Battle of the Dystopias

Tarquin Underspoon wrote: harmonium.ro wrote: I'd add Do Android Dream Of Electric Sheep?, one of my favourites.   Totally forgot about that one. A great book indeed!

I consider "Ubik" or "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" to be much better books by Dick


Edited by BaldJean - January 23 2010 at 18:47

Have only read the first three... Brave New World was the most meticulously thought out of the societies though. It is also without a doubt the most likely future society of the dystopias we might find ourselves living in... Huxley even wrote an essay in the 60s (30 years after writing the book) about how much society can become like the world depicted in BNW...

Sadly, I never read "We" and I never even heard of that last one 

But out of the 3 I have read it has to go to 1984. Great story. I liked Fahrenheit 451 as well and Brave New World....meh. I was not a fan.

Lem is one of my favourite SF authors. He hated SF.

Did you want to display this picture of him?

English wikipedia says it nicely, there is a lot of interesting facts about him.

Of Lem I especially like "Memoirs Found In a Bathtub" (a very kafkaesque novel), "The Futurological Congress" (an Ijon Tychy novel. Actually I love all Ijon Tychy novels; he is such a clumsy hero and gets into all kinds of absurd situations). "Eden" (one of his early works and quite simple compared to latter novels) and "Fiasco" (the book in which Pilot Pirx dies. The interesting thing is you don't know when he dies; it may be at the very beginning of the book and the hero in the rest of it is someone else, or he may have survived the introduction and is the hero throughout the whole book. But he is definitely dead at the end).


Edited by BaldFriede - January 24 2010 at 14:40

Fiasco is depressive. But it's a great book anyway!

^^As for Blade Runner Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? it's showing dystopian elements while clearly belonging to the cyberpunk; dystopias are often intersected with other SF subgenres, be it hard SF (Clarke's 'City and The Stars'), new wave (Walter J. Miller Jr.'s 'Canticle for Leibowitz' - great novel!), even alternative history - Robert Harris' 'Fatherland' is set-up in world where Hitler won - but it's just a tool for a detective story, and only marginally dystopia/science-fiction, in a same way space opera Star Wars are knights, dragons and wizards in SF disguise. But I'm off the subject.

However, I must metion THX 1138, Lucas' dystopian movie; as far as I know the screenplay was never rendered to a novel. A great piece if you like archetypal dystopia.

clarke2001 wrote: Fiasco is depressive. But it's a great book anyway! ^^As for Blade Runner Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? it's showing dystopian elements while clearly belonging to the cyberpunk; dystopias are often intersected with other SF subgenres, be it hard SF (Clarke's 'City and The Stars'), new wave (Walter J. Miller Jr.'s 'Canticle for Leibowitz' - great novel!), even alternative history - Robert Harris' 'Fatherland' is set-up in world where Hitler won - but it's just a tool for a detective story, and only marginally dystopia/science-fiction, in a same way space opera Star Wars are knights, dragons and wizards in SF disguise. But I'm off the subject. However, I must metion THX 1138, Lucas' dystopian movie; as far as I know the screenplay was never rendered to a novel. A great piece if you like archetypal dystopia.

By the way Moris, have a good luck with installing Linux. And MAKE Swap. I didn't and have problems to do now. There are guides, but I don't understand them. So I suffer.

Yep, Androids are half CP, half DT (not Theater), but CP without matrix, hacking, neuro implants, it's lacking something. This is why I didn't think about it as prog.

But I simply like alternate histories. For example in as Fried mentioned, The Man In the High Castle, reality when Hitler & Hirohito won the war and USA is not so much free, there is one pulp author, who writes a book about how it would be, when Hitler lose the war. Simply brilliant. 

Oh and from Harry Turtledove's wiki page:

wikipedia wrote: The Master of Alternate History" Turtledove has been dubbed "The Master of Alternate History". Within that genre he is known both for creating original alternate history scenarios such as survival of the Byzantine Empire or an alien invasion in the middle of the Second World War and for giving a fresh and original treatment to themes previously dealt with by many others, such as the victory of the South in the American Civil War and of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. His novels have been credited with bringing alternate history into the mainstream. His style of alternate history has a strong military theme with scenes of combat happening throughout many of his works.

Kotro wrote: Only read the first three, Fahrenheit 451 being my pick out of those. Some good suggestions here.   I also enjoyed Max Barry's Jennifer Government and, if graphic novels count, the amazing Moore/Lloyd work V for Vendetta.

Yes, V for Vendetta is for sure interesting. As is a lot of Alan Moore's work.

Thanks Moris, I'll go for it. I already read one book by F.Pohl in collaboration (Merchants with Space, or something like that), but do not remember it well. I was 11 then :- / with 1984 14, with City & Stars 13 ...

This is a problem, I've read all these classics when I was very young. Reading book isn't like listening album, it's far more hard. And you can't do anything while reading. Maybe eating. Yes, I eat all the times :-)-

Now, prepare your souls for upcoming post of gargantuic size (really big), but let's just enjoy it. It's my epitaph (confusion ...)