AKICOLJ: A book for tom

[coalescent]

The esteemed Mr Anderson passes on this request for book recommendations:

... an SF book for a reading group - needs to be something that non-SF readers would appreciate, not too hard to read, something to get them started with SF. Any ideas? Also needs to be in cheap-ish paperback I suppose.

The need for it to be readily available in paperback probably implies something fairly recent; it needs to be science fiction, not fantasy; and obviously, it needs to be good. Tom is already suggesting The Separation, The Prestige, and ("through gritted teeth") Cloud Atlas. What else should be on this list? (Tom notes that he will find and kill, horribly, anyone who suggests Air.)

(On a separate note, for anyone who might be interested my books-read-in-2006 roundup is here.)

EDIT: Tom has listed the suggestions so far here.

Comments

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

No, it has to do with tom thinking it's rubbish

Gasp, choke, splutter, etc.

[colonelrowe.livejournal.com]

Who is Tom?

[colonelrowe.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as for the actual question at hand, how about one of Justina's recent books?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Not a bad idea -- I don't think Keeping it Real would work, somehow, but Living Next-Door to the God of Love is a definite possibility.

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Me.

-- tom

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

A range of things, apparently.

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Afraid so. We should discuss the matter some other time, though!

Anyway, i'm not so big-headed that i'm not going to suggest a book as an option just because i think it's rubbish; clearly, enough people like it that there's a chance this lot will. 'Air' is thus on the list.

In fact, i'd be very interested to see what they thought of it - i thought 'Air' was a skiffy book trying its best to look like Grown-Up Literature, but failing; i can understand people with a skiffy-centric worldview (ie all of us) being impressed by that, but i suspect that people from outside the genre might not be. But then, Alexander McCall Smith is very popular out there.

-- tom

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

Hey, Air won the Clarke Award, and we all know that Clarke juries never do anything wacky or wrongheaded!

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

people with a skiffy-centric worldview (ie all of us)

*cough*

Oh, also, in case no-one here's mentioned it, far too many of you skiffy-centric people thought that Never Let Me Go was SF. I just thought it was a wonderful book, with plenty of stuff worthy of discussion. But you might consider it meets your criteria.

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

far too many of you skiffy-centric people thought that Never Let Me Go was SF

Specifically, not terribly good SF - didn't we think it was basically an iffy knockoff of 'Spares'?

-- tom

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Not heard of "Spares", so not sure. I know there was a lot of "but WHY isn't the cloning explained properly, with science and everything?" complaining going on.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Who made that complaint?

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

See Liz's comment in this thread :-)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

If I'm understanding Liz correctly (which I may not be) she doesn't think the book is bad because the sf is bad, she thinks the book is bad in all respects, including the sf. Or to put it another way, even if the cloning was explained in more detail, if everything else stayed the same she wouldn't like the book much, if at all, more. Adam Roberts' review is along not-dissimilar lines.

Whereas I thought you were talking about complaints of the "the science isn't explained, therefore it's a bad book regardless of other considerations" variety. Which I haven't seen.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

You seem to think that I paid a huge amount of attention (or indeed, very much attention at all) to reviews of the book. This may be a mistake on your part.

(And reading Roberts' review reminds me why I don't bother to read all that many reviews).

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You seem to think that I paid a huge amount of attention (or indeed, very much attention at all) to reviews of the book.

Well, you did somewhat give that impression by saying "I know there was a lot of ... complaining going on." :-p

Most of the mainstream reviews either went out of their way to reassure their readers that no, of course it's not science fiction, don't be silly; or to reassure them that yes, it's science fiction -- but don't worry, it's actually quite good! What a miracle! (In a deeply ironic twist, the only review not to mention the phrase "science fiction" at all was by Margaret Atwood.) Most of the genre reviews, like Roberts', actually focused on the qualities of the text, which made a refreshing change even when I disagreed with them.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Well, you did somewhat give that impression by saying "I know there was a lot of ... complaining going on." :-p

Knowing that people are complaining != paying attention to reviews :-p

In a deeply ironic twist, the only review not to mention the phrase "science fiction" at all was by Margaret Atwood.

And mine :-p

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

Mine either, but it doesn't count so much as a review as rambling.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Hee! I only tag my book/film/TV ramblings as "reviews" because it's a shorter tag than "in which I witter and ramble pointlessly about stuff for a bit" :-)

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Spares uses one of the same central ideas, ie clones who exist only to provide spare organs for donation. Not really a revolutionary idea, and the rest of the book is completely different.

Never Let Me Go I thought was shite as far as the SF went, and pretty rubbish otherwise, yes.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I read the two last year with barely a pause between. Despite liking MMS's other stuff, I thought Spares was ...well, not terribly well written. I though NLMG was tightly controlled, but still not uite controlled enough to stop me googling and asking questions of the air at random intervals.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

i thought 'Air' was a skiffy book trying its best to look like Grown-Up Literature

Do you mean that Air was trying to assume an aura of respectability generally associated with general fiction? Because there are enough WTF moments in the book (the entire hospital segment, the stomach pregnancy) in which it wears its skiffy credentials proudly. Unlike, say, Never Let Me Go, I don't see Air as using SFnal elements as a means to a cause.

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

'Air' is definitely SF, and doesn't pretend not to be - even apart from the psychokinesis bits (ie the hospital fence and the mouth baby), the whole Air thing is pure SF. None of it is terribly great SF, in ideas terms, but it's passable.

What i meant is that Ryman tries really hard to supply all the goodies one has in mainsteam capital-L Literature, ie deep and believable characters, beautiful prose, evocative descriptions, meaningful social interaction, etc. And i think he fails - the characters are two-dimensional, the village and its people are an insulting caricature of third-world life, and the prose is overdone. I wrote something a bit more detailed at one point, but i'm not sure where - i'll see if i can dig it out.

Heh. There is probably a crack about low-cost writing and 'Ryman Air' in their somewhere.

-- tom

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

all the goodies one has in mainsteam capital-L Literature, ie deep and believable characters, beautiful prose, evocative descriptions, meaningful social interaction

"Miss Eliot, that is not good company. That is the best."

Or, to put it another way, I don't think this is an accurate description of what capital-L literature contains or, for that matter, what your average SF novel doesn't. It's just a description of a really good book. I've read plenty of general fiction that fell short of this standard and precious few novels in any genre that met it.

We obviously disagree over whether Air belongs to former or latter group, but I truly doubt Ryman was trying to emulate general fiction when he attempted - successfully or unsuccessfully - to integrate believable character, beautiful prose, etc. into his novel. I think he was just trying to write a good book.