Back in the late Jurassic era, I was tagged with a book meme by John at Grasping for the Wind, and I figure better late than never.

Nightstand/Table: Nothing. I don’t like to read in bed.

Reading at the Moment: I like to read a lot of books concurrently, usually a few fiction and a few nonfiction. That way I can jump around according to my mood. Currently reading:

Saturn Returns, Sean Williams

Soldier, Ask Not, Gordon R. Dickson (Nostalgic for me- read a bunch of Dorsai books from the library when I was a kid and just starting out with science fiction.)

Bone Song, John Meaney

The Constitution of Liberty, F.A. Hayek (Last read this one in high school. Quite the chick magnet, I was.)

Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco

Annals, Tacitus (Which now has a largish Guinness stain on it, due to my fondness for reading at the bar and my poor hand-eye coordination.)

Political Writings, Benjamin Constant (Compilation of several works, including The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments)

Can’t Put Down:

Gathering Dust: I have two used bookstores within a relatively short distance of my house. When I take an interest in an author, I head to the used bookstore, find their supply of that author, and just clean them out. I then stockpile these books in my home, like a survivalist accumulating ammunition and canned food to sustain him in case a Russian first strike wipes out civilization. Thus, I have a truly colossal backlog of books I have yet to read.  I’m trying to pick up my reading pace, because I don’t want to accidentally knock over one of my stacked cheap plastic storage boxes and meet my doom buried alive beneath an avalanche of Jack Vance paperbacks.

Secret Indulgence: Faeries’ Landing, an appallingly cute manga series.  It looks a bit odd on the shelf next to my Hammer’s Slammers books, but it’s funny, and I like cute, damn it.

Looking Forward To: The January Dancer by Michael Flynn, The Devil’s Eye by Jack McDevitt, The Gods Return by David Drake

At last week’s Mind Meld at SF Signal, the question asked was:

What are the best examples of SF/F worldbuilding?

This is a question I like to think about, since I think worldbuilding- and especially the process of extrapolating how this or that technology or social change would affect the world- is one of the core virtues of science fiction that distinguishes it from more conventional fiction. People always say- or chant- “All fiction is about people,” and in a trivial sense that’s true, but it’s often less true in science fiction than in other genres. A science fiction story certainly can be about people (that is, the psychology of specific individuals, or some alleged truth about the “human condition”), but it doesn’t have to be, and that’s one of its strengths.

(This, I think, lies at the core of why science fiction is held to be inferior to “literature:” it rejects mainstream culture’s privileging of emotion and socialization over other human faculties, such as reason. Most people- and, what’s more important, most opinion-shapers in this area – are primarily socially/emotionally/people oriented, and people often consider subjects outside their own field of interest and/or competence is to be inferior or unworthy. It’s also a common human tendency to find people who aren’t like you to be some mixture of baffling, pitiful, and repulsive, and so disdain for the stereotypical nerd spills over onto the interests and pastimes of the stereotypical nerd. There are other factors, but I think this is the heart of it.)

But I digress. So, what are some of my favorites?

The Oikumene and worlds beyond of Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series (The Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams, currently available in two omnibus collections) is the first thing that comes to mind. There are so many interesting locations, and there are few who can make places come alive like Vance: Dar Sai and it’s bizarre mating customs and strange sports (someone ought to get a real hadual league going), the cruel and morbid people of Sarkovy, the diverse worlds of the vast Rigel Concourse, and many more. Vance is also the unsurpassed master of the fictional epigraph as world-building device.

The old BattleTech universe was tremendously detailed and interesting, especially if you have some of the old House sourcebooks that came out in 80s. It’s actually pretty remarkable how much background material they created for a tabletop war game, and I love that sort of thing. Granted, there’s no real reason anyone needs to know what the legal status of Lutheranism is in the Rasalhague District of the Draconis Combine in order to adjudicate battles between giant robots, but it’s fun to have information like that if you like to immerse yourself.

Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise is a good one, and my favorite post-apocalyptic setting. There’s lots of interesting stuff – Skyholm, a pre-war aerostat whose inhabitants rule parts of Western Europe, the well-intentioned but oppressive Maurai nation that rules the Pacific, the near-anarchic and rapidly industrializing Northwest Union, held together by its Lodges. There are lots of little things that made it feel more real to me- for instance, the fact that the nuclear war that shattered civilization centuries ago is called different things (the Doom, the Judgment, etc.) in different cultures, or how pre-Doom religions have evolved in subtly different ways in different parts of the world.

I love the setting for John C. Wright’s Golden Age trilogy, the Golden Oecumene. I can’t really do justice to it, because it’s it probably more densely packed with ideas than just about anything I’ve ever read; I sometimes felt as if every page had enough imagination to support whole novels. It also manages the feat- a difficult one, I’ve argued- of being an exciting story within a utopian society, without even the expedient of venturing into some hostile realm outside the utopia being portrayed. I love Iain M. Banks’ Culture books, for instance, but the Culture itself is really the least interesting thing about the books it appears in. Not so the Oecumene.

I’ve become increasingly fond of Neal Asher’s Polity universe. My favorite location in it is probably the world of Spatterjay from his book The Skinner, with its relentlessly nasty ecosystem. Spatterjay has some interesting social speculation, too: The bite of the Spatterjay leech transmits a virus that gradually changes the human body, making the host stronger, tougher, and faster-healing until he is almost unkillable. The human settlers thus have a rather casual attitude towards violence- they have prize-fights where disemboweling someone is merely the equivalent of a boxing TKO. He’ll be fine, just stuff his intestines back in and let him walk it off…

Finally, Larry Niven’s Known Space deserves a mention. I love the juxtaposition of hard science fiction elements with the more implausible or even outrageous concepts Niven comes up with. On the one hand, you’ve got carefully thought out use of reaction drives, slower-than-light travel and civilizations, and other hard SF staples. Even the more fanciful elements are dealt with rigorously- momentum is conserved when you’re sent through a teleporter, for instance. On the other hand… A billion years ago, telepathic aliens crushed a slave revolt with a massive telepathic transmission that killed all sapient life in the galaxy! Human adults are actually just the adolescent form of a race of hyperintelligent genocidal aliens from the galactic core! Luck is genetic, and you can selectively breed for it to create nigh-invulnerable people! It’s sort of like going to a really interesting physics lecture and then taking LSD halfway through, but without those pesky dissociative fugue states and giant spider attacks.

Any thoughts? Any favorites of your own to nominate?

Warning: this post has what you might call a thematic spoiler for Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams, though nothing that would be likely to diminish your enjoyment of that book.

A few days ago, SF Signal had a discussion on the best and worst endings of books. This got me thinking about the subject, because endings are often the aspect of fiction that I find the most interesting. They’re the biggest determinant of a story’s “aftertaste,” for lack of a better term. My own preferences are towards the grim or melancholy side of things, though not exclusively. Some of my own personal favorites:

Poul Anderson, The Night Face- Great buildup, and at the end… Anderson rips your heart out with a single sentence.

Glen Cook, Soldiers Live- Very poignant for me after spending so much time with the Black Company. Like Croaker, I’ll always have the memories.

David Drake, Rolling Hot- The first Drake novel I read, and the one that made me a devoted fan. I can’t recommend this one enough. (It’s included in the Drake collection The Tank Lords.) It was especially effective for me because, atypically for one of Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers stories, one of the principal viewpoint characters isn’t a soldier, but a civilian who gets dragooned into joining the conflict. The whole book is a series of savage muay thai kicks to the emotional groin, and the very end is just devastating.

Jack Vance, The Book of Dreams- The culmination of the five-novel Demon Princes series. Anticlimactic, but that’s the point, and it works wonderfully. You’ve won what you’ve dedicated your life to- leaving you with nothing.

Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man- The climax of the story sort of comes out of nowhere, but the very end manages to be blackly humorous and straightforwardly horrifying and disturbing at the same time.

John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence- I’m not all death and gloom. This is the last book of the Golden Age trilogy, one of my favorite science fiction series ever. Like The Night Face, but with a very different set of emotions at the end, it has a truly perfect final sentence. With the conclusion of his trilogy, Wright leaves the reader feeling- as he should- exultant.

If novellas count, Neal Asher, The Engineer- Creepy. As. Hell.

While I’m at it, I’ll throw in a movie:

Colossus: The Forbin Project- Great science fiction movie that sees its own grim logic through to the bitter end. (It’s also quite fun, the second time you watch it, to imagine that the movie chronicles the birth of Neal Asher’s Human Polity.)

Those are the ones that first come to mind and have really stuck with me. Anyone else have a list of favorites?