The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe. The question of which science fiction books are the best ever is a pointless one for most people, since many of the "greatest science fiction novels" are books that no one but science fiction fans will read. A better question to ask might be: What are the best science fiction books that you don't have to be a hard-core science fiction fan to enjoy? We scanned our library and came up with these 10 (well, 12) books that not only provide great SF fun, but also are approachable enough for the casual reader. Some old, some new - but all good reads.
Dune by Frank HerbertDavid Lynch made this book into a 1984 film that was so incomprehensible that the actual novel - 600 pages on the future of religion, politics, desert ecology, and drug trafficking - look positively streamlined in comparison. When the book came out in the mid 1960s its multiple story threads were daunting. (Photo: Robert E. Nylund, via Wikipedia) But (ironically) thanks to shows like The X-Files and even The West Wing, in which several things are happening all at once, people got used to following intersecting story lines. The result is that Herbert's magnum opus now comes across more like an epic historical novel that happens to be set in the future, not the past. Herbert wrote several Dune sequels of varying quality. More recently, Herbert's son Brian teamed up with SF author Kevin J. Anderson to write a trio of prequels that Uncle John doesn't think are on par with the rest. Stick with the original. Links: Dune | More by Frank HerbertEarth by David BrinScientists in the near future create a tiny black hole and - oops - allow it to sink into the earth's core; in the process of digging it out, they discover there's another black hole down there, and that one's origin is a mystery - and a problem. (Photo: David Brin) This plot line is the skeleton on which author and real-life physicist Brin hangs some fascinating episodic story lines that involve problems the world faces today (global warming, privacy, energy crunches), carried out to their possible outcomes 50 years from now. Originally published in 1991, Earth has already pegged a couple of items correctly (such as a version of the World Wide Web and the idea of futzing with old movies using new computer graphics). Plus, scientists have begun trying to generate tiny little black holes in labs. So imagine what else Brin might (eventually) be right about. Links: Earth | More by David BrinEnder's Game and Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott CardSupersmart child-warriors are used by the military to battle an invasion of buglike aliens. That's the setup of Ender's Game; the meat of the story comes from the struggle of one of these extraordinary children (named Ender) to keep a grip on his humanity even as he's being turned into the perfect killing machine. (Photo: nihonjoe via Wikipedia) Card sets up a lot of questions about morality, war, and man's purpose in Ender's Game; in the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, these questions get a payoff as the grown-up Ender finds himself in a position to save a new sentient species or allow it to be destroyed. Proof that interesting philosophical questions can be asked (and even answered) in the form of a purely entertaining story. Links: Ender's Game | More by Orson Scott CardGrass by Sheri TepperLike Dune, this is a large tale involving nobility, religion, politics, and the fate of the human race - but for a change, the hero is a heroine. (Photo: Charles N. Brown, via Locus Online) Marjorie Westriding is dispatched with her family to a far-off planet to find a cure for a plague, but she ends up confronting questions of original sin among aliens. Lots of philosophy, and even some sex (well, sort of), but also lots of action, plus a group of purely malevolent creatures who love nothing better than to toy with humans. Hand this to someone who enjoys those massive romantic epics for a change of pace. Links: Grass | More by Sheri TepperHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas AdamsEarth is destroyed to make an intergalactic bypass, launching the interstellar travels of one completely ordinary and befuddled human being named Arthur Dent. (Photo Jill Furmanovsky, via DouglasAdams.com) Geeks love this one, but for the right reasons - namely because it'll make you laugh so hard that you may vomit involuntarily. Note that this is humor of the distinctly British, Monty Python-like variety, so if you're not into that, you may wonder what the fuss is about. But if you ever laughed at Monty Python and the Holy Grail (or even A Fish Called Wanda), you'll be laughing at this one, too. Hitchhiker has several sequels, each progressively less funny than the one before (but still worth a chuckle or two). Links: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | More by Douglas AdamsHyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan SimmonsIt takes guts to snatch the format of The Canterbury Tales and use it to crank out epic science fiction, but the extraordinarily talented Dan Simmons (who also writes bang-up horror and action novels) is just the guy to do it. (Photo: Dan Simmons) Over the course of these two novels, Simmons creates a galaxy-wide human civilization that's pitted against a mysterious enemy. Hyperion uses the overlapping stories of a clutch of pilgrims to paint the picture of this future civilization; Fall of Hyperion describes its downfall, as seen through the eye of a clone of the great Romantic poet John Keats. Great storytelling, great action, great plotting; not just a couple of the best science fiction novels ever, but two of the best adventure novels in a long time, period. Links: Hyperion | The Fall of Hyperion | More by Dan SimmonsThe Martian Chronicles by Ray BradburyThis one shows up on a lot of high school reading lists, and for good reason. It's a fine combination of science fiction and fantasy and an increasingly neglected literary form - a series of short stories, hung together with a single thread: they all take place on Mars. (Photo: Alan Light, via Flickr) The stories include encounters with real live Martians (who may or may not be happy to see humans), the stories of the humans who leave Earth to come to Mars, and, in the end, the stories of the humans who are left behind, each short enough to be read in a single sitting. It's Bradbury at the top of his form, which means these are some of the better short stories you'll find almost anywhere. Links: The Martian Chronicles | More by Ray BradburyPerdido Street Station by China MiévilleThe perfect book for anyone who thinks that science fiction can't be literary and/or adventurous in form. Miéville's genre-buster of a novel is not unlike what you would get if you spliced together the genes of Charles Dickens and horror master H.P. Lovecraft and raised the resulting creature on the writings of Orwell, Huxley, and Philip K. Dick (the fellow who wrote the story that was the basis of the movie Blade Runner). (Photo: Andrew M Butler, via Flickr) It's difficult to describe the novel, except to say that it involves mad scientists, interspecies romance, vampiric moth creatures, Tammany Hall-like urban politics, the value systems of alien species, interdimensional spiders, and a rip-roaring final action scene that takes place on the rooftops of a city you really can't imagine. All written by someone who uses the English language like Yo-Yo Ma uses a cello. Fabulous writing, regardless of genre. Links: Perdido Street Station | More by China MievilleSnow Crash by Neal StephensonWilliam Gibson's Neuromancer may be considered the first "cyberpunk" novel, but the fact is, it's kind of a deadly bore. Snow Crash, on the other hand, is a real hoot right from its first scene, which involves a madcap pizza delivery and is written with the same sort of delirious cinematic urgency that you'll find in the best novels of William Goldman (Marathon Man). (Photo: Bob Lee via Flickr) The novel's plot involves a computer virus that (get this) dates back to Sumeria, but it doesn't really hang together, so instead, enjoy the book for its portrayal of both an insanely Balkanized America and a huge cyberworld so vividly imagined that a whole bunch of Internet companies bankrupted themselves in the 1990s trying to create a world just like it. Also, any book that features a large Aleutian with a nuclear bomb in a motorcycle sidecar and the words "Poor Impulse Control" tattooed on his forehead is one you know you're going to have fun with. Links: Snow Crash | More by Neal StephensonStranger in a Strange Land by Robert HeinleinThe expiration date for this novel and its ideas regarding love and sex and human transcendence has sort of passed (people used the novel for years as a foundation for their own desire for hippie polygamy, and now they don't so much), but it still make for a good read for two reasons. (Photo: Dd-b, via Wikimedia Commons) One, Robert Heinlein wrote damn fine dialogue, which makes him more fun to read than most other writers today (and how sad is that, since Heinlein's been dead coming up on 15 years now). Two, Heinlein thought seriously about the nature of God and the interrelationship between God and His followers, which is interesting to contemplate even if you're not interested in the polysexual hijinks. Also, Jubal Harshaw, the cranky old man who counsels the "Stranger" is like a dyspeptic Yoda advising an extraordinarily horny Luke Skywalker, is one of the great curmudgeons of the 20th century writing, and you don't want to miss out on a character like that. Links: Stranger in a Strange Land | More by Robert A. Heinlein |
|
| The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out! | |
| What have we missed? Let us know in the comment section! | |
Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
If you're a dog, beware of a tiny Texas town of Ferris, about 20 miles south of Dallas. Oh, stray dogs are rounded up by animal control officers all over the US, but in Ferris, Texas, they shoot 'em:
The rural North Texas town of Ferris — about 20 miles south of Dallas — has approved a policy that allows authorities to shoot “wild” roaming dogs.
Ferris City Manager David Chavez said the Ellis County town approved the policy because it was becoming a dumping ground for unwanted pets. People drive out to the country to release pets they no longer want, but the starving animals breed, form packs and wind up scavenging for food, he said.
Ferris Police Chief Frank Mooney said the city would shoot only “potentially violent dogs,” and only as a last resort — after attempts to humanely capture the animal had failed.
Link - via Muttskis
(The photo is from the iconic January 1973 cover of National Lampoon humor magazine, and yes, it's not neat but isn't it remarkable?)
In 2000, the publishing giant Random House assembled a board of authors and literary critics to list the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
The Zeray Gazette blog has the list (of which I reprinted the top 10) and I'm sad to say that I've only read 4 of these:
1. (1922) Ulysses James Joyce
2. (1925) The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. (1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
4. (1955) Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5. (1932) Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. (1929) The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
7. (1961) Catch-22 Joseph Heller
8. (1940) Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
9. (1913) Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
10. (1939) The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
How many of the 10 (and 100) have you read? And what's missing from the list? Link
If you like to water the lawn in the middle of the night, this is the garden hose for you. Behold the Lighted Garden Nozzle, which comes with a built-in LED light to let you see exactly what you're watering after dark.
The Raptor is a short yet clever video clip (1:37) about Jurassic Park, but without any real dinosaurs. Just a hallway and two dudes who managed to be quite entertaining!
Link [embedded YouTube]
Tin man jungle gym "Playground" by Tom Otterness, photo by Kat Sterck
Sculptor Tom Otterness created this amazing bronze tin man jungle gym as a private commission. That's one lucky kid who has his or her own Otterness creation as a playground! http://www.tomostudio.com/exhibitions_play.html - via Super Punch
If his dedication to the Boy Scout is any indication, Shawn Goldsmith will surely go far. He has accomplished a rare feat: he earned all 121 Boy Scout merit badges available!
You only need 21 to get the title "Eagle" Scout. "If I run into a stranger, there's definitely something to talk about. I have 121 topics to talk about," he says when asked why he did it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98982354
The growing popularity of Facebook has an unintended consequences for young people who used to have the social networking website all to themselves: their parents are joining and befriending them!
The Facebook group entitled "For the love of god -- don't let parents join Facebook" has 5,819 high school and college-aged members who want to stop the growing number of parents who are joining Facebook, the massively popular social networking site, from "spying" on them. [...]
"It's really weird that nonstudents and parents use Facebook," said Emma Gaines, a Tufts University sophomore. "It makes me feel really uncomfortable that my older aunt has Facebook, because she says that she likes to check up on her teenage nieces and nephews and takes our pictures for her own use. That's creepy."
Many people find that city life is exhausting and now scientists know the reason. Here's how urban living is actually detrimental to the human brain:
Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."
One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.
Donald Peters has got to be both the luckiest and unluckiest man on the day of his death. Well, unlucky because he suffered a heart attack and died, but lucky because he just bought the winning lottery ticket that provided for his family:
The Peters children think their father would have appreciated the irony.
Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local 7-Eleven store on Nov. 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife Charlotte. Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury. [...]
"He'd be very mad, he just passed away and she won a lot of money," said Brian Peters, one of the couple's three children. "He'd say, 'Figures!"'
http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO100359/
Instructable user arcticpenguin unraveled the mystery behind various screw types (what? You think that there are only Phillips and slotted screws?). Take for example, the history of the Phillips screw:
This cross drive screw story starts when Henry Phillips purchased a crude form of a cruciform-recessed screw head concept from an Oregon inventor named J.P. Thompson.
Henry F. Phillips (1890 to 1958), a U.S. businessman from Portland, Oregon, has the honor of having the Phillips head screw and screwdriver named after him.
The cruciform shape can be considered to be a cruciform design with their 90 degree shapes as most have similar physics properties.
Phillips developed Thompsons invention screw into a workable form. Phillips had come up with a recessed cross screw designed for efficiency on an auto assembly line. The idea was that the screwdriver would turn the screw with increasing force until the tip of the driver popped out, called camout. When tightening a Phillips screw with a Phillips screw driver you will notice that when the torque gets to be too strong, the screw driver winds itself out of the screw so the screw head would not be ruined or brake off.
Phillips also founded the Phillips Screw Company in Oregon in 1933, but never actually made screws. He had called on every established screw manufacturer in the US and was told simply that the screw could not be made. Screw makers of the 1930s dismissed the Phillips concept since it calls for a relatively complex recessed socket shape in the head of the screw; as distinct from the simple milled slot of a slotted type screw.
Phillips then called on the American Screw Company, a newcomer to the industry whose new president, Eugene Clark, personally became interested in the new product, despite the opposition of his engineers, who like others in the industry had insisted it could not be made. According to one printed report, the president of American Screw Company said: "I finally told my head men that I would put on pension all who insisted it could not be done. After that an efficient method was evolved to manufacture the fasteners and now we have licensed all other major companies to use it." (Source)
If you have small children hooked on the TV show Yo Gabba Gabba! you'll recognize this crocheted beanie hat right away. I don't know why Yo Gabba Gabba! is so popular with kids - the show is non-sensical, but with a very catchy tune.
It's the Plex robot beanie hat, by Etsy seller UrbanPrincess: Link - via Yokiddo
This one is strange: a woman in Birmingham, England, is hospitalized because she faints whenever she eats a sandwich!
The woman, 25, was seen in hospital complaining of short 10-second episodes of feeling "light-headed, occasionally nauseous, and suddenly and alarmingly unwell".
On more than one occasion she had collapsed. The problem had started when she was aged 15, sometimes recurring several times a week. [...] The episodes tended to occur when the woman consumed certain types of food, particularly sandwiches and fizzy drinks.
Turns out, her condition is called "swallow syncope," a rare medical condition where swallowing triggers the nerve reflexes that cause the heart to stop temporarily: Link - via Look At This
Reverend Ed Dobson did just that, and the retired megachurch pastor found out that living like Jesus is tough. Really tough:
The retired megachurch pastor and one-time architect of the religious right has spent the last year trying to eat, pray, talk and even vote as Jesus would. His revelation: Being Jesus is tough.
"I've concluded that I am a follower, but I'm not a very good one," Dobson said. "If you get serious about the Bible, it will really mess you up."
But a year of living like Jesus has affected Dobson in deeply spiritual and unexpected ways. He has witnessed for Jesus in bars, picked up strangers needing rides and voted for a Democrat who he believes best reflects Christ's teachings. During recent Christmas celebrations, as Christians worshipped the Christ child born in a manger, Dobson appreciated more than ever the man who preached love, only to die on a cross.
Charles Honey of the Religion News Service has more on the fascinating story: Link
(Photo: Emily Zoladz/The Grand Rapid Press)
Note: A.J. Jacobs also did this and wrote a book about it: The Year of Living Biblically
Think that because diet sodas have low calories they help prevent weight gain? Think again! David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding of Men's Health wrote an article on the ugly truth about diet soda:
When confronted with the growing tide of calories from sweetened beverages, the first response is, “Why not just drink diet soda?” Well, for a few reasons:
Just because diet soda is low in calories doesn't mean it can't lead to weight gain.
It may have only 5 or fewer calories per serving, but emerging research suggests that consuming sugary-tasting beverages--even if they're artificially sweetened--may lead to a high preference for sweetness overall. That means sweeter (and more caloric) cereal, bread, dessert--everything.
Link | More on "The Dangers of Diet Soda" at Get Fit Slowly blog
Email This Post to a Friend