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A.E. Van Vogt, 1912-2000 85

Posted by jamie from the more-than-human dept.
Snark Boojum writes "Well, I'm sorry to bring this one in, but it seems A.E.VanVogt died last Wednesday." One of the great science fiction writers of the 1940s, his famous Slan inspired a lot of the period's pulp SF. I'm going to try to get to the library to check out The World of Null-A before it gets slashdotted. Meanwhile, here's a good site or two.
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A.E. Van Vogt, 1912-2000 More

A.E. Van Vogt, 1912-2000

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  • Re:We're losing the masters. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Joan Vinge's _Fireship_ has to be one of my all-time favorite SF stories. It's forward-looking, cheerful, utterly humane, and chock full of sensawunda. It blew me away when I read it, because it made me feel like it was possible to be have enough greatness to encompass the universe, if that makes any sense at all.

    And it's a damn good story.

  • It is a said day...but he has not been well for a long time. We tried to get him as Guest of Honour at CAN-CON, back in the early 90s, but even then he was not well enough to attend. I hope that he passed peacefully.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • ...for SF authors whose surnames start with V


    Kur t Vonnegut 'critical' [bbc.co.uk]


    Author Kurt Vonnegut is in a critical but stable condition at a New York hospital after a fire at his home in Manhattan.
  • Old sci-fi is a cinch for book finder services as well. And if you've got the time and money I'd suggest cruising estate sales and auctions.

    Fortunately, I already have a near complete collection of most of my favourite authors. It just depresses me that readers new to SF won't be able to go to a bookshop and buy what I consider essential reading for any SF fan...

  • I'm sure my Dad will be upset...Slan has been his favorite book of all time from since before I was born. He will be missed.
  • I was talk about this with my local indie bookdealer/sf critic the other day. It's true; she guessed she saw about a 10:1 fantasy to new sf ratio last year. Her theory was that the pace of technological change now is so rapid that authors can't keep up or are afraid of being out-of-date next year.

    And you know, I agree with her. As science and technology twists and turns into our future, our present becomes ever more fantastic than most writers' best stories. I think of how outdated even much stuff from the eighties seems today. For example, a small few even thought something like the 'net would exist, but it's hard to imagine a future without one now. Biotech may or may not be right around the corner and no-one has any idea what that will do to society.

    So, did science kill sf?

    Kind Regards,
  • In the B's you missed the best of all Iain M. Banks. His Culture books are some of the best SciFi ever written.
  • Not to mention the fact that Shakespeare himself ripped off most of his themes, and he still seems to be fairly highly regarded. ;-)
  • You see, van Vogt's death is simply fact cheking the Goessyn "deaths" in his Null-A series...stay tuned for van Vogt II, coming soon to a planet near you.
  • AEVV provided hours of entertainment in my high school and University days.

    God bless and go in peace, A. E.
  • The economics of fiction writing, particularly short stories, are very, very bad at this point.

    Most of the Golden Age writers started in short fiction in pulp magazines. And at this point, that just isn't a viable market for a full-time writer.

    The kind of science fiction that I think we are all missing here (I know I am) is very hard to sustain for a novel or a series. A quick, speculative story focused on a single idea. Not a big, profound idea that is fundimental to The Human Condition, but a little idea like how would someone use this particular gadget or power, if it existed.

    Vogt's novels tend to be messy because he was a pulp writer. His ideas weren't novel-length, so he stapled them together.

    He didn't write The Great American Novel. He wrote trashy little stories. Excellent trashy little stories. Stunning trashy little stories that I could read all night long and be disapointed to hit the back cover.

    I need that.

    Last time I read one of his, it started with the protagonist walking through a river, not remembering what water is and that it isn't breathable. That's fiction. Sometimes I need that more than I need a realistic reminder that life consists of self-conflict, imperfection, and mortality.

    Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
    Mitsubishi ad
  • I wasn't trying to be complete. I don't have the time! As I said, there's a lot of good stuff out there. If you start feeling like there's not much, read the current year's hugo and nebula award winners. That'll give you a start.
  • Yes, both of them are good, though Le Guin's best work is definitely her early seventies stuff like "The Dispossed" (one of my top ten books ever) and "The Left Hand of Darkness".

    Le Guin has been branching out lately. She's been writing children's books (The "Catwings" series. Great of you are a ten year old.) and other stuff (A "Tao Te Ching" translation. Great if you're a Taoist.)
  • Stephenson's pretty good, and I like his politics, but both Snow Crash and Diamond Age suffer from silly plot-enabling technical limitations (like requiring human actor/ractors in DA, as though AI wouldn't be able to do it by then), as well as general authorial exhaustion in the endings -- just enough energy to fall across the finish line.

    As someone with a degree in Cognitive Science, I agree with Stephanson. AI won't be there to that level. People always seem convinced that true AI is about twenty years away. They thought that in the fifties. They certainly were when I got that degree in 1987. Many still seem to thinks so. I'm convinced they're wrong. By 2050 is wildly optimistic, IMHO. The error comes from a couple of fallacies, the prime one being that creating an AI is merely a matter of collecting enough computing power. That's like say that getting a rocket to the moon merely requires the ability to make a big enough explosion.

    You're right about his endings, though.

    But anyway, yeah, I agree about Sterling. (Can't believe I forgot him!) (Haven't read MacLoed. Will check him out.)
  • "Stranger in a Strange Land" character -> Micheal Valentine Smith.
  • Unfortunately a lot of his stuff is out of print. I see from the evil patent-scumbags* that while "Slan" can be had, most of his stuff, including "World of Null-A", is out of print.

    *I search their site to use their resources. Don't buy from them.
  • I think there is plenty of new talent, but there are myriad other posts in this topic that list them, I didn't bother. If you want a list, Orson Scott Card is still writing, though he is past his prime. Same with John Varley, to the extent of my knowledge. I happen to like Jeff Noon a lot, although his writing is not particularly deep - but Vurt is a good recreation read.
  • You can't expect them to seem so cutting edge when they're writing with what is now an established genre rather than something new and quirky.
  • I haven't took time to cross-check infos but I assume that /. knows what they're talking about.

    I'm quite sad that Alfred E. van Vogt is dead, he was one of my few favorites Sci-fi author (along with Azimov and a few others).

    I still remember the first book I read from him, "Slan", one of his numerous big success. It opened my mind to a style I wasn't used to and instantly made me a fan.


    Guess I'll miss him :(

    Have a nice day nonetheless
    Mike
  • If you want new AEVV equivalents, read some of the SF magazines and then get subscriptions to the ones you like. A few bucks now gets you great writing- decades ahead of most SF movies and TV (which tend to have the sophistication of 1950's SF stories)- and supports the best novels of a few years from now.


    The great writers of science fiction exist because of the magazines. Few writers this century sprang up ex novelo; they developed their talents and reputations with shorter stories published first. And most would continue to write short stories after their novels are published- it keeps the mind sharp, because a good short story is the most difficult type of writing. The stories also create a fan base and a track record that both contribute to a publisher's willingness to accept a novel.


    Recent anthologies like "The Year's Best Science Fiction" contain stories that rival anything from the golden age of SF in intensity, cutting-edgeness, and sheer old-fashioned numinous sense-of-wonderness. Notice where the stories came from: Asimov's [asimovs.com] (probably the largest single source), SF Age, Analog, SF&F...all good magazines. And look at awards lists [locusmag.com] of recent Hugo [wsfs.org] and Nebula [sfwa.org] winners/nominees. Authors first show up in the lists with shorter story nominations, and then the novels appear.

    Now for a re-read of Weapon Shop...

  • Yes, a lot of people have heard of this guy. MOST of us geeks have! Sorry you haven't, your missing out on some great writing and your life is poorer for it's absence.

    Actually to back up the original poster I have never actually heard of this guy either. Did he create anything new recently? What was his last major work?
  • His legacy will survive him though; F. Paul Wilson's "Repairman Jack" novels (The Tomb, Legacies, and the recently released in hardback Conspiracies) feature a supporting character named Abe who runs a NY sporting goods store called the Isher Sport Shop. The homage part is that Abe runs a clandestine gun shop out of the back and espouses on libertarian ideals while supplying "Jack" with weapons and tools for his work...

  • If you're after a modern sci-fi master-in-the-making, you owe it to yourself to check out Michael Marshall Smith - I think he caputures the zeitgeist of our age as well as Van Vogt et al captured the zeitgeist of the 40s and 50s. We won't see gloriously epic and optimistic rocket-to-the-stars sci-fi any more, because that subgenre has fallen too far towards fiction and lost the sci-angle. But we can still expect good sci-fi - it'll just be mutating all the time, much as science does... The Null-A series is a must for anyone, by the way... sci-fi + general semantics = good brain food.

  • It seems to be in poor taste to mention this as a result of this tragedy, but it seems as if Slashdot is quickly becoming a service for me to find out what's going on that's crappy in the world. The media came to the realization during the Vietnam war that bad news sells more ads than good news. Please don't let slashdot go the same way. Let's at least balance good with bad.

    Just my 2x10^-2
    --

  • I liked Haldeman,too. I have read lots of SF books between 12 and 20, but then everything started too look alike, The author which revived my love for SF again was actually Jeff Noon. I think his Vurt-Universe is taking Gibson's Virtual Reality on the next stage, literally a more natural approach.

    You might want to check out Vurt and the better sequel Pollen.

  • It kind of shocks me that /. doesn't include John Brunner in their list of masters. This is the author of the Shockwave Rider, wherein he predicted the Internet, and designed a game more difficult to code an opponent for than Go, and significantly moreso than Chess.

    Brunner is gone too, but his social predictive power, as well as his social conscience (lacking in much sci-fi) has always astounded me. The Times of Time is one the most beautiful works of science fiction I've every read. And he was fairly prolific, and is now difficult to find, so reading him all isn't trivial.

    As far as current masters, I'm all for touting Ian McDonald. Excellent prose, offhand use of high scifi concept, incredible characters. Evolution's Shore is definitely his best yet, and highly recommended. But Terminal Cafe might be more /.s speed, dealing with nano-tech as it does.

  • Van Vogt used to write several books a day ;) I have stack of them a couple of feet high. But even though he churned them out, and even though he didn't make any sense, he was a pretty cool writer.

  • LeGuin has always been a fine writer, but like you, I think "The Disposessed" is her best. One of my all time favourites in fact.

    Iain M Banks is another good one, as is Ken MacLeod, but I'm biased on those two, since they're locals (I live in Edinburgh, Scotland), and I occaisonally get to meet them in the pub, alongside a few of the other ancient folk from the University SF society.

    All three make a lovely change from the very tired cyber-corporate-capitalism-gone-mad-punk which less talented individuals pump out without bothering to rub any braincells together.

    Of course, William Burroughs beats all of them, but is very questionably SF. Some people think his work is high art, I'm of the opinion its hardboiled pulp SF.

  • Not the Micheal Smith that appears within the pages of "Stanger in a Strange Land" I hope. If it is, then watch out for the mouthy idiot that follows him around...

  • If you look at things like star trek their society is fundamentally different. Do you happen to see any bums on Earth? Are there panhandlers outside Starfleet Academy? No. People work for the hell of it and to gain status. I think this is fundamentally different from what we do today.

    But is Star Trek any more realistic than the classic SF? Personally, I don't think so. In fact, as much as I like Star Trek, I get annoyed at how politically correct and preachy it tends to be. And all the gadgets and technology are there for a reason, to give support for a future techno-utopia.

    What I generally don't like is where we take good ideas and put them in a package that makes it seem like crap.

    Seem is the operative word here. The old adage that "you can't judge a book by its cover" springs to mind. While the appearance is nice, it's what's under the hood that counts. Would you want to buy a car with the body of a Porsche and the engine of a Festiva? Probably not.

    Suppose I get a car with a superior engine, 1,000 miles to the gallon, can achieve speeds of 200 Mph and go from 0 - 60Mph in say 2.3 seconds. This car will also run off of urine or almost anything that is put in the tank (including sugar). No suppose I take this an put it into a pinto's chasis.

    Kind of like building a time machine out of a DeLorean. :-) Actually, I would buy this car, for the very reason you put forth: "If I can say do something a little more efficiently then I will be able to have more time to ponder the great questions." I really couldn't care less what my car looks like (you should see what I drive) just as long as it gets me from point A to point B in a timely, efficient manner. Guess I'm just overly practical that way.

    Predictions are nice however not all of them are acurate. A great deal of the future concepts of what society will be like are crappy. Here is a popular one:

    Man builds intelligent cyborgs. Cyborgs serve man for a time. Eventually cyborgs say "fsck this" and decide to kick ass. Man is destroyed, forced underground, or enslaved.

    But the real story (predictions and all) is how mankind (or different, individual people) will react to different events.

    With literature, though, there really isn't any objective standard. The mechanics (grammar, spelling, plot coherence, etc.) can be judged objectively, but the actual content (story, characters, etc.) is purely subjective. Just my two bits in defense of the classics...

    Cheers!
    Jim


    JimD

  • Indeed reading this article brought a sigh out of my chest. Perhaps it is the same pain I felt when I heard that Mr. Seymour Cray passed away ...
    But this is life : sooner or later, whether we like it or not, we have to say farewell to those we respect.
    And no, I am not going to say that there are no good SF writers any more. Of course, none will be like Mr. Van Vogt... At this moment I feel more like being grateful because many of his ideas influenced us, because in an indirect way he contributed at what we are today. And I think this is the reason why we simply should say : "Requiscat in pace", you will not be forgotten.
  • I am the only person I know to have noted the correspondence between purpose and, at best, effect of the weapon shops of Isher, serving as an ultimate limit on the power of the state over the aggregation of the individuals. This is exactly the intent of the Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution. I am saddened at the news of his death. I would be pleased to think some who read this will introduce his books to your favorite libertarians, sci-fi fans, and social theorists.
  • Van Vogt is very popular here in France.

    A lot of his books are still available and often reprinted by "J'ai lu" edition. The world of null-A and the players of null-A have been translated in french by the famous author Boris Vian.

    Van Vogt has greatly influenced modern science-fiction and many authors, especially Philip K. Dick (who has also a huge popularity in france)

    If you can read french, I recommend the recent essay from Joseph Altairac "Van Vogt, parcours d'une oeuvre", Encrage edition.

  • There's a real differance in writing between the "comfort" method and what, perhaps we really love about great classics of every literary genre. If fantasy is simply about writing a story with elves, magic, warriors, and the looming mystique of lost ages of glory and grace, then it's simply "comfort". If SF is simply about incorporating lots of techno-garble into a very tried and tested story, then it's simply "comfort". Either way, I'm not interested; and I don't think any "classics" of either fall into that category. Great stories, SF or Fantasy, come about when the special qualities of the genre bring us to terms with something special or illuminating about the human condition -- the only thing we really understand. How does technology's ability to transcend our human limitations change our lives? How do mere humans react when confronted with the epic proportions of fantasy's legends? It's these questions [successfully answered] that really provide us with good SF and fantasy; and curiously, they're the qualities of any good work of art. The pulp fiction of the middle of the century did a fantastic job -- realising that it took more than just an element of scientific credibility to produce stories worthy of our attention. The contemporary obsession with "accuracy" and "credulity" could be cutting off many budding SF-inclined minds, who don't realise that what they need to do is understand how science, real or imagined, relates to people; and not how warp drives or time machines really work. After all, what sufficiently advanced technology is distinguishable from magic? The giants of yesteryear understood the human condition. Perhaps once we move back towards an integration of science into our lives, we'll realise a renaissance in SF writing [and, probably, fantasy, too]. Perhaps in the passing of Mr. Van Vogt, we can take a minute to think about what makes the classics so valuable. Hopefully, that contemplation will bode well for those who follow him and remain. Larsal
  • If SF in general has become a victim of the Advance of Science (I don't take this view), then Greg Egan shows how good "science-oriented" SF can be. His stories have a touch of complete originality which seem to be derived directly from their science roots. Awesome stuff :)
  • Sorry, I stand corrected, must be an age thing, should of said many of us older lovers of Science Fiction. It is sad but true, that most of his works are now out of print. And as to new works, he's been suffering with Alzheimer's for awhile. In posting the news of his death, /. is doing two services. Letting us know of the passing of a man who's works were once well known and loved, and (indirectly) informing those who were ignorant of his work, of his writings.
  • Yes, a lot of people have heard of this guy. MOST of us geeks have! Sorry you haven't, your missing out on some great writing and your life is poorer for it's absence.
  • Though I only read one of his books, it is a sad day when a real writer passes away. in a period of enless series of books with a minimum of 3 authors to a book, Pulp-Sci-Fi is at a all time high. I wish a new Asimov or Clarke could take place of these Book-a-Day writers.
  • First of all, media has changed a lot since Asimov, Vogt, et al.
    SF has expanded into movies and TV. Films like Star Wars are the new pulp comics.
    As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.

    "Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell" ... hmmm. This was a short story by someone - who was it now?

  • Re:We're losing the masters. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Speaking of this talk about the "old masters", I'm reminded of something that a friend said once. In his opinion, science fiction (SF) had a lifespan like computers or M$ OS's. Once the science and the social context became dated, then the story was obselete. I disagree with this, but I think it's much too common in SF for old gems to be ignored in favor of the new. By those standards, van Vogt would be *extremely* obselete. His science was always on shaky ground, adn the stories clearly weren't polished gems. And he had a disturbing tendency to interject weird (and flawed) philophical reasoning in his stories. I was about ten pages into "The World of Null-A" before I realized that van Vogt wasn't being sarcastic about "Null-A" ("nonaristolean logic"). :-) But the stories are so exciting that you'll forgive the rough edges. No one thinks that George Orwell's "1984" is irrelevant because the year 1984 passed without incident. Should Asimov's Robot and Foundation series be ignored? Clearly, the three rules of Robotics aren't going to cut it for programming your bot. And hopefully we'll never be able to predict the future of the human race like Hari Seldone could in the Foundation series. But the ideas are there to provoke us. Even pulp material like the Doc Savage series which features the "man of bronze" against villians all over Earth. His ideas on curing crime through brain surgery would be extremely illeagal today, but tommorrow? :-) Finally, witness the stories of the earliest true science fiction authors H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Sure the Martians aren't invading any day soon, but H. G. Wells take on human nature in "The War of the Worlds" is dead-on. And Verne beats the environmentalists by a cool hundred years with "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" and "The Master of the World". Admittedly, some of the new SF is awesome. Especially, the Hyperion Cantos ("Hyperion" and :Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons) and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson ("Red Mars", "Green Mars", and "Blue Mars" in order of occurence and difficulty). Haven't read much Brin, but he has the vision. Gibson may be downbeat, but his world is fascinating. I'll reserve judgement on Greg Bear. He wrote "Blood Music" which is cool, but he's treading on dangerous ground with that "Foundation and Chaos" nonsense. Also, I still haven't recovered from "Psyclone". :-) BTW, how in the world did "steampunk" (Victorian age meets cyberpunk) become a real genre? Am I off-topic yet?

  • A. E. Van Vogt Memorial Haiku (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A. E. van Vogt dies.
    Golden Age SF scribe meets
    final Black Destroyer

    van Vogt's Super Slan:
    Science Fiction fans had their
    tendrils on their can.

    General Semantics
    And Hubbard's Dianetics:
    Lost mind more than once.

    A great writer, but
    one caught in amber; the field
    Just moved beyond him.

    van Vogt: "The right to
    buy weapons is the right to
    be free." Then as now.

    - Lawrence Person
    lawrence@bga.com
    http://www0.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
  • I don't see why not. Elf Sternberg [halcyon.com] did it.

  • Why Slan? (Score:2)

    by Tet ( 2721 )
    Why is everybody going on about Slan so much? I'm a big Van Vogt fan, but for me, by far his best work was "The Weapon Shops of Isher" and "The Weapon Makers", with the mutant mage series being pretty good too.

    What is it that people see in Slan over and above his other work? Or is it just that it's among the easier of his books to find, so more people have read it?

    As a side note, I find it incredibly depressing how hard it's becoming to buy classic science fiction. Here in the UK, at least, it's rare to find more than 6 or 7 books by the major names (Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein), and others like Van Vogt and John Windham are almost non-existent. Even worse, I'm talking about specialist SF bookshops like New Worlds and Forbidden Planet here. In "normal" bookshops the situation is even more dire. Surely these books have the same appeal now that they always did? Or am I just showing my age?

  • good ones. add Greg Egan too; /. readers should find him especially interesting.

  • Its Science Fiction not Science Prediction. The only point at which Sci-Fi can be judged is when something is found not to be viable (and we still don't know that someone won't come along in the future and work it out). Good Sci-Fi is about general/philosophical ideas.

    I read a few of A. E. Van Vogt's novels when I was younger, and throughly enjoyed them. I particularly remember one (whose title I forget) where society is dominated by women by making men wear coloured spectacles, and this guy finds that clear adhesive tape over a the 'lenses' nullifies the effect and is set free. I'm sure that wasn't meant as a prophecy. It was a very exciting read.

    Right, I'm off to find out what that book was called and give it another read. Its sad to think that I only got round to this because of the author's death.

  • Or these:

    John Barnes
    Greg Egan
    Ken MacLeod
    James Morrow

    I think the problem is that the market has become too diffuse: there are no BIG NAMES like there were before, so it looks like there are no 'masters'.
  • I think the Null-A site [sundial.net] explains it pretty well - he and his wife got sucked into the black hole of Scientology in the early Fifties and did not re-emerge until the Seventies. A lot of the work that made his contemporaries better-known (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, et al.) was going on throughout that period. Unfortunately Van Vogt never again rose to his previous level of prolific output even after ditching the Hubbardites. Damn those Clams!

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • Vernor Vinge?
    Try reading his ex-wife's books. Joan Vinge has a lot going for her, as does Ursula LeGuin. There are still a lot of good ones out there (m and f).

    Van Vogt stories were broadly similar in that his (super-)hero kept expanding his capabilities, and then meeting dangers he would have been defeated by just one chapter earlier. I suppose the stories would have been a lot shorter otherwise!
  • We're losing all the old great masters of science fiction. I guess this is inevitable, but modern science fiction just isn't the same
    The great masters of Science Fiction have been gone for a century now.
    Of course, they're not gone, they are exactly as present in the literary world as they were when they were still alive. No great books have up and disappeared from the earth that I can remember.
  • I remember reading "Slan" when I was 14 or 15. Man, that was great science-fiction.

    But, much more than that, it meant to much to me because it described my life. In the books, Slans are rejected, feared and hated for being different. Mr Van Vogt had hit on a very universal theme.

    I also remember that, at the same time I was reading the book, me and some of my high-school friends were being rejected (and feared and ridiculed, etc...) for being the first kids on the block with a passion for micro-computers. That book was such a mirror image of my life. I kept re-reading it, when I was not busy hacking on the CP/M machines my high-school had. Even though I do not necessarily like the conclusion, the "politics" or the black/white plot logic of the book, I guess I'll always a soft spot for the hunted Slans -- strangers, geeks and nerds before these terms became mainstream.

    He'll be missed.
  • If you haven't read anything by David Brin, Lois McMaster Bujold, John Varley or Greg Bear, do so. There is a future in SF, and they are leading it.
    --
  • One thing to keep in mind (regarding old SF vs. new SF) is that fact that the basic nature of people does not change (just take a look at history). It doesn't really matter whether people are running around in reflective space suits and
    wielding death rays or fusion-powered armor and hauling plasma cannons; the technology is just there to help tell the story (whatever that story may be), which is invariably about people.

    Well I think it matters. If you look at things like star trek their society is fundamentally different. Do you happen to see any bums on Earth? Are there panhandlers outside Starfleet Academy? No. People work for the hell of it and to gain status. I think this is fundamentally different from what we do today. Some of the ideas that I actually look at are taken from science fiction. What I generally don't like is where we take good ideas and put them in a package that makes it seem like crap. Suppose I get a car with a superior engine, 1,000 miles to the gallon, can achieve speeds of 200 Mph and go from 0 - 60Mph in say 2.3 seconds. This car will also run off of urine or almost anything that is put in the tank (including sugar). No suppose I take this an put it into a pinto's chasis. Now do you like the car as much? Will you buy it if all you see is the outside of the car? First impressions matter. Human nature can change based on what the human has. If I can say do something a little more efficiently then I will be able to have more time to ponder the great questions.

    But predictions are, in my opinion, what science fiction is all about! As I said above, I generally view the technology as an aid for the story. A story itself is about people. Ever read a work of SF (or any literature, for that matter) that
    didn't have any characters? :-)

    Predictions are nice however not all of them are acurate. A great deal of the future concepts of what society will be like are crappy. Here is a popular one:

    Man builds intelligent cyborgs. Cyborgs serve man for a time. Eventually cyborgs say "fsck this" and decide to kick ass. Man is destroyed, forced underground, or enslaved.

    Now we can see that even with the possibility that cyborgs are strong they are most likely not invincible. Humans obviously will not invest trillions of $$ without control.

    Modern SF is every bit as "preachy" as classic SF. It's just a different kind of preaching. It's the change in the zeitgeist, the prevailing philosophy of the time, that makes it seem more hokey or preachy now than it may have 50 years
    ago. But it's good to read the stuff that's stood the test of time; there's a reason it did stand.

    Does anyone have any opensource sf (ala gutenberg) out there? I know that probably Edward Belemay's "Looking Backward" (supposedly how a time traveler from the 19th century ends up in the year 2000) is most likely out there are there others?
  • [slashdot-terminal@slashdot slashdot-terminal]$ flameshield --verbose --activate --abestos

    ===============================================
    Ok now that I am protected I have a little critique on this post.

    We're losing all the old great masters of science fiction. I guess this is inevitable, but modern science fiction just isn't the same.


    I would say that it's a little more realistic in terms of what humanity will actually do. Come on. Do you really think that peole will actually go around in flying saucers and wear crappy reflective space suits and kill aliens will the "Evil Death Ray of Doom"(tm)? I think the recent incarnations of Star Trek and such are far more realistic then people who actually believed that there was a whole civilization on mars. Ever read some of the stuff Bradbury created? If people genuinely believe that science will make people like that they have to take a step back and look at themselves. What early science fiction is more of is just like myths and legends. Generally these things are obviously not real and have no truth to them they are just teaching some kind of early prophecy or moral. I look to science fiction to see how realistically we can achieve various elements. Having people in reflective spandex just dosn't cut it.

    I think modern writers can learn something from the Great Old Ones. ;) In the Campbell era, there were genuinely new ideas, examination of social issues without being preachy or satirical, great writing and (oddly absent from many
    modern writers) a great knowledge of science. You can find pieces of that puzzle everywhere now, but the specialization leaves us with few authors who try to be great in everything.


    In the beginning everything is new. You remember the joke about the chicken crossing the road? Well at one time in history it was really knee slapping funny too. However we have things like cliches and things like that and because of this we have to do things differently or rish looking like a fool. Maybe these guys are equivelent to Mel the programmer of bygone days who wrote everything in machine code and did it better than people do now. Maybe these guys were better than we think. However time they are a chinging. Generally I want something that dosn't think that PCs are not a reality that only the 5 richest kings of Europe can have them, that humans will turn into mutated creatures and live underground, etc. In short I want a picture of the mid to far future that I like.

    So while we're mourning, and catching up our anthology collections, let's think about where we want science fiction to be going.

    Something that isn't so far flung that it makes Santa and the Tooth Fairt, The Easter Bunny and The Great Pumpkin seem to be fact. I want more use of technology and less reliance on unrealistic social and political predictions of the future.
  • The great masters of Science Fiction have been gone for a century now.
    Of course, they're not gone, they are exactly as present in the literary world as they were when they were still alive. No great books have up and disappeared from the earth that I can remember.

    The poster is refering to the use of new talent in the area. I am sure that Win 3.11 is a cool shell/sub-operating system but that dosn't mean there is any quality development on it. How about kernel 0.99 or so? Debian beta 0.98? I didn't think so. Generally the lack of new talent kills a medium.
  • Site on Null-A [sundial.net]

  • As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.

    That's true, but will a SF author "reuse" a plot device like the Ringworld when it's already "been done" by Larry Niven?

    To tell you the truth, I wish they would. Ringworld was a pretty bad novel from a plot and character point of view, but the themes were so fascinating that it made up for them. I wouldn't be opposed at all to seeing other authors pick up these themes are try fresh plots but with the same device. There are innumerable interesting stories that could be told about different reasons a ringworld would be built, and different societies that would come out of it.

    The question is, would the author get slaughtered for "unoriginality" or "ripping off" Larry Niven? One would hope not, since zillions of authors have ripped off themes from Shakespeare, but often the variations on the same theme can bring a freshness to the material.


    --

  • Well, here is something from Jack Chalkers website [jackchalker.com] (Think Well World. I was there looking to see if he had any new books recently, like his new Well World novel...) talking about what is currently going on with the publishing industry:


    Those of you following my saga know that I'm going through a very bad time right now, along with a LOT of other writers, not just science fiction ones as well. The consolidation in the publishing industry, the takeover of book distribution by Wall Street, and the firing of the old editors like those at Del Rey who were mostly concerned with books rather than media has caused a real slump and financial as well as other problems. How much of a standing do I have with Del Rey at this point, a company I've been with for 20+ years and sold millions of copies through? Well, the current management printed a mere 20,000 copies of PRIAM'S LENS, and when those sold out seemed awfully surprised and they say they're going to maybe print 3 or 4 thousand more. If they won't promote you, won't believe in you, and don't get you out there on the stands, how can you prove 'em wrong? It's very sad.
    The current news [jackchalker.com] on his site talks a lot about what is currently going on with his books and the changes in Del Ray, and the old news [jackchalker.com] gives more info on the situation.


    The only real good thing was that his site pointed me to a nice online bookseller, Alphacraze [alphacraze.com]. Hope things get better in the field soon. Used bookstores can only hold me for so long...

  • Van Vogt wrote big idea science fiction. He was particularly prescient in The Weapon Shops of Isher [amazon.com] -- combining elements we've grown familiar with from Mao and the NRA [the defenseless cannot long remain free, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun] with those of the Clinton administration's latest proposal [guns that can only be fired by the owner, and indeed can only be used for defensive purposes].
  • Generally these things are obviously not real and have no truth to them they are just teaching some kind of early prophecy or moral. I look to science fiction to see how realistically we can achieve various elements.

    One thing to keep in mind (regarding old SF vs. new SF) is that fact that the basic nature of people does not change (just take a look at history). It doesn't really matter whether people are running around in reflective space suits and wielding death rays or fusion-powered armor and hauling plasma cannons; the technology is just there to help tell the story (whatever that story may be), which is invariably about people.

    I want more use of technology and less reliance on unrealistic social and political predictions of the future.

    But predictions are, in my opinion, what science fiction is all about! As I said above, I generally view the technology as an aid for the story. A story itself is about people. Ever read a work of SF (or any literature, for that matter) that didn't have any characters? :-)

    Modern SF is every bit as "preachy" as classic SF. It's just a different kind of preaching. It's the change in the zeitgeist, the prevailing philosophy of the time, that makes it seem more hokey or preachy now than it may have 50 years ago. But it's good to read the stuff that's stood the test of time; there's a reason it did stand.

    Cheers!
    Jim


    JimD

  • sad day (Score:3)

    by orabidoo ( 9806 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @06:58AM (#1315635) Homepage
    I remember reading somewhere that the question with A.E. Van Vogt's novels was not how good they are, but how they can be so fascinating, intense, and ultimately, influential, despite all their shortcomings. I think that sums the situation up. AEVV was mentally more daring and ready to try with his mind than anyone else around, and that's including the Beat Generation people. That put him in contact with ideas and things that have turned out to be less than hoped (e.g General Semantics), or even downright nefarious (e.g Dianetics). But that's the price to pay for being open-minded and ready to experiment. We all owe Van Vogt a collective thanks for the mass of intense ideas that he acquainted us with. And, what the hell, Korzybski still makes an interesting read.

  • We're losing the old masters, and getting new ones (Score:3)

    by Ice Tiger ( 10883 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @07:11AM (#1315636)
    Ok try the following

    Stephen Baxter
    David Brin
    David Mace (who can name them books)
    Iain M Banks (Ok not a tech.)
    David Drake
    Joe Haldeman

    So the old masters go and new ones come along.

  • Re:A take on "classic" science fiction. (Score:3)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @07:21AM (#1315637) Homepage Journal
    I would say that it's a little more realistic in terms of what humanity will actually do.

    Well, I have to take issue with this. There was a lot of crap back then, but there was a lot of good stuff that is applicable right now. For example, there is the wonderfully satirical "Midas Plague" (Pohl and Kornbluth) in which people are forced to consume in order to keep the economy going. (Or their "Space Merchants", which similarly talks about consumerism. Bester's "Demolished Man" stands up as well right now as it ever did. Much of Heinlein's stuff (especially the early stuff) is as relevent now as it ever was. (His early stuff wasn't "death rays". It was "What would happen if right-wing wackos turned the US into a theocracy" ("If this goes on..."). There was Simak, talking about the social effects of the flight from the city, to the suburbs. Hell, just read "Slan", for god's sakes!

    "Reflective spandex" is an artifact of the film industry, not written SF. Try reading some of the old masters. I suspect you'll be surprised.

  • Re:We're losing the masters. (Score:3)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @07:06AM (#1315638) Homepage Journal
    Declining? There's lots of good SF out there still, though Sturgeon's law (sigh...lost him too) still applies.

    There's Stephanson, of course (though his last wasn't SF) as well as the SF B's, Bear, Brin and Benford. (Just read Benford's "Cosm", BTW. recommended if you are looking for hard SF.)

    Of the old masters, Jack Vance, Frederick Pohl and Poul Anderson are still active and writing. (And up to full caliber.) (Though I suppose Vance is more fantasy usually.)

    Then there's Haldeman, and Varley, and Kim Stanley Robinson. About half of Cherryh's stuff is SF. (She's currently doing fantasy, but she recently completed the "Foreigner" series, which was SF.)

    There's also Vernor Vinge.

    There's plenty of stuff. You just have to learn to sort through the chaff.

  • preponderance of fantasy (Score:3)

    by jajuka ( 75616 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @07:15AM (#1315639)
    Also, for some reason, fantasy has been exploding while SF has been declining. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so this has been really depressing for me.

    Is there that much more of a demand for fantasy books rather than good ol' SF?

    Maybe it's because its OK to be unoriginal in fantasy (the themes are generally timeless), but how many books about a "ring around the sun" can be done? Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell.


    Well this is probably stating the obvious, but I think it's largly because fantasy is easier to write. "Science" has expanded greatly in the years since the so called Golden Age of SF. It's gotten much harder to be a well rounded generalist. A fantasy writer pretty much only has to be self-consistent, mess up a fact in SF and you'll get slaughtered by your readers.
    I'm not putting down fantasy writers by any means, I read both, and for me the hard thing is not finding SF but finding readable SF. Publishers demand much higher page counts than they did in the past, probably a consequence of Tolkein's success. But while cool ideas can carry a book thru 2 or sometimes 3 hundred pages, get much over that and I need some character to keep my interest. Sadly most SF writers cant hold a candle to the Fantasy writers when it comes to characterization. There are exceptions of course, but as a rule...

    There's something to what you say about fantasy being unoriginal too but perhaps not in the way you mean. (Most) Fantasy writers dont deliberatly reuse plots and such out of laziness, familiarity and certian themes/moods are an inherent quality of what their readers are looking for. Fantasy is a "comfort" literature to a large degree, which is not to say it cant tackle issues, but a reader expects to be left with a certain type of feeling from the experience. SF doesn't promise that.

    SF will never die, it may get harder and harder to write, but unless they kill of everyone who loves a good mind-stretch it'll never go away.

  • Re:We're losing the masters. (Score:3)

    by Tim Behrendsen ( 89573 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @06:37AM (#1315640)

    Also, for some reason, fantasy has been exploding while SF has been declining. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so this has been really depressing for me.

    Is there that much more of a demand for fantasy books rather than good ol' SF?

    Maybe it's because its OK to be unoriginal in fantasy (the themes are generally timeless), but how many books about a "ring around the sun" can be done? Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell.


    --

  • The Great *OLD* ones (Score:3)

    by guran ( 98325 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @06:42AM (#1315641)
    I totally lived on the stories by Van Vogt, Asimov, Heinlein and actually even Hubbard (later inventions of his apart) as a kid. Rereading them now, though makes me realize how far it is between the 50's and now.

    Yes they got the science right (more or less) but they completely missed the cultural change. They placed a fifties man in a future environment, not a future person. Their future was the future of the white western male.

    This not said to be judging. I'm a product of my time, just like they were a product of theirs.

    Ever tried Stephen Baxter? There you have a modern sf-writer who gets the science right and avoids the Gibson-ish bleak alleys.

    Rest in peace Van Vogt. There will be followers boldly going where... wait a moment, I'm becoming pathetic....

  • Writers (Score:3)

    by thebruce ( 112025 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @06:50AM (#1315642) Homepage
    Personally, I've never heard of Van Gogt, but I'm sure he was a good writer if he had a following.

    People were saying how modern writers just aren't the same. That's tough, I think it depends on what you like in writing. Today a lot of people who know only modern literature will think that the older writing is wierd.

    Personally, I think the idea of sci-fi has evolved as long as the media has evolved. People say older writing is better because they seemed to have a better grasp of good story and plot, character development. Today, good stories are rated on the pumping adrenaline kind of gripping action. I love good stories, and I'm always impressed when I find a book that accomplishes that kind of immersion and depth, and I've noticed that it seems to be the more real life type novels that do that. I think the sci-fi of old dealt more with expanding humanity, the importance of still recognizing one's self while growing in knowledge. Today, all that matters is that we get the technology, and try to learn as much as possible. But we lose ourselves in the process. Our Reach is exceeding our grasp. We have technologies today that people never would have tohught of long ago. But are we wise enough to handle that responsibility? That's where the good sci-fi writing comes in, IMHO.

  • Voyage of the Space Beagle/Aliens (tm) movies (Score:4)

    by cerulean ( 99519 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @07:47AM (#1315643) Homepage
    Possibly interesting bit of trivia, from www.imdb.com [imdb.com]:

    A lawsuit by A.E. van Vogt, claiming plagiarism of his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" (which he had incorporated in the 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle"), was settled out of court.
    (The suit was with regard to the movie Alien)

    "Discord in Scarlet" was a great chapter in Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is my favorite A.E. Van Vogt book. If you've ever read it, you'll understand why he sued! "Discord in Scarlet" is about finding an alien body floating deep in interstellar space, far from anything, but still alive. The alien is a millions-of-years-old survivor of a hyper-advanced civilization, and it is at least as vicious as the alien in "Alien", without all the acid drooling and with the cool ability to walk through walls. It reproduces by grabbing an egg out of it's own chest and passing it into the body of a host, in this case a crew member of the ship that found it. The ensuing battle between the alien and the crew of the ship is a lot more interesting, and clever, I think, than the plot of "Alien", as much as that movie rocked.
    A.E. Van Vogt was certainly before my time, but I have fond memories of reading his stories out of my father's collection of Science Fiction, including lots of old back issues of Analog magazine. "Voyage of the Space Beagle" is my favorite Van Vogt book, but Slan is pretty good too, and the Weapon Shops stories are a lot of fun. I'd recommend Van Vogt to nerds everywhere, for a big ol' dose of prime vintage Sci-Fi

  • We're losing the masters. (Score:4)

    by Wellspring ( 111524 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2000 @06:16AM (#1315644)

    It was sad to hear this-- I remember sitting up at night in middleschool and high school reading the old sci-fi classics.

    We're losing all the old great masters of science fiction. I guess this is inevitable, but modern science fiction just isn't the same.

    I think modern writers can learn something from the Great Old Ones. ;) In the Campbell era, there were genuinely new ideas, examination of social issues without being preachy or satirical, great writing and (oddly absent from many modern writers) a great knowledge of science. You can find pieces of that puzzle everywhere now, but the specialization leaves us with few authors who try to be great in everything.

    So while we're mourning, and catching up our anthology collections, let's think about where we want science fiction to be going.

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