Club is Alive
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Want to read some books? Many of our users have shown interest in having a book club. Now it's finally time to kick it off.
Your soytyrant has pre-selected the first three books so that you have more time to read them, should you choose to do so:
September: Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew
October: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
The plan is to read a book, and discuss it on the 1st of the following month. Suggestions for new books (of any genres, not just "science fiction") will also be collected at the same time. You can start listing some of your suggestions right now in this comment section. We'll pick up to eight of them and run a poll on September 15th to decide the book for December. And so on.
The first book is Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew, one of our more literary users (not to be confused with Mars Ho! by Jennifer Willis). The book is available for free on McGrew's website, although there are some purchasing options available if you want to support him. From the description:
Captain John Knolls thinks he's just been given the best assignment of his career -- ferrying two hundred prostitutes to Mars. He doesn't know that they're all addicted to a drug that causes them to commit extreme, deadly violence when they are experiencing withdrawal or that he'll face more pirates than anyone had ever seen before. Or that he'd fall in love. A humorous science fiction space novel, a horror story, a love story, a pirate story, a tale of corporate bureaucracy and incompetence.
All book club posts will be in the Community Reviews nexus, which is linked to on the site's sidebar. You'll likely want to click on that link once the posts fall off the main page.
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
A poll for the January 2019 book will be around the 15th, unless you want it sooner (not sooner than the U.S. midterms).
Discuss Foundation by Isaac Asimov in the comments below.
As for Liu Cixin's best known novel:
"Wildly imaginative, really interesting." ―President Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy
The English translation for The Three-Body Problem was published in 2014 by Ken Liu under Tor Books.
Consider using <spoiler>text</spoiler> wherever you feel the need to do so.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho!
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
The next poll will pick two books. I'd like to do it that way to keep a strong second place contender from being overlooked, and so I don't have to update the poll so often.
Discuss The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin in the comments below.
Snow Crash was written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. The novel features a bit of a Calexit scenario, and is known for popularizing the term "avatar" (paving the way for James Cameron's true magnum opus). These days, Neal moonlights as Magic Leap's "Chief Futurist". Seems appropriate.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation
February: Fiasco by Stanisław Lem
March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in the comments below.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein was published in 1966:
The book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is used in the story for precise human-computer interaction. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits this novel with the first printed appearance of the phrase "There's no free lunch", although the phrase and its abbreviation considerably predate the novel.
The virtual assistant Mycroft is named after a computer system from the novel.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem
March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein in the comments below.
Fiasco was translated into English in 1988 by Michael Kandel:
Fiasco (Polish: Fiasko) is a science fiction novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem, first published in a German translation in 1986. The book, published in Poland the following year, is a further elaboration of Lem's skepticism: in Lem's opinion, the difficulty in communication with alien civilizations is cultural disparity rather than spatial distance. The failure to communicate with an alien civilization is the main theme of the book.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem • Snow Crash
Discuss Fiasco by Stanisław Lem in the comments below. If you have any book suggestions for the upcoming poll, feel free to add those.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is the first book of the "Bobiverse" series by Dennis E. Taylor:
Dennis E. Taylor is a Canadian novelist and former computer programmer known for his large scale hard science fiction stories exploring the interaction between artificial intelligence and the human condition.
While working at his day job as a computer programmer, Taylor self published his first novel and began working with an agent to try and publish his second novel We Are Legion. However Taylor still had difficultly getting any publishing house to take on his work, eventually publishing it through his agent's in-house publishing arm. An audiobook rights deal with Audible was also reached and once recorded, We Are Legion became one of the most popular audiobooks on the service and was awarded Best Science Fiction Audiobook of the year.
[...] In October 2018 Taylor was added to the X-Prize Foundation Science Fiction Advisory Council as a "Visionary Storyteller". This group of accomplished science fiction authors help advise the X-Prize team on envisioning the future.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem • Snow Crash • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:54AM (1 child)
No member of Book Club ever reads a book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:15PM
Though, judging from the reviews on Amazon, several hundred of them appear to have read 'Crash Override'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:28AM (1 child)
+1
I read Mars, Ho! shortly after it was announced as the selection. I enjoyed it especially the main two plot twists which kept it from being predictable. I had intended to just skim it a bit and move on, but after skimming a bit, I went back and read more carefully from the beginning. The part about opening the wine was incorrect however as the method was ineffectual. Young wine needs decanting to achieve the effect described. I liked the role the bureaucratic mistake regarding orbital mechanics played in the story.
Since I did read it and did enjoy it, I must now figure out how to drop something in that digital tip jar without letting a dime pass through Amazon. I guess that means Lulu, so time to dust off that account or make a new one.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:20AM
Mail him a picture of a dead president. Those still work as currency.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:39AM (4 children)
Some SF fans love to say that SF predicts the future, but by reading the "classics" that are now over half a century old, it becomes obvious this is not true.
If you approach the classics as antique ideas of their time and peculiar to their author, it becomes easier to read them. Old SF is not futuristic at this point.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:51PM (3 children)
SF people don't claim that SF stories predict the future. None that I know of, anyway. SF asks questions, instead. The question is, "What if?" As a result of exploring that question, in regards to any number of possibilities, sometimes a SF author DOES "predict" something that eventually happens. Usually, they "predict" possible futures. "What if Aunt Hazel had not married that crazy bastard? Would I still have my cousing, Lori, Corey and Leo? Would I have cousins I like better? Or would I have cousins that I hate worse? Would I have cousins at all?" If it's SF, then the author is asking about something or other that seems possible to him. In the case of this question, he's about to fire up an old, dusty, forgotten time machine, and go find out about his possible cousins in some alternate reality - or something like that.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:46PM (2 children)
In addition to this, I find classic Sci Fi to be an interesting illustration of the past: what questions authors felt needed asking back then, what aspects of contemporary culture needed changing, and what was so natural that it would surely be part of everyday life in the future (e.g. smoking).
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
In addition to this, I find classic Sci Fi to be an interesting illustration of the past: what questions authors felt needed asking back then, what aspects of contemporary culture needed changing, and what was so natural that it would surely be part of everyday life in the future (e.g. smoking).
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman was a bit like that. It's probably time for me to look at it again and see what still holds up. Certainly there was no faster than light travel by the late 1990s. On the other hand TV, and its online replacement, has become quite fake rather like in the book. There have been quite a few major outlets presenting doctored videos as bona fide during the last year. Some were as simple as skipping a few seconds at a time. Others have been completely synthetic.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:07AM
Thank you so much. I've been meaning to go back over that again.
I'm halfway through the Wheel of Time right now. Perhaps after.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:05PM (2 children)
Rough start, the book club not the book itself.
I read the article from sept 2 about the club booting up, read Mars Ho and enjoyed it, review later, I guess, and I waited all month for "the mars ho article" to appear in my feed. OhShit.jpg I was supposed to discuss in the Sept 2 article, not wait for another article.
Of course now there is another problem
vs the original story which is status:
I think interest in the club might be higher than observed due to this frankly minor confusion. Stuff happens oh well.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:06PM
OK strange formatting and not enough caffeine but the general point should be clear.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:39PM
Everything is subject to change.
As for the discussions being archived too fast, I have brought it up to TMB. We ought to be able to make it so that certain nexuses have longer open discussions. For example, 2 months for Community Reviews instead of 2 weeks or whatever it is now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by tmib on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:58PM (1 child)
I've been a huge fan of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein for most of my life.
--- tmib / ntozier tmib.net osticket.com/forums
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:19AM
Good suggestion. Seconded.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:00PM (2 children)
As mentioned previously I messed up the scheduling and was confused when this should be discussed so I'm 66% of the way thru the book. I intend to finish it probably this week. I bought it on Amazon for $1.99 and read it on my kindle whenever I'm waiting somewhere bored. I hope Amazon does not charge $1.98 of transaction costs and fees or whatever, that sounds very Amazon.
The book style is a mix of hard and soft sci fi. The technical details are very realistic hard sci fi excellent immersion, at least so far. The endless harping about pork being expensive is odd/interesting; you'd think a world of fusion generators would have infinite energy to grow livestock feed and do exotic genetic engineering and animal breeding, so an utter apocalypse of a species (virus or whatever) would likely be rectified in a couple years at most. Given infinite free energy, some things in the book are a little obscure. Maybe its a cultural problem such that people won't buy pig unless its provided with a full video record of its life proving its not "long pig" aka human flesh. If Chinese will export baby formula containing melamine to westerners .... I would be nervous about buying pork sausage especially after one of their periodic political purges. Then again infinite free energy might destroy world trade, why send "long pig" sausage from China to the USA if the energy cost is zero making it trivial to grow the pork we eat in our cities, like whats the point of eating old food far away that costs more than fresh local food, if, when energy is infinite and free, that situation applies to all foods?
Cultural issues can be a little weird. Pro sports turned out to be boomer; in the 90s when star trek DS9 had a weird side plot about no one watches pro baseball anymore that seemed the usual ethnic group that always instinctively has to countersignal the dominant group just to be disagreeable, up to its usual tricks, although here we are almost 2020 and baseball is in fact dying out with the boomers. So there's strange anachronisms where the dude pays attention to pro sports and is addicted to spending like half his waking hours watching non-interactive pre-recorded boomer-era entertainment. And his girlfriend is apparently of similar interests implying he's not some kind of retro-hobbyist oddball. Boomer memes about higher ed come up constantly in the protagonists thoughts.
The book portrays a very white male boomer civilization, which is refreshing given recent ridiculous industry awards based solely on the authors results in the Diversity Olympics competitions. Basically every non-NPC in the book, so far, is a white male, possibly with a suntan and grew up in Africa or possibly they talk about other people being non-pork eating muslims or dog eating asians, or even anatomically a woman despite being a white male research scientist or charity founder and CEO. By being a white male, I mean WRT IQ, personality, work ethic, cultural beliefs, morals, ethics, attitudes, there are no cultural groups in the story other than white men and NPCs. I suppose its unrealistic to assume you can have a space faring civilization with sub-saharan africans and Jews, a successful space program is an inherent White (and Asian) privilege. The story is culturally pretty much Hugh Hefner and all his boomer baggage takes 200 whores on a USO "entertainment" trip to Mars, instead of Vietnam like in "apocalypse now". Its entertaining as all heck even if parts are not terribly realistic or are ... unusual.
There are character personality issues. As stated above everyone in the story is a white man or a NPC, including all the "Heinlein-Style" fake diversity and the women. There's not much in between, at least so far there are no characters that are not critical to the story or are NPCs. Maybe the white male research doctor (who anatomically is a woman...) is kinda in between a main character and part of the background setting... Its interesting to read and not necessarily bad, but its unusual and non-formulaic to not have a hierarchy of characters, there's just utterly important white males and background NPCs.
Another character oddity is the main character kills a bunch of space pirates early on in an interesting military fight; not a terribly realistic psychological portrayal of actual combat vets I've met. To some extent this is another boomerism like Star Trek where they can't decide if they're a WWII battleship propaganda movie, or space battleship yamamoto, or if they're some greenpeace research vessel. Also the pirates are weird; at least the early first 2/3 of the book they're basically Somalians-in-space like the youtube video of "The Old Negro Space Program" parody documentary. If you have a culture where only white men exist then its weird to put Somalians-in-space in as an incompetent antagonist given extensive historical literature about actual white male pirates black-beard or whatever-diverse-color-beard or going back further to Norse raider psuedo-pirates or chartered letter of marquee privateer operators. Also in space, I'm not sure a pirate fleet is sustainable without a base and if they have a base, a space or land based railgun can eliminate the base rapidly resulting in no fleet, so why are there pirates to begin with? At least so far its a moderately entertaining story without pirates. Maybe it would have been more realistic to have pirate action be a totally new thing in space, surprise to both the protagonist AND the reader. Maybe it'll make more sense if I finish reading the book.
There are other cultural oddities like there appear to be no leftists, no progressives, no jews, no identity politics, no social media, no higher ed forced political indoctrination, no social virtue signalling, no oppression olympics; of course as stated above its fairly realistic that a society sick enough to have those illnesses can't go into space, so this society being in space, obviously there cannot be media support for female SJWs on space-twitter posting about how they want to genocide the white men who created civilization for them to criticize as being so awful; because Haiti, Saudi Arabia, and India are such a paradise on earth for women to live.
The women in the book, admittedly NPCs or reskinned white men, do not exhibit blue pill behavior like sick women, or red pill behavior like real women, or even legacy hollywood or modern hollywood or sci fi tropes; their behavior is ... unique. Admittedly in context all of them but two are supposed to be addicts, but even the two non-addicts kinda had the mold broken when they were born, it seems. So a guy finds (fictional) women to be mysterious and interesting; maybe thats the most realistic way to portray them of all?
Speaking of droppers, I haven't finished the book but I'm assuming the "common widely available chemicals" that go into drops are something like pulverized colloidal American twenty dollar bills or powdered gold or similar. Thats unrealistic in that in the current century we've already invented an antidote to women having too high of a sex drive, its called "wedding cake". Yeah well maybe I should not be writing comedy. But making drops ground up twenties would have made the story both more realistic and more funny. I haven't finished the book, maybe drops are pulverized credit cards, i donno.
It seems in the story that the promises of "big data" did not materialize at least WRT infinite business optimization. Apparently no AI or data scientist noticed their flight scheduling system was super un-optimized or no one noticed Mars had a woman shortage or Earth had a problem with droppers or they can't build cleaning robots that don't have their lithium batteries explode. So you got "Alexa built into a dining room table" but somehow nobody uses MySQL or Hadoop or whatevs to analyze operations data anymore; uh yeah about that...
Overall I like the book, its not formulaic and gives the reader a lot to think about and is just plain old fun. Its also really cheap, giving it a great ratio of enjoyment to expense. I would recommend this book, at least the first 2/3 that I've completed so far.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
Oh other hard sci fi oddities, no big deal:
They don't have "big data" and AI at corporate HQ to competently run the company, but on board the ship, they have a substantial SCADA system that makes the poor captain spend half his time tediously responding to voltage alarms on the ion drives per company procedure. Thats weird. Also they got no video cameras in this universe so he needs to walk around instead of looking at cams and looking at drone footage (they do have drones, just no drones with cameras). So the poor guy has a kinda crappy job in the sense of walking around a lot because his employers are kinda dumb.
Another sci fi oddity; its apparently common to get small batteries for drones with great surface area to volume ratios that none the less explode and catch fire inside the ship constantly, BUT its an established plot line multiple times that every ship has enough batteries such that if (when) both generators blow up there's enough stored energy to keep the hotel loads operating for many months. Maybe hes just neglecting to mention the solar array or modern hotel loads are extremely efficient such that a 9V radio battery could keep you alive for months, I donno.
They've carefully manipulated the IQ of the AI repair robots such that they're smart enough to repair robots that catch fire, which must be very hard, but not quite smart enough to determine the root cause of HQ buying inferior quality batteries, which is weird.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:58PM
The dearth of cameras is an intentional thing, and mentioned in the pilot's contract. If all he had to do was watch cameras, he'd swell up into a lard-assed blimp, and he'd probably implode when he got into a gravity field greater than our moon. So, the pilot walks, unless he'd prefer to run.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:34PM
Plenty of sci fi. Not a problem, necessarily. If you want even more sci fi how about Ringo's complete "Troy Rising" series? He is not a verbose author, the complete series of novels is shorter than some other authors individual novels.
Of if four sci fi in a row are too much, how about some alternative history with Eric Flint's 1632, not the bazillion sequels and fanfic but just plain old 1632? I checked and its still available for free reading on baen.com. They hope you'll get hooked and pay for a bunch of sequels and fanfic. Worked on me, I guess.
How about "Last Centurion" which is military action and a lot of political commentary (maybe too much?) Or the Aldenata Posleen series, I believe the fourth book in the series is the "I love giant tanks" book? Or if you're tired of my suggesting almost everything Ringo has ever written, how about almost everything Frankowski ever wrote?
In a previous discussion about book selection I mentioned the criteria for a book DISCUSSION should be its interesting to discuss, not necessarily its the best book evar. The books above are not quite the level of Shakespeare but the authors clearly wanted the readers to think and debate and react. So they are not exactly hugbox safespaces, but they would be interesting to read, anyway.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)
"Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins" I've read the entire series up to the present and it's quite an interesting romp through the universe.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spinward-fringe-broadcast-0-randolph-lalonde/1102499499?ean=2940000695951 [barnesandnoble.com]
https://www.amazon.com/Spinward-Fringe-Broadcast-Origins-Collected-ebook/dp/B004EPYUXA [amazon.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:05PM
Manna
I only read the first chapter years ago, but I heard about it from slashdot and/or here.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:19PM (1 child)
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
I have not yet had the intestinal fortitude to actually read it.
After killing his own wife while drunkenly clowning around with his gun, Burroughs fled to Tunisia, where he got hooked on heroin, eventually to hallucinate giant bugs on his typewriter that jizz voluminously as he writes his novels.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @01:56AM
William Burroughs
Heir to the Burroughs mechanical calculator company (at one time a serious rival to IBM).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:16AM
Preface: I don't read fiction of any kind for its underlying societal commentary. I read it for recreation. If any unstated societal commentary exists and is so poorly done as to cause me to notice it, I won't finish reading the book. If it's an upfront part of the plot, that's fine as long as it doesn't get precedence over storytelling. Which is to say, don't expect any discussion of it from me.
First the beefs. I almost DNF'd the book less than a dozen pages in. Pure dialog without so much as a bit now and then to remind you who is speaking is clunky as hell to read. Also, the need for a copy editor was extremely evident over the same range. I get not wanting to spend the money but having your novel professionally edited makes one hell of a difference. There are plenty of people out there who would be glad to do so for you for a relatively modest fee, so not doing so is really inexcusable unless you're a broke-ass teenager.
Now that that's out of the way, I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It's not by any stretch a heavy read with lots of character development and an intricate plot but the story and storytelling style work quite well together to produce a light bit of humorous reading. I'd recommend it to most anyone old enough to have pubes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:18AM (3 children)
Is this the place, or is there supposed to be a thread titled "Foundation by Isaac Asimov"?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 08 2018, @01:34AM (2 children)
We read that one in October, and discuss that one in November.
I'll retitle/text accordingly going forward.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 08 2018, @01:40AM
OK, I think I've got it. Thanks!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 10 2018, @06:54PM
This is a FAQ (where do we discuss this/that) which can be remedied pretty easily.
My I suggest stories in this nexus along the following lines:
Story: Let's discuss book so-and-so
Story: What do you guys want to read for (time period)
Story: This Story Contains News About The Book Club
which would semi-neatly put related discussion together.
This might be an improvement over the current:
Story: Multiple random not-necessarily-even-connected topics
Story: Multiple random not-necessarily-even-connected topics
Just my two cents.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday October 21 2018, @10:35PM
I much enjoyed this book when McGrew posted a rather sad message with a link to the book on his website.
He related how he had submitted it to Analog, and the editor had rejected it with suggestions for changes.
He decided that it was rejected and to get it into public view he posted it on his website.
The message was sad because he did not know that Analog, like most other professional magazines, doesn't make individual suggestions like that without wanting the story to be resubmitted after those changes are made.
I don't think McGrew will make that mistake again. And please, you other authors who might be reading this, don't make it either. If an editor wants revisions, make them and resubmit.