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The best science fiction this decade
Marc Andreesen gives a list, what do you think? Marc just started, he is already one of the best bloggers out there.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 16, 2007 at 10:12 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Interesting list. I love Stross, but dang, it's a bit depressing to hear him described as #1. His ideas are really strong, which is good, because his prose, characterization, and plotting are all pretty weak. It strikes me as a sad thing for the science fiction field if he is the best at the moment; there should be someone stronger out there.
Other than Vernor Vinge (who is old but very good news), I find I don't have much desire to read the rest of the list. Though I do keep hearing good things about Scalzi from wildly different sources.
I find myself more attracted to fantasy these days. I don't think it's the genre so much as the active authors.... I'm not aware of any science fiction writer I would say is writing at the level of a Neil Gaiman, Steven Brust, or Caroline Stevermer, much less someone truly great like Gene Wolfe. (Except to the extent those authors occasionally write SF, of course!)
Hmm... though I guess I'd put in good words for John Varley (old author, but two recent novels read like very-well-updated Heinlein) and my friend Elizabeth Bear. (Though I like her fantasy better than her SF so far.)
Posted by: Sol at Jun 16, 2007 12:12:35 PM
I've read a number of the books, and liked them. Stross is a writer "in his time" writing a good riff on what we see around us. Morgan's stories strike me as guilty pleasures ... some good ideas but 9 parts ripping yarn. Old Man's War had some interesting ideas. Vernor Vinge is still good, and for that matter, William Gibson. I haven't read Spook Country, but Pattern Recognition should make any shortish list.
Posted by: odograph at Jun 16, 2007 6:06:10 PM
Vinge's latest disappointed me; a good idea book, but poorly written. Scalzi is promising. Reynolds is wonderful, and the genuine science is deeply satisfying. The rest I will run out and buy right now.
I've been surprised by Cory Doctorow--not just any old internet personality, his short stories are entertaining and delightful.
Posted by: Brian Guthrie at Jun 16, 2007 7:40:21 PM
John C. Wright's Golden Age saga should be on anyone's list. He posits a far future in which humans have the capability to completely re-wire their neurological structure, and yet his characters are entirely accessible and internally consistent. Also, he's one of the few writers to successfully imagine how a capitalist economy would function in a world of ultra-fast sentient artificial intelligences.
Posted by: Tom T. at Jun 16, 2007 8:28:08 PM
Nice comment, Sol. I think Andreesen's list is not much different from one that might answer the question, "Who are the clearest heirs of Robert Heinlein, writing over the past decade?" I like Stross, Reynolds, and MacLeod, and a few others, but most seem to share the same weaknesses with respect to characterization, the quality of prose, thematic depth, and so forth--just like Heinlein. Well, that's science fiction for you. (For what it's worth, my favorite SF writers are Lem, LeGuin, and Vance; Gaiman, Pratchett, and Pullman for fantasy.)
Posted by: RSA at Jun 16, 2007 10:36:45 PM
I just finished Rainbow's End and completely agree with Brian Guthrie's comment. Some very good ideas, about as plausible as a look at the near future can get, but a very weak plot. It's the third Vinge book I've read, I was very impressed with A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in The Sky. Andreesen mentions Vinge as setting the table for the cyberpunk of Stephenson, etc., and I think you could say he also did the same for writers like Ken Macleod contemplating the singularity.
As for Ken MacLeod...He's my favorite living author, and second only to Heinlein overall. His prose for the most part far exceeds the usual bare minimum functionality of most sci-fi, and the plots and Big Ideas are just fantastic. I think Andreesen's apprehension about his treatment of socialism is unnecessary - MacLeod certainly isn't preaching its virtues the way, say, Heinlein preaches a libertarian world view, rather he is considering how different systems would/could work in a post-scarcity world (er, solar system / galaxy). The Cassini Division absolutely floored me the first time I read it - Not just for its brilliant imagination and exciting plot, but because the good guys were socialists that I could happily root for. I think Professor Cowen would appreciate this book (assuming he does in fact read sci-fi).
Stephen Baxter is one of the more interesting sci-fi authors out there today - Probably one of the best, but I don't like to admit it, simply because he is generally rather pessimistic. This is probably a fault more on my part than his, in that the reason I (and probably a lot of other sci-fi fans) love the genre is because of its general optimism even in the face of pretty nasty (speculated) adversary. "Evolution" is an absolutely mind-blowing book, and I'm not even sure its properly considered as sci-fi (only a very few chapters take place in the future, its not alternate history, mostly 'pre-historical' fiction in the sense of Clan of the Cavebear. Now as for his hard sci-fi, Baxter's Xeelee Sequence and Manifold: stuff is very good, even if his fatalism about the (very distant) future of the human race is a bit unnerving. I guess his overall pessimism is realistic, in that our current leading theories of the fate of the universe all suck anyway, be it Big Crunch, Big Rip, or Heat Death.
Posted by: mtc at Jun 17, 2007 1:16:03 AM
I've enjoyed most of the authors and their works on this list. Scalzi is enjoyable both the "serious" and lighthearted works. and has an amusing blog too .
Posted by: Bill at Jun 17, 2007 11:35:37 AM
I would rank them Morgan, MacLeod, Scalzi, with a big dropoff after Scalzi.
Perhaps _The Atrocity Archives_ wasn't the best book to start with for Stross, but I found it kind of tedious. Maybe I should look at _Accelerando._
_Old Man's War_ is a wonderful debut novel from Scalzi, but I get the impression he's having a little trouble finding his voice in his later novels. There's some tension between the form and content of his novels -- the form is very short with witty, flip dialogue, while the content seems to be shifting to complex plots and intelligent characters trying to outwit each other. In his latest, _The Last Colony,_ this tendency made the book kind of frenetic, where every few pages another character is proclaiming a new master strategy. He needs to give his ideas more space to breathe.
MacLeod is probably the best straight sci-fi author. His books are quite inventive, have interesting (and varied!) systems of politics and economics, and have good plots and strong characters.
Morgan's _Altered Carbon_ is the best single sci-fi novel of the decade. The sequels are strong, too. _Market Forces_ is kind of a dog. The underlying premise -- rapacious conglomerates hire gladiators to literally fight to the death for the right to exploit third-world countries -- is kind of stupid and forced, and it slows the story down. Some of the themes of a corrupt and overbearing system that breaks down the little guy work much better in the purely fictional worlds of his later work.
Posted by: Zach at Jun 17, 2007 12:33:32 PM
I tend to prefer Hamilton for his ability to create consistent and thorough worlds. Orson Scott Card mentions in his book on writing science fiction that one must be consistent, if you introduce a way to put people in stasis, you've got to explain why that can't be done when someone is injured, or else do it. Hamilton is good at that, letting technology and its consequence fill the world. Though he does probably fall into the whole "organic technology" trend too much and the whole possession thing might be a bit much to chew in the Night's Dawn trilogy.
I recommend Scalzi and Morgan too, though often I get to the end of a Scalzi book and find that while I enjoyed, it seems lacking in some way. Like all the ideas are old and the synthesis of them together has been fun, but not fulfilling or groundbreaking. Just well crafted though. Not such a bad thing though.
I'd love to see an Altered Carbon film trilogy. I imagine one actor playing Takeshi Kovacs, but he's just motion captured so all of the sleeves move the same and speak with the same cadences. So it'd be heavy on the cgi. Or else extensive make up.
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